The Spirit Ring

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Thur nodded, clutched his hammer, and ran across the courtyard, waving the monks to follow him. He disappeared into the castle by a side entry.

  Gingerly, Monreale went to Vitelli's head, picked it up, and laid it beside the severed neck. He knelt and made the rites, sprinkled water from one of his jars, and bent his head in prayer. The manikin inside the rain-man convulsed, but then went quiescent.

  When Monreale rose again, Master Beneforte remarked, "I liked your little sermon on will, just now. But then, I always liked your sermons, Monreale. They made me good for half a day after, at times."

  "I would you could have heard them more often, then." A brief smile quirked Monreale's lips.

  "You did warn us, how death comes suddenly to the unprepared. I was not prepared for it to come in this strange half-measure, though." He stepped closer to Monreale in a liquid shimmer, to be private, for the awed and astounded onlookers were venturing nearer. He lowered his voice to a whisper no louder than rain runneling on a shutter. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned..."

  Monreale nodded and bent his head close. The voice rilled on until Thur appeared with a stiff, gauze-swathed shape, balanced on a makeshift bier that looked like the lid of a pine crate. Monreale blessed the rain-shape, then turned to duplicate the rites upon the not-quite-abandoned body.

  Fiametta crept to the rain man's side, and asked tremulously, "Did we cast it well, Papa? Your great Perseus?"

  "An awful risk, for a couple of beginners —" he began, then stopped his critique in mid-word. He tilted his hat down at her, curiously, as if he were really seeing her for the first time, and half-smiled. "Well enough."

  Only well enough? Well… that was Papa.

  He added, "Marry the Swiss boy, if you will. He's an honest young lout who will not betray you. You will not do better for any money. Speaking of money, Ruberta is to be given one hundred ducats. It is listed in my will; Lorenzetti the notary has it. Good-bye, be good —" His form wavered as the dark manikin raged within. "And Fiametta, if you can't be good, at least be more careful!"

  He turned to Monreale. "Father, your sermon is wearing off. Speed us. While I can still will to hold him."

  "Go with God, my friend," whispered Monreale, and made the last sign of blessing.

  The rain fell. And then there was nothing there at all.

  Thur raised his hands in supplication to Monreale. "Father. Spare a blessing for Uri? My brother?"

  Monreale blinked and seemed to come back to himself. "Of course, boy." He turned awkwardly, almost stumbling; Thur caught his arm. Together, they inspected the statue. It was solidified in the pose in which it had first been cast, but the tiny glimmer of intelligence yet lingered, dimming, in its eyes. What sensations did that metal body bear him? The very heat that animated it made it impossible for Uri to embrace his brother, or kiss Fiametta good-bye.

  Fiametta, on her knees, prayed for strength, and murmured "Piro!" one last time. Only the bronze lips flushed dark red.

  "Father, bless me, for I have sinned," the hollow voice whispered like the faintest flute. "Though not nearly as much as I would have liked."

  The corner of Monreale's mouth flicked up, but he murmured, "Don't joke. It wastes your little time."

  "All my little time was wasted, Father," the fading voice sighed.

  Monreale bent his head in acknowledgement. "'Tis a fair complete confession. Do not despair, for it is a sin. Hope, boy."

  "Shall I hope to rest? I am so tired...."

  "You shall rest most perfectly." By the time Monreale's hands had passed, nothing stood before them but a lifeless casting.

  Not quite as it was first cast, Fiametta realized, looking up. The bland Greek face had not returned. Instead Uri's own distinct, alert, imperfect features were stamped permanently upon the bronze. There was even a touch of humor about the curve of the lips, most alien to the classic original.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thur held his palm near the statue's face. The bronze, though no longer glowing with its own light, was still too hot to touch. But Uri was no longer here to touch even if Thur could. The streaming rain would cool the metal soon enough. Thur raised his face to the sky, letting the cold drops mix with the hot ones from his eyes, disguising his grief before all these strangers. Their world would know Uri no more, would soon forget that he'd ever lived or laughed. But I swear I will remember.

  When he'd blinked his vision clear, Thur saw that soldiers, Montefoglian soldiers, were arriving through the ruined gates. A couple of them pointed at the statue in startled recognition of their late captain's features, but then hurried about their work. Fiametta stood in the scintillating rain looking small, and exhausted, and very wet, her crinkly black curls escaping her braid only to be plastered flat to her skin. Thur wanted to offer her a cloak, but he himself possessed only the sodden old robe turned down around his loins. He rucked it back up over his shoulders and stood barefoot in the puddles, shivering partly from cold, partly from reaction.

  Fiametta turned her wan face to Monreale. "How did you come here, Father? When they carried you off to the infirmary at Saint Jerome under Vitelli's spell, you were lying almost as pale and still as a dead man yourself. Brother Mario wouldn't let me see you."

  Monreale hung on his crozier, his sandaled feet apart. He tore his pensive gaze from the cooling bronze. "The spell was broken late yesterday evening. Was that your doing, Thur?"

  "I... think it may have been, Father. I did not know for sure what spell was broken, but it distracted Vitelli when I swept a spell-set from the table. It was just before I escaped from the castle dungeon with my brother's body."

  "Indeed," said Monreale. "I woke, but I was very sick. The healers kept me abed until morning, when I finally regained enough strength to ride over them. It was not until afternoon that I discovered you were gone from Saint Jerome, Fiametta, and no one seemed to know for how long. I sent out my birds, but could learn little except that Vitelli and Ferrante were not abroad, and Thur was not yet hanging by his neck from the castle tower.

  "Sandrino's officers and I agreed we must attack, try as we'd planned yesterday. But I decided I must close the distance before attempting to grapple again with Vitelli. His powers had clearly grown to an extraordinary degree. We made ready, settling on a night assault to disguise our thin numbers." Wearily, he rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes narrowed and glinted with the press of these recent memories.

  "We sallied out at dark, and had a sharp fight with the besiegers that delayed us again. We finally broke through and made for town. The soldiers needed the few horses we had, but a brother found that white one wandering among our sheep. Our remaining sheep. Is that the beast your Papa bought in Cecchino, Fiametta? He was robbed. Well... it saved my strength, I suppose.

  "But when we all came up to the town gates, expecting a desperate battle, the Losimons were gone from them, pulled out by a mob of townsmen. So instead of leading the populace to the castle, we followed them. I had by then gained the idea that you were mounting some sort of magical attack, Fiametta, and I rode ahead as fast as I could, in great fear that Vitelli's demonic powers might indeed have grown so transcendent as to conquer death. And so it proved." Monreale vented a depressed sigh. "Not that this second-rate old man imagined himself a match for that dark power."

  "Yet you came anyway," said Thur.

  "Father, we would have been destroyed without you. In fact," Fiametta's brows drew down, puzzling this out, "none of us alone was a match for Vitelli. I could release Papa, but I could not hold Vitelli. Papa could hold Vitelli, but could not exorcise him. You could speed him to banishment, which thing neither Papa nor I were capable of... but only if he were held. And we could never have entered in here at all without Uri, who would not have been made without Thur. We may all of us be lesser folk, but we were a first-rate company together."

  "Huh.” Monreale smiled slowly, his eyes half-lidded. "Could that be the lesson God had been trying to teach me, all this time? From the mouths
of babes."

  "I am not a babe," said Fiametta with some determination.

  "Child, from the vantage of my half-century, you all look like babes." Monreale pulled himself up by his crozier, straightening painfully. He gazed a moment more at the bronze statue. "No. You are not a babe. And so you stand in a grown woman's danger."

  "Father," said Thur. "There's something you had better see, right away before it gets disturbed. I left one of your monks to guard the door."

  Monreale nodded. “Lead me, boy. For there is much yet to do."

  Thur beckoned him into the castle by the servant's entry and down the now-familiar corridors into the dungeon. At least they were out of the rain. A monk held a torch for his abbot. Thur was not sure how the stone-cut halls could be any darker at night than in the day, but they seemed so. The strength that relentless terror had lent him was passing off, and he bumped into the walls as he walked. Limped. Every muscle he owned seemed shot through with rust and grit, twinging when he moved, aching when he stood still.

  The racks of iron bars that were the cell doors stood open; the prison was half-emptied of prisoners. The hale had already departed to join the fray. The injured were being helped out by Montefoglian townsmen, some of them relatives.

  Thur's little procession wound down the stairway to the lower half. A white-faced monk stood holding Thur's sledgehammer outside the shattered, splintered door to the necromancers' magic work chamber. They all entered after Monreale, and Thur took the one burning candle and lit the slagged remains of others from it.

  Monreale's breath hissed out between his front teeth. The trestles were knocked over, and the salt crate dropped and split and spilled where Thur and a monk had snatched the lid in their haste to bring out Master Beneforte's body. Upon the floor spiraled a complex double diagram; one lobe was emptied—Thur had lifted up Master Beneforte's remains himself, when the frightened monk had refused to touch them—the other lobe framed yet another corpse. A naked young man, dreadfully mutilated, his throat slit.

  "That was the power by which they finally forced Papa into the spirit ring," breathed Fiametta, peering fearfully around Monreale. "The new ghost. I saw him, inside Vitelli. Oh, Father." She turned and closed her eyes, swallowing hard.

  That could have been himself, Thur thought, looking, but out of the corner of his eye. "Who is this poor wretch, Father?"

  Monreale moistened his lips, cautiously approached, and knelt by the dead man's head. But whatever magic had been generated by this dark deed was apparently now consumed. "Yes. I know the boy. He's one of my brethren. His name was Luca. He is the monk I sent to spy two days before you, Thur, and heard no more of. Vitelli must have selected him for this from among the prisoners, after you escaped. He has a family in town, parents and brothers and sisters.... Murder, murder of the blackest." He bent his head in deep sorrow and began the rites of blessing.

  When he rose, Thur asked in worry, "Should we have this room boarded up, or something?"

  Monreale sucked grimly on his lower lip and walked around, muffling his shock, examining the evidence with the cool thoroughness of one who realizes he must soon write an official report upon it all. "Hm? No..." He gathered up the notes and papers on the worktable. "These should not be left about, however. No, Thur, quite the contrary. This room should be left open, and every guard and citizen who can should be brought to view it. Let the evidence of Vitelli and Ferrante's wrongdoing be made public before as many witnesses as can be gathered." He paused. "As many witnesses as saw a bronze statue get up and walk, and slay two men. At least that many witnesses."

  He turned on his heel to face Thur and Fiametta. "You two know what you have done, and we will talk of it further. Later. The first reports to the Archdiocese, the Curia, and the general of my Order will be written by me. In the meantime... you may be certain that the most fantastical rumors will be flying among the people about tonight's events. I hope as many of those rumors as possible may attach to Vitelli, and not to yourself. Do you understand?"

  Fiametta nodded rather doubtfully; Thur shook his head in honest bewilderment. Monreale motioned him over, and lowered his voice. "Look, boy. It is absolutely essential that Fiametta never come to be questioned by the Inquisition. They would burn her for her hot tongue alone at the end of the first day, the evidence go hang. Understand?"

  "Oh..." Thur could see it, yes.

  "If you love her, help her keep her head down and her mouth shut. Church politics are my department. If necessary, well, a man or two owes me a favor or two. But Fiametta must take care not to offend her neighbors, or to appear... too unusual. Or I might not be able to control all of the consequences."

  "Uh, would getting married and setting up shop in her father's house be too... unusual?"

  "No. That would be ideal. Her setting up shop without getting married, now that could be dangerous."

  Thur brightened. "I'll help her all she'll let me, Father."

  "You'd better be prepared to help her more than that, boy, if necessary," Monreale murmured dryly.

  "With all my heart, sir."

  Monreale gave Thur a short nod, and turned to go out. Thur paused for one last disturbed sidelong look at the sacrificed man lying in his pooled blood.

  "He was my scapegoat. Luca." He must remember that name, even as he hoped others would remember Uri's.

  Monreale pursed his lips. "Yes, in a sense... though if you had died yesterday, it would not have saved him tonight. Still, I charge you to light a candle for him each Sunday in Montefoglia Cathedral, and pray for his soul."

  "Yes, Father," said Thur, comforted.

  Monreale nodded and led them out.

  While passing again through the now nearly deserted prison corridor, one level up, Thur heard a faint moan. "Wait..." He ducked back to the end cell. Sure enough, a bundled shape lay on the woven straw pallet. "Why has this door not been opened? Where is the key?" Thur called.

  An elderly townsman appeared from the guard station, rattling the key ring. "They told us he was mad, sir. Is the proper sergeant coming to take these?"

  "I'll take them," said Monreale, unburdening the townsman of the ring. He passed it to Thur, who bent and opened the lock.

  Lord Pia lay alone in the cell under a thin blanket. His face was very gray, and his glazed eyes seemed not to recognize Thur. The wound in his arm had never been bandaged, and was thickly clotted with blood. Judging by his mottled bruises, he had been badly beaten upon his final recapture. To satisfy his mind, Thur stuck his head out of the cell window. One bar remained at the side; around it were tied the points of a stretched-out silk hose leg, its foot in turn tied to another to make a rope of sorts, now hanging limp and wet against the cliff face. How very simple. Thur was both relieved and slightly disappointed. Lord Pia had not flown down like a giant bat to Vitelli's dark chamber window last night after all. Thur imagined he would have liked to.

  Monreale sent for help, and soon had the poor castellan laid on a plank to be carried out of the dungeon before them by a sturdy monk and another townsman-parishioner. They all arrived back at the courtyard to find a swirl of shouting people coalescing around Duchess Letitia, who had been released from the tower. She had called Sandrino's surviving officers to her and was organizing them to regain control of her castle, first from the remaining Losimons, and then from the Montefoglian townsmen. The Montefoglians, while scorning to steal from their late Duke directly, were not above relieving any captured or killed Losimon looters of their booty. Monreale was promptly drawn into the Duchess's whirlwind.

  Lady Pia ran to her husband's side, looking distressed. Lord Pia seemed to recognize her, despite his debilitation and uncertain mental state. He smiled weakly up at her and grasped her hand as she knelt by him. She immediately browbeat some passing men into carrying him upstairs to their apartments in the tower, once more a home and not a prison, and ruthlessly diverted a healer-monk in Monreale's train to her aid.

  Somehow, the center of all this midnight chaos had shift
ed, from them to Monreale to the Duchess. Thur was just as glad. The rain was letting up, turning to a fine misting drizzle. Thur put his arm around Fiametta's shivering shoulders.

  "I guess we can take your Papa's body home, now."

  "If my house is still standing. What... what of Uri?"

  "You mean the statue? Leave it, I suppose. It's only a statue, now. Nobody's going to steal him without the aid of a couple of yokes of oxen."

  She nodded, her eyes wide in the wavering half-light. They picked their way to the crate lid resting on the cobbles with its shrouded burden. "Thur, I don't think I can carry my half," she worried.

  "I don't think I could either, right now," Thur said honestly. "D'you want your horse back?"

  The white horse was sniffing dolefully at the cobbles, where no grass grew. It had not wandered far, and for some reason no one had attempted to abscond with it while Monreale's back was turned. Thur captured it by walking up to it and scratching it behind the ears. It rubbed its head against him, scraping Thur's skin on the bridle studs and shedding wet white hairs.

  Thur handed the reins to Fiametta and went to look for a piece of rope. He found a coil hanging on a nail in the stables. No one disputed his claim of it. He tied one end of the rope to a stirrup, wound it around the headboard of the crate lid, and tied the other end to the other stirrup, converting the lid to a makeshift drag or sledge. The white horse flared its nostrils in worry at the scraping sound behind it, and sidled, giving Thur a mad vision of the beast bolting across the country with Master Beneforte thudding and bouncing along behind in one last wild ride. But after a moment the horse settled down to its usual tired plod, and Thur judged it safe to help Fiametta aboard. She wrapped her hands in the long mane and drooped over the animal's thick neck. Thur led them out the ruined castle gate and down the hill.

  The streets of Montefoglia were growing quieter as the night waned. They passed only two small groups of excited men with torches, who yet swung as wide as the narrow streets permitted around Thur's little cavalcade. Thur was too tired to do anything but ignore them. They arrived at the wrecked oak door to Fiametta's house without being accosted. The walls were still standing, nor had the tile roof fallen in. That was nice, if unexpected.