The Spirit Ring

Chapter Seventeen

"Now this is truly and straightly forbidden," said Fiametta, glancing around the front work chamber at her companions. Friends. Allies. Ruberta and Tich sat on opposite sides of a double diagram Fiametta had drawn on the floor in chalk. In the center of one axis lay Uri's body; on an absurd, indefensible impulse, she had placed a pillow beneath his head, as if he were sleeping. He didn't look asleep. That gray stiffness was unmistakably death. Thur sat cross-legged in the center of the other axis, looking scared but determined. The room's shutters were closed and locked; candles at the diagram's cardinal points gave practical as well as symbolic illumination. "If anyone wants to withdraw, you'd better do it now."

Tich and Ruberta shook their heads, identically tight-lipped. "I'm ready," said Thur sturdily.

We must all be mad, thought Fiametta. Well, if they were, Ferrante had driven them so. Thus evil bred evil. Not all evil. I do not compel Uri's soul. I only beg of it. She once more checked through the recipe for a seance in her father's notes. If he had left nothing out, then neither had she.

"Are you sure I don't do anything?" asked Thur plaintively.

"You do nothing—in a, a positive sense. I think it must be harder than it sounds. You have to give up control." Fiametta reflected on this. "You have to really trust your ... your guest."

Thur shook his head, smiling sadly. "Any other—guest, no. Uri, yes."

"Yes." She pursed her lips. "Abbot Monreale starts every spell with a prayer. It seems a little hypocritical here, but ..." What to say? She could hardly ask for blessings upon this enterprise. She bent her head, and her companions followed suit. "In the names of Jesus and Mary we beg. God have mercy upon us, God have mercy upon us, God have mercy upon us all."

"Amen," murmured around the room. And an anxious, unvoiced presence assented, too.

She glanced for the last time at the notes, written in her father's flowing Latin hand. The spoken part of the spell was brief. She ran over the syllables in her mind, testing each one, and had a sudden insight. The substance of the spell was not in the Latin, but in a kind of under-structure of thought—was the insistence upon Latin merely a device to keep power from the ignorant? Uri did not speak Latin anyway, just German and Italian and a smattering of barracks-French. But now was surely not the time for experimentation.

Her lips formed the words anyway, a bridge of sound across a pattern held from second to second in her mind, of which the chalk tines were only a mnemonic reminder. "Uri, enter!" These were magic words, so blunt and plain? Her impulsiveness had spoiled the spell, they must start all over again—

Thur jerked, his eyes widened, his lips parting. His stoop-shouldered slump, partly weariness, partly a habit from ducking his height through unforgiving low mine tunnels, vanished. His spine straightened, like a soldier's on parade. An eager, hungry, almost frantic possession ...

"Fiametta, I am here." It was Thur's voice, but with Uri's accent and intonation, polished smooth and mellowed by his time in the south. And his eyes—his eyes were intent, and bright, and very, very angry. "It's hard to stay. Hurry!"

"Oh, Uri, I'm so sorry you were killed!"

"Not half so sorry as I am." The flash of wry humor was all Uri, truly. His anger was not at her.

"It was my fault, I distracted you when I screamed."

"It wasn't you, it was what fell out of that accursed footstool. Horrible."

A knot of guilty regret loosened in her heart. Uri/Thur's eyes closed. "Bless you, brother, for wresting me from the necromancers." The eyes pressed shut more tightly, as if in residue of some agony. "I tried to resist them. They did not ... fight fair."

"I imagine not," said Fiametta faintly. "God grant you grace."

"It was hard to think of God in that dark place. Some men find grace in dungeons and mineshafts, as if the color and noise and distractions of life blind them, and only in the darkness do they see clear. But I came too late, and to the wrong dungeon. Vitelli's shadow is a darkness empty even of God." His face was set with the memory of that emptiness, of that dark.

"Shh ... it's all right now." Well, hardly that, Fiametta thought, glancing at the gray corpse. "But could you—dare you—face him again?"

Uri/Thur flinched. "Vitelli?"

"Yes. But not so unevenly matched, this time. Uri—we have discovered a spell of Papa's, a wonderful spell. Instead of casting your ghost into a ring, I think we can use this spell to open a way for you into the great Perseus. He was you, after all, but for the face and the pock marks. A body not of flesh, but of bronze, tireless and immensely strong. It cannot be for long, though I plan to use my fire-spell to keep it hot and moving for as long as possible. But in that time you'd have a chance, one chance, to strike back at Ferrante and Vitelli. I cannot—I will not—compel or bind you in any way. But I will beg you. Uri, help us!"

"Make me a path to that end," breathed Uri/Thur, "and I will fly down it. Great Sorceress!" His eyes burned. "Sandrino trusted me with his life. And I stood right there, open-mouthed like a country buffoon, as Ferrante took it from him. I failed my oath, I was dishonored by surprise—I did not trust Ferrante, I should have been more forward, oh, Fiametta! To wash out my dishonor in Ferrante's blood, I'd give my soul for the chance!"

"Don't say that!" Fiametta cried, panicked. "I don't want that! But if the Crusaders can be soldiers for God, I don't see why you can't. Vitelli is worse than any Saracen. But we need even more help than that. Papa would have employed ten strong workmen on this casting. We have only four, three, because I will be attempting the spell. You were there, in the castle—can you tell us how Lord Pia compelled the kobolds in his aid?"

"Lord Pia has a long-standing friendship with the little rock people. That's why they are so thick about the castle. They had a mutual interest in caves, and in the creatures that live in them." Uri/Thur raised his hands, and made a little bat-wing-flapping gesture. "I once visited the kobolds' colony in Lord Pia's company. How you may compel them, I am not sure, especially to work, for they are lazy and flighty and would rather play tricks. They'll play nasty tricks on you, if you cause them pain. Trying to compel a kobold is a bad idea." His brows-down expression became muddled, all of a sudden, and confused. Thur's voice pushed out of his own mouth with difficulty, slow and slurred. "Bribe 'em. Mother's milk. They'd do anything for it." His jaw opened, closed; then Uri was back, looking surprised.

"That would work better than stealing a nanny goat—it's not something they are often offered! They would flock to you!"

"But where would we get—oh, this is getting so complicated!"

"It is strange . .." Uri/Thur's gaze grew distant, "what I can see now. More. Less. Other. Walls are like glass. Stone is like water. But I can see the kobolds in their shadow-form inside the rocks, and they seem oddly solid. People—you, in your flesh—are like shadows used to be, all garbled and distant and out of reach. Except right now, looking through these eyes. It's good to see you, once more." He smiled briefly, then grew grim. "All but Vitelli. His shadow is solid, inside his flesh. Solid and dark. Of him, I am afraid." Uri/Thur sighed, a long, controlled breath. "You must hurry. Even now Vitelli is moving toward binding your father in his ring. It's like a wrestling match. And Master Beneforte is losing! With your father's spirit bound to his will, Vitelli will own all his powers and knowledge. And who would doubt Master Beneforte's power to defeat his own spell, your spell, our spell?

"When does Vitelli now plan to cast the ring?" Fiametta asked intently. "Do you know, can you tell?"

"Tonight."

"Tonight, oh, no! Can you see or speak to Papa at all? Tell him—"

But Uri/Thur's face writhed; a last, plaintive, "I cannot hold! Good-bye—" broke from his lips, and he fell backward, gasping, all and only Thur once more.

"God. God." He almost wept.

"Did it hurt?" asked Fiametta anxiously.

"Hurt?" Thur shook his head from side to side in bewilderment, dazed eyes jerking. "I feel sick. Uri—Uri hurts. Vitelli has hurt him."

"Can we move now?" asked Tich breathlessly. "Is it safe?"

"Yes. It's over," nodded Fiametta. Tich stuck his legs out in front of him and bent and stretched, and Ruberta hitched around in her bundle of skirts and petticoats. "No. It's only beginning," Fiametta realized. "And we have so little time! It's grown so complicated. And Ferrante's soldiers might descend on us here at any moment, and oh—" She shuddered, nearly overwhelmed.

"We'll do it step by step, Fiametta," said Thur. "The last won't look so big, once the first is done. What's first? The copper. For which we must have the kobolds. For which we must have ... hmm." He frowned at the ceiling.

"I don't think a wet nurse will drop down from the sky," said Fiametta tartly, following his gaze. "At least not one who would be willing to put a nasty little rock-demon to her breast. And we cannot involve an unwilling soul, which means we must reveal what we are doing. And if told, and if she does not agree, she could betray us—"

Ruberta snorted. "Oh, you children." Fiametta looked up, puzzled at her dry tone.

"Do you think you are the only ones hurting from this evil?" the housekeeper asked. "Ferrante's soldiers have been swaggering around town for days, making enemies for him. They don't act like the guard of a new lord, they've been acting like an occupying enemy. I could lay hands on a dozen unhappy women who would be willing to do far worse things to strike a blow in return. You leave this to me, girl." Ruberta grunted up and stood with her hands on her hips. "I'd do it myself in a trice, but that I gave up wet-nursing four years ago to become your Papa s housekeeper. I was getting old for it anyway. It's not a job for the squeamish. I don't know why they encourage maidens to be squeamish, there's no place in women's work for someone afraid to get her hands dirty." She nodded shortly, and marched out looking quite steely.

Tich raised his eyebrows, as if amused, or at least bemused, by her military stride.

"Don't you look like that at her," said Fiametta sharply. "Some of Ferrante's drunken men raped her niece two nights ago. Took her right off the street, when she ventured out to get food for her family. The girl was still in bed crying, all bruised and beaten, when I went there at dawn to look for Ruberta. The whole family's in an uproar."

Tich hunched contritely.

Thur took a deep breath, and heaved himself up. "Tich. We can start laying the wood in the furnace while we wait. And shift that stack of tin ingots."

"Right" Tich scrambled up, too.

Fiametta slumped, exhausted. "Oh, Thur. I feel like I've just kicked a pebble off the top of one of your mountains, and watched it start two other rocks, which struck five—a mountain is going to fall on someone tonight. Will it be us?"

"On Ferrante, if I can help it." He offered his hand to her; she took it and he pulled her to her feet as lightly as a straw doll.

She bent and gathered up the precious book, "I had better study the spell some more. And gather what I can of the necessary symbols. We'd best not go in and out of the house any more than we can help. The smoke from Ruberta's cooking fire will be put down to the guard, but what's going to happen when we light the smelting furnace? It s bound to attract attention."

"It will likely be dusk, by that time. It's past noon already," Thur pointed out. "You should also take a little time to rest, before."

"Yes." There was no more time for half-efforts or doubts. Fiametta squared her shoulders. She must dance atop this falling mountain, or they would all be buried in it. May God have mercy upon us, amen.

The knocking on the door from the street was unmistakably Ruberta, her habitual loud thump followed by three short taps, repeated impatiently. Fiametta hurried from the front workroom to let her in. The afternoon was waning. Truly, Ruberta had not been gone all that long, considering the complexity and delicacy of her errand, but the passage of time was making Fiametta frantic. Hardly the calm and ordered state of mind ideal for a master mage to cast a major enchantment, Fiametta thought drearily. But then, she was hardly a master mage. She hoped Ruberta had remembered the dried rue.

Tich, not knowing Ruberta's knock, had run to the entryway too, his knife clutched in his hand. Fiametta waved him back to work, and unbarred the oak door. She swung it open to reveal Ruberta, capped and shawled and burdened with a basket and a large jug. Behind her stood a tall silent woman in a long cape with a big hood pulled up over her head, shading her face. Ruberta gave Fiametta a reassuring short nod, as if to say, This is it; I've done it. Fiametta beckoned the women inside and locked and barred the door again.

"Hello," said Fiametta to the strange woman. Woman, not girl. There were gray streaks in her black hair, drawn back in a bun and braid. Lady, Fiametta refined her evaluation; her clothes were as finely made as Fiametta's had been, before the Losimons had stolen most of them. "Thank you for coming. Bless you for coming. Has Ruberta explained—oh, excuse me. My name is—"

Roberta held up an interrupting finger. "We have agreed to name no names."

That was understandable. Fiametta nodded. "I haven't a prayer of being anonymous, but you shall be as nameless as you wish. Call me Fiametta." The woman nodded back. "Has Ruberta explained what we ask of you?" Surely this lady was not a professional wet nurse.

"Yes. I handed off my babe to my mother-in-law, and ate well, before I came."

"I brought some good ale, to keep up her strength," Ruberta added, hefting the jug.

"Has Ruberta explained what it is we ask you to nurse?" Fiametta reiterated, making sure.

"Yes. Rock-demon, gnome, kobold, the Devil himself I don't care what you call it, as long as it rebounds to Uberto Ferrante's everlasting sorrow." She had that same burning-eyed look Fiametta had seen in all too many faces in Montefoglia of late. "The Losimons killed my husband on the first day. They murdered my first-born, my bonnie boy, my blooming young man, in a street fight these two days past. The plague took my middle two babes, years ago. Only the toddler is left, and now I shall get no other." Her hands clenched. Fiametta knelt, and kissed them each.

"Then you are as ready to start as I am." She rose again. "Come with me."

Fiametta led them through the courtyard toward the kitchen. She walked wide around the chained Losimon, who was awake and gagged again. He made a menacing lunge toward them, was brought up short by his chain, and sneered. The tall woman garnered her cloak away, not in fear, but as one might draw away from a leper, and gave him a direct and murderous stare. Despite his bindings he managed to return an obscene hand gesture, but then gave up and sat down sulkily as Thur appeared, hefting his sledgehammer. Thur and Tich accompanied the women into the kitchen, where Thur raised the trapdoor for them.

Fiametta lit the lantern, and led the woman down into the root cellar, a chamber half the size of the kitchen partly lined with shelves and stone jars. Thur also let himself down the narrow stair, almost a ladder. Ruberta and Tich watched anxiously from above. Fiametta upended a crate, and the woman seated herself on it as gracefully as on a velvet-covered chair.

The walls were surfaced with cobbles. The floor was beaten earth but for an outcrop of stone; Montefoglian soil was thin. Fiametta set the lantern down, and squatted next to Thur, who was staring at the rock as if he might see through it. However limpid it might look to Uri's ghost, the rock remained stubbornly opaque to her. Thur spread his hands out on the rough surface, and cocked his head as though listening.

"Smear some milk on the stone," Thur suggested after a moment. The nameless lady rose, undid her bodice, and leaned over to place a squirt of milk where he pointed. Fiametta rubbed it about and, rather desperately, called, "Here, kobold, kobold, kobold!"

"You're not calling a crowd of alley cats!" criticized Tich, looking down into the cellar. "Shouldn't you chant something?"

All the more stung because she was wondering the same thing, Fiametta snapped, "If you know so much about it, you chant something. Here, kobold, kobold, kobold!"

Dimness; the wavering glow of the lantern; silence. Not even the scuttle of a rat or the skitter of a roach. They waited. And waited.

"It's not working," said Tich, nervously biting his finger.

Fiametta glanced apprehensively at the tall woman. "Maybe just a little longer ..."

"I'm not in a hurry," the woman said. Patience for her vengeance dripped like vitriol from her voice; even Tich was quelled.

"Here, kobold, kobold, kobold," Fiametta tried again. Tich screwed up his face, apparently deeply offended by this dreadfully domestic, unsorcerous proceeding. But then his eyes widened.

Dark shapes twisted upon the wall, and upon the sloping outcrop, shapes not made by the lantern light. Two, three, four ... six ... twiggy little men rose up, as if instead of casting shadows they were cast by their shadows. Silently, they crept up around the tall woman, seated on her crate. The boldest reached out to touch her skirt, and tilted his head in a shy, sly smile. "Lady?" he piped. "Nice lady ..." She gazed back gravely, and did not flinch.

"You shall have milk," said Thur, "but not yet."

"Who are you to say, metal master?" asked the kobold leader. It frowned at him, thrusting out its bony chest.

"He speaks for me," said the tall woman quietly. The kobold hunched and shrugged, as if to say, No offense meant. Its bright black eyes were avid upon her.

Thur said, "In the garden court at Montefoglia Castle sits a stack of copper pigs. Each of you who helps to bring them through the earth to the courtyard of this house will be permitted to drink his, er, her ... its fill. When the copper is all transported. And not before."

"Too much work. Too heavy," whined the kobold.

"Not if you work together."

"We can't run in the sun."

"The day is cloudy, and almost done. The shadow of the wall is across that end of the garden by now."

"Just a little sip, on the lip, first, metal master?"

Thur wiped his fingers across the milk smear on the outcrop, and twiddled them under the kobold's nose. "You like this? Good? Then bring us the copper. First."

"You'll trick us, cheat us. Eh?"

The tall woman said, "If you do as he asks, you shall have your reward. You have my word on it." Her eyes held the kobold's. Its eyes darted away, as if scorched.

"Lady's word. You heard," it chanted to its comrades.

"Be careful, little ones," Thur warned. "Avoid the dark man called Vitelli. I think he could hurt you."

The kobold gave him a pained stare, its lips twisting. "This we know, metal master."

"Have you—" Thur's eyes went suddenly intent, "have you seen Lord Pia? Is he killed, or does he live?"

The kobold ducked away, crouching. "Friend Pia lives, but does not rise. Many tears are in his eyes."

"And Lady Pia? The Duchess and Julia, what of them?"

"They are kept too high in the air. Kobolds cannot venture there."

"Very well. Go. The sooner you return, the sooner you will have your reward." Thur sighed, and stood, mindful of his head on the beams above. They all climbed again to the kitchen, where Ruberta carefully wiped and poured ale into a Venetian glass, slapped Tich's hand away from it, and gave it to the tall woman, who sat and sipped obediently. Fiametta, Thur, and Tich went back out into the courtyard.

She and Papa used to take breakfast on a rustic wooden table in this courtyard, when they first moved to Montefoglia. The space had been almost a garden, cool and soothing, with potted flowers and a gurgling fountain. Now the Perseus project filled it from wall to wall. The old breakfast table was shoved away under the gallery, half-buried under a pile of tools and trash. The furnace, a beehive of bricks as tall as Thur, sat on a mound of rammed earth dug from the casting pit; the pretty paving stones had been torn up and incorporated into its base.

Fiametta peeked into the furnace. Thur had already laid in the first layer of seasoned pine. Tich had carefully swept and covered the channel, made of wood thickly lined with clay, sloping from the bottom of the furnace to the gates at the top of the mold. The big-beamed crane that had lowered the mold painstakingly into the casting pit, and was intended to raise the finished statue, was rotated out of the way for now. The huge clay lump was wound round with iron bands, just like a bell casting Papa had said, to prevent the mold from bursting when the great weight of molten metal poured into it.

Fiametta walked around the pit, planning her spell. She would lay Uri's body on the side opposite the furnace. No need to include the furnace itself in the diagram of forces. For one thing, Thur and Tich would have to cross and recross her lines, to add wood, stir the melt, and adjust the play of the bellows. There was no call for magic in the purely physical process of melting the bronze. The moment when Thur knocked out the iron plug at the base of the furnace and the metal flowed across her line, that would be the proper moment to start channeling Uri's urgent ghost into this creation. Fiametta realized she was really vague about cooling times. Those iron bands would have to be broken loose to release ... Uri, but if done too soon the mold might burst and the statue slump; if too late, it might grow too stiff. Scaling up was always a problem. Papa had said. And she was scaling up this spell with a vengeance. I must be mad.

An unexpected sharp noise came from the chained Losimon, that Fiametta finally realized was a shriek, pushed out around his gag. The startled guard had recoiled to the end of his chain. On the other side of his pillar two kobolds lugging a bar of copper recoiled from him with twittering cries.

The Losimon tried to cross himself, and gargled through the cloth in his mouth, "Demons! Demons in broad day!" "

Ugly! Ugly Man!" squeaked the kobolds.

It was dusk, really, Fiametta decided, dancing at the sky. The courtyard was in shadow, and overhead thick clouds scudded across a purpling sty. It was growing chill. She could smell rain in the air.

"Over here." Thur motioned to the kobolds to bring their burden to the furnace. Tich ran to the kitchen with the news. By the time he returned with Ruberta and the nameless woman, a second pair of gnomes were emerging from the ground beside Thurs feet. There was something revoltingly organic about how the earth squeezed them forth, reminding Fiametta of the clown in the marketplace who extruded whole eggs from his bulging mouth for a trick. But they brought another copper bar. With a giggle, the first pair dove back headfirst into the earth. Then the third pair-emerged, cheerful as cicadas.

Thur began stacking the copper carefully in the furnace, alternating with more wood. Master Beneforte had filled a downstairs storeroom with select pine, laid in to dry especially for this project. The Losimons had taken some—how closely had her father calculated his fuel? They would find out. More kobolds, or the same kobolds, popped up like weasels. Fiametta soon lost count, but Thur did not. "That's the last," he said.

Fiametta came to his side as he backed out and closed the iron door to the furnace through which he'd been squeezing to load ingots and fuel. He rubbed his hair out of his eyes with the back of a dirty hand. He was big and warm, and his blue eyes were exhilarated. Even the absurd undersized robe he wore like a tunic, with his bare calves sticking out, could not quite make him look silly.

He could burn for this. For her. There was a momentum in this moment that had nothing to do with Ferrante. She could feel it, the drive of art from the inside out, the determination to complete. She had hated her father, some days, for being as willing to consume others as himself to fuel that drive. And what she'd hated in her father she was not at all sure she liked finding in herself.

"Are you scared?" she asked Thur.

"No. Yes. I'm scared I might do something to spoil all this beautiful preparation. I mean, the furnace alone is a work of art. No wonder his ghost lingered, cut off so close to this being finished. It's a wonder he's not howling around it. If I can bring this off—it would be a bride-price for your Papa worthy of you. Poor miner's son be damned!"

Be not! "Thur, you realize—I have no idea what the effect on the statue will be when the spell wears off." Nor on Uri.

"The little brass hare was fine, you said. It's going to be magnificent. You'll see." He paused. "We can light the furnace now."

"That's a job for me." Fiametta brightened in a whiff of nostalgia. "I used to light all of Papa's fires for him."

They gripped hands, then Thur stepped back. Fiametta closed her eyes. For you, Papa. And for Abbot Monreale, and Ascanio and his Mama, and poor Lord and Lady Pia, and Tich and Ruberta and her niece and the lady with no name. For all of Montefoglia. "Piro!"

The furnace roared, then the sound dropped to a busty hiss. Thur started pumping one bellows, and on the opposite side of the beehive Tich began working the second pair. In a private spot beyond the furnace, sheltered by the gallery, the nameless lady sat, watching with interest. The first light from the furnace picked out an approving glitter in her dark eyes. She drew her cloak around a kobold, one of a cluster at her feet, who turned its wrinkled face up to her adoringly. In the twilight, one could almost imagine them as children. Almost.

A few sparks wavering in the heat rose from the furnace vents, but not much smoke. The wood burned hot and dry and clear, just as it should. Not . .. not too conspicuous, Fiametta hoped. But we had better not be too long at this.

She rounded up Ruberta, and together they carried Uri's bier into the darkening courtyard. Enough light leaked from the furnace to prevent stumbles, but Fiametta decided to have Ruberta hold a lantern for the next part.

"I can draw the diagram and lay out the symbols, and then rest while the bronze is melted. As long as we are all careful not to step on them. I'll draw them as close and tight to the bier and the pit as I can. You hold the light so I can be sure there is no break in the line."

"Where's your chalk, girl?" asked Ruberta.

"This spell doesn't use chalk." She knelt and took a small sharp knife from the basket of tools and objects she had made ready. She rolled up her right sleeve, and turned her palm out to expose her wrist. She studied her veins. "Um."

Ruberta held her hand to her lips in dismay, but suggested faintly, "Parallel to your tendons, dear, not across them. If you still mean to be able to write or do anything else, after."

"Uh ... right. Good idea. Thank you." This was hard. Think of it as practice for childbirth. The lines had to be drawn with the mage's own blood. No one else's would do. She had to give Papa credit for that one, anyway. No easy way; she dug the knife in point-first and dragged it through her flesh. She had to do it again before the blood was flowing freely enough down her hand for her to write with her index finger. She cleared her mind, stepped to Uri's head, and began.

Her head was swimming by the time she'd murmured her way all around and closed her circle at the starting point. Another problem of scaling up. She stopped squeezing her arm and the blood oozed to a halt. She sat a moment on the ground to recover.

"Is it melting yet?" wheezed Tich to Thur, sagging on his bellows. "Is it time to add the tin?"

"Not nearly." Thur poked his head around the side of the furnace and grinned at him. "If you add it too soon, the tin exhales from the alloy and you lose your trouble and expense. We've hours to go yet."

Tich moaned. But after a few moments of whispered conversation, a couple of smirking kobolds crept out of the corner by the lady and took over his bellows, jumping and hanging off the handle like monkeys. Tich sweated and rested by Fiametta. The rest of the kobolds pitched in, alternated with diving in and out of the furnace in their shadow-form, hooting and giggling. The orange glow from the flames lit the demonic scene. The Losimon prisoner also saw it as a vision out of hell, it seemed, for he had given up his surly sneer and cowered, snivelling and weeping, on the far end of his chain, the whites of his eyes wide in the dare. Ruberta brought watered wine and bread and hard garlic sausage all around. Fiametta ate gratefully, but thought, We have to speed this up.

Papa. It's a wonder he's not howling round this, Thur had said, in all innocence. A wonder, indeed. Where was Master Beneforte? Why was his shade not drawn to this, his obsession? She could scarcely imagine a more potent conjuring for him. It wasn't a problem of range. He had appeared as far away as Saint Jerome. She closed her eyes, and tried to empty her mind, to listen and feel. Papa? Nothing. If he did not come to this, it could only be because he could not. Bound, or partly bound—she pictured Vitelli winding him into smaller and smaller confines, a room, a diagram, finally to a finger's-breadth. How soon?

Very soon, she thought queasily. And what of Vitelli himself? There was enough to her quiet preparations to draw his supernatural attention, if he were actively looking. Vitelli and Papa must be fully occupied with each other, to be so conspicuously absent here. It's like a wrestling match, and Master Beneforte is losing ...

She opened her eyes, rose, and walked over to the furnace. Thur had folded down the top of his robe, and was now naked to the waist. His body glistened in the light and heat as he poked a long, iron stirring-rod through the access window.

"Is it melting yet?" Fiametta asked anxiously.

"Starting to."

She closed her eyes, concentrated deeply, and recited, "Piro. Piro. Piro." She stopped, dizzied; when she opened her mouth, her breath steamed. The furnace roared. Orange sparks spiraled up out of the vents into the night air, and were whipped away by the rising wind.

"Fiametta, save your strength." Thur's big hand closed in concern on her shoulder.

"We haven't much time left. I can feel it." I am afraid.

His grip tightened. "We can do this thing," he breathed in her ear. "It's going to be magnificent." In the bright blue light of his eyes, she could almost believe.

Tich staggered out under a huge double armload of pine, which he dropped at his feet with a clatter. "This is the last of it," he gasped.

"What?" said Thur. "Surely not already." He peered through the furnace window again with troubled eyes.

"Sorry," said Tich. "Not another splinter."

"Well, let's load it in." Together, they heaved the wood into the furnace, while the kobolds manned the bellows. Thur stirred with the iron rod. "Maybe we'd better put in the rest of the tin now. It shouldn't be long, alter that, Fiametta."

She nodded, and stood back. She watched the hot light play over his intent, absorbed face as he stirred the flux again. He feels it too, the passion of making. Her heart grew warmer, and her lips curved up in unexpected pleasure. He is beautiful, right now. Like carved ivory. My muleteer. Who would have thought it?

Suddenly, Thur's lips rippled back in a snarl. "No," he groaned. He stirred harder, then stepped back, driven away by the heat. "It's caking!"

"What does that mean?" asked Tich, bewildered, but frightened by Thur's expression of despair.

"It means the casting is ruined! The metal is curdling. Ah!" He stamped his naked feet, threw the rod on the ground, and stood stiff and trembling. Tich slumped. Fiametta's breath stopped. Ruberta moaned. The kobolds chittered in confusion.

Thur threw his head back. "No!" he roared. "There must be something we can do to save it! More tin— more wood—"

"There is no more," said Tich timorously.

"The hell there's not. I'll give you more wood!" Fiercely, Thur rushed across the courtyard to the old rustic table and upended it, clearing it of its contents with a crash. Yelling like a madman, he took the sledgehammer to it. "Dry oak. Nothing burns hotter! More, Tich! Fiametta, Ruberta! Anything oak in the house! Benches, worktables, shelves, chairs, bring them! Hurry! Kobolds, to me! Pump those bellows, you little monsters! Shove these boards under the grating where the ashes fall, that the heat may rise up...!"

The next few minutes were like an orgy of destruction. Thur dragged a big shop workbench by himself with strength gone half-berserk, so that Fiametta feared he would burst her careful stitches again. Thur, Tich, even the kobolds helped whack the furniture apart. The kobolds seemed to enjoy it, squealing and shrieking. Ruberta even threw in her wooden spoons. The fire thundered, sparks and flames flying up out of the vents in a river coursing skyward. It must look like a signal fire, from outside.

Panting, Thur opened the furnace window and stirred again. His face fell, and his shoulders slumped; he crouched, his smudged, scorched face sagging almost to his knees. "It's not enough," he gasped. It's over...." He curled there, staring at nothing; Fiametta bent over a belly that ached in sympathetic synchrony. To come so close, and fail now ... God did not wait for death to damn them to eternal torment, it was present in life ...

"Pewter," Thur whispered in the smoky silence.

"What?"

"Pewter!" screamed Thur. "Bring me every scrap of pewter you have in this house!" Not waiting, he leapt for the kitchen, to return juggling an enormous armload of old plates, platters, and porringers. He threw them through the furnace mouth as fast as he could, and ran back for more. Fiametta sprinted up the gallery stairs and through the upstairs rooms. She returned with a mug, a battered basin, and a pair of grubby old magic candlesticks that lit themselves with a word from anyone, that the Losimons had not recognized as valuable. Ruberta brought more spoons. In all, there must have been over a hundred pounds of metal. Thur stuffed it all into the furnace, crying, "Ha! Ha!" He stirred, jammed more oak into the grate, stirred again. The roar of the conflagration was omnivorous, ominous, drowning out the distant thunder that echoed across Lake Montefoglia.

"It's melting!" Thur howled joyously. His lips drew back in a demented grin. "It liquifies, oh, it's beautiful! Beautiful! Fiametta, get ready!'

She scurried to her chosen spot, the apex of a triangle halfway between Uri's head and the casting pit, and knelt on the churned earth. How she was supposed to think, evoke a master mage's serene control, in this screaming satanic chaos, she did not know. That's why you memorized this spell. Don't think, just do.

She touched the six herbs arranged in front of her, the knife, the cross. She touched the powders to forehead and lips. On impulse, she swiftly crossed herself, FatherSonandHolySpirit. God! God be ... God be praised for all wonders. She closed her eyes, opened her heart and mind. Uri was a pressing force, a towering will hovering at her hand, three parts rage and one part terror, his dear humor almost gone. I did love you, in some way. She opened her eyes, looked at Thur, and nodded.

Tich swept the cloth cover from the channel. Thur grasped the crooked iron bar, and hooked the plug from the bottom of the furnace. White-hot fire streamed out, driving back the shadows. It ran down, biting through the line of Fiametta's drying blood, and poured into the gate of the great clay mold, a river of light as swift as hot oil.

Uri flowed through Fiametta. A thousand thousand images of memory, climaxing in the mortal wrenching dark of his death, all in the midst of motion—Her mouth opened and her back arched in agony. It burns, oh it burns! Mother Mary. Mother ...

Above them, in the roaring rising heat, the wooden gallery caught fire. Yellow flames licked over the balustrade and railing. The door to the street began to shake with great blows, and the yells of men. Still the fire in Fiametta's veins coursed on and on. She dared not move, she dared not break, surely she was about to ignite like the gallery, explode like a human torch ... Tich ran to the stairs with a futile little bucket of water, Thur picked up his sledgehammer.

In the paved hallway, the door burst inward. Three Losimon soldiers holding a battering ram stumbled in on their own momentum. Behind them strode their shouting officer, his sword drawn. A bearded, savage, black-mouthed man, swearing furiously. In the channel, the last of the bright metal sucked away into the mold. Her spell released Fiametta as abruptly as an opening hand. She slumped to the ground, unable to move, barely able to breathe, and not even knowing if she had succeeded or failed.

The Losimons ran to the courtyard, and hesitated, doubtless stunned by the incomprehensible scene before their eyes: the burning gallery, the shrieking women, for Ruberta and the nameless lady were running after Tich with more water, kobolds flying every which way, the spasming chained guard howling through his gag and bucking wildly. Fiametta, her face sideways on the ground, giggled. Thur stood gently swinging his hammer. One man with a worker's tool against four swordsmen. Fiametta stopped giggling, and rolled over to gaze glassily into the casting pit. What had happened down there?

Let me out, something called. Fiametta didn't think she heard it with her ears. Let me out!

"Thur," she wheezed. "Jump down and knock off the hoops. The iron retaining hoops."

He glanced back and form, at her, at the mold, at the advancing Losimons with their swords cautiously

THE SPIRIT RING

327

feeling in front of them as if for invisible enemies. He slid into the pit and began clanging at the clasps of the reinforcing iron bands. Fiametta s heart raced. Suppose it was too soon. Suppose the mold shattered, and white-hot molten bronze spewed out, drowning him.... One band sprang apart, then another, another. The point of a sword touched Fiametta's throat, pressing her to the ground. She looked up into a dark, bearded face devoid of humor, devoid of intellect, almost devoid of humanity.

"Put down that mallet and come out of there or I'll run her through," the Losimon lieutenant snarled. Thur, abandoning his hammer, lifted himself out and rolled away on the opposite side of the pit. He crouched froglike on his hands and knees, and grinned, eyes glaring, catching his breath.

In the pit, the clay began to crack apart with a sound like shattering crockery. It scaled away, fragmenting and powdering. Deep within the cracks, something glowed red as blood.

Something shrugged off its clay tunic like a dog shaking off snow. A severed head appeared first, at the top, clutched and brandished in a strong hand. Bronze snakes, cherry-red, writhed upon its mythic skull. Shoulders hunched, pulled back. A muscular arm holding a curved sword broke free. Then a winged helmet, and, with the jerk of his chin, a man's face. But not the serene face of the bland Greek, no.

It's Uri, thought Fiametta. Complete with his pock marks. She was insanely glad to see those pock marks.

The molten gaze rose, and found the gap-toothed lieutenant. Remember me? the burning eyes silently cried. For I remember you. The bronze lips smiled a terrible promise.

The Losimon broke at last, and ran screaming.