He paused. “I . . . I . . . My God . . . Luc . . .” His eyes bulged and he screamed. The hair on Erik’s neck stood up. It was the same terrible shriek they’d heard on the night that Father Maggiore had been killed. He heard the hiss of Manfred’s broadsword being drawn. He didn’t even know how his own came to be in his hand.
“Reverse the blade!” yelled Manfred. “A crucifix!”
Erik did it. He began to walk forward. It was like pushing against the tide . . . the air seemed to be full of carillons of bells, all discordant. Sparks leaped and hissed from the steel. The words of the Lord’s Prayer came instinctively to his lips.
To his right, Erik could see Manfred advancing also. Lord Calenti was tearing at his clothes; his face was contorted into the same terrible rictus of a smile they had seen on Father Maggiore. The flames and the cruel, vicious laughter began together with a maelstrom wind that plucked the papers up in a snowstorm. The velvet-seated chair skittered across the room; the writing table was hurled at them. It all stopped just short.
And still they continued to advance. A glance showed that Manfred’s steel armor was almost purple with the sheen of crackling lightning. So was his own, Erik realized. The discordant bells were coming to a cracked and furious crescendo. He could scarcely hear his own chanting. They dropped to their knees on either side of the naked and burning man . . .
And there was silence. Blessed silence. And the flames died as if they’d never been . . . except for the ruin they’d left behind. Then Lord Calenti began to scream. It was a healthy, joyful sound, comparatively. It was merely the scream of a badly burned human in extreme pain.
At this point, Erik realized that they had an enormous audience. Students were peering in at the window, crowding in through the door. Awestruck and horrified faces gaped at them.
“Call a doctor!” yelled Erik at the crowd. “We need a chirurgeon here, fast!”
A man pushed his way forward through the crowd. Unlike most of the gaping young watchers, he was weather-beaten and wrinkled. He joined the knights at the side of the now moaning Lord Calenti, who was curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the ruined salon. The crowd was pressing forward, threatening to overwhelm them. Manfred got to his feet. “Back!” he shouted. “All of you out of here! Out!”
His bull-like bellows were accompanied by sharp swats with the flat of his broadsword, first on heads and then on behinds. So he was obeyed. Obeyed with alacrity—the fact that Manfred was able to wield that huge and deadly weapon in such a light and casual manner, causing no more damage that a schoolmistress with a switch, was even more frightening than the great blade itself.
“And fetch us a priest!” he bellowed after the retreating students. “We may need one.”
Erik had stayed with the lean, wrinkle-faced man who was gently examining Lord Calenti. “Will he live?” he asked quietly, surveying the burned, whimpering man.
The weather-beaten man shrugged. “Might do. Might not. He’ll need skilled nursing, and lots of fluids. He’s going to be terribly disfigured even if he does live. Hell on a man who thought of himself as the ladies’ delight. But I think you saved his soul. He should be grateful for that at least, even if he dies. It was devouring him. Here. Help me with these.”
From a battered pouch at his waist he produced two poultices of neatly folded leaves, thick with some unguent. “I was taking these to someone else. Treatment for healing skin, not fresh burns, so they’re not ideal, but they’ll do. They’ll sooth and keep the infection out of his face.”
They were in the final stages of applying them to Lord Calenti’s ruined face when a man in an elegantly tailored cardinal’s red, with beautifully coiffured hair burst into the room. Despite the horror of the scene, the bishop’s eyes were first drawn to the healer. His eyes grew as wide as saucers.