The Spirit Ring (36 page)

      
Vitelli, facing away from Ferrante, rolled up his eyes 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 in placation.

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

      
Ferrante smiled, not pleasantly. "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, then settled gently 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, face up, 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 face down. 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, setting 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, letting the terrible tension leak away, before moving.

      
"Clumsy —!" he cried to Ferrante in real agony. "We'll 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 up the little corpse 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 down 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 in 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 up flung 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, turning 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 with which to attack a swordsman. 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 off Vitelli's head 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, knocking the sword wide. Ferrante still covered himself with a knife, not the bone-handled one, which 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, stopping 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 kicked 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.