"What have you done with my Papa?" she quavered to the Vitelli demon.
She should not have attracted its attention, she realized as it bent those red eyes upon her. "His will is mine, now," Vitelli whispered in a voice like ice. "You are too late." It smiled a hellish smile. "He is too late, also." Its face rose toward the gate.
A horse's hooves clattered and scraped on the cobbles. Fiametta's heart leapt up, and she wanted to scream triumph and relief. It was Abbot Monreale, riding to their rescue on a white horse.
"Fiametta! Thur!" he shouted.
Her scream melted away in her throat as she took in the doubtful details. In the first place, there was the horse. She knew that horse. Even the cavalry saddle Monreale had borrowed from somewhere failed to conceal its swayed back. It stood wheezing and blowing, its nostrils red and round in its gray muzzle, its expression mournful and its legs trembling. Abbot Monreale must surely be a miracle worker beloved of God, for he had somehow forced the beast to trot uphill.
Monreale wore his gray monk's robe, nicked up with his bare legs sticking out and his sandals all awry from beating at the old horse's sides. His hands were a tangle, managing his crozier, the reins, and a couple of bottles. His hair stuck out as wildly as his bushy eyebrows, and he had a big lumpy purple bruise on his forehead. "Fiametta!" He cried again, and choked, as his eyes took in the tableau in the courtyard.
"I was going to say," he continued in a strange, mild, conversational tone, "Fiametta, whatever you do, don't kill Vitelli."
His gray eyes locked with the red ones of the dark man. Fiametta, gratefully, felt herself slide from Vitelli's dangerous attention. Everything about Monreale looked absurd, just now, except for his eyes.
Never breaking his gaze, Monreale swung his right leg over the white horse's sagging neck and jumped lightly down. He tucked the bottles into his robe, stood his crozier upright, and ran a hand thoughtfully down its length. He walked forward, then stopped with a jerk, as if feeling the same cold blow Fiametta had.
"Jacopo Sprenger. Though your spirit is parted from your body, you still partially exist in the world of will. While your will is free, you may yet effectively repent, confess your sins and profess your faith; I swear to you God is greater than any evil you can encompass. Stop. Stop now, and turn your face around!" Monreale s voice was anguished in its sincerity.
He had ridden through the night not to destroy Vitelli, but to save him, Fiametta realized. And she saw too a dreadful danger in it. Vitelli might try to trick Monreale, challenge him into dropping his guard. Despite all doubts, Monreale's own conscience would compel him to try Vitelli in all good faith ...
But Vitelli's pride in his power scorned to dissemble. The dark man crossed himself mockingly with an obscene gesture. The next gesture was something more effective, and when the swirling colors departed from Fiametta's eyes and the roaring from her ears, Abbot Monreale was on his knees, and not in prayer. He brandished his crozier, though, and counterattacked; Vitelli seemed to shrink into himself, but only for a moment.
Uri could be no more help. He was freezing to cold bronze even as Fiametta watched, and there was not enough fire left in her spirit to make him hot again. She could not even stand up, but sank to her knees, then her hands and knees, and finally to the wet cobbles. Any passing Losimon could cut her throat this moment and she might do no more than look dully at him. Thur crouched worriedly beside her, and caught her shoulders.
The spirit ring. The gold gleamed on the corpse's hand, not two yards off. No wonder spirit-magic was so rare. So hard to accomplish, so fragile when invested! If only she knew her Papa's spell of unbinding—she pictured the moment, Ferrante's upraised hand, the crack and flash of the silver ring, the smell of burning flesh....
But she did know rings. She had laid a little part of herself into the gold of her lion-ring. It was held there by ... held there by ... "Structure," she muttered muzzily. The spell had fallen into the molten metal like a seed crystal into the alum-water that the dyers used, and from it structure had feathered out like frost, intricate and beautiful ... The reverse must be ... the reverse must be ...
She rolled over on her face on the paving-stones a little way from that dead adorned hand. She had not enough power left to reanimate Uri, no. But she had some. Gold was a softer metal than bronze, and there was little more than a thimbleful in that ring. It was enough. It would do ...
"Piro," she whimpered. "Piro."
The gold mask sagged, slagged; the metal dripped as the flesh it encircled scorched, spattered, steamed and blackened. The acrid scent of burnt meat seared her nostrils.
The dark Vitelli screamed, as the band of light on his shadow-hand vanished. He whirled, his red eyes flaming rage, and focused on Fiametta. She smirked at him from the circle of Thur's arms, quite unable to move.
He seemed to inhale, towering up and up into a spindle of black smoke that slid sinuously into the open mouth of the bronze Medusa-head, held high in Uri's frozen left hand. The little snakes upon the skull turned cherry-red, and began to squirm. The head's eyelids slitted open in hot white lines. The face twisted slowly, and the ghastly eyes opened wide, and found Fiametta.
He will burn me to ashes where I lie. "Thur, get away! Get back!" She tried to twist from his protective arms, which tightened in distraught confusion.
And then, between her and that obscene head, the rain man appeared. He was made all of dense suspended diamond droplets, that glittered like tiny rainbows in the torchlight. He shone as bright and brilliant as the shadow Vitelli was dark. He was amazingly beautiful. He wore a glittery pleated tunic, a big round hat like rain-brocade; his beard was fog, and his eyes were liquid and luminous.
"Papa," Fiametta breathed happily.
He blew her one kiss, or was it a raindrop landing chill on her skin? She rubbed her cheek in wonder, trembling.
A beam of incandescent fire lashed out in a double line from the Medusa's eyes. All the rain in its path turned to steam, boiling clouds of it, but the rain man reformed unharmed, only whiter for the added fog.
"Come out of there," demanded Master Beneforte querulously. "That's mine." He crouched, his hands cupped. With the slowness of tar, the black shape was drawn forth from the Medusa's mouth again. The rain man encompassed it. Fiametta could see it inside him, a spasming black mannikin, screaming in silence.
Master Beneforte turned to Abbot Monreale. "Quick, Monreale! Send us now, together, while I hold him! I cannot hold him long."
Monreale, his face stunned, levered himself up on his crozier. "Where ... where does your body lie, Prospero?"
"The Swiss boy knows."
"Thur." Abbot Monreale turned to him. "Go at once—take these men"—for a couple of panting monks had arrived belatedly in Monreale's wake—"and fetch forth Master Beneforte's mortal remains. Hurry!"
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 mannikin 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 m 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, Fattier, for I have sinned ..."