The Spirit Ring Read online

  "You tell him, Thur," gasped Niklaus from the floor.

  Birs cringed away, his terror dwindling to a suppressed whine.

  "Take Niklaus's other arm. There's naught to do but hold your breath and push yourself along. The other two both made it."

  They dragged Niklaus into the water and waded out. Thur pushed off with his feet and started under. Flailing, with a panicked cry, Birs retreated.

  No help for it. Tugging Niklaus, who at least had sense to claw the wall with his free arm and help push, Thur kept going. The heat was sucked faster this time from his aching flesh and bones. When they broke the surface again, Niklaus's eyes had rolled back in shock.

  But Master Entlebuch and Farel were waiting, with two other men. The team of three quickly laid Niklaus on a blanket and started away with him.

  "Anyone left?" Master Entlebuch asked.

  "Birs," Thur wheezed, his body racked with shudders.

  "Is he hurt?"

  "No. But he's all in a twist through terror of the water because of some fool fortune-telling."

  "Can you swim back and get him out?

  "He could get himself out, if he would." Thur's woolen hood, tunic, and leggings were saturated, sagging and leaden with their burden of water, a dead weight on his body. Irked to distraction by it, he pulled the dripping hood off over his head like a horse collar and let it fall with a sodden splat.

  The mountain groaned again. The thick support timbers skirled like bagpipes, followed by a hail of tiny popping noises from within the wood.

  “It's going to go." Master Entlebuch's voice rose taut. "We've got to clear this tunnel now."

  Muting his own inner wail, Thur turned and waded in for the third time. His growing numbness almost mitigated the cold. His head was pounding, strange red lace swirling before his tight-shut eyes, before he felt his way to air again. When he fought up out of the water this time, the stony beach in the air pocket had shrunk to a mere yard. Birs was crouched there, praying, or at any rate crying, "God, God, God, God...." He reminded Thur of a sheep bleating.

  "Come on!" yelled Thur. "We'll be buried here!"

  "I'll drown!" shrieked Birs.

  "Not today, you won't," snarled Thur, and clipped him hard across the jaw with his bunched fist. Rather to Thur's surprise, Birs bounced off the wall and fell dazed at the single blow. It was the first time Thur had hit anyone with his new man's strength, not in a boys' scrambling puppy-fight. Birs's jaw looked strangely off-centered. No help for it now. Thur clamped Birs's head under his arm and dragged him into the freezing water.

  Even dazed, Birs struggled against Thur's grip as their heads went under. Thur clamped it tighter, heaved and pushed. His lungs labored and pulsed against the seal of his mouth. He let a little air out; he couldn't help it. Ice water will put you out... but not today, not today, not today. God save me for hanging.

  He surfaced to air and confusion. The black was pitch-absolute. Master Entlebuch was gone. And he'd taken the lamp with him. Thur's free arm waved, disoriented, seeking wall or floor or roof or any guide. He thumped at last into the wall, stoving his reaching fingers. His feet found the sloping floor. He was cramped, bent like a bow from the cold and with knots in his legs and arms that felt like walnuts. Out of the water with his burden. Birs was choking and sputtering, therefore alive and undrowned. Thur was afraid to let go of him in the dark, even when Birs rolled over and vomited about a quart of swallowed water into Thur's lap. Thur struggled to his feet and began march-dragging Birs up the tunnel.

  The ladder at the lower shaft proved a nightmarish barrier as Thur tried to shove his dizzied workmate up it. He shouted threats and encouragement up at Birs.

  "Move! Move! Move your hands! Move your feet!" His own fingers were numb to the point of paralysis, crippled claws. Then from the tunnel below them came an almost rhythmic series of splintering cracks, and a thunderous rending crash. Birs's boots vanished from before Thur's nose—He's fallen, was Thur's first panicked thought. Then pebbles pattered down on his head from Birs's mad scramble out the top of the shaft. No, he's recovered. Thur scrambled too, and ran like a crouching rabbit after he heaved himself into the upper tunnel.

  He added his hollering to Birs's muffled screams when they reached the lift shaft. It seemed to take forever before the ore bucket descended. Thur stuffed Birs into it and took to the ladder. He almost blacked out, halfway up, but the gray light overhead drew him up like the silver promise of heaven. Henzi was unloading Birs when Thur arrived. Thur stood in the lift shed, his hands braced on his knees, lungs pumping like bellows.

  "Didn't you bring out any of the tools?" Master Entlebuch asked him anxiously.

  Thur stared at him like a dumb ox, stupefied. Birs, once on his feet, mumbled something unintelligible but distinctly hostile in tone, swung a punch at Thur, missed, and fell over. Outside the lift shed door, spring sleet was hissing slantwise down the wind.

  "I want to go home," Thur said.

  *****

  Incoherent from the cold, he reached his cottage at last. His mother took one horrified look, stripped him of his freezing garments, stuffed him into her own bed between two feather mattresses with hot stones, plied him with steaming barley water sweetened with honey, and never asked after tools or even his missing hood. Even so it took him two full hours to stop shivering, racking shudders like an ague. He gave her a jerky and truncated account of his day that nevertheless left her face drawn and lips compressed. She never left him till his teeth stopped chattering.

  When his steadying voice at last reassured her of his probable survival, she went across the room to the mantle over the fireplace and came back with a piece of paper that crackled as she unfolded it. "Here, Thur. This came this morning from your brother Uri. He has found you a fine opportunity."

  Uri, still after him to take up the mercenary's pike? The letter's red wax seal was already broken by their apprehensive mother, who greeted every rare communication with suppressed terror, of news of disease, inflamed wounds, amputation, loss of money at play, or disastrous betrothal to some whorish camp follower, all the hazards of a soldier's life.

  It wasn't exactly the risks of a soldier's trade that repelled Thur. All life was a hazard. And he'd be willing enough to make swords. He'd seen Milanese armorers' work that had taken his breath away. But to then take that work of art and stick it into a live man... no. He vented a long-suffering sigh and took the paper.

  A curious shock ran up his arm. His fingers warmed. As he read, his weariness dropped away, and he sat up. Not soldiering after all. His eyes raced faster over the phrases. ...apprentice to the Duke's goldsmith and master mage... marvelous bronze underway for my lord Duke... needs a strong, smart lad... opportunity....

  Thur stroked the paper. The sun would be warm now on the southern slopes of the pass into Montefoglia. In the summer the sun would blaze like a furnace mouth. He licked his lips. "What do you think?" he asked his mother.

  She took a brave breath. "I think you should go. Before that devilish mountain eats you as it ate your father."

  "You'd be alone."

  "Your uncle will look after me. I'd rather have you safe in Montefoglia than up in that vile mine every day. If Uri wanted you for a soldier, it would be different. You know how I hated it when he went for a mercenary. So often the boys come back, if they come back at all, either broken and sick, or turned strange and hard and cruel. But this, now..."

  Thur turned the letter over. "Does the master mage realize I have no turn for sorcery?"

  His mother pursed her lips. "I confess, that's a part I do not like. This Master Beneforte is a Florentine. He may be a dabbler in the black arts, or worse perversions, as dangerous to boys as to maidens. Still, he works for the Duke of Montefoglia, who by Uri's account is honorable, for a nobleman."

  "Montefoglia." He had never noticed before how the very name sounded warm.

  "You can read and write in two tongues, and have a little Latin, too. When Brother Glarus was teaching you he
once told me you might go to Padua and study to be a doctor. I often dreamed of it, but then your father was killed, and things got harder."

  "I did not love Latin," Thur confessed warily, suddenly realizing there could be worse fates than soldiering. But his mother did not pursue that subject. She rose to tend to the pease porridge bubbling over the fire, made with extra ham in honor of Thur's narrow escape from the mine.

  He burrowed back into the feather mattress, clutching the letter to his chest. His flesh was still cold as lard, but the paper seemed to radiate warmth. Grave digger, grave digger, go to the fire.... He laughed, then muffled the laugh as his mother glanced over and smiled though not knowing the joke. Montefoglia. By God and the kobold, I think I'll do it. He lay back and watched the firelight flicker like reflections off water on the whitewash between the dark roof beams, and dreamed of incandescent summer.

  Chapter Three

  Ruberta the housekeeper helped Fiametta lift and slide the heavy red velvet gown over her head and smooth it down over her fine linen underdress. Fiametta brushed at the folds of its wide-cut skirt, so profligate of cloth, and sighed pure satisfaction. The dress was far finer than anything she'd dared hope for. Master Beneforte had produced it, quite unexpectedly, from an old chest when Fiametta had complained of the sad figure she would cut at the Duke's banquet in plain gray wool. The dress had once belonged to Fiametta's mother; Fiametta and Ruberta had spent a week cutting it down and re-sewing it. Judging from the measurements, Fiametta was now nearly as tall as her mother had been, though more slender. Strange. She remembered her mother as tall, not short: tall and dark and warm.

  Fiametta held out her arms, and Ruberta pulled on the sleeves and tied them to the dress at the shoulders, fluffing out puffs of the underdress for contrast at the elbows. The red velvet sleeves were embroidered with silver thread, echoed by a silver band running all around that wonderful hem.

  "Don't bounce so, girl," Ruberta complained mildly, pinching her lower lip with her teeth in concentration as she knotted the bows just so. She stepped back and regarded Fiametta with judicious pride. "Now for your hair."

  "Oh, yes, please." Fiametta plunked down in obedience on the stool. No little girl's cap today, nor hair in a mere simple braid down her back. The dress had come with a matching hairnet of silver thread and pearls, magically untarnished with age. Ruberta parted Fiametta's hair in neat, if wavy, wings, wound it up on the back of her head, and fastened the net over the mass of it, except for two dark ringlets she made to bounce artfully in front of Fiametta's ears. Fiametta stared greedily into her little mirror, delighted, turning her head back and forth to make the ringlets jump. "Thank you, Ruberta!" She flung her arms around the housekeeper's aproned waist and hugged her. "You're so clever."

  "Oh, your slippers—they're still in the kitchen. I'll go get them." Ruberta hurried out. Fiametta tried the mirror at various angles, and ran her hands again over the soft sumptuous cloth. She sucked on her lower lip and, on impulse, rose and went to the chest at the end of her bed.

  She pushed aside linens and found a flat oaken casket. She opened it to reveal her mother's death mask. Many people kept death masks of wax; Prospero Beneforte had recast Fiametta's mother's in bronze, darkened by his art to a rich brown close to her original skin tones. The alert dark eyes were closed, now, like sleep, but a strangely sad sleep, above the soft curves of her nose and wide mouth. Fiametta held the mask up to her dress and peeked over it into her mirror, held out at arm's length. She squinted, in an effort to weld face and dress in the blur. Then she lowered the mask to her chin, comparing the two faces. How much of the paler one was Prospero Beneforte, how much this lost woman? Fiametta's nose had a definite bridge, and her jaw was more sharp-cut than this dark visage, but otherwise... Who am I? And whose am I? Where do I belong, Mother?

  Ruberta's step sounded on the gallery, and Fiametta hastily replaced the mask in its casket and locked it away again. Ruberta handed the polished shoes in through the door. "Hurry, now. Your Papa's waiting downstairs."

  Fiametta jammed her feet into the shoes, and skipped out of her bedroom and around the upper gallery overlooking the courtyard. She took up her skirts to descend the stairs, then shook them out and walked more sedately, as befit her lady's hairstyle. No slave's gown, this, nor mere servant's, but obvious proof that her mother had been the true Christian wife of a great artisan. Fiametta held her chin up firmly.

  Master Beneforte was standing in the stone-paved hallway. He looked splendid too, Fiametta decided. He wore a cloak of black velvet that swung to his knees, and a big hat of the same fabric, wound round like a turban with a jaunty fall of cloth to the side. His tunic was of honey-brown cut velvet, high to his neck where a bright white line of linen showed, with a pleated skirt to his knees and black hose. Despite his graying hairs Master Beneforte still resisted the long gowns of the aged, though the sober colors he'd chosen suggested a suitably powerful maturity. He'd set off the tunic with a gold chain of his own workmanship, displaying his art.

  He turned at Fiametta's step. "Ah, there you are." He looked her up and down, eyes going strangely distant, muttered "Huh," and shook his head as if to clear his vision.

  "Do I look well, Papa?" asked Fiametta, alarmed.

  "You look well. Here." He thrust out his hand to her.

  Draped over his palm was a silver belt of cunning workmanship. Fiametta took it up, surprised. It was in the form of a silver snake, round and flexible as a rope. The gleaming scales were as fine as a real snake's, their overlapping plates concealing whatever linked its skeleton. Its head was solid silver, modeled as in life, with green chips—emerald? glass?—glittering for eyes.

  "Put it on," said Master Beneforte.

  "How? I see no clasp."

  "Just loop it. It will stay."

  "It's enchanted, isn't it?"

  "Just a little spell for your protection."

  "Thank you, Papa." She fitted it around her waist, curling the tail around behind the head, and indeed it held fast. Only then did she think to ask, "Does it come off?"

  "Whenever you wish."

  She tried it, then looped it back on. "Did you just make this?" She thought he'd been working night and day to finish the saltcellar.

  "No, I've had it for some time. I just cleaned it and renewed the spell."

  "Was it Mama's?"

  "Yes."

  Fiametta stroked it, her fingers sliding over the scales. They emitted a faint musical vibration, almost too thin to hear.

  The Duke's saltcellar sat waiting on a bench against the wall. Its new box was satin-lined, ebony to match the base, with gold clasps and gold handles on the ends. Fiametta had helped assemble and polish it. She would not have guessed her father to be nervous, but he opened the box and checked its contents one last time, rechecking the seating and security of the clasps, then wandered into the workroom and peered out the window.

  "Ah. At last." His voice drifted back to her, and he returned to the hall to unbar the door for the Swiss captain and two guards. The guards' breastplates gleamed like mirrors. Captain Ochs was dressed in his best and cleanest livery, including a new doublet with gold buttons issued in honor of the betrothal.

  "All ready, Master Prospero?" The captain smiled. He nodded to the ebony casket. "Shall I have my men carry it?"

  "I'll carry it myself, I think," said Master Beneforte, lifting the box. "Have them walk one ahead and one behind."

  "Very well." And they started off so ordered, the captain and Fiametta flanking the goldsmith.

  'Keep the door barred till my return, Teseo," Master Beneforte called back, and the apprentice bowed awkwardly and closed it behind them. Master Beneforte paused till he heard the bar slide into place, nodded, and marched down the cobbled street.

  It was a bright day two weeks after the holy feast of Easter, just barely cool enough for velvets to be comfortable. Trees had budded into new leaf in the weeks since Fiametta had cast her ring. She clutched the lion mask on her left thumb, and
let the—sigh—garnet catch and wink back the midday sun. That light glowed, too, off the yellow brick and stones and red tile roofs. Sad dun in winter, Montefoglia almost looked like a city of gold on long summer afternoons. They passed from the street of big houses flanking her father's home and workshop down into older, more crowded construction.

  Crossing a side alley leading down to the water, Fiametta glimpsed boats and the docks. A few lazy lake gulls swooped and squawked. Perhaps when Papa took her fishing again this summer, he'd finally teach her the secret spell he used for baiting his hook. The narrow lake extended eleven miles north from Montefoglia, toward the foothills of the Alps beyond which lay Captain Ochs's home. The first pack train of the season had come down over Montefoglia Pass a week ago, Fiametta had heard. Higher and more difficult than the great Brenner to the east, the route yet served the needs of the little duchy. Montefoglia was hard hill country, and would have been poor indeed without the trickle of trade and the fishing of the lake.

  On the east shore, north of town, the monastery of St. Jerome kept grape vines, spring wheat in terraces, orchards and sheep. The main road ran up the east side of the lake past its stone walls, the west side being too sheer, rocky, and wild for any but goat paths. Fiametta could see a few figures on horses and a slow ox cart moving on the dusty white ribbon. St. Jerome's scriptorium also supplied illuminated books for the Duke's library, pride of the castle that dominated the bluff at the far end of town. It was the Duke's boast that his library held none of that cheap modern printed matter, but only proper calligraphed manuscripts bound in rich decorated leather—over a hundred volumes. It seemed a constrictive stipulation to Fiametta's mind, but perhaps it was because Duke Sandrino could read but not write himself that calligraphy seemed so significant to him. Old people were ridiculously conservative about the oddest things.

  "And how go the betrothal celebrations?" Master Beneforte inquired of the captain. Fiametta, lagging, quickened her step and closed the gap to listen.