The Spirit Ring by Lois McMaster Bujold

Author:Lois McMaster Bujold
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy - General, Magic, Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, &WORKING, Juvenile Fiction, Fiction - Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Wizards, Historical, General, Epic, Middle Ages
ISBN: 9780671721886
Publisher: Baen Fantasy
Published: 2010-01-22T08:09:27+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Fiametta rubbed her drooping eyelids and stretched her arms high in an effort to fight off drowsiness. The watered wine and bread she'd had for supper was not so grand a feast as to induce torpor, but she'd slept poorly last night, turning over and over on the crackling straw, worrying about Thur, constantly disturbed by the rustling and coughing and movements of the other women in the overcrowded dormitory. Not to mention the fleas. She scratched a red welt on her elbow.

Abbot Monreale's workroom was warm, the plastered walls of the second-floor chamber still retaining the heat of the day, and the light from the single candle beside her was golden and cozy. She wriggled her hips on the hard perch of her barrel-seat, planted her elbows on the table, and let her chin sink back into her hands. On the tray before her the three remaining tambourines, the mouth-twins to the little ears Thur carried, remained stubbornly mute. Were they still working... ? Yes, her day's practice at keeping them enspelled had made it an almost automatic process, like absentminded humming. They conveyed nothing because they had nothing to convey.

In the next room she could hear Abbot Monreale pause to cough, pace, and continue his dictation to Brother Ambrose. A letter to the Bishop of Savoy, describing their desperate situation, calling for help, magical if not military. A futile letter. How did Monreale propose to dispatch it? The day had passed in an ominous, overheated quiet, without even the usual desultory exchanges of curses and crossbow bolts between the besiegers and the defenders on the monastery walls. No new herald or emissary had come to the gates today, no new refugees. No one at all. It was as if Lord Ferrante's grip tightened chokingly around them.

She stared at the little circles, willing them to speech. Three had come to life today, two in the afternoon and one at dusk, when she'd been gone to supper. Initiate brothers had taken each one off to their cells, where they sat with quills and paper ready to take note of important secrets. She trusted the brothers were all staying awake, too. But anyway, Thur had still been alive and free at dusk.

She stifled a yawn; if Monreale glanced in and saw her fading, he would send her to bed, and she might miss the next word from Thur. Why didn't the big fool think to speak into the ear-tambourines when he activated them and report on himself? She gritted her teeth on her next yawn. The white parchment circles swam before her eyes.

Then, without other warning, one—flared, Fiametta supposed she must describe it, though it was not an effect she saw with her eyes. She took a deep breath of anticipation and sat up straight. Thur's voice, whispering his badly accented Latin, drifted up from the tambourine to her straining ear. Talk to me, Thur! But there followed only a scraping sound, as of a jar shoved across a shelf. Footsteps crossed a stone floor, then a sad, meditative silence fell.

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