The Spirit Ring by Lois McMaster Bujold
"Uri Ochs?" Fiametta repeated in horror. "Oh, no! Is he—is Captain Ochs dead, then?"
"He must be," said Monreale blackly, "to be a recipient of that spell. That would explain why he was neither among the wounded prisoners or the dead who were returned.... Ferrante fancies a spare ring, it seems."
"Poor Thur..." breathed Fiametta. Where was Thur? He'd scarcely had time to escape, between the time his breath had activated the little ear and the time Ferrante and Vitelli had entered the chamber of dread. Yet he must have escaped, or he'd have been discovered by now.
"No..." Monreale corrected himself judiciously, "Captain Ochs must have been selected first, by Ferrante, on the very day he fell. He had no known relatives in town to demand his body for burial. It was your father, Fiametta, who was added as an afterthought."
"There." Vitelli's voice sounded satisfied; slapping sounds followed, as if he were rising and dusting chalk, and worse, from the knees of his robe.
"How much longer must we spend on this pedantry?" Ferrante asked querulously. "I want my rings. Events of State will not wait on your thaumaturgic fiddling."
"Beneforte's is a very dangerous ghost to attempt to invest, my lord. He is hostile, and he knows far too much. One little mistake..." Vitelli paused reluctantly, then added, "I think we can invest the soldier as early as tomorrow night. That is the sensible order of things, for then we can use him to help control the mage. You bring the new bronze for the ring. I'll see to the fuel. Then you will have at least one ring, ah, to hand."
"I'd rather have the Swiss anyway," Ferrante remarked in a brighter tone. "He's not such a tricksy weasel as the Florentine. As a soldier, he will doubtless understand obedience better."
"Perhaps I should keep the mage's ring, then," suggested Vitelli, in a casual tone that did not quite hide an eager quaver. "There are two rings, two of us—it would be difficult for you to manage both."
Said Lord Ferrante distantly, "No, I don't think so."
The silence after that was distinctly sticky, till Vitelli broke it with a curt, "Let us be done. If you will take down the leather bag with the adder, my lord."
The next noises were very hard to interpret, until Vitelli said, "Are you quite certain you have the head end pinned through the leather this time, my lord?"
"Yes," snapped Ferrante impatiently, "Open the bag and reach in. Or would you rather I did?'
"I—well, if you wish, my lord. I'll get the knot."
"Ah ha! Got him. Right behind the head. See him grin for you, Niccolo? Heh, heh."
"Ah—not so close, if you don't mind, my lord. His venom would be wasted on me. Come along. We're almost done for tonight, and I am weary to the bone."
Ferrante grunted reluctant agreement. A clattering sound, like pine boards being wrestled about, was followed by actions Fiametta couldn't even guess at, plus more of Vitelli's Latin, sprinkled with some Hebrew, or perhaps it was outright gibberish. Fiametta could scarcely tell.
"What are they doing now?" she asked Monreale.
"I believe it is a spell based upon the principle of contrariety." Monreale listened intently. "It seems to be quite original.... I believe they are forcing the puff adder to, er... I'm sorry, Fiametta—bite the corpse, or the corpses. It seems to be part of the preservation spell."
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 understa
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 foots
A tiny scuttling noise crossed the chamber. Only in this stone-silence and night-stillness could Thur have heard it, exacerbated though his senses now were. The snake seemed to hear it, too. Its head rose and wove from side to side; then, coil by coil, it slid from Thur's leg and out from under the linen cloth. It seemed to take an age for it to remove its entire length. Thur held his breath for several more seconds, then let it go with an explosive huff. In a frantic, fluid motion, he rolled out from under his cramped table-prison and vaulted atop it instead. He grabbed for a dislodged iron candelabrum, felt but scarcely seen, before it could fall with a clang. His eyes, straining in the utter darkness beneath the cloth for so long, could actually make out dim shapes in the faint starlight reflecting from the lake through the deep window: his table, the crates on their trestles. The light was not good enough for him to see the adder, though.
"Master Beneforte," he quavered, "will you light me one candle?" No response. More hesitantly, "Uri? Please?"
His hands shaking, Thur felt along the tabletop. Papers, knives, cool metal tools. A little box. A tinder box? Thur opened it, but found it contained only a soft powder. He almost licked his fingers to try to identify it, but on second thought wiped them on his tunic instead. From the floor came odd scrabbling noises, clicking, and a weird, tiny animal shriek, which Thur tried to ignore. Could snakes climb table legs? He'd heard of snakes in trees....
Another, heavier box proved more lucky. Flint and steel made familiar weights in his hands. He struck sparks, found the tinder in their light, and managed after several tries to ignite a splinter. It almost went out before he could raise it to a candle wick, but after dying to a tiny blue globe, the yellow flame flared up from the wax. Thur, kneeling on the tabletop, decided it was the most beautiful flame he'd ever seen. He reignited the splinter and lit the entire candelabrum, six short, slagged, and nearly spent beeswax lumps. Then he looked around for the adder.