The Spirit Ring (42 page)

      
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 husky 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 up its wrinkled face to her in adoration. 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, turning 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, sniveling and weeping, on the far end of his chain, the whites of his eyes wide in the glare. 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 was 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 after 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 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, yet 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 galloped 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, then 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, which 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 liquefies, 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.