Damiano - Raphael Part 16

He vanished and reappeared, rising phoenix-like in a shape that mirrored the black dragon in length, shape, and deadly armament. But whereas the dragon was black, Satan was white: a stainless, powdery white, tipped with gold at every claw and spine.

These two beasts flexed metallic crowns as they stared at one another. The black dragon reared, rising as effortlessly as a bubble in water. So did the white. Together they lifted slowly: two marionettes on a single wire, two heads balanced on serpentine necks which rocked back and forth in time, keeping even the distance between them.

"Clown!" drawled the snowy dragon. "Wind kite!"

The beast of black iron showed its teeth. Saara crouched behind the dragon's multicolored head s.h.i.+eld, gripping the pierced scales with all her strength.

She was no more than a flea in a battle of armed and armored knights; invisible, powerless, ignored by both contestants. She suspected that the Devil did not even know she was there.

But she was not forgotten: not by the armored knight who carried her. For as the two dragons rose and the white spewed fire, the black dragon arched his head back, sparing his rider the force of the flaming blow.

At the same time his whiplike tail lashed forward, slicing at the ermine belly of his opponent. The Devil howled and struck again.

Saara closed her eyes, for the heavens were wheeling above her too closely. Her feet slipped from the dragon's metallic sides and there was nothing holding her on except the grip of her fingers.

Whirling, twisting like two strands in a rope, the dragons rose. The sharp peak of granite fell away beside them. The air was lurid.

But though the black dragon was huge and ancient, he was a creature of the earth, with terrestrial limits. He bent back before the limitless onslaught of Lucifer's flame. He threw back his head for a breath of air uncontaminated by his enemy's reek, and at that moment the white beast struck, slas.h.i.+ng with scimitar teeth at the iridescent black neck. The black dragon hissed pain and fury.

The floating rope of two strands bent, became a wheel: black-hubbed with a rim of s.h.i.+ning silver. The white serpent emitted a blistering laugh and slashed again, using flame and tooth together.

Saara, though she could not see, could guess the deadly situation. "You can't get close enough to use your own fire! Because of me," she shouted thinly into the furnace-crackling air.

"No matter," replied her mount quite calmly, though his mouth spattered flame as he spoke. "There are other weapons at hand." And once more he slashed out at Lucifer, not with his tail alone, but with his whole length, from the base of the neck.

The air cracked like thunder as seventy-five feet of edged violence snapped through it. It caught Lucifer at the crease where his near hind leg joined the body, leaving a sharp pink line which darkened tored. Then as the white dragon pulled back, guarding the wound, the black released his bottled fires.

Blazing acids, not sulfurous but smelling of iron, spattered and stuck to the snowy scales. Wherever they touched, the stainless surface bloomed into whorls of color: red, green, and blue like oil spilled on rock. Then, as the flame went out, the circles darkened.

"Ho, Demon," boomed the black dragon. "You have smudged your funeral whites."

Lucifer coiled and faced his enemy. All was still for a moment, with the two beasts circling each other like twin moons. Then the Devil whispered, "I needn't bother to dress well for YOUR funeral, brute."

Snakelike, Lucifer struck. The black dragon twitched back with the same speed, but as he did so he felt the grip of his hidden rider loosening. He slipped back under her but in that moment the claws and jaws of the white dragon found their hold, and the two were locked in awful embrace in the skies.

Saara heard the armor of her champion crack and shatter. She saw moonlight on a tooth as long as her body, before it sank into the black neck not five feet from her leg. She smelled blood.

And the ma.s.sive head of the black dragon lashed left and right, ineffectually, unable to catch any part of the enemy which was grinding into his windpipe below.

Saara cursed. She released her hold and slid down the s.h.i.+ning black scales until the white muzzle (now stained red) was near beside her. She stood, propping herself against the first of the black dragon's dorsal spines. "Yey! Liar! You fly-blown p.i.s.spot! Look here!" And the white dragon's blue eyes searched up and down, left and right, before he focused on the mite before his nose.

"No matter how long you wash, you still smell like a sick dog, you know," commented the little witch.

Then she added, "And though you fancy yourself a trickster, I have found you the easiest dolt in the world to deceive." She let go her hold on the spine and flung herself into s.p.a.ce.

Lucifer twisted his jaws around and spared one claw to catch the plummeting human. But no sooner did the black dragon feel his enemy's grip slipping than he himself struck, with a fury of contained hate.

Not only did the Devil miss Saara, but he lost his killing squeeze on the black throat, and in another moment his clutching claw was pierced by teeth as sharp as slivered gla.s.s.

Meanwhile, the shape plunging in blackness wavered and was replaced by a ball of downy feathers.

The owl Saara had become tumbled and lost a few secondaries before recovering in the air, then rose again to soar in wide circles around the battle.

What she saw was a different scene from that she had just left, for the black dragon had a wealth of stored fires and twenty years of stored hate. Once free of the necessity to protect his head, he fought with a savagery that seemed beyond the reach of pain.

He had Lucifer's foot in his mouth and one claw beneath the Devil's long jaw, holding both tooth and fire useless. The white dragon, at the same time, had wrapped his serpentine tail around the black's muzzle and was striking viciously with its edged tip at the others eyes.

Saara circled, hooting dim, owlish encouragements to her champion, who had now forced his other claw to the Devil's throat and was attempting to strangle him. The white dragon was kicking the blacks belly like a fighting tomcat.

Regardless of the dripping wound in his neck the black dragon held on. He caught one of his enemy's punis.h.i.+ng hind feet in his own and twisted the white's lower body around so that he kicked only air.

When Lucifer's front claws found the tear in the flesh of the black dragon's neck and worried it open, he not only ignored the pain, but was not aware of it at all.

Could a mortal creature, however strong or ancient, destroy a spirit? A great spirit? The dragon considered this question in a dry and academic manner while his mouth uttered his rage and talons squeezed and squeezed.

Although the Mahayana philosopher, Nagarjuna, admitted various levels of spirit and matter, nothing among them was imperishable (except the atman, or breath, according to certain other Indians).

Therefore this dragon before him (who might contain breath, but was certainly not purely breath) might well be perishable.

But the j.a.panese, now, like Dogen, tended to put change above all, and did not exclude breath fromits dominion. THAT would imply that this white dragon neck between his claws was susceptible to infinite alteration, no matter what its spiritual character.

Where does the flame go, when a candle is blown out?

The dragon, deep in such reflections, snapped his mouth over that of his white enemy, both pinning its jaws shut and cutting off air. He threw his shoulders into the cause of metaphysical experiment until the silver throat caved in beneath him.

The pale body writhed wildly and was still. But a voice from the air spoke, saying, "I think I am getting bored with all this."

The white dragon went out.

Like a candle.

The black dragon floated through the air as limply as a weary swimmer. His fire-washed sides were dull under the starlight, and black blood oozed down his length, dripping at last from his tail to the earth far below. His head snaked left, then right, but his amber eyes found nothing.

Except a tiny feathered shape that darted in above the lofting heats and sat on his nose. "Quick!

There. Follow while he flees, or it will be for nothing!"

"Follow what?" asked the dragon patiently. Saara sprang from his muzzle to his outstretched hand.

She took human form and pointed at nothing-at-all among the stars.

"There. The bright shadow. Can't you see?"

Snapping his tail behind him, the enormous beast shot forward, enclosing Saara in a cage of black tines. "Certainly I can see. I see Betelgeuse and Rigel and a host of lesser luminaries, and I see the moon in her half-phase. I see the Mediterranean Alps beneath and I see your little friend disappearing into the window we have sought so long. What else should I be seeing?"

"The Liar! He s.h.i.+nes like rotting fish.

"Follow where I point," added the witch, as she saw that the dragon had no more eye for magic than had Gaspare.

"Now up!" she shrilled, and suddenly, "Turn, turn to your left! Sharper."

The dragon obeyed, though growling softly to himself. The earth beneath them reeled repeatedly, with white stone and black pine tilting like beer in a rolling barrel. But Saara was too intent for dizziness now.

"Up, up!" she cried ferociously. "Faster or we will lose him."

But the dragon's climb slowed, though his tail beat the air below them so fast Saara could barely see it. It slowed and stopped, and finally they began to fall.

"Too high for fire," whispered the dragon faintly, and they floated, loose as a rope in the ocean, down toward the gleaming earth below.

There were some moments of silence, during which Saara stretched out on the five-fingered hand of iron. "So it is," she admitted ruefully.

They sank, weariness establis.h.i.+ng its mastery over both of them. The dragon began to ache.

"That was a famous battle," Saara remarked. "If I were a poet, I would make a saga about it."

The dragon, however, growled glumly. "What does it matter how it went, when I failed you?"

The witch sat up and peered behind them at the black and starry sky. "Failed me? How? Did you expect to split the sky in two? You would have done that before killing the Liar, who was never born."

"Then what were we after?" The yellow eyes, bigger and brighter than torches, looked down at her.

"The answer to a question," replied Saara, who continued to stare into s.p.a.ce. "I must find Raphael, the Eagle Chief."

The dragon puzzled. "But we failed in that too. He gave us no time to ask, and now he is gone beyond chasing."

"No," the tiny woman corrected him. "He is not beyond chasing. In fact he is coming back at this moment."Then the stars spun about as the black dragon swivelled in place. "Where?"

"Coming," repeated Saara, calmly. "He wears no shape." Changing her own shape once again, she darted, a round, fluffy owl, behind the dragon's head spines. "I will tell you where he goes," she whispered, "and what he does."

"He is below you," said the owl. "What do you see?"

"Nothing."

"Then what do you feel?"

The dragon slashed with his tail. "Loathing," he hissed through set teeth.

Again the owl peeped and chattered. "Now he is beside you. Can you sense him?"

The dragon's back scales sc.r.a.ped together. "I feel only... disgust," he said, but Saara thought he might have used another word but for pride.

"Now he is abo-" hooted the owl, but at that moment a shape hurtled toward her, and Saara threw herself fluttering to the left.

It was an eagle, and it was s.h.i.+ning white. It pursued the rotund owl in the air with a skill equal to her own. Twice it chased her around the dragon's very head, pressing so closely she had not the time to hide herself among the projecting spines.

The dragon craned his neck wildly, but the birds were too tiny and too close for him to touch. Like a hawk mobbed by ravens, he sank away from the combat in the air.

But owls do not give battle with eagles, or at least not for long. One of the eagle's talons struck, taking a handful of feathers from the owl and scattering them. She flapped, off-balance, toward the dragon's protective head. The satanic eagle followed, growing closer.

The dragon saw his chance and took it. He opened his mouth and let the owl flutter through. His crocodilian jaw snapped shut on the eagle. The wounded owl fluttered down on his hand.

"Now I will not ask, but demand," said Saara, whose dress hung in tatters stained with blood. She motioned to be brought nearer the dragon's mouth.

"Liar!" she called. "Now you will take us to Raphael. You will release him from his bondage. Or you will spend a long time in a very dark place!"

There was silence, and the dragon clenched his jaw. Then he gagged, for suddenly out of his mouth and nose was pouring streams of matter.

They were hideous, the white-blue of phosph.o.r.escent, decaying flesh, and they crawled. They erupted from the dragon's mouth faster than he could spit them out, and they scrabbled over his body.

They came down his hand and claw and reached Saara.

They could bite. They could burrow into flesh. Saara screamed, while the dragon belched helpless fire that lapped his sides but did nothing to discourage the infestation. In a panic of horror Saara watched the sc.u.m of pale blue disappear between the dragon's scales.

He writhed like a back-broken snake. In a moment surely he would close his hand and crush her.

Saara herself lay in a ball on the black palm of the dragon's hand, clawing at a body that had gone slippery with blood.

Like thistledown the black dragon floated down through the high airs. He touched the stone of the peak and rolled as limp as a leather strap, all the way down to the road.

8.

Where had his pride gone, Gaspare asked himself. He had not felt so shaken since the bad days: thedays he tried never to think about, the days before Damiano, when he had been n.o.body, with bare feet on the streets of San Gabriele.

He watched the Lady Saara ascend into the sky on her serpentine steed, knowing he had been put on a shelf, while she and the dragon were out to confront the Devil. Yet proud Gaspare-man of many tempests-had said nothing against the plan. Yes, he would continue along the road, in the unlikely event the Devil had placed the entrance to his eyrie in plain sight. Yes, he would watch the befuddled horse.

Truth was, Gaspare was fit for nothing else, for he had run out of strength. Entering the worm hole had drained him of bravery in no ordinary manner, while his encounter with the dragon itself had left him with a dull feeling that anything might happen next and there was naught that could be done about it.

The high air (or lack of it) was much to blame for the redhead's shakiness, but, child of the mountains that he was, he did not connect the peaks around him with his intense desire to sit down on the road and shut his eyes.

He leaned against Festilligambe: not a good idea, for the horse was in no condition to support his weight. "Come, old outlaw," grumbled the redhead. "Wake up and show some fight!"

Festilligambe hauled up one ear, but made no other response to Gaspares urging. Staring into the gelding's round brown eyes, Gaspare thought he saw reflections of amber.

"What has he done to you, a.s.s-face? You look like old Lucia after her third tankard." The youth twisted Fes-tilligambe's black tail (heavy by nature, thinned by too much standing near the fire) as though the horse were a pig. A groan was the only result.

Festilligambe's paralysis conquered Gaspare's. His spirits rose to contempt for the addled beast.

"Snap out of it, horse. It was just a big lizard, you know. A dumb brute like yourself."

Suddenly there came a whistling shriek from somewhere above and ahead, accompanied by booming curses and followed by a great hiss of engines. "Or a brute, at any rate," Gaspare added with less c.o.c.kiness. "Come on. We can't stay here."

To his left rose a slope of rock and rubble, rising to the sharp tooth of the mountain. On the right the slope fell again in increasing steepness. Gaspare did not move to the gravel-scattered edge to look over, for there was an uncomfortable cold wind.