The Spirit Ring (27 page)

      
More rattling about, and then, suddenly, a shout: "Watch out! It lashes —" "Don't drop —" The rapid scuttling of feet. "
Catch
it!" "
You
catch it!" "It's going under the table!"

      
A brief silence.

      
"You have boots on, my lord," said Vitelli suggestively.

      
"They will not protect my arms, reaching under there in the dark, if that is what you are implying," said Ferrante coldly. "You reach under there for it. Or enspell it out. My little mage."

      
"I am exhausted with spells." Vitelli's voice sounded like it, low and slow.

      
Ferrante spat again, but did not deny this. After a pause he said, "Come back and clean this place up in the morning. When you can see better. Catch it then. Or perhaps by then it will have escaped, slithered under the door. Come down from there, now."

      
"Yes, my lord," said Vitelli wearily.

      
A careful thump—Vitelli letting himself down from a tabletop?—was followed at length by a bit more rustling and rattling, footsteps, a door closing, and the grating of a key in an iron lock. Then unbroken quiet. When a nightingale warbled from outside Monreale's own workroom windows, Fiametta jumped. The candle guttered low.

      
Ambrose shook himself from his concentration and went to light new candles from the old before it went out. The added illumination seemed to bring everyone back to the present. Monreale rubbed his face, grooved deep. Fiametta stretched muscles gone rigid with tension. The tambourine spoke no more; surely Thur must have somehow escaped the chamber before Ferrante and his pet sorcerer had entered. Fiametta could only be glad he could not have witnessed the dreadful abuse of his brother's corpse and spirit.

      
"Papa resisted that horrible offering Ferrante made... didn't he, Father Monreale?"

      
Monreale made no immediate answer, though he gave her a small strained smile. "The two necromancers thought their effort a success," he said at last. "But they could be mistaken. Self-delusion is a common fault of those who dabble in the black arts."

      
Fiametta judged this weak reassurance to be the desire to comfort her, warring with honesty; Monreale being Monreale, honesty had the edge. In a way, she was glad.

      
Ambrose drew up a wooden chair for the abbot and a stool for himself, and sat heavily, his brow channeled with dismay. "Who is Jacopo Sprenger, Father? Besides, apparently, Niccolo Vitelli the clerk."

      
Monreale settled back with a weary sigh, looking deeply disturbed. "For a moment, I thought he must be a demon himself. Till more natural explanations occurred to me.

      
"About ten years ago, the Order sent me to study advanced spiritual thaumaturgy at the University of Bologna, under Cardinal Cardini, that the Church might qualify me to issue licenses to such master mages as your father, Fiametta. In my college at that time was a brilliant young student from Milan named Jacopo Sprenger. He was of humble origins, but had completed his bachelor's work in the seven liberal arts, and was close to being qualified as one of the youngest doctors of theology and thaumaturgy ever. Too young, in my opinion. Brilliant, but not... wise. That happens, sometimes." Monreale sighed.

      
"He was training to be an Inquisitor. Again, too heavy a burden for his age, though I fear his intellectual pride was such that he would have been the last to recognize it. He was drawn into a deep study of black witchcraft, ostensibly to aid the Inquisition as a specialist witch-smeller, to stamp out the evil of witches perverted by the service of demons. He was working on a treatise, which he meant to dedicate to the Pope, that he'd titled "The Hammer of Witches." The subject excited him greatly. Too greatly, we finally recognized—too late. He fell into the temptations of the object of his study, as wizards sometimes do; he began to actually experiment with demonology, and it soon got out of hand. Who shall guard the guardians?" Monreale stared into the candle flames, and rubbed his exhaustion-numbed face with both hands.

      
"I fear I had not a little to do with the discovery of his, er, after-dark career. He was expelled, and brought to trial very quietly, so as not to damage the reputation of the school. I testified against him. But before the verdict was issued, he suicided in his cell. Swallowed a poisonous sublimate smuggled in to him—or so I was told. Now I think his body must have been carried out still alive, counterfeiting death through some combination of medical and magical means.

      
"A committee consisting of Cardinal Cardini, myself, and a doctor from the college of law took up the problem of his papers. Cardinal Cardini thought at first merely to put his book on the Index, until we examined it more closely. Sprenger had a hungry mind and a phenomenal memory—his accumulation of spells, anecdotes, folklore and hearsay could have filled ten volumes. But he had no
sense
. His style was facile, even compelling, but his scholarship was weak, his credulity unlimited, his practical understanding of real courts—the doctor of law threw up his hands. Sprenger seriously recommended that accused black witches be compelled under torture to name accomplices! I know the tortures the Holy Inquisition uses, and the sort of men
 
who apply them—can you imagine the spate of wild accusations that would result, each triggering more arrests, more accusations—why, in a little time an entire district would be in an absolute uproar! It was all incendiary to the point of hysteria. I think it represented Sprenger—the daytime Sprenger—struggling desperately against his night-self. I recommended the book and all his notes be burned."

      
Ambrose, himself a scholar in a minor way, winced. Monreale spread his hands. "What would you have? Better to burn the book than the poor old hedge-witches, who in my experience—yours too, you've worked in the country districts—are nine times out of ten either mumbling old women with foggy minds, or the malice of a neighbor trying to fix blame for the death of her maltreated cow or for some perfectly natural event like a hailstorm. And the book was bad theology, to boot, ignoring the power of the name of Christ... tremendously dangerous. We burned it all. Cardinal Cardini was not so sure, but I felt like a surgeon who had successfully stopped a gangrene through a timely amputation.

      
"Be that as it may, Sprenger himself was by the time of his—we thought—death, utterly corrupt, his will given over entirely to the pursuit of demonic power. Yet I felt I'd personally lost a soul for God, the night I heard he'd suicided, and the Devil laughed at me." Monreale shook his head in memory.

      
"What are we going to do now, Father?" Fiametta asked, as the silence lengthened.

      
An ironic smile, full of pain, twisted Monreale's lips. "God knows. I can only pray He will confide it to me."

      
"But you have to do something to stop them!" quavered Fiametta. "It's black magic! It's in your holy vows to fight black magic! Tomorrow they mean to enslave poor Captain Ochs. Then Papa. And then Ferrante's troops will arrive, and then there will be no chance!"

      
"If we are to try anything, it must be before the Losimon infantry arrives," Ambrose agreed diffidently.

      
"I don't need you to tell me that," snapped Monreale. He controlled his nervous irritation with a visible effort, squaring his slumped shoulders. "It’s not a simple problem. It's hard to conceive of a force sufficient to stop Ferrante that does not itself partake of black magic. Some evil intent, seeping through to imperil the soul."

      
"But... everyone's depending on you. Like a soldier. Soldiers do awful things, but we need them, to protect us from... from other soldiers," said Fiametta.

      
"You need not tell me what soldiers do," said Monreale dryly; Fiametta flushed. "I'm well acquainted with the whole vile argument. I've seen it used to justify crimes you can scarcely imagine. And yet..."

      
Fiametta's eyes narrowed. "There is something. You have it in mind, something you can do, don't you. Something magical."

      
"I must pray on it."

      
"You pray a lot. Will you still be praying when Ferrante's army marches to the gate of Saint Jerome and batters it down? When Ferrante commands spirits with the wave of his hand?" Fiametta demanded hotly. "If all you're going to do is pray, why not hand over Lord Ascanio and everything now? Why not yesterday?"

      
"We might," said Brother Ambrose slowly, "live to fight another day. Lay charges of black magic later upon Lord Ferrante."

      
"And what Herculean sergeant-at-arms shall we send to arrest the miscreants, after they have made themselves undisputed lords and masters of two states?" said Monreale softly, staring again into the flames. "Sprenger must remember me, as surely as I do him. I know he must; he's been so very careful to keep from my sight. I wonder if I would live to lay charges anywhere."

      
"Well, then!" said Fiametta.

      
His fingers told over the beads in his lap. He glanced up at her from under tufted gray brows. "I am not a powerful mage, Fiametta. Not as powerful as your Papa, or even some of the lesser mages here in Montefoglia. God knows I tried to be, once. It has been my burden to have an understanding greater than my talent. Those who can, do. Those who can't..."

      
Ambrose interjected a little negative huff, spreading his hands in denial. "Not so, Father!"

      
One corner of Monreale's tips twisted up. "My good Brother. By what standards do you imagine you judge? Did you think it was only a monastic calling that holds me here in Montefoglia? First-rate talents go to Rome, go to the Sacred College. Lesser men find themselves buried in rural provinces. In my youth, I dreamed of being a Marshal by the time I was twenty-five. I put away those military follies only to replace them with dreams of becoming a Cardinal Thaumaturge before I was thirty-five.... God gave me humility at last, for God knew I needed it.

      
"Sprenger—if Vitelli is indeed he—had a talent stronger than his understanding. Now, after it has had ten years to grow cunning in dark and secret, he's found a powerful patron, who protects him, funds him, lends him his animal vitality—for Ferrante has great strength of will, make no mistake. Add to that a spirit-slave of the order of Master Beneforte, and their potency will be..." He broke off.

      
Ambrose cleared his throat. "I confess, Father, your words unsettle my stomach."

      
"My calling is to save souls, not lives." Monreale's fingers worked.

      
"Souls can be saved later," Fiametta pointed out urgently. "When you lose lives, you lose lives and souls both."

      
Monreale shot her a peculiar grin. "Have you ever considered taking up Scholastic studies, Fiametta? But no, your sex forbids."

      
An insight shook her, "You're not afraid of losing your soul. You're just afraid of
losing
." Afraid of having his self-accusation of second-rated-ness finally confirmed?

      
Ambrose drew in his breath at this blunt insult, but Monreale's grin merely stretched. His eyes were lidded, unreadable.

      
"Go to bed, Fiametta," he said at last. "Ambrose, I will send Brother Perotto to watch and maintain this ear through the night. Though I suspect the play is over for the moment." He stood up, shook out his robes, and rubbed his face. "I'll be in the chapel."

Chapter Twelve

Thur sat very, very still. The puff adder's earlier agitation had passed off, but now instead of burrowing under Thur's crossed legs as if beneath a little cave ledge, it had looped itself entirely around his calf and thigh. For warmth, presumably. Thur could feel the cool waxy scales through his fine hose as the snake hitched itself up another couple of inches. As long as Thur remained the best source of heat in the room, the viper seemed disinclined to move away.

      
Thur dared not even move the dark linen cloth still draped stuffily over his head and body. He needed to piss, and his nose itched abominably. He dreaded a sneeze. He tried to wriggle his nose, twitching and stretching his lip, but it didn't help greatly. How much time had passed since the two necromancers had left this rock-cut chamber? An eternity? Still the pitchy darkness was unrelieved by the slightest gray hint of dawn. If he could just see the cursed reptile, he would match his hand against the speed of its strike and try to grab it behind the head. But to grope for it in the dark.... Yet he could not sit like this much longer. The cold stone floor stole the heat from his numbing buttocks, and his leg muscles, unrelieved for too long by any change of position, threatened to spasm.

      
Movement, when it came, was not the prayed-for departure of the adder, but the scrape of a key in the lock again. The snake's coil tightened around Thur's leg. Light booted footsteps crossed the floor and stopped at one side of the room. A faint crockery clatter was followed by a tiny gurgle, as of someone pouring liquid from a jug. Then—Thur froze, if possible, more still, though his heart beat faster—Vitelli's voice, in a brief Latin chant. The snake twitched. A pause: in more impatient tones, Vitelli repeated his words. The snake unwound a little more, but made no move to leave Thur's lap. Well, it was probably just a country snake. Maybe it didn't understand Vitelli's fine school Latin. Thur suppressed an hysteric giggle.

      
Vitelli swore under his breath. "Damned stupid snake. Probably escaped by now. Have to send a pig-soldier to Venice tomorrow to buy another." The footsteps departed in an irate shuffle; the door was locked once more. The snake vented a surly hiss. Thur blinked tears of frustration and fear, which trickled maddeningly down the inside of his nose. He must try a grab....