Free Elisha Magus by E.C. Ambrose Page A

there were indivisi either, ”Thyme said,“ and now we seem to have one. ”
    “ The mancers’re real, ”said Chanterelle.“ And so close by. I’ve heard them in the earth. ” Her voice grew a little louder. “ Do you feel that? ”
    Elisha spread his awareness around him, catching the edge of fear in Chanterelle’s presence. He had not fully attuned himself to the place and started to do so now, sending his awareness into the earth and air, reaching out with his other senses to the darkness. The sun had nearly gone, but moonlight fell around him, turning the scene from gold to silver. The air remained warm, the water chill, but there was a cold beneath the cold, a force that did not flow like water. “ Yes, ” he answered her. “ I feel it .”
    In an instant, she was gone, her presence lifted from the water. With his senses fully alert, Elisha heard a rustle across the water, wide though it was. He rose in time to see a figure spring up from the water’s edge. Slight and long haired, the figure ran through the reeds over the rocky verge to the grass and dove into the earth. It swallowed her up with a tiny spit of dirt, just as a splash of water marked a cormorant’s dive.
    “ Just as well she’s left, ” said Watercress. “ The indivisi are all mad, every one of them.”
    “ It comes of too much knowledge. They devote themselves to one thing so thoroughly they can’t relate to anything else, ” Foxglove replied.
    “ But that’s not what we came to talk about, ” Briarrose began.
    “ She’s not mad, ” Elisha cut in, “ she’s frightened. Didn’t you feel it? It was like … like an eel slipping through the water to find her. ”
    “ Maybe he really is one of them, ” Thyme said.
    Then a shriek shot through mud and water, jolting from Elisha’s soles to the crown of his head. He cried out in echo.
    From the bank above, Rosalynn’s voice called, “Elisha? Are you hurt?”
    He shook himself, casting off the sense of the other’s terror and searching the darkening shore for any sign of her. She seemed to have vanished into the dirt, but how far could she go? Something glimmered—a torch in the hand of a thick figure hard to distinguish from the shadowy trees at its back. The torch dropped as the figure moved away into the trees. Smoke furled upward from a dozen places in the earth, then flickering cracks of flame crept across the heath beyond. That dark figure had set the very ground on fire, kindling the peat which might burn for weeks. Orange and crimson flames worked their way inward from all directions, converging like hunting hounds, tiny flames, but quick and driven. A woman hid beneath that earth, but her enemy was already upon her.

Chapter 8

    E lisha splashed into the water, but it was quickly up to his thighs and pulling hard against him. Damn it! Chanterelle was trapped, might already be burning, and he was helpless.
    “Elisha!” Rosalynn stumbled to shore, breathless. “What’s going on? What are you doing out there and why did you cry out like that?”
    “A woman’s in trouble—over there!” He jabbed his finger toward the opposite shore. “Where’s the bridge?” He spun about in an arc of water, but Rosalynn caught his hand.
    “This way!”
    Aside from a few buildings further on, he saw nothing to span the water. “There’s no—”
    “This way,” she insisted, tugging at him. “There is no bridge, not for miles. There’s a ferryboat.” Rosalynn pulled and Elisha ran after until they ran together along the bank.
    The cottage door stood open when they got there, an old man peering into the twilight, his own fire in the hearth behind him. “What’s on? Thought I heard a scream, I did.”
    “There’s someone in trouble on the opposite shore,” Elisha told him. “We need to cross.”
    “No night crossings,” the man said stiffly and started to pull the door shut.
    “We’ll pay double,” Rosalynn announced. “I’m Lady Rosalynn of Dunbury. We need