The Spirit Ring

Chapter Eighteen

Fiametta pushed herself up to her hands and knees, then sat up on her heels. The gibbering gap-toothed Losimon was caught and held by two of his men, who had not seen what was happening in the casting pit. The third soldier finished breaking the prisoner's chain with blows from his sword against the stone pillar; the freed man repaid his comrade's pains by knocking him down in his rush for the exit. Thunder rolled close overhead in the midnight sky, shaking the house.

Uri's hands, burdened each with the curved sword and the fiery head of the Medusa, came up over the edge of the pit. Red bronze muscles rippled as he heaved himself out, a glorious nude hero. Even in the glare from the burning gallery he glowed with his own dark red light, except for his eyes which were yellow-white. It must be the magic, holding him together at that temperature, Fiametta thought woozily. His outlines were crisper, more perfect even than her Papa's fine wax copy of his body had been. Thur jumped lightly down into the vacated pit to retrieve his sledgehammer, which evidently gave him quite as much comfort as it gave his enemy onlookers unease.

The hot bronze Uri gazed down upon the cold fleshly Uri, then raised his eyes to Thur. The two brothers exchanged a look, and even in the blank molten-yellow radiance of the metal Fiametta read regret, and sorrow, and something like love, mixed with the determination and rage.

Thur, his blue eyes flashing with the water standing in them, raised his sledgehammer in solemn salute. "Lead us, Captain Ochs. In the name of God, Bruinwald, and Duke Sandrino."

"Follow me, boy," Uri responded with a slow smile, "and I'll give you a show to tell my nieces and nephews. Mind you do." His bronze voice reverberated tike a blast from an organ-pipe, deep, loud, with undertones to raise the dead, yet still somehow Uri. His yellow eyes found Fiametta, scrambling to her feet. "I haven't much tune. Let us be about it."

"Lead. We follow," said Fiametta breathlessly. Her house was burning down. So what. She turned her back on it.

Uri bent his gaze upon the four Losimons who, supporting each other, had somewhat regained their nerve. They took a stand in a cluster, backs prudently to the exit hall. Uri's fingers flexed on his sword hilt, and he strode toward them. The churned earth blackened, steamed, and smoked in his deep footprints.

The black-mouthed lieutenant took his sword and his bravado and made a rush at the approaching apparition. His sword clanged off Uri's nude side, jolting his arm. Uri raised the head of the Medusa and brought it down upon his murderer's skull, smashing him to the ground. The Losimon convulsed once, his legs kicking, then lay without moving. The survivors retreated, crouching and covering each other in an almost orderly fashion, till they reached the shattered oak door to the street. The semblance of discipline burst as they sprinted away. Fiametta almost grabbed up the dead fellow's dropped sword, just in case, Uri's ruddy weapon was impressive, but she was uncertain how bronze, and heat-softened bronze at that, was going to stand up to weapons of tempered steel. Then she realized Uri could not exchange his sword. It was melded, one with his hand.

Thur hugged Fiametta around the shoulders as they followed Uri into the street. Fiametta stopped, taken aback by the sight of the crowd which was assembled there. A couple dozen people milled about, men, boys, even a few women, in every sort of dress and half-dress and nightshirts. Fiametta recognized the faces of several neighbors.

Lorenzetti, the notary who lived next door, rushed up to her. The Losimons had looted his house, too. His head was still bandaged from some ill-advised resistance. "Fiametta! What is happening? What have you done?"

"My house is on fire," she said numbly. With frightened cries, the crowd fell back from around Uri, though not very far back. They goggled, and shouted amazed queries. "We have made a bronze hero, a soldier to fight the Losimons for us and free Montefoglia. We're on our way to kill Ferrante now. Please stand back."

The three remaining Losimons had stopped and formed ranks again, in the dark street on the far side of the crowd. They hovered on the balls of their feet, watching and waiting. A man among Fiametta's neighbors, Bembo the wax chandler, held a torch aloft; more torches arrived, from where Fiametta did not know, and the fire was shared, doubled and doubled again.

Lorenzetti squinted, gaped, and stammered, 'Isn't that Uri Ochs, Sandrino's Swiss fellow? I played dice with him. He died owing me half a ducat ... Hey! Uri!"

Uri gave him a cheery salute with his sword hand in exchange for the recognition.

Lorenzetti backed a step, wild-eyed, and opened his hands in a bow. "Well, you have my blessing. Hey! Make way, there!" He gestured the crowd apart. The Losimons were suddenly framed by two ranks of their victims. An odd, abrupt silence occurred, half by chance. A cobblestone flew out, launched by an angry young man. It bounced off a Losimon's breastplate with a clank. The Losimon staggered. Uri began striding up the street between the people. Fiametta and Thur, holding hands like two children in the dark, followed close on his heels. A roar went up from the Montefoglians that reminded Fiametta of the furnace in full flux. The Losimons turned and ran this time in earnest, no stopping or looking back.

Shouts echoed through the streets. Above, shutters banged open and nightcapped heads crowded the windows. Cries of curiosity and fear rained down. Fiametta glanced over her shoulder. People were following them, first in ones and twos, then a stream, then a river. Doors flew wide, and more men issued. Knives and daggers appeared, and a few swords, and other weapons even more extemporaneous: axes and hammers, clubs, hoes, a mattock, a rusty sickle. One fat woman joined the throng armed with a large cast-iron frying pan. More torches sprang up, held high. Fiametta had no idea what the people at the back imagined they were following: half-parade, half-assault, exhilarated, ugly, determined, and confused.

And not at all the silent, secret midnight skulk through the streets of Montefoglia that Fiametta had pictured and planned Uri could hardly march unseen anyway, fervid red in the dark like that. If the Inquisition ever brought her to trial for this night's work, there would be a thousand witnesses.

Lightning cracked the sky. The first few fat, cold drops of rain fell, slapping Fiametta's upturned face. They boiled off Uri instantly, and he trailed tendrils of gaunt steam. His feet hissed on the cobbles as they grew wet and shining. Too cold, Fiametta thought to the rain. Stop, go back, not yet! She stumbled, and Thur's grip tightened and held her on her feet.

They came to the base of the hill, and began climbing the road to the castle. No hope, no hope at all of sneaking in and taking Ferrante by surprise. Losimon soldiers were already running along the walls lighting torches. She could hear the rusty shriek of the portcullis being lowered. As she watched, the big heavy oak doors swung shut with a boom that matched the thunder echoing across the black lake.

"No," she cried, agonized. "Now what do we do? Ferrante can just wait in there until, until ..."

Uri smiled over his shoulder. "Let us see." He paused a few yards from the castle gate. From above, a steel crossbow quarrel whacked into his shoulder, and stuck there. He shrugged, and brushed it away like a biting fly, and studied the gate. "Fiametta, warm me," he said.

"Piro" said Fiametta, ordering the spell in her whirling mind with the greatest difficulty. But its familiarity steadied her. "Piro. Piro."

Uri held up his sword-hand. "Tis enough, for now." He walked to the oak doors and leaned into them. The wood charred and burst into flame. He twisted his arms through the hole thus made and began elbowing and lacking the wood apart as if it were rotten punk. Burning chunks flew wide. Fiametta and Thur chicked and crouched in the ditch.

Uri stalked into the dark passageway between the two gate towers. A few paces further on the entrance to the courtyard was blocked by the grid of the portcullis. From the murder-hole above, a terrified Losimon soldier upended a pot of burning oil on Uri's head.

Uri threw back his face and laughed, a great bronze trumpeting. He turned under the stream of flame as under a refreshing shower, as a man might sport naked in a waterfall. In who-knew-what frenzy of mind the Losimons upended a second and third pot of oil after the first, before it dawned on some officer that it was doing them no good. Flames flared up, dancing and twisting, from Uri's glistening body as he swaggered, salamanderlike, to the portcullis.

He stuck his sword arm through one square of the cast-iron grid, wrapped it around a bar, and heaved backwards. The iron tore apart with a crack. Then another, another, another, till he could walk through upright, shoulders square. Fiametta picked up her skirts and dashed after him through the dying flames on the passageway floor, Thur on her heels. Thur paused to widen the gap in the portcullis with a few well-placed blows of the sledgehammer, for the convenience of those who came after. And there were men coming after, daring the few crossbow bolts from above that Ferrante s wit-scattered men managed to loose. They ran right and left, in groups of three and six, spreading into the castle to hunt down Montefoglia's tormentors. The mob behind them clogged the gate, then broke through.

Fiametta crouched on the cobbles, panting and watching. Uri strode into the courtyard, lighting it like a human torch. A gust of rain made him steam like a fumarole. "UBERTO FERRANTE!" he roared. The stones bounced back shuddering echoes. "Uberto Ferrante! Come out!"

Half a dozen Losimon swordsmen exited the castle door and spilled down the marble steps. Their offensive onslaught slowed and froze to defensive postures as they saw what called them. They glanced at each other in horror.

Lord Ferrante stepped outside, and swept his gaze over the court. He wore his gleaming chain mail, silver-gilt in the springing firelight, and his black leggings and boots. He wore neither hat nor helm, and a Few raindrops glittered in his dark cap of hair like diamonds. He stood very still for a moment, then drew his sword with a slow, deliberate scrape that seemed to go on forever, and made Fiametta's teeth ache. He turned his head and shouted over his shoulder, "Niccolo!" He then raised his chin and stared briefly at the north gate tower, and lifted his blade in salute to someone Fiametta could not see, as if to say, I dedicate this death to you. Then, alert, sword ready, he stalked slowly down the stairs.

His guards, with backwards nervous glances, spread out in a screen before him. For a little time, till Uri raised his hands and started toward them. To a man, they broke and ran. Ferrante watched them go without surprise, a little ironic smile playing about his lips. But he did go so far as to open his mouth and bellow, "Niccolo!" again, louder. Niccolo! To me, now!"

Did Ferrante sense himself to be outmatched? Fiametta thought so. And yet still he stood there on the last rain-silvered marble step, and did not retreat.

"He's evil," whispered Thur. "But ..."

Fiametta felt it too. "Brave. Or fey." No wonder men followed this man. Fiametta had sometimes wondered why angels were reported to spend so many tears on sinners. They do not weep for the evil. They weep for the good that is wasted in it.

"So," said Ferrante, and moistened his lips. "Sandrino's incompetent guard captain rises from the waves like Venus. I thought we'd killed you."

"So," said Uri, with an attempt at matching irony. "My incompetent murderer. Care to try again?" He lifted his red sword in invitation. Ferrante, Fiametta thought, did irony better. He had the style for it. But Uri's rage burned visibly, in rising waves of heat, and what his words lacked in bite they made up in power.

Ferrante cocked his head, half-smiling, and stepped off the stairway. "I think ... you are in my secretary's department. But I shall do my best to entertain you till he arrives." And over his shoulder, his brows lowering and his lips rippling in irritation, "Niccolo!"

"What so occupies mm, that he does not come running?" whispered Thur.

"I think I know," Fiametta whispered back, heartsick. But she could not yet race off through the castle searching for Papa; she Had to stay with Uri, and keep him heated. Ferrante lunged.

The first flurry was brief. Ferrante's blade flicked past Uri's guard, but then clanged uselessly off the bronze skin. Ferrante skipped backwards, his stunned fingers flexing on his sword hilt, and the last irony left his face, to be replaced by an expressionless concentration. He closed again to try for a stab at Uri's yellow eyes, then recoiled, teeth clenched, hissing with pain, as Uri's attempt to brain him with the head of the Medusa brushed past his cheek and raised a swathe of instant white blisters.

"He cannot win, he's got to run. Why doesn't he run?" Fiametta whispered fiercely. She wanted Ferrante to run. Be a coward, yes, and utterly contemptible. But instead he closed on Uri again, clanging thrust and parry, parry—

"He's testing himself," Thur said suddenly. "He wants to be the best. He wants to know he's the best. And he wants everyone else to know it, too."

"He's mad."

"What is Uri about? Why doesn't he just pick up Ferrante and crush him?"

The method in Uri's attack came clear finally as he forced Ferrante to trip and fall backwards on the marble steps. Uri's sword lashed out and pinned him there, pressing into his chain mail in the identical spot to Uri's own mortal wound. Uri's face tightened in wrath, and he leaned on his sword with all the inhuman weight of his dense metal body.

"Niccolo!" screamed Ferrante. At last, a timbre of purely human terror.

He is brought down, thought Fiametta. He is brought down. But it gave her no joy.

The chain burst, and the sword drove through Ferrante's chest, searing flesh and quenching blade in one motion. Uri stood bent, holding Ferrante in place, for one long, long moment.

Vitelli flew out the castle door and cannonaded off the marble balustrade, his black, symbol-decked robe flaring. He brandished his right fist in triumph. Upon his index finger gleamed a gold band with a mask in the shape of the face of a bearded man. "My lord, I have it!'

Fiametta breathed a silent wail, her fists clenching hopelessly. We were too slow ...

Ferrante rolled his eyes up toward him and gasped out, "You're late ... Niccolo. On purpose?"

"No, lord!" Vitelli screamed in horror, seeing him pinned there. A beat too late for conviction.

"Don't ... lie to me, Niccolo. I hate a man who lies. I saw you, hovering in there. Waiting. Saw the whites of your eyes. Damn your eyes, Niccolo ..." His mouth opened and his face contorted in rictus agony as Uri put his foot to his chest and drew the sword back out.

For just a moment, Uri hesitated, staring warily up at the sorcerer with a face so strangely set as to almost make him appear inert metal in truth. Then, in two bounds, the marble cracking under him, Uri leapt up the stairs between Vitelli and the door. Vitelli launched himself one-handed over the balustrade, and jumped to the cobbled court. His knees bent, and he grunted with the force of his landing, but he straightened and danced back with room to move, his hands sweeping his velvet robe straight.

"I have you, simulacrum!" he screeched at Uri. "Cold will freeze you where you stand, and birds will nest in your ears!" He muttered, gestured; Uri, advancing determinedly upon him down the stairs, slowed. Uri's red glow faded, and his new bronze gleam shone instead, on his nose, ears, toes. With a tortured effort, he raised his sword arm.

"Piro, piro, piropiropiro!" Fiametta cried. Uri shook himself, red-hot all over, and began to move again, cat-footed across the stones, maneuvering for his cut. Fiametta fell to her hands and knees.

Vitelli shot Fiametta a look that said,Later, And you'll wish that you'd never been born , but then was forced to turn his entire attention upon Uri. He trod backwards, and rubbed his new ring. His low-voiced muttering became intent, then rose to a shout: "Thus I release you! Fry, unbonded, and be free!"

The bronze Uri stopped short. Vitelli, his eyes narrowing in triumph, straightened and strolled closer to inspect the frozen hero.

"No," groaned Thur. "He has your Papa's spell, Fiametta! The one you said he used to release the baby spirit from Ferrante's first silver ring. We are undone! God help us, and Uri, too!" He hefted his sledgehammer, eyes rolling at Vitelli, and inhaled, ready to strike against the impossible odds. The smirking necromage circled around in front of the silent statue.

"No, wait," hissed Fiametta, scrambling up and clutching Thur's arm. "That's not right, it's not right, wait—!"

The bronze Uri grinned. His whisper reverberated off the castle walls.

"You cannot release me. I am not bound."

In a vicious, whistling flat arc, he swung his sword full-force, and took Vitelli's head; but not before his words were heard and understood, so that the last expression on that black-browed face as it rotated through the air was of the most confounded dismay.

It landed, rolled, stopped.

Silence fell, and gusts of rain. Fiametta looked around. About a hundred people were watching, standing back all around the perimeter of the court. Three smudged white women s faces were pressed to the window slits in the north gate tower. Most of the witnesses were Montefoglian townsmen, with a few dazed Losimons being held at sword's point. Distant shouts, screams, and crashes wafted from odd corners of the castle as the last of Ferrante's men were winkled out by the mob. Vitelli's blood, pooling on the cobbles, steamed gently in the cold night air. Uri steamed, too, standing back in the rain; his red glow was darkening, and the gleam of metallic bronze beginning to frost his edges and surfaces. Cold, and a kind of lonely premonition, quenched the bright triumph of his eyes. He must go soon from his temporary metal body. Go where?

And where was Papa? She thought of the new gold ring on Vitelli's dead hand, and started toward it. She must retrieve it. Maybe Abbot Monreale would know what to do with it. It had to be possible to release Papa from the ring, and the ring from Vitelli's will, for how could one dead man be bound to another?

Ferrante too was crawling toward Vitelli's decapitated body, Fiametta saw with shock. The Lord of Losimo was not as dead as she'd thought. The hot blade must have cauterized as it cut, so that despite his crushed ribs Ferrante was not bleeding to death as fast as Uri had. His face was a clay-colored mask of determination and pain.

She raced him toward the ring. Thur followed with his hammer, though she did not think Ferrante was in any condition to offer further physical threats. Still there was a kind of weird glory in his unyielding will, that dragged his useless body across the rain-sucked stones.

But as she reached for Vitelli's right hand, a cold blast knocked her backwards with the force of a club. Ferrante, too, jerked back, one hand flung up to ward the invisible blow. The effort broke something loose inside, for he gasped once, then his dark eyes grew fixed, and closed no more. Fiametta crouched, open-mouthed, her eyes filling with the impossible.

A form was condensing over Vitelli's body, as if night were being made palpable. A dark man, a blackness much deeper than any shadow in this torch-lit courtyard. Inside the black man it seemed to Fiametta that she saw other little half-digested ghosts, dozens of them, deformed and agonized.

"Oh, no," choked Thur. "We've made another ghost! Will it never end?"

"No," breathed Fiametta, her chest tight with terror. "Worse. Much worse. We've made a demon." Where was Papa? Inside the dark man? One of those subghosts was very fresh, and in terrible pain.

The dark man's face awoke, sharpening into definite and familiar features. Vitelli's black eyes opened, and glittered with their own red glow. He looked almost as surprised as Fiametta. He turned his hands over, and stared at them in wonder. A shining light encircled one black finger. Vitelli threw back his head and laughed, as he realized his continued existence and power.

"It worked! I live! I am immortal now!" The dark man actually capered, and swept a wild ironic bow toward Uri, who stood freezing and stunned. "I thank youl"

She'd done it now, Fiametta thought miserably. Abbot Monreale, in one of his many sermons on the subject, had once described a sin as the making of a really irrevocable mistake, with permanent consequences. She stared out at her vast mistake, and thought: The eighth deadly sin really is stupidity. And ignorance. She had no idea how to fight a demon, none. But she was heart-certain that if Vitelli once escaped, the consequences would be dreadful.

"What have you done with my Papa?" she quavered to the Vitelli demon.

She should not have attracted its attention, she realized as it bent those red eyes upon her. "His will is mine, now," Vitelli whispered in a voice like ice. "You are too late." It smiled a hellish smile. "He is too late, also." Its face rose toward the gate.

A horse's hooves clattered and scraped on the cobbles. Fiametta's heart leapt up, and she wanted to scream triumph and relief. It was Abbot Monreale, riding to their rescue on a white horse.

"Fiametta! Thur!" he shouted.

Her scream melted away in her throat as she took in the doubtful details. In the first place, there was the horse. She knew that horse. Even the cavalry saddle Monreale had borrowed from somewhere failed to conceal its swayed back. It stood wheezing and blowing, its nostrils red and round in its gray muzzle, its expression mournful and its legs trembling. Abbot Monreale must surely be a miracle worker beloved of God, for he had somehow forced the beast to trot uphill.

Monreale wore his gray monk's robe, nicked up with his bare legs sticking out and his sandals all awry from beating at the old horse's sides. His hands were a tangle, managing his crozier, the reins, and a couple of bottles. His hair stuck out as wildly as his bushy eyebrows, and he had a big lumpy purple bruise on his forehead. "Fiametta!" He cried again, and choked, as his eyes took in the tableau in the courtyard.

"I was going to say," he continued in a strange, mild, conversational tone, "Fiametta, whatever you do, don't kill Vitelli."

His gray eyes locked with the red ones of the dark man. Fiametta, gratefully, felt herself slide from Vitelli's dangerous attention. Everything about Monreale looked absurd, just now, except for his eyes.

Never breaking his gaze, Monreale swung his right leg over the white horse's sagging neck and jumped lightly down. He tucked the bottles into his robe, stood his crozier upright, and ran a hand thoughtfully down its length. He walked forward, then stopped with a jerk, as if feeling the same cold blow Fiametta had.

"Jacopo Sprenger. Though your spirit is parted from your body, you still partially exist in the world of will. While your will is free, you may yet effectively repent, confess your sins and profess your faith; I swear to you God is greater than any evil you can encompass. Stop. Stop now, and turn your face around!" Monreale s voice was anguished in its sincerity.

He had ridden through the night not to destroy Vitelli, but to save him, Fiametta realized. And she saw too a dreadful danger in it. Vitelli might try to trick Monreale, challenge him into dropping his guard. Despite all doubts, Monreale's own conscience would compel him to try Vitelli in all good faith ...

But Vitelli's pride in his power scorned to dissemble. The dark man crossed himself mockingly with an obscene gesture. The next gesture was something more effective, and when the swirling colors departed from Fiametta's eyes and the roaring from her ears, Abbot Monreale was on his knees, and not in prayer. He brandished his crozier, though, and counterattacked; Vitelli seemed to shrink into himself, but only for a moment.

Uri could be no more help. He was freezing to cold bronze even as Fiametta watched, and there was not enough fire left in her spirit to make him hot again. She could not even stand up, but sank to her knees, then her hands and knees, and finally to the wet cobbles. Any passing Losimon could cut her throat this moment and she might do no more than look dully at him. Thur crouched worriedly beside her, and caught her shoulders.

The spirit ring. The gold gleamed on the corpse's hand, not two yards off. No wonder spirit-magic was so rare. So hard to accomplish, so fragile when invested! If only she knew her Papa's spell of unbinding—she pictured the moment, Ferrante's upraised hand, the crack and flash of the silver ring, the smell of burning flesh....

But she did know rings. She had laid a little part of herself into the gold of her lion-ring. It was held there by ... held there by ... "Structure," she muttered muzzily. The spell had fallen into the molten metal like a seed crystal into the alum-water that the dyers used, and from it structure had feathered out like frost, intricate and beautiful ... The reverse must be ... the reverse must be ...

She rolled over on her face on the paving-stones a little way from that dead adorned hand. She had not enough power left to reanimate Uri, no. But she had some. Gold was a softer metal than bronze, and there was little more than a thimbleful in that ring. It was enough. It would do ...

"Piro," she whimpered. "Piro."

The gold mask sagged, slagged; the metal dripped as the flesh it encircled scorched, spattered, steamed and blackened. The acrid scent of burnt meat seared her nostrils.

The dark Vitelli screamed, as the band of light on his shadow-hand vanished. He whirled, his red eyes flaming rage, and focused on Fiametta. She smirked at him from the circle of Thur's arms, quite unable to move.

He seemed to inhale, towering up and up into a spindle of black smoke that slid sinuously into the open mouth of the bronze Medusa-head, held high in Uri's frozen left hand. The little snakes upon the skull turned cherry-red, and began to squirm. The head's eyelids slitted open in hot white lines. The face twisted slowly, and the ghastly eyes opened wide, and found Fiametta.

He will burn me to ashes where I lie. "Thur, get away! Get back!" She tried to twist from his protective arms, which tightened in distraught confusion.

And then, between her and that obscene head, the rain man appeared. He was made all of dense suspended diamond droplets, that glittered like tiny rainbows in the torchlight. He shone as bright and brilliant as the shadow Vitelli was dark. He was amazingly beautiful. He wore a glittery pleated tunic, a big round hat like rain-brocade; his beard was fog, and his eyes were liquid and luminous.

"Papa," Fiametta breathed happily.

He blew her one kiss, or was it a raindrop landing chill on her skin? She rubbed her cheek in wonder, trembling.

A beam of incandescent fire lashed out in a double line from the Medusa's eyes. All the rain in its path turned to steam, boiling clouds of it, but the rain man reformed unharmed, only whiter for the added fog.

"Come out of there," demanded Master Beneforte querulously. "That's mine." He crouched, his hands cupped. With the slowness of tar, the black shape was drawn forth from the Medusa's mouth again. The rain man encompassed it. Fiametta could see it inside him, a spasming black mannikin, screaming in silence.

Master Beneforte turned to Abbot Monreale. "Quick, Monreale! Send us now, together, while I hold him! I cannot hold him long."

Monreale, his face stunned, levered himself up on his crozier. "Where ... where does your body lie, Prospero?"

"The Swiss boy knows."

"Thur." Abbot Monreale turned to him. "Go at once—take these men"—for a couple of panting monks had arrived belatedly in Monreale's wake—"and fetch forth Master Beneforte's mortal remains. Hurry!"

Thur nodded, clutched his hammer, and ran across the courtyard, waving the monks to follow him. He disappeared into the castle by a side entry.

Gingerly, Monreale went to Vitelli's head, picked it up, and laid it beside the severed neck. He knelt, and made the rites, sprinkled water from one of his jars, and bent his head in prayer. The mannikin inside the rain-man convulsed, but then went quiescent.

When Monreale rose again, Master Beneforte remarked, "I liked your little sermon on will, just now. But then, I always liked your sermons, Monreale. They made me good for half a day after, at times."

"I would you could have heard them more often, then." A brief smile quirked Monreale's lips.

"You did warn us, how death comes suddenly to the unprepared. I was not prepared for it to come m this strange half-measure, though." He stepped closer to Monreale in a liquid shimmer, to be private, for the awed and astounded onlookers were venturing nearer. He lowered his voice to a whisper no louder than rain runneling on a shutter. "Bless me, Fattier, for I have sinned ..."

Monreale nodded, and bent his head close. The voice rilled on until Thur appeared with a stiff, gauze-swathed shape, on a makeshift bier that looked like the lid of a pine crate. Monreale blessed the rain-shape, then turned to duplicate the rites upon the not-quite-abandoned body.

Fiametta crept to the rain man's side, and asked tremulously, "Did we cast it well, Papa? Your great Perseus?"

"An awful risk, for a couple of beginners—" he began, then stopped his critique in mid-word. He tilted his hat down at her, curiously, as if he were really seeing her for the first time, and half-smiled. "Well enough."

Only well enough? Well ... that was Papa.

He added, "Marry the Swiss boy if you will, he's an honest young lout who will not betray you. You will not do better for any money. Speaking of money, Ruberta is to be given one hundred ducats, it is listed in my will, Lorenzetti the notary has it. Good-bye, be good—" His form wavered as the dark mannikin raged within. "And Fiametta, if you can't be good, at least be more careful!"

He turned to Monreale. "Father, your sermon is wearing off. Speed us. While I can still will to hold him."

"Go with God, my friend," whispered Monreale, and made the last sign of blessing.

The rain fell. And then there was nothing there at all.

Thur raised his hands in supplication to Monreale. "Father. Spare a blessing for Uri? My brother?"

Monreale blinked, and seemed to come back to himself. "Of course, boy." He turned awkwardly, almost stumbling; Thur caught his arm. Together, they inspected the statue. It was solidified in the pose in which it had first been cast, but the tiny glimmer of intelligence yet lingered, dimming, in its eyes. What sensations did that metal body bear him? The very heat that animated it made it impossible for Uri to embrace his brother, or kiss Fiametta good-bye.

Fiametta, on her knees, prayed for strength, and murmured "Piro!" one last time. Only the bronze lips flushed dark red.

"Father, bless me, for I have sinned," the hollow voice whispered like the faintest flute. "Though not nearly as much as I would have liked."

The corner of Monreale's mouth flicked up, but he murmured, "Don't joke. It wastes your little time."

"All my little time was wasted, Father," the fading voice sighed.

Monreale bent his head in acknowledgement. "Tis a fair complete confession. Do not despair, for it is a sin. Hope, boy."

"Shall I hope to rest? I am so tired...."

"You shall rest most perfectly." By the time Monreale's hands had passed, nothing stood before them but a lifeless casting.

Not quite as it was first cast, Fiametta realized, looking up. The bland Greek face had not returned. Instead Uri's own distinct, alert, imperfect features were stamped permanently upon the bronze. There was even a touch of humor about the curve of the lips, most alien to the classic original.

And, she saw with a shiver, the Medusa's face too had changed. Black-browed Vitelli had the immortality he'd craved. Of a sort.