Lois Bujold - THE SPIRIT RING

It was dusk, really, Fiametta decided, dancing at the sky. The courtyard was in shadow, and overhead thick clouds scudded across a purpling sty. It was growing chill. She could smell rain in the air.

"Over here." Thur motioned to the kobolds to bring their burden to the furnace. Tich ran to the kitchen with the news. By the time he returned with Ruberta and the nameless woman, a second pair of gnomes were emerging from the ground beside Thurs feet. There was something revoltingly organic about how the earth squeezed them forth, reminding Fiametta of the clown in the marketplace who extruded whole eggs from his bulging mouth for a trick. But they brought another copper bar. With a giggle, the first pair dove back headfirst into the earth. Then the third pair-emerged, cheerful as cicadas.

Thur began stacking the copper carefully in the furnace, alternating with more wood. Master Beneforte had filled a downstairs storeroom with select pine, laid in to dry especially for this project. The Losimons had taken some—how closely had her father calculated his fuel? They would find out. More kobolds, or the same kobolds, popped up like weasels. Fiametta soon lost count, but Thur did not. "That's the last," he said.

Fiametta came to his side as he backed out and closed the iron door to the furnace through which he'd been squeezing to load ingots and fuel. He rubbed his hair out of his eyes with the back of a dirty hand. He was big and warm, and his blue eyes were exhilarated. Even the absurd undersized robe he wore like a tunic, with his bare calves sticking out, could not quite make him look silly.

He could burn for this. For her. There was a momentum in this moment that had nothing to do with Ferrante. She could feel it, the drive of art from the inside out, the determination to complete. She had hated her father, some days, for being as willing to consume others as himself to fuel that drive. And what she'd hated in her father she was not at all sure she liked finding in herself.

"Are you scared?" she asked Thur.

"No. Yes. I'm scared I might do something to spoil all this beautiful preparation. I mean, the furnace alone is a work of art. No wonder his ghost lingered, cut off so close to this being finished. It's a wonder he's not howling around it. If I can bring this off—it would be a bride-price for your Papa worthy of you. Poor miner's son be damned!"

Be not! "Thur, you realize—I have no idea what the effect on the statue will be when the spell wears off." Nor on Uri.

"The little brass hare was fine, you said. It's going to be magnificent. You'll see." He paused. "We can light the furnace now."

"That's a job for me." Fiametta brightened in a whiff of nostalgia. "I used to light all of Papa's fires for him."

They gripped hands, then Thur stepped back. Fiametta closed her eyes. For you, Papa. And for Abbot Monreale, and Ascanio and his Mama, and poor Lord and Lady Pia, and Tich and Ruberta and her niece and the lady with no name. For all of Montefoglia. "Piro!"

The furnace roared, then the sound dropped to a busty hiss. Thur started pumping one bellows, and on the opposite side of the beehive Tich began working the second pair. In a private spot beyond the furnace, sheltered by the gallery, the nameless lady sat, watching with interest. The first light from the furnace picked out an approving glitter in her dark eyes. She drew her cloak around a kobold, one of a cluster at her feet, who turned its wrinkled face up to her adoringly. In the twilight, one could almost imagine them as children. Almost.

A few sparks wavering in the heat rose from the furnace vents, but not much smoke. The wood burned hot and dry and clear, just as it should. Not . .. not too conspicuous, Fiametta hoped. But we had better not be too long at this.

She rounded up Ruberta, and together they carried Uri's bier into the darkening courtyard. Enough light leaked from the furnace to prevent stumbles, but Fiametta decided to have Ruberta hold a lantern for the next part.

"I can draw the diagram and lay out the symbols, and then rest while the bronze is melted. As long as we are all careful not to step on them. I'll draw them as close and tight to the bier and the pit as I can. You hold the light so I can be sure there is no break in the line."

"Where's your chalk, girl?" asked Ruberta.

"This spell doesn't use chalk." She knelt and took a small sharp knife from the basket of tools and objects she had made ready. She rolled up her right sleeve, and turned her palm out to expose her wrist. She studied her veins. "Um."

Ruberta held her hand to her lips in dismay, but suggested faintly, "Parallel to your tendons, dear, not across them. If you still mean to be able to write or do anything else, after."

"Uh ... right. Good idea. Thank you." This was hard. Think of it as practice for childbirth. The lines had to be drawn with the mage's own blood. No one else's would do. She had to give Papa credit for that one, anyway. No easy way; she dug the knife in point-first and dragged it through her flesh. She had to do it again before the blood was flowing freely enough down her hand for her to write with her index finger. She cleared her mind, stepped to Uri's head, and began.

Her head was swimming by the time she'd murmured her way all around and closed her circle at the starting point. Another problem of scaling up. She stopped squeezing her arm and the blood oozed to a halt. She sat a moment on the ground to recover.

"Is it melting yet?" wheezed Tich to Thur, sagging on his bellows. "Is it time to add the tin?"

"Not nearly." Thur poked his head around the side of the furnace and grinned at him. "If you add it too soon, the tin exhales from the alloy and you lose your trouble and expense. We've hours to go yet."

Tich moaned. But after a few moments of whispered conversation, a couple of smirking kobolds crept out of the corner by the lady and took over his bellows, jumping and hanging off the handle like monkeys. Tich sweated and rested by Fiametta. The rest of the kobolds pitched in, alternated with diving in and out of the furnace in their shadow-form, hooting and giggling. The orange glow from the flames lit the demonic scene. The Losimon prisoner also saw it as a vision out of hell, it seemed, for he had given up his surly sneer and cowered, snivelling and weeping, on the far end of his chain, the whites of his eyes wide in the dare. Ruberta brought watered wine and bread and hard garlic sausage all around. Fiametta ate gratefully, but thought, We have to speed this up.

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.