Papa. It's a wonder he's not howling round this, Thur had said, in all innocence. A wonder, indeed. Where was Master Beneforte? Why was his shade not drawn to this, his obsession? She could scarcely imagine a more potent conjuring for him. It wasn't a problem of range. He had appeared as far away as Saint Jerome. She closed her eyes, and tried to empty her mind, to listen and feel. Papa? Nothing. If he did not come to this, it could only be because he could not. Bound, or partly bound—she pictured Vitelli winding him into smaller and smaller confines, a room, a diagram, finally to a finger's-breadth. How soon?
Very soon, she thought queasily. And what of Vitelli himself? There was enough to her quiet preparations to draw his supernatural attention, if he were actively looking. Vitelli and Papa must be fully occupied with each other, to be so conspicuously absent here. It's like a wrestling match, and Master Beneforte is losing ...
She opened her eyes, rose, and walked over to the furnace. Thur had folded down the top of his robe, and was now naked to the waist. His body glistened in the light and heat as he poked a long, iron stirring-rod through the access window.
"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, alter 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 like 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, and 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 leapt 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, and 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, that 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 liquifies, 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.