The Spirit Ring

Chapter Fifteen

After an age, the reverberations of pain through Thur's body died away enough for him to uncurl from around his throbbing crotch and try to sit up. The north-facing window of the cell admitted no creeping patch of sunlight to mark the time, but the deep blue color of the bit of sky he could see suggested that the afternoon was waning. Gingerly, he put his hand to his swollen lips, touched loose-moving teeth, and winced. Sheer chance he had not bitten his tongue in half. His sides and back and kidneys ached from booted kicks, almost eclipsing the clamor of yesterday's sword cut broken open again. His red cap was gone, likewise his shoes. His knitted hose were torn, and unraveling badly. By pushing himself up sideways he got his back to the wall and his legs out in front of him. He looked around at last.

Lord Pia sat cross-legged upon a straw pallet, which had its own scrap of blanket. The castellan rocked gently back and forward, and nibbled at the blanket's corner in much the same absent way as a man might bite his fingernails. His red-rimmed eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Thur. His fine silk hose were all riddled and ruined too, Thur noticed with a sense of dreary fellowship.

"Who are you?" Lord Pia husked, not dropping his unnerving stare, nor ceasing his rocking.

"My name is Thur Ochs," Thur mumbled, muffled by his puffy mouth. "Brother to Captain Uri Ochs. I came seeking my brother, but Lord Ferrante has killed him." His tale sounded almost mechanical in his own ears, leaden, so often had he repeated it.

"Uri's brother? Truly?" Lord Pia's stare sharpened. "He spoke of a brother ... I saw him die."

"He mentioned your name, from time to time, in his letters, Lord Pia," Thur ducked his head respectfully. Both men had been Sandrino's officers; they must have worked together daily.

"Uri was a good fellow," Lord Pia remarked, staring now into the middle distance. "Sometimes he helped me to catch bats, in the caves west of the lake. He was not afraid of the caves, after the mines, he said." He fingered the silver embroidery on his tunic, the glitter, Thur realized upon a closer look, of tiny bats ranked wingtip to wingtip edging collar and cuffs. Had Lady Pia stitched them?

"Oh?" said Thur neutrally, remembering how mention of the little flying animals had set Lord Pia off last night.

"A bat's the thing, you know. Clever creatures. I think a man might fly as a bat flies, without feathers, if he could but devise wings light enough, yet strong.... The leather was too heavy, even for Uri's sword and shield arms, next time I shall try parchment.... Do you know, bats eat the marsh mosquitoes that plague us? Their fur is very soft, like a mole's. And they can be trained not to bite the hand that feeds them. Unlike men." The castellan brooded. "To think that men dare to call them evil, only because they fly in the night, when men do murder in the broad day—the hypocrites!"

"They are God's creatures too, I am sure," Thur said warily.

"Ah! So good to find a man who is not prejudiced by idle superstitions."

"I often saw bats in the old mineshafts. They do no more harm than the kobolds."

"You are a miner, eh? So Uri said. Not afraid of the dark, either? Good fellow." The castellan brightened. Lord Pia's fellow-feeling for the bats seemed more enthusiastic than irrational, but for a certain skewed intensity of gaze when he spoke of them.

"I ... saw Lady Pia earlier today," Thur offered, even more hesitantly. "She seemed unharmed. She stays bravely by the Duchess and Lady Julia. Ferrante is keeping them all together in the north gate-tower."

"My apartments," said Pia. "Ah." He tensed, blinking tears, and bit on his fingers, red gaze becoming withdrawn.

Thur's hands flexed together. Mad or not, the castellan had demonstrably escaped this cell twice before. "My brother," Thur began, and stopped at a creak of leather and a smothered belch. A Losimon guard sat just outside the cell on a bench against the far wall, watching them and listening. His left arm was bandaged, and his face bore week-old bruises, but a short sword hung at his belt. Thur's lips tightened. What the devil, let him get an earful. "My brother's body lies in a chamber just below this one," he continued more loudly. "Ferrante and Vitelli practice some terrible necromancy upon him. Magic black enough to burn for." Even louder, "Aye, and burn those who aid them, too!" He wasn't certain, in the dim light, but he thought the bandaged guard flinched. "They have also stolen the corpse of Prospero Beneforte, the master mage. They mean to enslave his spirit to a ring for Lord Ferrante."

"Ah," said Lord Pia distantly. "I have seen that chamber. So that's what they are about."

"You'll all burn!" Thur yelled out to the guard, then huddled back, coughing from the effort. He doubtless looked and sounded as mad as the castellan. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Lord Pia, help me! They hold poor Uri's spirit through his body, and mean to drag him to some damnation. He is a prisoner, imperiled even in death. I have to ... free him, somehow. And Master Beneforte, too."

"Ah," said the castellan, arching his brows. "Free. That's the trick of it, isn't it?"

Thur paused, confused. The castellan hunched a shoulder, turning away on his pallet, and resumed nibbling on his blanket and staring into space. He is mad. This is useless. Thur sighed. He added tentatively, "Abbot Monreale holds Lord Ascanio—Duke Ascanio—safe at Saint Jerome, for now, but they are besieged by Losimons." But to this Lord Pia made no response. "... Abbot Monreale enspelled some bats to be his spies, but I don't know if they have come this way."

"Ah!" said the castellan. "They are good and gentle creatures, don't you see, to so serve the holy abbot. Monreale knows." Lord Pia nodded sagely, and gnawed wool. Thur lay back down on the stone and throbbed awhile, despairing.

He was roused by steps and voices from the corridor. A couple of big Losimons loomed beyond the door, followed by Messer Vitelli in his red robe. Vitelli held a small green glass flask padded with woven straw. The little man stared through the bars at Thur, yawned, and sucked on his lower lip. "Go ahead," he directed, and stepped aside-to let the prison sergeant unlock the door. The sergeant, one eye on the castellan, waited warily for the big bravos to enter the cell. But Lord Pia never even looked up at this invasion.

One of the bravos got behind Thur, and yanked him to a sitting position, his arms locked behind his back. Vitelli leaned against the wall, yawning as if his face would crack, then touched something under his robe. He shook his head like a dog shedding water. "Damn the man," he muttered, and straightened up, inhaling deeply.

The hairs stirred on the back of Thur's neck, as Vitelli's dark aura disturbed something subtler than his senses. There was neither heat nor flash, sound nor scent, yet it was as if an aroma of magic rippled Thur's belly, without first passing his nostrils. Vitelli was maintaining a spell, not invested and constrained and supported in some symbolic object, but held in his own liquid thoughts, a spell powerful and oppressive. And yet he was still able to walk and talk, smooth and ordinary. The impression faded even as Thur grasped at it, giving him hallucinatory vertigo. Maybe it was just another aftereffect from his beating. He squeezed his eyes shut, and blinked rapidly, and the dark aura receded to linger on only in Vitelli's dark eyes.

The man behind Thur grasped his lank blond hair and pulled his head back, and the second stepped forward to force a stick between his teeth and pinch his nostrils shut. Vitelli unstoppered his flask, and sloshed its contents into Thur's aching mouth. It was a sweet dark wine with a bitter undertaste. Thur choked and sputtered and bucked and gagged. And swallowed.

"Good," Vitelli stepped back, and turned his emptied bottle upside down. A last drop shivered on its lip, and fell like a starburst of blood upon the cell floor. "That should do it, even for so large a lout. Return in half an hour and cart him downstairs." He exited the cell, leaving his men to lock it; the dark distracted look spread out from his eyes across his face again as he turned away. Their scuffling footsteps faded again down the corridor, leaving only the sitting guard. Thur's head, sinking inexorably, met the cool stone.

The castellan's face came up, and he giggled, quite distinctly. His giggles became hoots, then high screams. He jumped to his feet. "A bat's the thing!' he cried, snatched up the slops bucket from the corner of the cell, and skipped around the little chamber. With a cunning grin, he stopped by the door, yanked off the bucket's lid, and flung the reeking urine upon the startled guard.

The guard came up off his bench with an outraged yell, unfortunately meeting rather than dodging the vile wash. The castellan leaned through the bars, his hands opening and closing, then danced backward as the soldier drew his blade and lunged at him. Lord Pia pounced upon the sword arm and wrested the blade away, and waved it in the air, striking sparks from the ceiling. Swearing and screaming for the prison sergeant to bring him the key, he was going to kill this madman despite all, the guard retreated up the corridor, brushing at his tunic in disgust and almost crying.

"Quickly." Lord Pia dropped the sword and turned to the swooning Thur, who had watched the whole performance from a numbing huddle on the floor. Strange patterns, like watered silk, swirled and wavered across his vision. Lord Pia slapped the slops bucket upright under Thur's nose, yanked his head back by the hair rather less gentry than had the Losimon bravo, and thrust his thick and filthy fingers deep into Thur's throat. He kneed Thur's belly for good measure.

"That's it, boy, bring it all up," he crooned encouragingly, as Thur retched into the smelly bucket.

Thur didn't even need a second stimulus to empty his stomach altogether. The sickly sweet wine, bile, and poisonous acridity of the drug filled his mouth, and he spat wildly, eyes watering, nose running. Lord Pia turned his head, listening, then grabbed the bucket away to toss its revolting new load quite accurately and neatly through the bars of the outside window.

"Before they get back. Listen to me!" Lord Pia pulled Thur up by the hair again, hissing. Thur's eyes still swam with tears. "Lie still! Pretend it is yet working upon you. Go limp as a slug, don't cry out even if they stick an iron needle into your flesh, and they will carry you out of here themselves. Then keep pretending, till I call you to rise and strike! Do you hear? Do you understand?" His red eyes were fierce. Thur nodded dizzily. It took no effort at all to pretend to swoon; a dark haze fogged his brain. At least the numbness muffled the pain of his bruises and knocks. He wiped his lips on his sleeve, eliciting another. "Lie still!"

Lord Pia snatched up the sword and bounced from wall to wall, waving it and ululating, as the guard and the sergeant returned. The sergeant peered through the bars, looking very annoyed. "Stupid fool, to let him disarm you! Now how d'you think I'm supposed to get it back for you from a howling lunatic? Ha? Wait for him to cut his own throat? I ought to—" Both men jumped back as the castellan on his breathless circuit clattered the sword across the bars. The iron continued to ring faintly as he stopped, tilted his head cunningly, and blatted his lips in the direction of the Losimons. The guard, wild, grabbed for the sergeant's key ring, but the sergeant slapped him down. "Witless nit, I'll have you flogged if you don't obey orders. Here, you!" This last was directed at Lord Pia who, with a weird snicker, danced to the window and stuck the sword out through the bars, and let it go.

The guard yelled in incoherent rage, shaking the door bars, and the sergeant cuffed him. "Ninny! Go and get it. You can wash in the lake while you're down there. In fact, you'll have to, that steel will be sunk ten feet down at least. And don't take all day!"

"Ill get him," snarled the unhappy guard, but was driven off with a stream of vicious invective and personal abuse from the sergeant, who then stared at the castellan, shook his head, and plunked down on the bench in weary obedience to his orders to keep the elusive madman under continuous observation. Lord Pia, wheezing and sweating, gray hair disordered, flung himself back down upon his straw pallet and stared at the ceiling with empty eyes.

Vitelli's two big bravos came back before the disarmed guard returned. The castellan ignored them completely as they stopped by Thur. One kicked Thur in the belly, not viciously, just testing; Thur could not help flinching, but he let his eyes roll back, and he stayed limp. It wasn't that hard. Trying to stand up, that would have been hard.

Night was falling. The light from the window was a strange salmon-pink afterglow. The sergeant held up a lantern like a smoky gold animal eye in the growing shadows. One Losimon took Thur's shoulders, the other his feet. It was good to be carried. He felt waterlogged, every breath an effort. As he was hoisted up Thur let his dazed eyes pass across Lord Pia's, who lay on his side and stared back expressionlessly, his fingers tracing and trapping out an odd little rhythm on the stone floor, as formlessly compulsive as his blanket chewing.

Why am I going along with this madman's plan? If he even has one. But here he was, just as Lord Pia had forecast, being carried out of the cell. His porters bumped him down the narrow stone stairs in the black dark to the familiar under-level with its four doors.

Too much to hope they would just lock him in with the wine casks ... no. They lugged him through the door into the magic workroom.

"Leave him there." Vitelli waved in the general direction of the room's center. They dumped Thur down ungently.

"Is there anything else, Messer?" one of the soldiers asked, cautiously deferential.

"No. Go."

They did not linger to be told twice. Their bootsteps scuffed up the stairs in double time.

Thur lay sprawled, his face mashed to the floor, and let one eye slit open. Vitelli was turned away, lighting a few more bright beeswax candles to add to an already brilliant array. The little man had exchanged his red robe for a gown of sable velvet. Gold embroidery glittered here and there in its folds. Symbols? Magical, or merely decorative?

Lord Ferrante entered, swinging a small leather bag in a way that suggested it did not contain wildlife this time. The cut on his neck had been cleaned and stitched closed with silk threads of extraordinary fineness. He wore a clean shirt, unstained with blood, but had donned his chain tunic and sword belt again, and leggings of black leather. "Do you have everything?" he asked Vitelli.

"Did you bring the new bronze?"

"Yes." Ferrante let the bag twirl on its strings.

"Then we have everything."

Ferrante nodded, and bent to lock the door. He placed the big, iron key back in the pouch hung on his sword belt. Thur almost moaned aloud. How the hell was he supposed to get out of here this time? Pretend, till I call on you to rise and strike. How the hell did Lord Pia think he was going to get in?

"Stay," said ViteIJi, as Ferrante started toward the salt crates. "I must divest this damned awkward sleep spell into something that will hold it for a little."

"Can't you just let it go? Even bound, it must distract you.'

"Not nearly as much as Monreale would distract me, should he recover quickly enough to interfere at some critical moment. And it is easier to maintain than it would ever be to recast. Prudence. And patience, my lord."

Ferrante grimaced, hitched a hip on me tabletop, and let one black-booted foot swing. He frowned down bleakly at the little footstool-chest, beside him, and shoved it away. After a moment he drew a slagged silver ring from his belt pouch, and turned it broodingly in his hand. His right hand was no longer bandaged, Thur realized, though it still looked red and barely half-healed.

"For all your troubles, Niccolo, Beneforte set the spirit of this ring free most readily. A wave of his hand. And none of your antics with the corpse or ring since have sufficed to call the power back."

"Yes, I've told you we must find Beneforte's hidden notes on spirit-magic. I have said it repeatedly."

"I think it was no bargain," said Ferrante quietly, "to trade my damnation for so brief and volatile a power." He closed his hand over his palm.

Vitelli, facing away from Ferrante, rolled his eyes up in exasperation, then carefully composed his features to proper deference, and turned. "We've been over this, my lord. The infant was sickly. Its mother lay dying. It would not have lived the night. Would you rather have let that death go to waste? What merit in that? And it was only a girl-child anyway."

Ferrante said dryly, "I would hardly have let you persuade me to do that to my son and heir, Niccolo, sickly or no." He blew out his breath. "I want no more such sickly girls. You're a magician, how do I assure a strong son next time?"

Vitelli shrugged. " Tis said a woman's part is to supply the matter, and the man's to supply the form with his seed. All things struggle toward the perfect form, the male, even as metals in the ground strive to grow to be gold; but many fail, and females thus result"

"Are you saying I should have added more form?" Ferrante's brows rose. "She was too sick. Vomiting all the time. Revolting. I had no heart to plague her. Besides, there were plenty of women in town."

"It's not your fault, I'm sure, my lord," said Vitelli placatingly.

Ferrante frowned. "Well, I want no child-bride next time. The pale and whimpering Julia is unfit to bear."

Vitelli said sharply, "With Julia comes a dukedom. Give her a little time."

"I hold the dukedom now by force of arms, or will, shortly," Ferrante shrugged, "what other right do I require? What other right would even avail, if I had no army?"

"True, lord, but the Sforza did both, in Milan."

"And left too many Visconti alive, who now skulk about half the courts of Italy, trying to brew trouble." Ferrante turned the ring in his hand, without looking at it, as if wondering if it sought some such subtle revenge.

Vitelli paused, and said slyly, "Give me the silver ring, my Lord, and I will try to see if anything may yet be salvaged."

Ferrante smiled, not pleasantry. "No," he said softly, but very firmly. "It was fair and just that my dead daughter's spirit serve me. No other. I would not bind one of mine to serve a base-born Milanese ... damned dabbler."

Vitelli bowed his head, his jaw tight. "As you will, my lord. There will be other opportunities. Better ones."

He turned to clear a place on the boards to his other side, dusted it with a gray powder, and then wiped it clean. He then arrayed a simple spell-set; a tiny gold cross, facedown, and a gauzy silk cloth. His features sharpened in concentration; he began murmuring. After a few moments, the silk gauze rose in the air like the head of a questing snake, and settled gentry over the cross. Vitelli s muttering died away. He took a deep decisive breath and turned to Ferrante. "Done. It will hold Monreale for—long enough."

"Shall I light the furnace, then?" asked Ferrante.

"No, I'll do that. Strip the Swiss spy of his clothes. I'll help you hoist his brother momentarily."

Ferrante tossed him his purse, which he caught one-handed. A little jeweler's furnace sat upon stone blocks near the window. Vitelli had already laid in the fuel. Now he bent to the lower hearth opening and whispered, "Piro." Blue flames licked the pine and charcoal, which caught and burned steadily. Vitelli emptied the chinking contents of Ferrante's leather purse into a new clay firing pot no bigger than his fist, and popped it into the oven.

Thur bore being stripped, willing his limbs to flaccidity, his breathing to a deep slowness. Ferrante was quick and businesslike—had he practiced on corpses in the field of battle?—though truly there was little left to take, just the ruined red hose and the gray tunic. The floor was chill on Thur's bare skin. Did drugged men shiver? This play could not go on much longer. He must throw off his seeming sleep and strike soon, or die. Or strike and die. One last chance. He was being given one last chance to be a hero like Uri....

Vitelli pumped the furnace bellows a few times, then turned to help Ferrante lift Uri's stiff gray corpse from its bed of salt and lay it out, faceup, on the floor near Thur. A few dislodged salt crystals fell and bounced, scattering across the stone with a muted glitter. Ferrante returned to arrange Thur facedown. And where the hell was the ghost of Master Beneforte while all this was going on? Indeed, if only Beneforte were lodged in hell, none of this would be happening. For a mad moment Thur wished him there with all his heart. No helpful dust-man rose from the floor now.

"Take over the bellows," said Vitelli to Ferrante. A tense edge to his voice warned Thur that the enspelling was about to start in earnest. Vitelli arranged three sticks of new chalk, green, black, and red, in a fan in his left hand, and stepped forward to crouch beside Uri. His Latin chant sounded almost like a prayer. Thur didn't think it was a prayer, at least no prayer to God. Vitelli took a clay ring mold from his robe, and set it on the floor midway between the quick and the dead. He placed a long-bladed and very shiny knife with a bone handle near Thur's head. What kind of bone? It was getting very, very hard to keep his eyes from focusing and tracking, and Vitelli kept glancing at him....

Murmuring again, Vitelli began to trace his chalk diagrams upon the floor around the two brothers. Thur thought of the cat, and the cock. This floor had been well scrubbed since last night, and not, he suspected, by any servant, unless Vitelli employed a man with his tongue cut out. The bellows wheezed steadily; the fire's husky sound deepened.

"The devil—!" Ferrante ducked. A bat had flitted in through the window, and was circling the room in rapid, silent swoops, as a child might whirl a toy on a string. Vitelli, engaged in his chant and unable to stop, gave Ferrante and the bat both a glare. Ferrante drew his sword, and swung at the flying target, missing three times. He swore, and lunged after it.

Vitelli came to the end of a stanza, and drew breath long enough to snarl, "It's only a bat. Leave it, damn it!" over his shoulder, then resumed chanting.

Ferrante grimaced, pausing, but on the bat's next circuit his sword licked up again. Only half-aimed, in a lucky blow it whacked the shadowy animal out of the air. A wing broken, the bat chittered across the stones and one of Vitelli's chalk-lines, smearing it

Vitelli's teeth clenched. He broke off his chant. His words felt to Thur like a line of marching soldiers stumbling into each other as their leader stopped without warning. Vitelli opened his hands, and let the terrible tension leak away, before moving.

"Clumsy—!" he cried to Ferrante in real agony. "Well have to start over. You get the sponge and mop these lines." Face working, he strode over and stamped on the injured bat, killing it. He picked the little corpse up by one wing, holding it delicately away from his robe, and flung it out the barred window.

Ferrante was clearly not pleased by this abrupt order to a menial task from his subordinate, but, stiff-faced, he obeyed. Out of his depth in this complex magicking, perhaps. He did a neat job, though, and within minutes the floor was dry and ready again. Vitelli picked up the ring mold and the knife and started anew.

This time he had Ferrante stand within the lines, by Thur, as he drew them. Thur kept one slitted, white eye on that bone-handled knife. He must reach for it before Ferrante did, come what may. He wished desperately he were in better shape. Could he even stand up, let alone fight? The miasma of magic in the room was so thick he could scarcely breathe, as if Vitelli's dark aura had expanded to the walls. Vitelli appeared in the corner of Thur's vision with a pair of tongs clasping the cherry-red clay cup holding the molten bronze. Sweat trickled in shiny tracks down his face. When he poured, the ring would freeze almost at once—trapping Uri's spirit? The chanting rose to a crescendo. Ferrante's leather leggings creaked, as he knelt behind Thur, awaiting his signal to take up the knife. Thur must strike now—a scrambling noise, and puffing, came from the window that faced the lake. Much too loud for a bat—

"Rise, and kill the bastards!" Lord Pia roared.

Ferrante wheeled, and drew his sword. Rise was not quite the word for it, but Thur lurched forward in a sort of frog-flop, fell upon the knife, and rolled. The bone hilt, in his hand, sent a paralyzing jolt up Thur's right arm, not-quite-pain, shuddering along his nerves. His hand spasmed open, and the knife clattered across the floor out of sight under the trestles. The chalk-lines burned his skin like whips as he pressed across them. Ferrante's sword struck sparks and a white scar on the stone where Thur had just lain.

Vitelli bent, and choked convulsively. The tongs fell from his grasp. The clay cup cracked on impact, and its molten bronze spattered across the cold stone floor.

The castellan squeezed from the window and stood, hair waving, eyes alight. The guard's short sword was in his right hand, and an iron bar from the window was in his left. His legs were bare and hairy. His lips were drawn back on a feral snarl.

Reaching a trestle that held a salt crate, Thur at last pulled himself to his feet. His legs shook, but held him. Ferrante started to lunge at Lord Pia, stumbled across the chalk lines, and recovered just in time to parry Lord Pia's sword with his own blade, then catch the murderously swinging iron bar with an upflung arm. Ferrante stepped back, absorbing the shock of Pia's onslaught in a hastily ordered defense. Pia was a soldier, yes, and a match for Ferrante with the sword. But older, and fatter. Already his breath pumped like the bellows.

Vitelli was half-sprawled, half-kneeling by Uri, doing something to Uri's mouth. Thur staggered over to him, grasped him by the padded shoulders of his velvet gown, and heaved him into the wall. "Win or lose, you will not have my brother!" Thur meant it to be a defiant shout; it came out a croak. He grabbed Uri's rigid ankles, and dragged him toward the window.

He glanced out, surprising a kobold shadow-man who was drawing the last iron bar down into the solid stone, like sinking a spoon into porridge. The kobold grinned at him, and melted away after its prize. Thur heaved Uri up and stood, his joints cracking and popping like the mine timbers. He aimed his brother at the little square window and charged forward as if he were carrying a battering ram. His aim was good. The corpse shot through the narrow opening without catching or dragging, and arced into the night air. After a moment a great splash sounded below. Thur pushed himself back upright from the window ledge, and turned to seek his enemies.

Lord Pia was still engaged with Ferrante, their swords clanging like a couple of demented blacksmiths. Thur, mother-naked, bore nothing to attack a swordsman with. What about a black magician?

Vitelli had regained his feet, and started toward Lord Pia, muttering, his hands gesturing. With one hand Thur grabbed an iron candlestick, and with the other he swept the spell-set of gold cross and silk gauze from the tabletop. Vitelli yelped, stumbled, and turned toward Thur.

Thur swung, doing his very best to take Vitelli's head off with the first almighty blow; he did not think he'd get a second chance. Vitelli ducked, and Thur was twisted off-balance by his own momentum. He came around just in time to see Ferrante stab Lord Pia through his sword arm, nailing him to the oak door. Pia did not cry out. Ferrante left his own sword quivering in flesh and wood, and caught Lord Pia's short sword as it fell. Without a pause, he whirled and lunged at Thur.

Thur knocked the sword aside with the candlestick, once, twice; Ferrante pressed him swiftly across the chamber. Backing him into the furnace. Thur could feel the heat on his bare haunches. He sidestepped to put the window behind him instead. Ferrante had regained his balance, moving smoothly and confidently; he almost seemed to study Thur at his leisure. Vitelli, moving up behind Ferrante, pointed a finger at Thur and began to scream in Latin. His dark aura spun around his head like a cyclone.

Thur did not think he had better be standing there when this spell, whatever it was, arrived. At Ferrante's next thrust he swung his candlestick with all his remaining strength, and knocked the sword wide. Ferrante still covered himself with a knife, not the bone-handled one, that had somehow appeared in his left hand. Thur spun on his heel and dove through the window after Uri. His aim was not so clean this time. The rough sandstone shredded the skin of his shoulders and knees in passing. Then he found himself flailing in the dark air. A man might fly as a bat flies, without feathers—had the castellan flown down? Where the hell was the water—

He smashed into it belly-flat. After the suffocating heat of the magic chamber, the cold was confounding. It closed over his head, and stopped his breath. He fought his way through a wash of tickling bubbles to the surface, and gasped for air. Cold but clean. It seemed to flush the dizzying sickly drug-torpor from his limbs at last. Thur splashed and turned about, trying to reorient himself.

The night was moonless, the stars muffled by haze. Fog tendrils steamed from the lake's surface, obscuring what vision was left. Against a looming black bulk, Thur made out a few dim gold blobs of candlelight, the cliff face with its windows and the castle wall, above. He had to get away from that. He paddled as silently as he could in the opposite direction, just his eyes and nose breaking the surface of the dark and quiet water. He bumped into a floating log.

No. Not a log. It was Uri's body. Somehow, in the frantic fight, Thur had imagined it sinking beyond Vitelli's reach, but it was quite buoyant. He tried to push it under, but it popped back up. Any Losimon with a rowboat could pick it off the surface of the lake tomorrow morning, and return it to Vitelli, and all this would be for nothing.

No, not nothing. Not nothing. But not enough. He had regained Uri only to lose Lord Pia. Mad, perhaps, but clever and bold ... as Abbot Monreale was holy, Duchess Letitia defiant, Ascanio innocent, and Fiametta ... Fiametta ... and all, all, sacrifices to Ferrante's towering self-conceit, his fame. What gave Ferrante the right to ride over all those lives?

Right has nothing to do with it. He fights to survive. And the more he drifts into wrong, the harder he will fight. Must fight. So spoke reason. Reason was no practical help.

Thur was drifting, too. He began to shiver as the chill lake water drew the heat from his body. At least it wasn't as killing-cold as the water in the mine. Would Uri become waterlogged, and start to sink or rot? Uncertainly, Thur began to kick, propelling himself and his brother log gently along. He was no longer sure where the shore was. No lights or lanterns shone bright enough to pierce the mist. But he achieved, after a little experiment, a sort of equilibrium, kicking just fast enough to keep warm, just slowly enough not to outpace his breath. He felt he might keep it up for hours. But then what?

By the time he bumped into the quay, he knew neither how far he had come nor how long he had been about it. He felt like he had paddled halfway to Cecchino. A town loomed beyond the steps and docks and pebbled beach. The stones bit his naked feet as he rose dripping and the water no longer supported his weight. He dragged Uri along horizontally as far, as possible, then pulled him ashore like a fish. He was almost as slippery as one. Thur stood, his legs trembling, and stared into the dark tinged here and there with some faint illumination escaping through a closed shutter. Big buildings, too big for any village. A dog barked twice, and stopped. What town ....

Damn. It was only Montefoglia. Still Montefoglia. Had he been swimming in circles? Quite possibly. He stared up and down the shoreline, mentally placing landmarks he could not now see with his eyes. To his right, the castle hill, to his left, the big docks, the lower walls, and the high outer town wall at the very end that ran right down into the harbor. Ahead lay narrow, winding streets, dark and strange. Well, they couldn't be any stranger than what he had just escaped.

He stood a moment in indecision, water lapping his ankles. Where should he be trying to go, anyway? He had to hide Uri. He wanted ... he wanted to talk to Fiametta. He wanted to find Fiametta, yes. Reason therefore said he ought to paddle back out into the lake and swim to Saint Jerome. He emptied his mind of reason, knelt, got Uri up on his shoulder, grunted to his feet, and started walking.

Up stone steps from the quay. His feet banged down hard with their doubled weight. Guards? There ought to be a guard—there. Thur ducked into the nearest alley as a man with a lantern appeared near the quay. An old man, a town watchman, not a Losimon. Thur walked on without looking back, placing his bare feet carefully in the dark. But suppose he aid meet some urban danger in these passageways? He had a sudden picture of himself, a naked Swiss madman carrying a corpse. ... Well, he had nothing to attract a robber, certainly.

Turn here. Turn there. Where the devil was he going? He would not go back to the castle, no matter now his sixth sense clamored. He stumbled over a blanketed lump in the alley, which gave a muffled cry; Thur, burdened, barely saved himself from landing hard enough to shatter his kneecaps on the cobbles.

"Damn it! No, be quiet. I wont hurt you. Forget you saw me! Go back to sleep," said Thur, panicked at the thought of an outcry.

"Thur?" said a familiar youthful voice. "Is that you?"

"Tich?" Thur stopped, stunned. "What are you doing here?"

"Why, you're all naked!" Pico's elder boy scrambled to his feet, his face a white smudge in the dimness. "What are you carrying?"

"Uri. My brother. You've met Uri, haven't you?" said Thur dizzily.

"It's a corpse," said Tich in horror, after a verifying touch.

"Yes. I stole him back from Ferrante's black magician. Why are you here?"

"Thur, those thieving Losimons—they killed my father and Zilio! They cut his throat like a dog—" His voice grew louder in his excitement—it had been a couple of days since he'd met any man he dared called friend, Thur guessed.

"Sh! Sh. I know. I saw your father's mules yesterday, when they brought them to the castle."

"Yes, I followed them. And they're my mules now. I want them back. I want to kill the bastards! I've been trying to figure out how to get into the castle."

"Sh, no. That accursed castle is no place to try to get into. I barely got out with my life tonight."

"Where are you going?" asked Tich, sounding quite as bewildered as Thur felt.

"I'm ... not sure. But I cannot stand naked in the street till the dawn finds me!"

"You can have my blanket," Tich offered immediately, though in a rather dubious tone.

"Thanks." Thur wrapped it about himself, and suddenly felt much better, and not just for the warmth. "I ... Look, I hate to take your only blanket. Why don't you come along with me?"

"But where are you going?" Tich repeated.

"To ... a house in town that I know." The vision of Fiametta's home came clearly as he spoke the words aloud, finally unconfused by the overlapping call of... Tich? Yes. It was no accident, that he'd stumbled over Tich in the dark, any more than when he'd stumbled over little lost Helga in the snow. But he knew where he was going now. "There's no one home. Except maybe a Losimon guard," Thur added in sudden doubt. Maybe reason ought to prevail, just this once ...

"I have a dagger," said Tich. "If he's a Losimon, I'll kill him for you!"

"I ... We'll see. It may not be necessary. Let's just get there first, eh? Um ..."

"I'll ... take his feet," said Tich reluctantly.

"Thanks."

Thur realized he was going to have to give up the blanket again. Awkwardly, they slung Uri between diem, and walked on, not talking except for a few whispered directions from Thur. "Turn here. Down this street ....ight. Up this slope. We're almost there...."

"Quiet neighborhood," Tich commented. "The houses are like forts."

The familiar walls of Master Beneforte's—Fiametta's—house rose up at last. There was the marble-arched oak door, glimmering even in the dark. No lights shone. It was surely both locked and guarded.

They set their burden down, and Thur borrowed the blanket back.

"How do we get in?" whispered Tich. Thur was not sure he could even climb into bed at this point, let alone climb a wall. He stepped forward, and knocked on the door.

"Are you mad? You said it would be guarded!" hissed Tich.

Yes, he might be a little mad by now. But it wouldn't do to tell Tich so. Thur only knew he was very, very tired. "So, if there is a guard, this will bring him to us. Then you can kill him," Thur promised. He knocked again, and propped Uri's body up beside him, supporting-him with a brotherly arm over his cold and waxy shoulder. He waited for the guard to greet them. And vice versa. He knocked again, harder.

At length came the sound of the bar being drawn back, and the snick of a bolt. Tich tensed, his hand clenching and unclenching on his drawn dagger. The door swung open.

Fiametta stood holding a lantern in one hand and a long kitchen knife in the Other. She was still wearing her red velvet dress, missing its outer sleeves. She stepped back a half-pace, and her eyes widened as she played the lantern light over her visitors. Thur felt doubly grateful for Tich's dirty blanket, now wrapped like a skirt about his waist.

Fiametta looked back and forth between the two brothers. "Dear God, Thur. How do you tell which of you is the corpse?"

"Uri is better looking," Thur decided, after a moment's serious thought.

"I fear you're right. Come in. Come in. Get out of the street." Fiametta waved them urgently inside.