The Spirit Ring by Lois McMaster Bujold
"What should we do with these notes, then? Turn them over to the Abbot? Your father is beyond earthly prosecution, I think."
"If we can. If we all live. I—there are things here—there is a lifetime's thought and work bound up in these pages. I could not bear to see them destroyed, but—Thur, the possibilities are horrid. Vitelli would not limit himself to rabbits! Suppose he decided to make an army of brass soldiers, spirit slaves? Papa speculates—an army of golems, he calls them; I do not know that word; I don't think it's even Latin. Papa danced so delicately, to try to use this magic power without damning himself, but others would see only the power, and reach for it regardless." She took a deep breath. "I'd give the book to Monreale before I'd see it destroyed. But I'd burn it myself before letting it fall into Ferrante's or Vitelli's black hands."
"All Montefoglia is falling into their hands," said Thur bitterly. "And nobody seems able—or willing—to stop them. I tried, God help me. And I failed. Even with a cowardly knife to the back. With a sledgehammer I might have done some good. You don't need me, Fiametta. You need a hero, like Uri, trained to the sword. The wrong brother lies dead in the next room."
"Thur, don't blame yourself! Lord Ferrante has been a soldier in the field for twenty years! How could you expect to best him in anything like single combat?"
"Lord Pia held his own, for a little. We almost had it, between us! Till I deserted him, left him nailed to the wall like a martyr surrounded by his enemies. But it was close, Fiametta. Lord Ferrante is not invincible. Not till his army gets here, anyway. Tonight, tomorrow." Thur grimaced.
"Not tonight," said Fiametta. "Ruberta says the rumors in the marketplace have it that the Losimons are held up getting their cannon across the ford at the border. But tomorrow—tomorrow they may be here." Wearily, Fiametta rubbed her face. "I found Ruberta this morning at her sister's. I thought that was where she must have gone, if she'd lived. She told me what happened here. When the soldiers came, that idiot Teseo panicked and unbarred the door to them. Ruberta barely got over the back wall with her life. Well, it saved our poor door from being battered in, I suppose, and made no difference in the long run,"
"Oh. Speaking of Ruberta. She says to come eat."
Fiametta sighed. "I suppose we must. To keep up our strength. Our strength to run away, if nothing else." Her face crumbled; she brought her clenched hand down on the tabletop with a bang, making the notebook jump. "No," she cried. "I don't want to run away! This house is the only dowry I have left. Ferrante's bravos have taken everything they could pry loose. I will not marry dowerless like a beggar's brat… like a slave..." Then she just cried.
"Fiametta... Fiametta..." Thur opened his hands, hardly daring to touch those shaking shoulders. "Your talents, your art and magic, are dowries in themselves. Any man must see, if he isn't a complete fool. And you're too good to wed a fool. Though I would wed you in a moment. But I haven't got a penny, either. I haven't even got any clothes or shoes! If we could live in Bruinwald, I could go back to the mines or the forge. I admit, there's not much call for goldsmiths in Bruinwald."
Fiametta raised a tear-stained face. "But... wouldn't you like to live here, Thur? I could take over Papa's shop, in a small way at first, but most of the tools are left—you could haul the wood, and move the furnaces, and carry out the big projects, and be my h-h-husband; the Guild Council would issue you the shop permits in a minute. As a minor orphan, the Guild would control my property, but if I were married, you would. And, and Ruberta could still come cook, and we could be happy here!"
Thur was taken aback by all the practical detail embedded in this picture of wedded bliss. She must have been thinking about it a lot. He'd scarcely dared let himself go beyond the vaguest physical longing—he had to admit, it was a wonderful house, as far above a miner's cottage as, as Montefoglia Castle was beyond a goldsmith's mansion. There were a lot of repairs to be done after the looting, of course. He could do repairs; his hand and eye were clever enough for that. "I'd like it fine," he said. His mother would be astonished for him to marry so well, so soon.... "Could my mother come live here? Bruinwald winters are so cold and lonely." Yes, sooner or later, it must be his burden to tell her about Uri's fate. His stomach knotted at the thought.
Fiametta blinked. "Well, there's lots of room..." And more doubtfully, "Do you think she would like me?"
"Yes," said Thur firmly. He saw his mother dandling a grandchild on her knee, as Fiametta chinked away at some elegant goldwork, Ruberta cooked, and he ran a furnace, pouring pewter platters and candlesticks and other sturdy, practical things.
The colored vision faded at the thought of the advancing tramp of Losimon troops. Fiametta shared that dread; the light faded from her eyes. "All for nothing, if Ferrante wins," she sighed.
"Yes. Let's go eat." Shyly, defying Ferrante and all the fates, he took her hand as they went out into the courtyard. She gripped his hand in return.
She paused to stare into the casting pit at the big clay lump, the fragile mold for the great Perseus. "So many works my father left unfinished. If I could do one thing to ease his poor shade, I would have this statue cast for him. Before the Losimons destroy the mold, or time and neglect crumble it away. We'll never get the metal for it, now."
Thur said glumly, "It's too bad we can't invest Uri into that old Greek hero, like the brass hare. He'd make Ferrante run."
Fiametta froze. "What?"
He stood very still. "Well, we can't... can we? I mean, that would be serious necromancy. Black sin."
"Any more sinful than assassination?"
Thur stared uneasily at her intent face.
"And suppose... suppose the spirit, Uri's spirit, was not bound against his will? Suppose he was invited—not a slave, but a free-will volunteer, like the spirit of Lord Lorenzo's great ring?" she said huskily. "Uri's spirit has already been strengthened for binding, if vilely, by Vitelli—we have the mold, the furnace, the wood, the spell is written out, oh, I understood it, Thur! It's not just words, it has an inner structure..." Her shoulders slumped. "But we still don't have the metal. Not Vitelli himself could conjure a hero's weight of copper out of the air."
A vision danced and dazzled in Thur's mind like a lightning flash. A grinning kobold, drawing an iron bar down into solid stone as if it were porridge....
"I can't conjure it out of the air.” Thur's breathless voice seemed to his own ears to be coming from a great distance, as across a sea. "But I swear I can conjure it out of the ground."
Chapter Seventeen
"Now this is truly and straightly forbidden," said Fiametta, glancing around the front work chamber at her companions. Friends. Allies.
Ruberta and Tich sat on opposite sides of a double diagram Fiametta had drawn on the floor in chalk. In the center of one axis lay Uri's body; on an absurd, indefensible impulse, she had placed a pillow beneath his head, as if he were sleeping. He didn't look asleep. That gray stiffness was unmistakably death. Thur sat cross-legged in the center of the other axis, looking scared but determined. The room's shutters were closed and locked; candles at the diagram's cardinal points gave practical as well as symbolic illumination. "If anyone wants to withdraw, you'd better do it now."
Tich and Ruberta shook their heads, identically tight-lipped. "I'm ready," said Thur sturdily.
We must all be mad, thought Fiametta. Well, if they were, Ferrante had driven them so. Thus evil bred evil. Not all evil. I do not compel Uri's soul. I only beg of it. She once more checked through the recipe for a séance in her father's notes. If he'd left nothing out, then neither had she.
"Are you sure I don't do anything?" asked Thur plaintively.
"You do nothing—in a, a positive sense. I think it must be harder than it sounds. You have to give up control." Fiametta reflected on this. "You have to really trust your... your guest."
Thur shook his head, smiling sadly. "Any other—guest, no. Uri, yes."
"Yes." She pursed her lips. "Abbot Monreale starts every spell with a prayer. I
"Amen," murmured around the room. And an anxious, unvoiced presence assented, too.
She glanced for the last time at the notes, written in her father's flowing Latin hand. The spoken part of the spell was brief. She ran over the syllables in her mind, testing each one, and had a sudden insight. The substance of the spell was not in the Latin, but in a kind of under-structure of thought—was the insistence upon Latin merely a device to keep power from the ignorant? Uri did not speak Latin anyway, just German and Italian and a smattering of barracks-French. But now was surely not the time for experimentation.
Her lips formed the words anyway, a bridge of sound across a pattern held from second to second in her mind, of which the chalk lines were only a mnemonic reminder. "Uri, enter!" These were magic words, so blunt and plain? Her impulsiveness had spoiled the spell; they must start all over again —
Thur jerked, his eyes widening, his lips parting. His stoop-shouldered slump, partly weariness, partly a habit from ducking his height through unforgiving low mine tunnels, vanished. His spine straightened, like a soldier's on parade. An eager, hungry, almost frantic possession...
"Fiametta, I am here." It was Thur's voice, but with Uri's accent and intonation, polished smooth and mellowed by his time in the south. And his eyes—his eyes were intent, and bright, and very, very angry. "It's hard to stay. Hurry!"
"Oh, Uri, I'm so sorry you were killed!"
"Not half so sorry as I am." The flash of wry humor was all Uri, truly. His anger was not at her.
"It was my fault. I distracted you when I screamed."
"It wasn't you—it was what fell out of that accursed footstool. Horrible."
A knot of guilty regret loosened in her heart. Uri/Thur's eyes closed. "Bless you, brother, for wresting me from the necromancers." The eyes pressed shut more tightly, as if in residue of some agony. "I tried to resist them. They did not... fight fair."
"I imagine not," said Fiametta faintly. "God grant you grace."
"It was hard to think of God in that dark place. Some men find grace in dungeons and mineshafts, as if the color and noise and distractions of life blind them, and only in the darkness do they see clear. But I came too late, and to the wrong dungeon. Vitelli's shadow is a darkness empty even of God." His face was set with the memory of that emptiness, of that dark.
"Shh... it's all right now." Well, hardly that, Fiametta thought, glancing at the gray corpse. "But could you—dare you—face him again?"
Uri/Thur flinched. "Vitelli?"
"Yes. But not so unevenly matched, this time. Uri—we have discovered a spell of Papa's, a wonderful spell. Instead of casting your ghost into a ring, I think we can use this spell to open a way for you into the great Perseus. He was you, after all, but for the face and the pock marks. A body not of flesh, but of bronze, hurtless and immensely strong. It cannot be for long, though I plan to use my fire-spell to keep it hot and moving for as long as possible. But in that time you'd have a chance, one chance, to strike back at Ferrante and Vitelli. I cannot—I will not—compel or bind you in any way. But I will beg you. Uri, help us!"
"Make me a path to that end," breathed Uri/Thur, "and I fly down it. Great Sorceress!" His eyes burned. "Sandrino trusted me with his life. And I stood right there, open-mouthed like a country buffoon, as Ferrante took it from him. I failed my oath, I was dishonored by surprise—I did not trust Ferrante, I should have been more forward, oh, Fiametta! To wash out my dishonor in Ferrante's blood, I'd give my soul for the chance!"
"Don't say that!" Fiametta cried, panicked. "I don't want that! But if the Crusaders can be soldiers for God, I don't see why you can't. Vitelli is worse than any Saracen. But we need even more help than that. Papa would have employed ten strong workmen on this casting. We have only four—three, because I will be attempting the spell. You were there, in the castle—can you tell us how Lord Pia compelled the kobolds in his aid?"
"Lord Pia has a long-standing friendship with the little rock people. That's why they are so thick about the castle. They had a mutual interest in caves, and in the creatures that live in them." Uri/Thur raised his hands and made a little bat-wing-flapping gesture. "I once visited the kobolds' colony in Lord Pia's company. How you may compel them I am not sure, especially to work, for they are lazy and flighty and would rather play tricks. They'll play nasty tricks on you, if you cause them pain. Trying to compel a kobold is a bad idea."
His brows-down expression became muddled, all of a sudden, and confused. Thur's voice pushed out of his own mouth with difficulty, slow and slurred. "Bribe 'em. Mother's milk. They'd do anything for it." His jaw opened, closed; then Uri was back, looking surprised.
"That would work better than stealing a nanny goat—it's not something they are often offered! They would flock to you!"
"But where would we get—oh, this is getting so complicated!"
"It is strange..." Uri/Thur's gaze grew distant, "what I can see now. More. Less. Other. Walls are like glass. Stone is like water. But I can see the kobolds in their shadow-form inside the rocks, and they seem oddly solid. People—you, in your flesh—are like shadows used to be, all garbled and distant and out of reach. Except right now, looking through these eyes. It's good to see you once more." He smiled briefly, then grew grim. "All but Vitelli. His shadow is solid, inside his flesh. Solid and dark. Of him, I am afraid." Uri/Thur sighed, a long, controlled breath. "You must hurry. Even now Vitelli is moving toward binding your father in his ring. It's like a wrestling match. And Master Beneforte is losing! With your father's spirit bound to his will, Vitelli will own all his powers and knowledge. And who would doubt Master Beneforte's power to defeat his own spell, your spell, our spell?"
"When does Vitelli now plan to cast the ring?" Fiametta asked intently. "Do you know, can you tell?"
"Tonight."
"Tonight, oh, no! Can you see or speak to Papa at all? Tell him —"
But Uri/Thur's face writhed; a last, plaintive, "I cannot hold! Good-bye —" broke from his lips, and he fell backward, gasping, all and only Thur once more.
"God. God." He almost wept.
"Did it hurt?" asked Fiametta anxiously.
"Hurt?" Thur shook his head from side to side in bewilderment, glazed eyes jerking. "I feel sick. Uri—Uri hurts. Vitelli has hurt him."
"Can we move now?" asked Tich breathlessly. "Is it safe?"
"Yes. It's over." Fiametta nodded. Tich stuck his legs out in front of him and bent and stretched, and Ruberta hitched around in her bundle of skirts and petticoats. "No. It's only beginning," Fiametta realized. "And we have so little time! It's grown so complicated. And Ferrante's soldiers might descend on us here at any moment, and oh —" She shuddered, nearly overwhelmed.
"We'll do it step by step, Fiametta," said Thur. "The last won't look so big, once the first is done. What's first? The copper. For which we must have the kobolds. For which we must have... hm." He frowned at the ceiling.
"I don't think a wet nurse will drop down from the sky," said Fiametta tartly, following his gaze. "At least not one who would be willing to put a nasty little rock-demon to her breast. And we cannot involve an unwilling soul, which means we must reveal what we are doing. And if told, and if she does not agree, she could betray us —"
Ruberta snorted. "Oh, you children." Fiametta looked up, puzzled at her dry tone.
"Do you think you are the only ones hurting from this evil pass?" the housekeeper asked. "Ferrante's soldiers have been swaggering around town for days, making enemies for him. They don't act like the guard of a new lord, they've been acting like an occupying enemy. I could lay hands on a dozen unhappy women who would be willing to do far worse things to strike a blow in return. You leave this to me, girl." Ruberta grunted up and stood with her hands
Tich raised his eyebrows, as if amused, or at least bemused, by her military stride.
"Don't you look like that at her," said Fiametta sharply. "Some of Ferrante's drunken men raped her niece two nights ago. Took her right off the street, when she ventured out to get food for her family. The girl was still in bed crying, all bruised and beaten, when I went there at dawn to look for Ruberta. The whole family's in an uproar."
Tich hunched in contrition.
Thur took a deep breath and heaved himself up. "Tich. We can start laying the wood in the furnace while we wait. And shift that stack of tin ingots."
"Right." Tich scrambled up, too.
Fiametta slumped, exhausted. "Oh, Thur. I feel like I've just kicked a pebble off the top of one of your mountains, and watched it start two other rocks, which struck five—a mountain is going to fall on someone tonight. Will it be us?"
"On Ferrante, if I can help it." He offered his hand to her; she took it and he pulled her to her feet as lightly as a straw doll.