Damiano - Raphael Part 17

Ahead of him a spur rose at the right of the road, amidst the scree, so there would be protection from both sides. Protection from the wind, at any rate. Gaspare tweaked Festilligambe's ear and prodded one thumb knuckle into his ribs, but the horse did not respond. At last he drew back, c.o.c.ked his foot, and spun around, landing an impressive roundhouse kick just below the gelding's limply hanging tail.

Slowly the horse swayed forward. Slowly he began to move.

Gaspare entered the protection of the rocks. When the road veered away to the left, following the base of the peak, he clipped the skin of Festilligambe's nostril between two fingers and led him around.

A shrieking roar blasted the rocks. Gaspare gazed up in time to see the dragons, white and black, rise twining into the high air. A horrid glory of flame brightened the evening sky.

Gaspare fell to his knees, not knowing it was Satan himself who a.s.saulted his friend in the air, but knowing it was terrible. "I am useless," he whispered, his teeth chattering. "By G.o.d and all His saints, I want to hide!" He hid his face in his hands.

The bellowing faded as the combatants rose farther from the road itself. Gaspare, folding his hands in half-shamed prayer, looked ahead and beheld the yellow light of a lamp.

In front of him, along the road itself, was a window. It extended from the gravel and dust of the earth to a peak at least twenty feet up, and the stone trim around it was as neat and pretty as that of a church.

It was the kind of window one could walk through, having neither shutter nor gla.s.s. Inside it was a room.

As Gaspare stood perched on the sill, a light spatter of flame licked the stone of the road behind him.

Acid hissed and crackled against stone. The youth hopped through.

down the two-foot drop to the interior floor, which was tiled quite fas.h.i.+onably in the Italian manner.

"So," he said. "Even as Delstrego described it."Delstrego had visited the Devil. He had told Gaspare all about it. But the redhead hadn't listened, exactly, because it had been back in the days when he thought Delstrego was... well, confused.

But he DID remember that the Devil's high chamber had been big-so big that a man might sit on a table as large as a ballroom floor. "Not quite as Delstrego described it," Gaspare amended.

Here was a table. Gaspare put his hand upon it. About two arm spans by one-and-a-half, he judged.

On it were two things: a rather impressively made model of a fortress, and a bowl of grapes. Besides the table, the only furnis.h.i.+ngs in the room were a single high-backed chair, various loud and busy scarlet embroideries on the walls, and a red leather bag hanging from the ceiling lamp.

Gaspare's curious fingers played with a tiny steel shutter which hung on one of the few windows of the model. It worked. He peered inside the arched windows on the tiny cupola which topped the model.

There was something in it, but he couldn't make out what. By habit he plucked a grape from the bowl and brought it to his mouth.

But there was something about the fruit, something greasy, perhaps, or was it the color which was not quite right? Gaspare put it down again and danced nervously through the room.

No doors, just three other windows. Two of them looked out onto blackness (night fell so abruptly in the mountains). Gaspare peered out of the fourth window, hoping to spy Saara and her dragon.

After a brief glimpse he backed away again, reeling. Gaspare's stomach didn't feel too well. He cursed a prayer, or prayed profanely (from the time he had been a street urchin, the two actions had blurred into one for him), and returned his attention to the toy on the table.

IT had no doors either. "No doors," he mumbled. "No way out."

"Go out the way you came in: that's my advice. And do so as quickly as possible," said the red leather bag hanging from the lamp.

Gaspare leaped squealing into the air and his arms flailed. One hand struck the bag, which was soft and saggy, and which began to swing back and forth. Two blue eyes, on stalks, moved in opposition to the swaying. "Don't do that," the bag complained. "You might hurt the image."

Gaspare blinked from the speaker to the work on the table. I'm sorry," he blurted. 'Who... what are you?"

It had a mouth, set above the blue eyes. It had a blobby big belly, with sticklike arms and hands tied together behind it. (Tied in a bow. With red string.) It had feet set at the very top of the belly, one of which had been tied with red string to the lamp cord.

"I am Kadjebeen,' stated the bag. "I am an artisan."

Gaspare made a discovery. "You're upside down," he informed the bag.

"Yes, I am, ' replied Kadjebeen equably. "I'm being punished."

"For what?" asked Gaspare, but before the demon could answer, Gaspare had untied the sticklike arms and was working on the knot in the lamp cord. Such was his att.i.tude toward punishment.

The little horror was lowered to the table. It rolled over so that its blue scallop-eyes were upmost. "I was supposed to have someone whipped half-to-death." His small raspberry-colored mouth emitted a sigh.

"What is 'half-to-death'?" Kadjebeen asked Gaspare, but did not wait for an answer before adding, "Life is neither distance nor volume, that I can take out my weights, levels, or my measures and get it exact. What was I to do?"

Gaspare didn't answer. The demon ma.s.saged his b.u.t.ton head in both hands. "Better to be conservative, don't you think? I mean, one can always whip a little more, afterward, but if the man is dead, one can scarcely whip a little LESS, can one?

"Besides... I did so admire those wings."

Gaspare, who had been listening to Kadjebeen's complaint with a certain lack of sympathy, suddenly lunged forward. "Wings? Angel wings?"

Kadjebeen cringed back, hiding his eyes in his hands. (One in each.) "What'd I say? What'd I say?Don't hit me! I'm only an artisan!"

Gaspare repeated his question more moderately.

"I don't know what kind of wings you're talking about. These weren't like regular demon wings. Not leathery. They had feathers like birds'. Whitish."

"Raphael!" cried Gaspare, and when Kadjebeen threatened to withdraw once more, he shook him.

"Yes, yes! Raphael was his name. Nice guy, he seemed. Well put together. Looked a lot like the Master."

Seeing Gaspare's exultant face, he asked, "You interested in wings too?"

"I am... interested in Raphael's wings," warbled Gaspare, dancing another little dance of excitement.

"Raphael is my friend. My teacher. We have come from San Gabriele in the Piedmont, looking for him.

"Through cold and wind," Gaspare chanted. "Past dragons and enchanted boulders we have come, and not all the Devil's wiles could stop us!"

Kadjebeen sighed again. "Then he must not have been trying very hard."

Gaspare was stung. "I'm sure he was! If he had any sense he was, because we are justice itself on his trail."

The skin at the back of his neck twitched, as Gaspare remembered where he was and to whom he was speaking. "You... LIKE him? Your wicked master? In spite of what he did to you? You'll tell Satan I was here, and everything I said?"

Kadjebeen's eyes made independent circuits of the room. "Like... the Master?" Then in a rush he replied, "Of course I don't. Who could like him? But I'm sure I will tell on you. He'll torture me till I do."

The round demon sighed. He walked over to his toy and fiddled with it in proprietary fas.h.i.+on. "And then he'll torture me some more, I guess."

Gaspare's courage, working as it did by law of opposition, rose as the demon quailed. "It doesn't matter if you do tell, you miserable insect. We've come for the angel and won't leave without him!" He pirouetted around the table, slicing most gracefully with an invisible sword.

"Well, I'm very sorry, then," mumbled Kadjebeen.

Between one florid step and the next, Gaspare stopped dancing. "Sorry for what?"

Kadjebeen was sitting on the table. He had both hands laced around his middle. Now his color was returning, and he looked more like a raspberry and less like a bag. "Because the Master gave him away."

"Gave him away?" echoed Gaspare. He struck his bony fist on the tabletop. The greasy grapes bounced. "He gave away an angel of G.o.d?"

"Watch out for the image," mumbled the demon reflex-ively. "It's a perfect correspondence, you see, and one has to be careful." Then the demon realized that Gaspare's attention could not be diverted from his goal.

"Yes. He melted off his wings and gave him to one of his toadies-uh, servants. Perfecto the Spaniard, the man's name is. I imagine your Raphael is in Granada now."

Observing the dusky flush of Gaspare's face, Kadjebeen added, to console him, "The wings were gone by then, anyhow. "

Gaspares impersonal glare sharpened. "You must take us to him!"

The demon squeaked, and drew in both hands and feet, so that nothing but his trembling eyes disturbed his rotundity. "Oh, I couldn't! The Master would never let me! He'd be so angry if he even knew you'd asked!"

Gaspare, whose own fear had somewhere been left behind, strode to the window, where the dazed horse stood placidly, seeing nothing. All sounds of battle had faded, but in his heart was growing a conviction that the battle was already won: a conviction which had nothing to do with Saara's magic, or the length of the dragons teeth.

"Your master, little insect, is nothing but sc.u.m!"

"Oh dear, don't," quailed Kadjebeen, as his ears and eyes rotated nervously. "He is the Prince of theEarth and very sensitive about it."

"He is the Prince of Cowardice," Gaspare declared. "And all his victories are cheats."

He spun theatrically and smacked his chest. "I myself tell you this, you poor deluded slave. And I should know, because I AM A VERY BAD MAN!"

Kadjebeen stared at Gaspare with an increase of respect.

"Or I WAS a very bad man. But with the grace of G.o.d and the help of His angel Raphael, I am trying. It is hard," added the youth, staring with wide green eyes at the round body on the table, "when you are born with low instincts and have habits both worldly and violent, but it is possible to throw off Satan entirely. Even you could do it."

His gaze on the demon lost certainty. "... I think."

"This Raphael person," Kadjebeen thought to mention, "didn't last very long against my Master."

Gaspare frowned, remembering Kadjebeen's part in that deed. "Raphael sacrificed himself," he said with dignity. "For MY sins, I am told.

"And I... I will release him from bondage. I have the greatest witch in all Europe at my side. We cannot lose."

Kadjebeen's stalked gaze s.h.i.+fted to Festilligambe. "The greatest witch in all Europe is a horse?"

"Uh, no. This is Festilligambe. He is probably the fastest horse in all Europe. He is certainly the most troublesome." A glance at the slack-jawed, lop-eared face forced him to add, "He is, however, not feeling his best.

"My companion, the Lady Saara, is at this moment chasing your foolish master's legions from the skies, while I have the responsibility to locate and rescue Raphael."

"He's in Granada," repeated Kadjebeen helpfully.

"So." Gaspare cracked his knuckles, one by one. "Take us to Granada."

"I couldn't..." began the raspberry demon, but he changed his mind in midsentence. "I would like to, but I don't see how..."

"And you call yourself an artist!" Gaspare's voice, not naturally resonant, rang strangely loud in that stale, tiled chamber.

"An artisan," Kadjebeen corrected him. "I build things. Images. As a matter of fact, I am the greatest maker of images that-"

"Artist, artisan... Bah!" Gaspare brushed the distinction aside. "Don't you know that all the arts are blessed, and Satan is their enemy? Raphael is the greatest musician ever created, as well as the most beautiful; it is out of jealousy that Satan has done him hurt. I myself-"

"I myself am tone-deaf," interjected the raspberry demon. "As well as ugly. But go ahead-you were about to tell me what YOU were greatest at."

"I was not," grunted Gaspare, instantly deflated.

"I'm not the best at anything, although my old friend and partner... Oh, never mind." For to Gaspares mind came the words the ghost had said at the top of the hill in Lom-bardy. "Don't strive to be the best, or you will wake up one day and know yourself no good at all."

There was no sound to be heard, except the droning sighs of Festilligambe, who seemed to be waking up. Suddenly Gaspare wanted to be out of this square room with windows that made no sense and air like doused ashes. Even if its owner never returned, it was no good place to be.

"Granada, you say?" He spared a last glance at the demon. "Then to Granada we will go, on the back of the greatest dragon that..." Gaspare swallowed.

"On the back of a dragon." He leaped lightly onto the sill.

Festilligambe nickered sleepily. Gaspare dragged him along by the mane. "Come on, a.s.s-face. We have what we came for..."

It was black outside, and all noise of combat had ceased. A dust of stars whitened the sky. Gaspare lifted his head, and cold wind caught his russet hair.Where were Saara and the dragon? Gaspare felt pregnant with news and wanted to communicate it.

Surely they had not chased that stranger dragon so far they could not get back to him? All pretty white and gold, it hadn't looked like a beast with much fight in it.

As he stood in the mountain darkness, huddled against a black horse for warmth, Gaspare heard an awkward scuffing behind him.

A squarish black shape was following his trail on spindly pink-purple legs. It looked like a bedding box with the hindquarters of a chicken. For a moment Gaspare's hair stood on end, not out of fear but disbelief, until he recognized the object as Kadjebeen's toy palace, propelled by Kadjebeen himself.

"I'm coming," panted the demon, unnecessarily. "With that?"

Kadjebeen hugged his masterwork with arms too short for the purpose. His eyes drooped protectively over the top. "It's mine," he mumbled. "I made it. Best thing I ever made. It's an image of the whole palace. Even His Magnificence has never appreciated how perfect a job it is."

Gaspare only sighed. Together he, Kadjebeen, and the horse stepped out of the shelter of the rocks.

There, on the gray-lit slope of the peak itself, lay a long body like a length of rope cast off by some giant. Moonlight glistened on it, for it was coated with some sort of slime, and small, scuttling things went in and out of the great, scimitar-lined mouth, which leaked steam. Yellow eyes shone faintly, staring at nothing.

Caged in one iron paw, undamaged but motionless, was a small shape in a scorched blue dress.

Gaspare stopped dead, causing Kadjebeen to b.u.mp into him. The horse reared in panic.

Then Gaspare ran wildly over the rubble and stone, up the slick and gripless slope of rock, toward the fallen dragon with its phosph.o.r.escent infection. He reached the black-clawed hand. He squeezed between the bars.

With both hands Gaspare wiped the ooze from Saara's eyes. He wept and cursed together as more came out of her nose and lips. Her flesh looked and felt like wax.

The creeping disease touched Gaspare.

Kadjebeen stood alone on the road, leaning on his work. He was feeling very low.

The fellow had seemed so certain of himself, with his greatest this and his fastest that. It had been a long time since Kadjebeen had met anyone except the master himself who was so self-a.s.sured. He tried to remember when and where he HAD met another like Gaspare. His memories were sadly jumbled.