The Spirit Ring (45 page)

      
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, glittering 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 manikin, 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 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 manikin 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 in 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, Father, for I have sinned..."

      
Monreale nodded and bent his head close. The voice rilled on until Thur appeared with a stiff, gauze-swathed shape, balanced 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 manikin 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.

Chapter Nineteen

Thur held his palm near the statue's face. The bronze, though no longer glowing with its own light, was still too hot to touch. But Uri was no longer here to touch even if Thur could. The streaming rain would cool the metal soon enough. Thur raised his face to the sky, letting the cold drops mix with the hot ones from his eyes, disguising his grief before all these strangers. Their world would know Uri no more, would soon forget that he'd ever lived or laughed.
But I swear I will remember.

      
When he'd blinked his vision clear, Thur saw that soldiers, Montefoglian soldiers, were arriving through the ruined gates. A couple of them pointed at the statue in startled recognition of their late captain's features, but then hurried about their work. Fiametta stood in the scintillating rain looking small, and exhausted, and very wet, her crinkly black curls escaping her braid only to be plastered flat to her skin. Thur wanted to offer her a cloak, but he himself possessed only the sodden old robe turned down around his loins. He rucked it back up over his shoulders and stood barefoot in the puddles, shivering partly from cold, partly from reaction.

      
Fiametta turned her wan face to Monreale. "How did you come here, Father? When they carried you off to the infirmary at Saint Jerome under Vitelli's spell, you were lying almost as pale and still as a dead man yourself. Brother Mario wouldn't let me see you."

      
Monreale hung on his crozier, his sandaled feet apart. He tore his pensive gaze from the cooling bronze. "The spell was broken late yesterday evening. Was that your doing, Thur?"

      
"I... think it may have been, Father. I did not know for sure what spell was broken, but it distracted Vitelli when I swept a spell-set from the table. It was just before I escaped from the castle dungeon with my brother's body."

      
"Indeed," said Monreale. "I woke, but I was very sick. The healers kept me abed until morning, when I finally regained enough strength to ride over them. It was not until afternoon that I discovered you were gone from Saint Jerome, Fiametta, and no one seemed to know for how long. I sent out my birds, but could learn little except that Vitelli and Ferrante were not abroad, and Thur was not yet hanging by his neck from the castle tower.

      
"Sandrino's officers and I agreed we must attack, try as we'd planned yesterday. But I decided I must close the distance before attempting to grapple again with Vitelli. His powers had clearly grown to an extraordinary degree. We made ready, settling on a night assault to disguise our thin numbers." Wearily, he rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes narrowed and glinted with the press of these recent memories.

      
"We sallied out at dark, and had a sharp fight with the besiegers that delayed us again. We finally broke through and made for town. The soldiers needed the few horses we had, but a brother found that white one wandering among our sheep. Our remaining sheep. Is that the beast your Papa bought in Cecchino, Fiametta? He was robbed. Well... it saved my strength, I suppose.

      
"But when we all came up to the town gates, expecting a desperate battle, the Losimons were gone from them, pulled out by a mob of townsmen. So instead of leading the populace to the castle, we followed them. I had by then gained the idea that you were mounting some sort of magical attack, Fiametta, and I rode ahead as fast as I could, in great fear that Vitelli's demonic powers might indeed have grown so transcendent as to conquer death. And so it proved." Monreale vented a depressed sigh. "Not that this second-rate old man imagined himself a match for that dark power."

      
"Yet you came anyway," said Thur.

      
"Father, we would have been destroyed without you. In fact," Fiametta's brows drew down, puzzling this out, "none of us alone was a match for Vitelli. I could release Papa, but I could not hold Vitelli. Papa could hold Vitelli, but could not exorcise him. You could speed him to banishment, which thing neither Papa nor I were capable of... but only if he were held. And we could never have entered in here at all without Uri, who would not have been made without Thur. We may all of us be lesser folk, but we were a first-rate company together."

      
"Huh.” Monreale smiled slowly, his eyes half-lidded. "Could that be the lesson God had been trying to teach me, all this time? From the mouths of babes."