Thur knocked the sword aside with the candlestick, once, twice; Ferrante pressed him swiftly across the chamber. Backing him into the furnace. Thur could feel the heat on his bare haunches. He sidestepped to put the window behind him instead. Ferrante had regained his balance, moving smoothly and confidently; he almost seemed to study Thur at his leisure. Vitelli, moving up behind Ferrante, pointed a finger at Thur and began to scream in Latin. His dark aura spun around his head like a cyclone.

Thur did not think he had better be standing there when this spell, whatever it was, arrived. At Ferrante's next thrust he swung his candlestick with all his remaining strength, and knocked the sword wide. Ferrante still covered himself with a knife, not the bone-handled one, that had somehow appeared in his left hand. Thur spun on his heel and dove through the window after Uri. His aim was not so clean this time. The rough sandstone shredded the skin of his shoulders and knees in passing. Then he found himself flailing in the dark air. A man might fly as a bat flies, without feathers—had the castellan flown down? Where the hell was the water—

He smashed into it belly-flat. After the suffocating heat of the magic chamber, the cold was confounding. It closed over his head, and stopped his breath. He fought his way through a wash of tickling bubbles to the surface, and gasped for air. Cold but clean. It seemed to flush the dizzying sickly drug-torpor from his limbs at last. Thur splashed and turned about, trying to reorient himself.

The night was moonless, the stars muffled by haze. Fog tendrils steamed from the lake's surface, obscuring what vision was left. Against a looming black bulk, Thur made out a few dim gold blobs of candlelight, the cliff face with its windows and the castle wall, above. He had to get away from that. He paddled as silently as he could in the opposite direction, just his eyes and nose breaking the surface of the dark and quiet water. He bumped into a floating log.

No. Not a log. It was Uri's body. Somehow, in the frantic fight, Thur had imagined it sinking beyond Vitelli's reach, but it was quite buoyant. He tried to push it under, but it popped back up. Any Losimon with a rowboat could pick it off the surface of the lake tomorrow morning, and return it to Vitelli, and all this would be for nothing.

No, not nothing. Not nothing. But not enough. He had regained Uri only to lose Lord Pia. Mad, perhaps, but clever and bold ... as Abbot Monreale was holy, Duchess Letitia defiant, Ascanio innocent, and Fiametta ... Fiametta ... and all, all, sacrifices to Ferrante's towering self-conceit, his fame. What gave Ferrante the right to ride over all those lives?

Right has nothing to do with it. He fights to survive. And the more he drifts into wrong, the harder he will fight. Must fight. So spoke reason. Reason was no practical help.

Thur was drifting, too. He began to shiver as the chill lake water drew the heat from his body. At least it wasn't as killing-cold as the water in the mine. Would Uri become waterlogged, and start to sink or rot? Uncertainly, Thur began to kick, propelling himself and his brother log gently along. He was no longer sure where the shore was. No lights or lanterns shone bright enough to pierce the mist. But he achieved, after a little experiment, a sort of equilibrium, kicking just fast enough to keep warm, just slowly enough not to outpace his breath. He felt he might keep it up for hours. But then what?

By the time he bumped into the quay, he knew neither how far he had come nor how long he had been about it. He felt like he had paddled halfway to Cecchino. A town loomed beyond the steps and docks and pebbled beach. The stones bit his naked feet as he rose dripping and the water no longer supported his weight. He dragged Uri along horizontally as far, as possible, then pulled him ashore like a fish. He was almost as slippery as one. Thur stood, his legs trembling, and stared into the dark tinged here and there with some faint illumination escaping through a closed shutter. Big buildings, too big for any village. A dog barked twice, and stopped. What town ....

Damn. It was only Montefoglia. Still Montefoglia. Had he been swimming in circles? Quite possibly. He stared up and down the shoreline, mentally placing landmarks he could not now see with his eyes. To his right, the castle hill, to his left, the big docks, the lower walls, and the high outer town wall at the very end that ran right down into the harbor. Ahead lay narrow, winding streets, dark and strange. Well, they couldn't be any stranger than what he had just escaped.

He stood a moment in indecision, water lapping his ankles. Where should he be trying to go, anyway? He had to hide Uri. He wanted ... he wanted to talk to Fiametta. He wanted to find Fiametta, yes. Reason therefore said he ought to paddle back out into the lake and swim to Saint Jerome. He emptied his mind of reason, knelt, got Uri up on his shoulder, grunted to his feet, and started walking.

Up stone steps from the quay. His feet banged down hard with their doubled weight. Guards? There ought to be a guard—there. Thur ducked into the nearest alley as a man with a lantern appeared near the quay. An old man, a town watchman, not a Losimon. Thur walked on without looking back, placing his bare feet carefully in the dark. But suppose he aid meet some urban danger in these passageways? He had a sudden picture of himself, a naked Swiss madman carrying a corpse. ... Well, he had nothing to attract a robber, certainly.

Turn here. Turn there. Where the devil was he going? He would not go back to the castle, no matter now his sixth sense clamored. He stumbled over a blanketed lump in the alley, which gave a muffled cry; Thur, burdened, barely saved himself from landing hard enough to shatter his kneecaps on the cobbles.

"Damn it! No, be quiet. I wont hurt you. Forget you saw me! Go back to sleep," said Thur, panicked at the thought of an outcry.

"Thur?" said a familiar youthful voice. "Is that you?"

"Tich?" Thur stopped, stunned. "What are you doing here?"

"Why, you're all naked!" Pico's elder boy scrambled to his feet, his face a white smudge in the dimness. "What are you carrying?"

"Uri. My brother. You've met Uri, haven't you?" said Thur dizzily.

"It's a corpse," said Tich in horror, after a verifying touch.

"Yes. I stole him back from Ferrante's black magician. Why are you here?"

"Thur, those thieving Losimons—they killed my father and Zilio! They cut his throat like a dog—" His voice grew louder in his excitement—it had been a couple of days since he'd met any man he dared called friend, Thur guessed.

"Sh! Sh. I know. I saw your father's mules yesterday, when they brought them to the castle."

"Yes, I followed them. And they're my mules now. I want them back. I want to kill the bastards! I've been trying to figure out how to get into the castle."

"Sh, no. That accursed castle is no place to try to get into. I barely got out with my life tonight."

"Where are you going?" asked Tich, sounding quite as bewildered as Thur felt.

"I'm ... not sure. But I cannot stand naked in the street till the dawn finds me!"

"You can have my blanket," Tich offered immediately, though in a rather dubious tone.

"Thanks." Thur wrapped it about himself, and suddenly felt much better, and not just for the warmth. "I ... Look, I hate to take your only blanket. Why don't you come along with me?"

"But where are you going?" Tich repeated.

"To ... a house in town that I know." The vision of Fiametta's home came clearly as he spoke the words aloud, finally unconfused by the overlapping call of... Tich? Yes. It was no accident, that he'd stumbled over Tich in the dark, any more than when he'd stumbled over little lost Helga in the snow. But he knew where he was going now. "There's no one home. Except maybe a Losimon guard," Thur added in sudden doubt. Maybe reason ought to prevail, just this once ...