The Spirit Ring

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Reluctantly, he turned and tugged the slip knot of the second crate, then stood a moment, screwing up his... not courage, exactly. Hope. Maybe it isn't Uri. Many men have died this week in Montefoglia. For one moment longer, he could hope. Then he would know.

  You know already. You've known from the beginning. And No! It won't be him! Thur shoved the lid back on a huff of decision.

  His brother's face jutted from its matrix of salt, both familiar and alien. The once-handsome features were all there, undisfigured. But the animating humor, the sparkle and shout, hungers and ambitions, quick wit... how empty this strange, drawn, pale visage was without them. He died in pain. That quality alone lingered in the stiff face.

  Thur looked down the nude body. A single wound gaped darkly in its chest, of which Thur's hot belly-cut seemed a thin parody. He died swiftly. Days ago. At least that half of the nightmare, of Uri suffering as a prisoner, could be laid to rest. If only you could have waited, brother. Hung on. I was coming. I was....

  There was no shortage of new nightmares to take the emptied place. What did Ferrante intend this chamber and its strange equipment for? His own face feeling nearly as numb as his elder brother's, Thur walked around once more. A cleared area in the center of the stone floor bore traces of chalk, and less-identifiable substances. Black necromancy indeed. Grimly, Thur took a little tambourine from his tunic, whispered its activation, and, on tiptoe, found a place for it on a high shelf behind a jar. There. That one ought to give Monreale's listening monks an earful.

  He returned to his brother and, for the first time, touched the cold face. Only a husk. Uri was gone, or at least, gone from this clay. But how far? Thur stared blindly around the chamber, realizing abruptly that both his nightmares were literally true. Uri was dead. And Uri was a prisoner in this terrible place. How do I release you, brother?

  The muffled reverberation of a bass voice, and the stony echo of a brief laugh, sounded from beyond the chamber door. Appalled, Thur hastily pulled the plank cover back over Uri's crate, banging his thumb painfully between box and lid to quiet the clatter. Too late to escape? He turned around, eyes raking the chamber for cover.

  The candles blew themselves out all at once, without a puff of breeze, plunging the room into darkness scarcely relieved by the night glimmer of starlight reflected up from the lake through the deep, barred window embrasure. A hand that Thur did not think he could have seen even in daylight grasped his shoulder. "Down, boy!" a whisper that moved on no breath tingled in his ear.

  Too frightened to argue, he crouched and shuffled under the table. The door clicked closed and the lock snicked shut. Thur shrank back against the wall, and a piece of cloth poked into his hand with the insistence of a dog snuffling up to be petted. It was light and soft, like linen, and he pulled it up over himself.

  A real and solid iron key scraped in the lock, and the bolt clacked back again. Thur peeked over his cloth cover at the wavering yellow glow reflecting from a hand-held lantern. The guards, come looking for him?

  Two men's footsteps crossed the floor, one's booted, one's slipper-soled. I wish it were the guards, he thought in sudden sick perception.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fiametta rubbed her drooping eyelids and stretched her arms high in an effort to fight off drowsiness. The watered wine and bread she'd had for supper was not so grand a feast as to induce torpor, but she'd slept poorly last night, turning over and over on the crackling straw, worrying about Thur, constantly disturbed by the rustling and coughing and movements of the other women in the overcrowded dormitory. Not to mention the fleas. She scratched a red welt on her elbow.

  Abbot Monreale's workroom was warm, the plastered walls of the second-floor chamber still retaining the heat of the day, and the light from the single candle beside her was golden and cozy. She wriggled her hips on the hard perch of her barrel-seat, planted her elbows on the table, and let her chin sink back into her hands. On the tray before her the three remaining tambourines, the mouth-twins to the little ears Thur carried, remained stubbornly mute. Were they still working...? Yes, her day's practice at keeping them enspelled had made it an almost automatic process, like absentminded humming. They conveyed nothing because they had nothing to convey.

  In the next room she could hear Abbot Monreale pause to cough, pace, and continue his dictation to Brother Ambrose. A letter to the Bishop of Savoy, describing their desperate situation, calling for help, magical if not military. A futile letter. How did Monreale propose to dispatch it? The day had passed in an ominous, overheated quiet, without even the usual desultory exchanges of curses and crossbow bolts between the besiegers and the defenders on the monastery walls. No new herald or emissary had come to the gates today, no new refugees. No one at all. It was as if Lord Ferrante's grip tightened chokingly around them.

  She stared at the little circles, willing them to speech. Three had come to life today, two in the afternoon and one at dusk, when she'd been gone to supper. Initiate brothers had taken each one off to their cells, where they sat with quills and paper ready to take note of important secrets. She trusted the brothers were all staying awake, too. But anyway, Thur had still been alive and free at dusk.

  She stifled a yawn; if Monreale glanced in and saw her fading, he would send her to bed, and she might miss the next word from Thur. Why didn't the big fool think to speak into the ear-tambourines when he activated them and report on himself? She gritted her teeth on her next yawn. The white parchment circles swam before her eyes.

  Then, without other warning, one—flared, Fiametta supposed she must describe it, though it was not an effect she saw with her eyes. She took a deep breath of anticipation and sat up straight. Thur's voice, whispering his badly-accented Latin, drifted up from the tambourine to her straining ear. Talk to me, Thur! But there followed only a scraping sound, as of a jar shoved across a shelf. Footsteps crossed a stone floor, then a sad, meditative silence fell. Desperately, Fiametta tried to generate a picture in her mind from the mere sound. Stone floor, harsh echoes: a stone chamber? Rock walls—the Duke's dungeon? True intuition, or self-delusion? Her hand pulled at the thong around her neck, drew the lion ring from its warm hiding place between her breasts, and closed over it. What was Thur seeing? Talk, you Swiss lout!

  But the deep buzz of a voice that came suddenly from the tambourine was not Thur's. She could not make out words. A tenor laugh followed, then a muffled clatter, hasty steps, a clunk and a clack. Words rang in her mind that did not come through her ear—Down, boy! She stiffened in panic. Papa! The sound of a door opening, then, and a stranger's light voice: "Do you smell hot wax, my lord?"

  My lord? Where was Thur? Had he fled? Her heart hammered.

  "From your lantern, Niccolo." The bored bass voice was Lord Ferrante's; his Romagnan accent was distinctive.

  She heard an odd muffled thunk, as of something heavy being placed on a wooden table. "I think not," returned—Niccolo's?—voice. "These candles are warm." Then, "Ow!" A scuffle of slippers, as of a sudden recoil.

  "Did you do that, Niccolo?" asked Ferrante in an interested tone.

  "No!"

  Ferrante laughed unkindly. "Beneforte is playing his little tricks again." His voice went mocking; Fiametta's imagination supplied a sweeping, ironic bow. "Thank you, my servant, for lighting my way."

  A sucking sound—burned fingers being licked? "He's not our servant yet," growled Niccolo.

  "Abbot Monreale," Fiametta whispered frantically, then reminded herself that sound only flowed one way through the little ear-and-mouth sets—could that be altered? —"Father Monreale!" she shouted. "Come quick! It's Lord Ferrante himself!"

  Monreale hurried through the door from his adjoining office, followed, after a scrape and crash of a chair falling and being righted again, by Brother Ambrose, still clutching his inky quill. They bent over the tray of tambourines.

  "Are you sure?" asked Monreale.

  "I remember his voice from the banquet. I don't know the other man's voice, though. Fe
rrante calls him Niccolo. I think they are in a chamber beneath the castle."

  "Ambrose, take over." Monreale nodded toward the mouth-tambourine.

  I can enspell it as well as he can, Father! Fiametta, wrenched, held her tongue and passed the spell-keeping to Ambrose. His lips moved silently a moment, then he settled in.

  Ferrante's voice asked, "How much more dare we strengthen him, then, before I do control him?"

  Niccolo replied grumpily, "He must be fed. And the very feeding brings him nearer to us. It's under control. I admit, I wish we could find his own damned notes on spirit rings. We could catch him by his own magic most finely. But he can't know that much more than I do. We'll have him under our thumb soon enough,"

  "None too soon for me. I've had about enough of this midnight skulking." Ferrante spat, eloquently.

  "Great works require some sacrifices, my lord. Hang the three bags on those hooks. Take care with the leather one."

  "To be sure."

  Rustling noises followed, as the two men arranged whatever mysterious burdens they had been carrying. Abbot Monreale's eyes narrowed and his lips parted in concentration, like Fiametta trying to guess at actions from their sounds. "Talk some more, blast you," he muttered under his breath.

  "Oh, for a dove now," mourned Ambrose.

  "They would not fly in the dark. And there's no time to launch a bat, nor could it see or hear much more than this. Sh!" Monreale waved him to silence as the tambourine spoke again.

  "Well," said Ferrante's voice. "Shall we conjure Beneforte now, and compel him to tell us the secret of this saltcellar of his?"

  "I'm certain I understand the secret of the salt, my lord. Our trials with the animals and the prisoner were most convincing. Alone, its ability to detect poison would make it a treasure for your table, but its ability to purify as well—pure genius!"

  "Fine and good. But I do not understand the secret of the pepper. And I am not inclined to trust my life to something that holds secrets from me. Salt is white and pepper is black. What more logical than that the salt embodies a white magic and the pepper a black?"

  "Slander!" Fiametta hissed. "Fool! Does he think Papa would —" Monreale's hand on her shoulder tightened, and she swallowed her outrage.

  "Possibly," allowed Niccolo. "Beneforte would have had to smuggle it past inspection by that prig Monreale, though."

  "Monreale should have been an Inquisitor. He has the long nose for it."

  "He lacks the stomach for it."

  "So he would have men believe," said Ferrante sourly.

  "I know that voice," muttered Monreale by Fiametta's ear. "Niccolo. Niccolo what?"

  Ambrose offered, "Lord Ferrante has a secretary named Niccolo Vitelli, Father. He's said to be Ferrante's shadow. I was told he's been in Ferrante's employ for about four years. Ferrante's men are wary of him—I thought it was for his slyness, but now it seems there's more to it."

  Monreale shook his head. "That's not what I... But I suppose this Vitelli could be the reason that Ferrante, who was never rumored to have any use for magic in his condottiere days, seems to be up to his ears in it now."

  "The pepper did no harm to the animals." Lord Ferrante's voice came persuasively from the parchment.

  "Of course not," Fiametta muttered. "They have no power of speech."

  "— and the spell engraved on the bottom of the saltcellar worked fine for the salt," Ferrante continued. "The second one must work for the pepper. I think we should try it again, upon a subject more capable of reporting subtle effects than Lady Julia's lap dog."

  "We?" said Vitelli in a suspicious tone.

  "I will speak the spell," said Lord Ferrante, "and you shall place the pepper on your tongue. But don't swallow it."

  "I see." An unenthusiastic silence was followed by a "Very well. Let's get it over with. There are more urgent tasks waiting tonight."

  Now Fiametta could picture the chinks and thunks as Ferrante squinting at the bottom of her father's saltcellar by candlelight, returning it to its ebony base, and installing a bit of pepper in the little Greek temple under the golden goddess's hand. In a rapid whisper, she interpreted the sounds for Monreale and Ambrose. Sure enough, Ferrante's voice soon intoned the Latin prayer of the pepper-spell.

  "Try it now," ordered Lord Ferrante.

  After a moment, Vitelli's voice reported, in the odd muffled intonation of a man trying not to dislodge a pinch of pepper from his tongue, "I feel nothi'g, my lor'."

  "It can't be doing nothing. Pepper. Tongues. Do you feel inspired to eloquence, perhaps?"

  "No."

  "Hm. Do you feel you could sway men's minds? Tell me a lie, and convince me of its truth. What color is my hair?"

  "Black, m'lor."

  "Say, 'red.'"

  "Rrr... black." This last was sputtered out so as to almost lose the pepper.

  "But say red."

  "I can't. Black!"

  A brief silence. "My God," whispered Ferrante. "Can the pepper compel truth?"

  "Took you long enough," muttered Fiametta.

  "Truth is not something that much springs to his mind, it seems," observed Ambrose.

  "No, don't spit it out yet," Ferrante's voice ordered firmly. "I must be sure. What... what is your age?"

  "Thirty-two, m'lor."

  "Your birthplace?"

  "Milan."

  "Your—oh, your name."

  "Jacopo Sprenger."

  "What?" Ferrante's voice from the tambourine blended in astonishment with Monreale's, as the abbot slammed his fists to the table and cried, "What? It can't be!"

  Fierce sputtering sounds emanated from the parchment circle, and muffled noises as of a man frantically wiping his mouth out with a cloth.

  "Does the spell compel truth?" Ferrante's voice demanded of his secretary.

  "It seems so, my lord," said Vitelli/Sprenger in a distinctly surly tone. After a short pause filled by who-knew-what boiling glance from the Lord of Losimo, the secretary went on reluctantly, "I took the name Vitelli in my youth. After a... little difficulty with the law in Bologna."

  "Well... so it is with half the scoundrels in my army. But I didn't think you had any secrets from me, my pet." Ferrante's tone was judiciously forgiving, but with a dangerous hint of steel underneath.

  "All men conceal something." Fiametta could picture Vitelli shrugging uneasily. His voice went bland. "Would you care to try the pepper for yourself, my lord?"

  "No," said Ferrante. The irony in his voice matched his secretary's. "I do think I believe you. Or believe Beneforte, anyway. But God! What a treasure! Can you imagine how valuable this could be when questioning prisoners? Or people who are attempting to hide their gold or goods?" The excitement of this vision sharpened his voice.

  "God," Abbot Monreale moaned, in quite a different tone. "Is any magic, any intention of men, ever so white that it can't be perverted? If even truth itself isn't godly..." His lips drew back on a grimace of pain.

  "Who is Jacopo Sprenger?" Brother Ambrose whispered, apparently, like Fiametta, unable to quell the secret conviction that if they could hear Ferrante, Ferrante could hear them.

  "Is it possible...? The fellow on the tower—but he's grown so thin! I'll tell you—later. Sh." Monreale bent his ear to the tambourine again, trying like Fiametta to guess what the rustling noises of Ferrante’s and Vitelli's next preparations meant. This time the occasional muttered word or order, or scraping sound, seemed to convey more to Abbot Monreale than to Fiametta, for he began to murmur interpretive guesses for Ambrose’s and Fiametta's benefit.

  "I believe they are drawing a sacred diagram upon the floor. Lines to contain the mystic forces of the planets, or of their metals... sacred names, to compel or contain the forces of their spirits. A peculiar combination of higher and lower magics, I must say."

  "Are they going to try and enslave Papa's spirit to that awful putti ring now?" asked Fiametta unhappily.

  "Not tonight, I think. I don't hear anything that sounds like them setti
ng up a furnace, do you? The ring must be new-cast from molten metal at the time of the investment, you see. The metal must be fluid to take up the internal form of the spirit."

  Fiametta, remembering the making of her lion ring, nodded.

  "They could not recast that putti ring for your father anyway," Monreale went on. "Silver is for a female spirit. They should use gold for Prospero Beneforte, ideally. If they have any idea of what they are doing. Which, unfortunately, they seem to. If Vitelli is Sprenger, that's no surprise.... He was a brilliant student of —" Monreale broke off as voices began again.

  "The black cat for the sorcerer, the black cock for the soldier," said Vitelli. "Hand me the bag with the cat, my lord, across the lines, after I enter the square and close it." His voice went off into another string of Latin, far more purely intoned than Thur's or even Ferrante's.

  "He enspells his blade," Monreale muttered.

  "What is he going to do with it?" asked Fiametta tensely.

  "Sacrifice a cat. Its life—I hesitate to call it its soul, but anyway, its spirit—will be given to your father's ghost, to... strengthen it. Like a meal."

  "Is it still alive?" demanded Vitelli's voice uncertainly.

  A weak and piteous meow, full of suffering and pain, was made to answer him. "Just barely," said Ferrante.

  Fiametta and Ambrose exchanged a look of horror. "Unlucky cat," said Ambrose. His thick hands wrung.

  "Just what are they doing to it?" asked Fiametta.

  "Enough for two men to burn for. Sh," said Monreale impatiently.

  The cat's voice rose to a terrified squall, cutting across Vitelli's Latin drone, then went abruptly silent.

  "Surely Papa would refuse such an unclean offering," said Fiametta. "He wouldn't... eat? The poor kitty!"

  Monreale shook his head, face grim as granite. But his brows wrinkled in puzzlement as Vitelli's chant started up again. "What are they... can there be two?"

  The mysterious scene was reenacted, but this time it was the squawking and flutter of a cock that fell to silence at the bite of Vitelli's darkly blessed blade. A familiar name flashed past, embedded in Vitelli's pure Latin.