The Spirit Ring

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Vitelli was half-sprawled, half-kneeling by Uri, doing something to Uri's mouth. Thur staggered over to him, grasped him by the padded shoulders of his velvet gown, and heaved him into the wall. "Win or lose, you will not have my brother!" Thur meant it to be a defiant shout; it came out a croak. He grabbed Uri's rigid ankles and dragged him toward the window.

  He glanced out, surprising a kobold shadow-man who was drawing the last iron bar down into the solid stone, like sinking a spoon into porridge. The kobold grinned at him and melted away after its prize. Thur heaved Uri up and stood, his joints cracking and popping like the mine timbers. He aimed his brother at the little square window and charged forward as if he were carrying a battering ram. His aim was good. The corpse shot through the narrow opening without catching or dragging, and arced into the night air. After a moment a great splash sounded below. Thur pushed himself back upright from the window ledge, turning to seek his enemies.

  Lord Pia was still engaged with Ferrante, their swords clanging like a couple of demented blacksmiths. Thur, mother-naked, bore nothing with which to attack a swordsman. What about a black magician?

  Vitelli had regained his feet and started toward Lord Pia, muttering, his hands gesturing. With one hand Thur grabbed an iron candlestick, and with the other he swept the spell-set of gold cross and silk gauze from the tabletop. Vitelli yelped, stumbled, and turned toward Thur.

  Thur swung, doing his very best to take off Vitelli's head with the first almighty blow; he did not think he'd get a second chance. Vitelli ducked, and Thur was twisted off-balance by his own momentum. He came around just in time to see Ferrante stab Lord Pia through his sword arm, nailing him to the oak door. Pia did not cry out. Ferrante left his own sword quivering in flesh and wood, and caught Lord Pia's short sword as it fell. Without a pause, he whirled and lunged at Thur.

  Thur knocked the sword aside with the candlestick, once, twice; Ferrante pressed him swiftly across the chamber. Backing him into the furnace. Thur could feel the heat on his bare haunches. He sidestepped to put the window behind him instead. Ferrante had regained his balance, moving smoothly and confidently; he almost seemed to study Thur at his leisure. Vitelli, moving up behind Ferrante, pointed a finger at Thur and began to scream in Latin. His dark aura spun around his head like a cyclone.

  Thur did not think he had better be standing there when this spell, whatever it was, arrived. At Ferrante's next thrust he swung his candlestick with all his remaining strength, knocking the sword wide. Ferrante still covered himself with a knife, not the bone-handled one, which had somehow appeared in his left hand. Thur spun on his heel and dove through the window after Uri. His aim was not so clean this time. The rough sandstone shredded the skin of his shoulders and knees in passing. Then he found himself flailing in the dark air. A man might fly as a bat flies, without feathers—had the castellan flown down? Where the hell was the water—

  He smashed into it belly-flat. After the suffocating heat of the magic chamber, the cold was confounding. It closed over his head, stopping his breath. He fought his way through a wash of tickling bubbles to the surface, and gasped for air. Cold but clean. It seemed to flush the dizzying sickly drug-torpor from his limbs at last. Thur kicked and turned about, trying to reorient himself.

  The night was moonless, the stars muffled by haze. Fog tendrils steamed from the lake's surface, obscuring what vision was left. Against a looming black bulk, Thur made out a few dim gold blobs of candlelight, the cliff face with its windows and the castle wall, above. He had to get away from that. He paddled as silently as he could in the opposite direction, just his eyes and nose breaking the surface of the dark and quiet water. He bumped into a floating log.

  No. Not a log. It was Uri's body. Somehow, in the frantic fight, Thur had imagined it sinking beyond Vitelli's reach, but it was quite buoyant. He tried to push it under, but it popped back up. Any Losimon with a rowboat could pick it off the surface of the lake tomorrow morning, and return it to Vitelli, and all this would be for nothing.

  No, not nothing. Not nothing. But not enough. He had regained Uri only to lose Lord Pia. Mad, perhaps, but clever and bold... as Abbot Monreale was holy, Duchess Letitia defiant, Ascanio innocent, and Fiametta... Fiametta... and all, all, sacrifices to Ferrante's towering self-conceit, his fame. What gave Ferrante the right to ride over all those lives?

  Right has nothing to do with it. He fights to survive. And the more he drifts into wrong, the harder he will fight. Must fight. So spoke reason.

  Reason was no practical help.

  Thur was drifting, too. He began to shiver as the chill lake water drew the heat from his body. At least it wasn't as killing-cold as the water in the mine. Would Uri become waterlogged, and start to sink or rot? Uncertainly, Thur began to kick, propelling himself and his brother log gently along. He was no longer sure where the shore was. No lights or lanterns shone bright enough to pierce the mist. But he achieved, after a little experiment, a sort of equilibrium, kicking just fast enough to keep warm, just slowly enough not to outpace his breath. He felt he might keep it up for hours. But then what?

  By the time he bumped into the quay, he knew neither how far he had come nor how long he had been about it. He felt as though he had paddled halfway to Cecchino. A town loomed beyond the steps and docks and pebbled beach. The stones bit his naked feet as he rose, dripping, the water no longer supporting his weight. He dragged Uri along horizontally as far as possible, then pulled him ashore like a fish. He was almost as slippery as one. Thur stood, his legs trembling, and stared into the dark tinged here and there with some faint illumination escaping through a closed shutter. Big buildings, too big for any village. A dog barked twice, then stopped. What town...?

  Damn. It was only Montefoglia. Still Montefoglia. Had he been swimming in circles? Quite possibly. He stared up and down the shoreline, mentally placing landmarks he could not now see with his eyes. To his right, the castle hill, to his left, the big docks, the lower walls, and the high outer town wall at the very end that ran right down into the harbor. Ahead lay narrow, winding streets, dark and strange. Well, they couldn't be any stranger than what he'd just escaped.

  He stood a moment in indecision, water lapping his ankles. Where should he be trying to go, anyway? He had to hide Uri. He wanted... he wanted to talk to Fiametta. He wanted to find Fiametta, yes. Reason therefore said he ought to paddle back out into the lake and swim to Saint Jerome. He emptied his mind of reason, knelt, hoisted Uri up on his shoulder, grunted to his feet, and started walking.

  Up stone steps from the quay. His feet banged down hard with their doubled weight. Guards? There ought to be a guard—there. Thur ducked into the nearest alley as a man with a lantern appeared near the quay. An old man, a town watchman, not a Losimon. Thur walked on without looking back, placing his bare feet carefully in the dark. But suppose he did meet some urban danger in these passageways? He had a sudden picture of himself, a naked Swiss madman carrying a corpse. Well, he had nothing to attract a robber, certainty.

  Turn here. Turn there. Where the devil was he going? He would not go back to the castle, no matter how his sixth sense clamored. He stumbled over a blanketed lump in the alley, which gave a muffled cry; Thur, burdened, barely saved himself from landing hard enough to shatter his kneecaps on the cobbles.

  "Damn it! No, be quiet. I won’t hurt you. Forget you saw me! Go back to sleep," said Thur, panicked at the thought of an outcry.

  "Thur?" said a familiar youthful voice. "Is that you?"

  "Tich?" Thur stopped, stunned. "What are you doing here?"

  "Why, you're all naked!" Pico's elder boy scrambled to his feet, his face a white smudge in the dimness. "What are you carrying?"

  "Uri. My brother. You've met Uri, haven't you?" said Thur dizzily.

  "It's a corpse," said Tich in horror, after a verifying touch.

  "Yes. I stole him back from Ferrante's black magician. Why are you here?"

  "Thur, those thieving Losimons—they killed my father and Zili
o! They cut his throat like a dog —" His voice grew louder in his excitement—it had been a couple of days since he'd met any man he dared called friend, Thur guessed.

  "Sh! Sh. I know. I saw your father's mules yesterday, when they brought them to the castle."

  "Yes, I followed them. And they're my mules now. I want them back. I want to kill the bastards! I've been trying to figure out how to get into the castle."

  "Sh, no. That accursed castle is no place to try to get into. I barely got out with my life tonight."

  "Where are you going?" asked Tich, sounding quite as bewildered as Thur felt.

  "I'm... not sure. But I cannot stand naked in the street till the dawn finds me!"

  "You can have my blanket," Tich offered immediately, though in a rather dubious tone.

  "Thanks." Thur wrapped it about himself, suddenly feeling much better, and not just for the warmth. "I... look, I hate to take your only blanket. Why don't you come along with me?"

  "But where are you going?" Tich repeated.

  "To... a house in town that I know." The vision of Fiametta's home came clearly as he spoke the words aloud, finally unconfused by the overlapping call of... Tich? Yes. It was no accident that he'd stumbled over Tich in the dark, any more than when he'd stumbled over little lost Helga in the snow. But he knew where he was going now. "There's no one home. Except maybe a Losimon guard," Thur added in sudden doubt. Maybe reason ought to prevail, just this once....

  "I have a dagger," said Tich. "If he's a Losimon, I'll kill him for you!"

  "I... We'll see. It may not be necessary. Let's just get there first, eh? Um..."

  "I'll take his feet," said Tich reluctantly.

  "Thanks."

  Thur realized he was going to have to give up the blanket again. Awkwardly, they slung Uri between them and walked on, not talking except for a few whispered directions from Thur. "Turn here. Down this street. Right. Up this slope. We're almost there...."

  "Quiet neighborhood," Tich commented. "The houses are like forts."

  The familiar walls of Master Beneforte's—Fiametta's—house rose up at last. There was the marble-arched oak door, glimmering even in the dark. No lights shone. It was surely both locked and guarded.

  They set their burden down, and Thur borrowed the blanket back.

  "How do we get in?" whispered Tich.

  Thur was not sure he could even climb into bed at this point, let alone climb a wall. He stepped forward and knocked on the door.

  "Are you mad? You said it would be guarded!" hissed Tich.

  Yes, he might be a little mad by now. But it wouldn't do to tell Tich so. Thur only knew he was very, very tired. "So, if there is a guard, this will bring him to us. Then you can kill him," Thur promised. He knocked again, and propped Uri's body up beside him, supporting him with a brotherly arm over his cold and waxy shoulder. He waited for the guard to greet them. And vice versa. He knocked again, harder.

  At length came the sound of the bar being drawn back, and the snick of a bolt. Tich tensed, his hand clenching and unclenching on his drawn dagger. The door swung open.

  Fiametta stood holding a lantern in one hand and a long kitchen knife in the other. She was still wearing her red velvet dress, missing its outer sleeves. She stepped back a half-pace. Her eyes widened as she played the lantern light over her visitors. Thur felt doubly grateful for Tich's dirty blanket, now wrapped like a skirt about his waist.

  Fiametta looked back and forth between the two brothers. "Dear God, Thur. How do you tell which of you is the corpse?"

  "Uri is better looking," Thur decided, after a moment's serious thought.

  "I fear you're right. Come in. Come in. Get out of the street." Fiametta waved them urgently inside.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "What did you do to the guards?" Thur asked, staring blearily around the darkened entry-hall. He and Tich laid Uri down upon the flagstones as Fiametta locked and barred the door again behind them.

  "Guard," Fiametta corrected, turning. "There was only one. He's locked in the root cellar under the kitchen, right now. I hope he's drinking himself senseless. I wasn't able to get his sword away from him." She glanced curiously at Tich.

  "Did you magic him down there?" asked Thur, impressed. Tich's brows rose. "Oh," said Thur. "I'm sorry. This is Tich Pico. Don't you remember him from Catti's inn? The muleteer's son. A gang of Ferrante's bravos killed his father and brother and stole his mules. Tich, this is Fiametta Beneforte. Her father was the master mage Catti smoked. This is his house. Was his house."

  "Yes, I do remember seeing you," said Fiametta. "We have a thing in common against Ferrante, then. All of us."

  "Yes, Madonna Beneforte." Tich nodded. "Do you want me to kill that Losimon in the cellar for you?"

  "I don't know. But he has to be better secured; I'm afraid he'll get out. Oh, Thur, I'm so glad you're here!" She flung her arms around him and hugged him.

  Thur blushed with pleasure and grunted with pain. "Are you really?" he said, feeling suddenly shy.

  "Did I hurt—oh, what a horrible gash! It should be closed and bandaged at once! You look terrible." She jumped back, but he managed to retain a clasp on her warm hands. He was still chilled from the lake and the night air. But as his blanket slipped down further, he had to let go to catch and clutch it to himself for decency. Fiametta paused in sudden puzzlement. "But why are you here?"

  "I wanted to find you."

  "But how did you know to come here? I wasn't sure I could get here myself, till an hour ago. Do you think... Is it still my ring?" She touched her chest. Yes, the ring hung mere, under her linen and velvet, Thur was sure of it. But he had not thought about the ring.

  He shook his head. "I don't know. This house was the only place I knew of in Montefoglia to hide. I mean, I knew—I felt this was how to find you. But I don't know how I knew. I'm good at finding things, Always have been. Lately, I've been getting better at it. I found Uri...."

  "It is a talent. It must be. Uri did right to apprentice you to my father. Oh, if only he had lived!" She rubbed her eyes, smeared wet with anger, weariness, and grief.

  Hurriedly, Thur launched into a brief tangled account of his sojourn in Montefoglia's castle, culminating in his escape with Uri's body. Tich listened open-mouthed; Fiametta's teeth clenched.

  "We knew you were taken, this afternoon. Before he destroyed the last ear Vitelli used it to tell Monreale he was going to put you to death," she said. "I thought he meant to hang you. I didn't imagine anything so evil."

  "But—how did you come to leave Saint Jerome?" asked Thur.

  Her brows rose quizzically. "I was looking for you. I was going to save you from being hanged. I hadn't figured out how, yet. I thought they would do it at dawn."

  A slow grin pulled up the corners of his mouth.

  "Well, nobody else was willing to try—oh, dear." Strange thumping noises echoing distantly through the house interrupted her. "I think that guard is trying to get out. Come on." She picked up the lantern and led the way through the courtyard into the kitchen. Thur limped after, Tich bringing up the rear.

  The wide polished boards flooring half the kitchen jumped as something hard struck them from below. The guard's head, Thur thought dizzily. Obscene curses drifted up, not quite muffled enough, as the Losimon heard their footsteps. After a moment, a sword blade thrust up through a thin gap between two boards, questing blindly for a target. Thur glanced down to make sure he was standing on the tiles.

  "How did you get him down there?" Tich asked, also stepping cautiously around the wood.

  "Not magic," said Fiametta. She lit a candle stub stuck in a bottle on the kitchen table from the lantern flame. "I was going to use magic. I was going to set him on fire. It's the only spell I know that I can work entirely in my head, without any material symbols to hold it. It's a talent. But when he came to answer the door, I thought I'd better get inside, first. So I told him I lived here, and I'd come back to see if any of my clothes were left. But then the talk went...
strange. He just let me in, and said he'd help me look for my dresses, if I'd let him... do things, to me."

  Letting Tich kill the Losimon seemed suddenly a much better idea to Thur. He set his teeth, then unset them again immediately as the loose ones twinged.

  "I told him... well, I told him all right." Her hand touched the head of a striking silver snake belt looped around her waist. "But I told him there was a wine cask my father had hidden in the root cellar, behind the turnips, a special vintage. There really was one, you see. It might even still be there. When he went down to look, I clapped the trapdoor closed, and dragged the pewter cupboard across it." She nodded toward the large painted cupboard pulled out from the wall. "He almost pushed it up enough to get his fingers out, but then I jumped up and down on it. And then you came. I thought, if it didn't hold him, I must set his hair on fire—at least he has hair—and then try to stab him." She paused as the sword thrust up again between the boards. "I could still set him afire. And you could stab him," she offered to Tich.

  Thur, remembering his experiences with Ferrante, shuddered at the thought of little Fiametta attempting hand-to-hand combat with an infuriated Losimon veteran. "Just wait a minute," he said. He borrowed the lantern and hobbled back to the courtyard. He recalled glimpsing... yes, there in a pile of tools beneath the gallery rested a good-sized sledgehammer. He carted it back to the kitchen. "At least let's get his sword away from him first."

  For bait, he walked out on the floorboards, taking care not to step on a crack. Sure enough, the sword blade and curses came up through the slit again just in front of him. He raised the sledgehammer, familiar in his hands, to his side and swung it down hard. It clanged off the sword blade, and Thur almost toppled. He clutched again at his slipping blanket, and, light-headed from the effort, handed the hammer off to Tich, who caught on at once. Enthusiastically, he whacked at the bent blade as the Losimon tried futilely to withdraw it. On the third blow, the metal broke. A crash from below, and more curses, as the Losimon fell backward.