The Spirit Ring
Page 30
"Is it melting yet?" Fiametta asked anxiously.
"Starting to.
She closed her eyes, concentrated deeply, and recited, "Piro. Piro. Piro." She stopped, dizzied; when she opened her mouth, her breath steamed. The furnace roared. Orange sparks spiraled up out of the vents into the night air, and were whipped away by the rising wind.
"Fiametta, save your strength." Thur's big hand closed in concern on her shoulder.
"We haven't much time left. I can feel it." I am afraid.
His grip tightened. "We can do this thing," he breathed in her ear. "It's going to be magnificent." In the bright blue light of his eyes, she could almost believe.
Tich staggered out under a huge double armload of pine, which he dropped at his feet with a clatter. "This is the last of it," he gasped.
"What?" said Thur. "Surely not already." He peered through the furnace window again with troubled eyes.
"Sorry," said Tich. "Not another splinter."
"Well, let's load it in." Together, they heaved the wood into the furnace, while the kobolds manned the bellows. Thur stirred with the iron rod. "Maybe we'd better put in the rest of the tin now. It shouldn't be long after that, Fiametta."
She nodded and stood back. She watched the hot light play over his intent, absorbed face as he stirred the flux again. He feels it too, the passion of making. Her heart grew warmer, and her lips curved up in unexpected pleasure. He is beautiful, right now. Like carved ivory. My muleteer. Who would have thought it?
Suddenly, Thur's lips rippled back in a snarl. "No," he groaned. He stirred harder, then stepped back, driven away by the heat. "It's caking!"
"What does that mean?" asked Tich, bewildered, but frightened by Thur's expression of despair.
"It means the casting is ruined! The metal is curdling. Ah!" He stamped his naked feet, threw the rod on the ground, and stood stiff and trembling. Tich slumped. Fiametta's breath stopped. Ruberta moaned. The kobolds chittered in confusion.
Thur threw his head back. "No!" he roared. "There must be something we can do to save it! More tin—more wood —"
"There is no more," said Tich timorously.
"The hell there's not. I'll give you more wood!" Fiercely, Thur rushed across the courtyard to the old rustic table and upended it, clearing it of its contents with a crash. Yelling like a madman, he took the sledgehammer to it. "Dry oak. Nothing burns hotter! More, Tich! Fiametta, Ruberta! Anything oak in the house! Benches, worktables, shelves, chairs, bring them! Hurry! Kobolds, to me! Pump those bellows, you little monsters! Shove these boards under the grating where the ashes fall, that the heat may rise up...!"
The next few minutes were an orgy of destruction. Thur dragged a big shop workbench by himself with strength gone half-berserk, so that Fiametta feared he would burst her careful stitches again. Thur, Tich, even the kobolds helped whack the furniture apart. The kobolds seemed to enjoy it, squealing and shrieking. Ruberta even threw in her wooden spoons. The fire thundered, sparks and flames flying up out of the vents in a river coursing skyward. It must look like a signal fire, from outside.
Panting, Thur opened the furnace window and stirred again. His face fell, and his shoulders slumped; he crouched, his smudged, scorched face sagging almost to his knees. "It's not enough," he gasped. “It's over...." He curled there, staring at nothing; Fiametta bent over a belly that ached in sympathetic synchrony. To come so close, yet fail now... God did not wait for death to damn them to eternal torment; it was present in life.
"Pewter," Thur whispered in the smoky silence.
"What?"
"Pewter!" screamed Thur. "Bring me every scrap of pewter you have in this house!" Not waiting, he galloped for the kitchen, to return juggling an enormous armload of old plates, platters, and porringers. He threw them through the furnace mouth as fast as he could, then ran back for more. Fiametta sprinted up the gallery stairs and through the upstairs rooms. She returned with a mug, a battered basin, and a pair of grubby old magic candlesticks that lit themselves with a word from anyone, which the Losimons had not recognized as valuable. Ruberta brought more spoons. In all, there must have been over a hundred pounds of metal. Thur stuffed it all into the furnace, crying, "Ha! Ha!" He stirred, jammed more oak into the grate, stirred again. The roar of the conflagration was omnivorous, ominous, drowning out the distant thunder that echoed across Lake Montefoglia.
"It's melting!" Thur howled joyously. His lips drew back in a demented grin. "It liquefies, oh, it's beautiful! Beautiful! Fiametta, get ready!"
She scurried to her chosen spot, the apex of a triangle halfway between Uri's head and the casting pit, and knelt on the churned earth. How she was supposed to think, evoke a master mage's serene control, in this screaming satanic chaos, she did not know. That's why you memorized this spell. Don't think, just do.
She touched the six herbs arranged in front of her, the knife, the cross. She touched the powders to forehead and lips. On impulse, she swiftly crossed herself, FatherSonandHolySpirit. God! God be... God be praised for all wonders. She closed her eyes, opened her heart and mind. Uri was a pressing force, a towering will hovering at her hand, three parts rage and one part terror, his dear humor almost gone. I did love you, in some way. She opened her eyes, looked at Thur, and nodded.
Tich swept the cloth cover from the channel. Thur grasped the crooked iron bar and hooked the plug from the bottom of the furnace. White-hot fire streamed out, driving back the shadows. It ran down, biting through the line of Fiametta's drying blood, and poured into the gate of the great clay mold, a river of light as swift as hot oil.
Uri flowed through Fiametta. A thousand thousand images of memory, climaxing in the mortal wrenching dark of his death, all in the midst of motion—her mouth opened and her back arched in agony. It burns, oh it burns! Mother Mary. Mother...
Above them, in the roaring rising heat, the wooden gallery caught fire. Yellow flames licked over the balustrade and railing. The door to the street began to shake with great blows, and the yells of men. Still the fire in Fiametta's veins coursed on and on. She dared not move, she dared not break, surely she was about to ignite like the gallery, explode like a human torch.... Tich ran to the stairs with a futile little bucket of water. Thur picked up his sledgehammer.
In the paved hallway, the door burst inward. Three Losimon soldiers holding a battering ram stumbled in on their own momentum. Behind them strode their shouting officer, his sword drawn. A bearded, savage, black-mouthed man, swearing furiously. In the channel, the last of the bright metal sucked away into the mold. Her spell released Fiametta as abruptly as an opening hand. She slumped to the ground, unable to move, barely able to breathe, and not even knowing if she had succeeded or failed.
The Losimons ran to the courtyard and hesitated, doubtless stunned by the incomprehensible scene before their eyes: the burning gallery, the shrieking women, for Ruberta and the nameless lady were running after Tich with more water, kobolds flying every which way, the spasming chained guard howling through his gag and bucking wildly. Fiametta, her face sideways on the ground, giggled. Thur stood gently swinging his hammer. One man with a worker's tool against four swordsmen. Fiametta stopped giggling and rolled over to gaze glassily into the casting pit. What had happened down there?
Let me out, something called. Fiametta didn't think she heard it with her ears. Let me out!
"Thur," she wheezed. "Jump down and knock off the hoops. The iron retaining hoops."
He glanced back and forth, at her, at the mold, at the advancing Losimons with their swords cautiously feeling in front of them as if for invisible enemies. He slid into the pit and began clanging at the clasps of the reinforcing iron bands. Fiametta's heart raced. Suppose it was too soon. Suppose the mold shattered, and white-hot molten bronze spewed out, drowning him. One band sprang apart, then another, another. The point of a sword touched Fiametta's throat, pressing her to the ground. She looked up into a dark, bearded face devoid of humor, devoid of intellect, almost devoid of humanity.
In the pit, the clay began to crack apart with a sound like shattering crockery. It scaled away, fragmenting and powdering. Deep within the cracks, something glowed red as blood.
Something shrugged off its clay tunic like a dog shaking off snow. A severed head appeared first, at the top, clutched and brandished in a strong hand. Bronze snakes, cherry-red, writhed upon its mythic skull. Shoulders hunched, pulled back. A muscular arm holding a curved sword broke free. Then a winged helmet, and, with the jerk of his chin, a man's face. But not the serene face of the bland Greek, no.
It's Uri thought Fiametta. Complete with his pock marks. She was insanely glad to see those pock marks.
The molten gaze rose and found the gap-toothed lieutenant. Remember me? the burning eyes silently cried. For I remember you. The bronze lips smiled a terrible promise.
The Losimon officer broke at last, and ran screaming.
Chapter Eighteen
Fiametta pushed herself up to her hands and knees, then sat up on her heels. The gibbering gap-toothed Losimon was caught and held by two of his men, who had not seen what was happening in the casting pit. The third soldier finished breaking the prisoner's chain with blows from his sword against the stone pillar; the freed man repaid his comrade's pains by knocking him down in his rush for the exit. Thunder rolled close overhead in the midnight sky, shaking the house.
Uri's hands, burdened each with the curved sword and the fiery head of the Medusa, came up over the edge of the pit. Red bronze muscles rippled as he heaved himself out, a glorious nude hero. Even in the glare from the burning gallery he glowed with his own dark red light, except for his eyes which were yellow-white. It must be the magic holding him together at that temperature, Fiametta thought woozily. His outlines were crisper, more perfect even than her Papa's fine wax copy of his body had been. Thur jumped lightly down into the vacated pit to retrieve his sledgehammer, which evidently gave him quite as much comfort as it gave his enemy onlookers unease.
The hot bronze Uri gazed down upon the cold fleshly Uri, then raised his eyes to Thur. The two brothers exchanged a look, and even in the blank molten-yellow radiance of the metal Fiametta read regret, and sorrow, and something like love, mixed with the determination and rage.
Thur, his blue eyes flashing with the water standing in them, raised his sledgehammer in solemn salute. "Lead us, Captain Ochs. In the names of God, Bruinwald, and Duke Sandrino."
"Follow me, boy," Uri responded with a slow smile, "and I'll give you a show to tell my nieces and nephews. Mind you do." His bronze voice reverberated like a blast from an organ-pipe, deep, loud, with undertones to raise the dead, yet still somehow Uri. His yellow eyes found Fiametta, scrambling to her feet. "I haven't much time. Let us be about it."
"Lead. We follow," said Fiametta breathlessly. Her house was burning down. So what. She turned her back on it.
Uri bent his gaze upon the four Losimons who, supporting each other, had somewhat regained their nerve. They took a stand in a cluster, backs prudently to the exit hall. Uri's fingers flexed on his sword hilt as he strode toward them. The churned earth blackened, steamed, and smoked in his deep footprints.
The black-mouthed lieutenant took his sword and his bravado and made a rush at the approaching apparition. His sword clanged off Uri's nude side, jolting his arm. Uri raised the head of the Medusa and brought it down upon his murderer's skull, smashing him to the ground. The Losimon convulsed once, his legs kicking, then lay without moving. The survivors retreated, crouching and covering each other in an almost orderly fashion, till they reached the shattered oak door to the street. The semblance of discipline burst as they sprinted away. Fiametta almost grabbed up the dead fellow's dropped sword, just in case. Uri's ruddy weapon was impressive, but she was uncertain how bronze, and heat-softened bronze at that, was going to stand up to weapons of tempered steel. Then she realized Uri could not exchange his sword. It was melded, one with his hand.
Thur hugged Fiametta around the shoulders as they followed Uri into the street. Fiametta stopped, taken aback by the sight of the crowd that was assembled there. A couple of dozen people milled about, men, boys, even a few women, in every sort of dress and half-dress and nightshirts. Fiametta recognized the faces of several neighbors.
Lorenzetti, the notary who lived next door, rushed up to her. The Losimons had looted his house, too. His head was still bandaged from some ill-advised resistance. "Fiametta! What is happening? What have you done?"
"My house is on fire," she said numbly. With frightened cries, the crowd fell back from around Uri, though not very far back. They goggled and shouted amazed queries. "We have made a bronze hero, a soldier to fight the Losimons for us and free Montefoglia. We're on our way to kill Ferrante now. Please stand back."
The three remaining Losimons had stopped and formed ranks again, in the dark street on the far side of the crowd. They hovered on the balls of their feet, watching and waiting. A man among Fiametta's neighbors, Bembo the wax chandler, held a torch aloft; more torches arrived, from where Fiametta did not know, and the fire was shared, doubled and doubled again.
Lorenzetti squinted, gaped, and stammered, "Isn't that Uri Ochs, Sandrino's Swiss fellow? I played dice with him. He died owing me half a ducat.... Hey!”
Uri gave him a cheery salute with his sword hand in exchange for the recognition.
Lorenzetti backed a step, wild-eyed, and opened his hands in a bow. "Well, you have my blessing. Hey! Make way, there!" He gestured the crowd apart. The Losimons were suddenly framed by two ranks of their victims. An odd, abrupt silence occurred, half by chance. A cobblestone flew out, launched by an angry young man. It bounced off a Losimon's breastplate with a clank. The Losimon staggered. Uri began striding up the street between the people. Fiametta and Thur, holding hands like two children in the dark, followed close on his heels. A roar went up from the Montefoglians that reminded Fiametta of the furnace in full flux. The Losimons turned and ran this time in earnest, no stopping or looking back.
Shouts echoed through the streets. Above, shutters banged open and nightcapped heads crowded the windows. Cries of curiosity and fear rained down. Fiametta glanced over her shoulder. People were following them, first in ones and twos, then a stream, then a river. Doors flew wide, and more men issued. Knives and daggers appeared, and a few swords, and other weapons even more extemporaneous: axes and hammers, clubs, hoes, a mattock, a rusty sickle. One fat woman joined the throng armed with a large cast-iron frying pan. More torches sprang up, held high. Fiametta had no idea what the people at the back imagined they were following: half-parade, half-assault, exhilarated, ugly, determined, and confused.
And not at all the silent, secret midnight skulk through the streets of Montefoglia that Fiametta had pictured and planned. Uri could hardly march unseen anyway, fervid red in the dark like that. If the Inquisition ever brought her to trial for this night's work, there would be a thousand witnesses.
Lightning cracked the sky. The first few fat, cold drops of rain fell, slapping Fiametta's upturned face. They boiled off Uri instantly, and he trailed tendrils of gauzy steam. His feet hissed on the cobbles as they grew wet and shining. Too cold, Fiametta thought to the rain. Stop, go back, not yet! She stumbled, and Thur's grip tightened and held her on her feet.
They came to the base of the hill and began climbing the road to the castle. No hope, no hope at all of sneaking in and taking Ferrante by surprise. Losimon soldiers were already running along the walls lighting torches. She could hear the rusty shriek of the portcullis being lowered. As she watched, the big heavy oak doors swung shut with a boom that matched the thunder echoing across the black lake.
"No," she cried, agonized. "Now what do we do? Ferrante can just wait in there u
ntil, until..."
Uri smiled over his shoulder. "Let us see." He paused a few yards from the castle gate. From above, a steel crossbow quarrel whacked into his shoulder and stuck there. He shrugged, brushed it away like a biting fly, and studied the gate. "Fiametta, warm me," he said.
"Piro," said Fiametta, ordering the spell in her whirling mind with the greatest difficulty. But its familiarity steadied her. "Piro. Piro."
Uri held up his sword-hand. "'Tis enough, for now." He walked to the oak doors and leaned into them. The wood charred and burst into flame. He twisted his arms through the hole thus made and began elbowing and kicking the wood apart as if it were rotten punk. Burning chunks flew wide. Fiametta and Thur ducked and crouched in the ditch.
Uri stalked into the dark passageway between the two gate towers. A few paces further on, the entrance to the courtyard was blocked by the grid of the portcullis. From the murder-hole above, a terrified Losimon soldier upended a pot of burning oil on Uri's head.
Uri threw back his face and laughed, a great bronze trumpeting. He turned under the stream of flame as under a refreshing shower, as a man might sport naked in a waterfall. In who-knew-what frenzy of mind the Losimons upended a second and third pot of oil after the first, before it dawned on some officer that it was doing them no good. Flames flared up, dancing and twisting, from Uri's glistening body as he swaggered, salamander-like, to the portcullis.
He stuck his sword arm through one square of the cast-iron grid, wrapped it around a bar, and heaved backward. The iron tore apart with a crack. Then another, another, another, till he could walk through upright, shoulders square. Fiametta picked up her skirts and dashed after him through the dying flames on the passageway floor, Thur on her heels. Thur paused to widen the gap in the portcullis with a few well-placed blows of the sledgehammer, for the convenience of those who came after. And there were men coming after, daring the few crossbow bolts from above that Ferrante's wit-scattered men managed to loose. They ran right and left, in groups of three and six, spreading into the castle to hunt down Montefoglia's tormentors. The mob behind them clogged the gate, then broke through.