Damiano - Raphael Part 3

"... neither were you."

Lucifer took another step forward, as though to prove to himself that his retreat had been an accident.

"Secondly, in the wretched village of Sous Pont Saint Martin, you stood for some seconds on a dimple in the snow. Below that dimple was an uncovered well, and a mortal man was forced to walk around you and miss the drop. It was a quick and smoothly handled bit of prestidigitation on your part, and I'm sure you thought that since the mortal never noticed you had saved his skin, perhaps no one else would. You were wrong."Thirdly, in the almost equally wretched village of San Gabriele, and at the instigation of an unaesthetic and inconsequential little dog shade, you opened a locked door and cheated the hangman of his employment."

Another small step. He was almost in touching distance of Raphael now. Saara shouted a warning.

"Fourthly, you cut a man's hair and tied his horse's harness in neat little bows. Very decorative, but not your destined work, I think.

"Fifthly-if there is such a word as fifthly-you committed what even among mortals is a crime. You hid a dying man from sight for an entire day, preventing anyone who might have saved his life from discovering him.

"And last of all, the decisive moment came here not three minutes ago, Raphael, as you announced quite baldly that you intended to squabble with me over my little prize.

"Could you not feel yourself shrivel as you spoke, brother? And each time you dirtied your hands in this mortal muck, weren't you aware of your light dimming? You have diminished till you are little more than a length of black wick lying in a puddle of wax."

Lucifer's tone was soft, sorrowful, almost caressing, and as he finished speaking he reached out into that clear brightness which surrounded Raphael. He put his hand toward his brother's face.

It stopped, or was stopped by something: some quality of the light or of the s.h.i.+ning smooth cheek itself, and the hand clenched empty air as Raphael answered.

"My size and form are whatever they are. I have done nothing to cause our Father pain."

"HE IS NOT MY..." The Devil's skin went from red to purple. Both of his hands leaped out at Raphael's throat, but it was as though a wall of gla.s.s came between them.

Lucifer swung angrily toward the table. Though Raphael's wing concealed the witch from his sight, the intricate dollhouse sat there, vulnerable. He raised his fist above it.

From the far corner came a squeal of dispair, and Kadje-been hid his face in his hands.

In the middle of his rage Lucifer smiled, hearing the music he loved best. He allowed his fist to unclose and once more turned to Raphael. "You are quite right, Raphael. I do want something of you-something very easily in your power to give, and a generous act besides. And if you give it to me, I promise I will put the creature back where I found it. Unharmed. I further promise to leave it alone in the future: as long as it leaves ME alone!" Lucifer spared a haughty and scandalized glance in the direction of his captive.

"It's a lie!" shrilled Saara from behind her white screen. "He won't release me, no matter what you do for him. He hates me; I bit his neck.

"And he hates you, Chief of Eagles, worse than he does me!"

Lucifer smiled sidelong. "Just listen to the little shrew. And what a name she gives you, brother. 'Chief of Eagles.' Don't you find it embarra.s.sing?"

"Not at all. I prefer it to being called the Liar," replied Raphael shortly. "Now enough of this tuneless twist. Tell me what it is your want of me."

Lucifer's shrug and smile were a bit coy. "My desire is small and well-meaning. I want to break down the old and unfortunate barrier which has stood so long between you and me, dear brother."

Then his pale gaze sharpened. "I ask nothing of you, Raphael, neither service nor friends.h.i.+p nor understanding (for I know I will get none of these), but only that you take my hand in yours once more."

Raphael stood unmoving, but the feathers on the backs of his wings where they joined the body rutched out, as the hair on a man's head may seem to crawl. And the wings themselves started a barely perceptible tremor.

"No!" cried Saara. "Whatever he says, it is still treachery!"

But the angel was not listening, or at least not to her. He stood motionless, his head tilted slightly to one side, and his dark eyes unfocused. Then Raphael answered his brother. "I want to see Saara sent back first."

"NO!" screamed the witch.Lucifer smiled and his eyes grew white-pale. "Afterward, dear brother. I don't trust your decision will remain the same once the motivation is gone."

"Yes, you do," replied the angel, as he shook his feathers into place. "You DO trust my word, Satan, or you would never have called me. The only reason you would refrain from returning Saara now that I have agreed to your terms is that you have no intention of returning her. Therefore it must be done now."

Lucifer, who had admitted to Saara already that he did not intend to free her, sulked for a moment. "If neither of us trust the other, Raphael, then I guess there can be no bargain, and the woman is sacrificed to your stiff-neckedness."

"It is your bargain, Satan. You offered it, and you must perform your promise first. If this entire scene was set with me in mind, then you should have no objections to letting your bait go free."

Now it was Raphael's turn to close the s.p.a.ce between them. "Otherwise it is war between us, and though you are stronger than I and I cannot prevail, you will still not escape that battle unharmed."

Lucifer growled in his throat, but he reached a negligent hand toward Saara, in her concealment behind the wing.

"One moment," called the angel, and the pearly screen lifted like a fan. He leaned toward the woman and spoke. "Saara, when you are home you must forget this and not try to involve yourself with the Liar, neither out of anger nor revenge. Or once again he will have the power to take you captive."

The miniature naked woman ran toward him until the cord tightened against her leg. "Listen to me, Spirit! I don't want my life from your hands. I can't take another sacrifice on my behalf. You and I love the same person and by his own request I was to watch over you. I cannot live with the shame of this failure!"

"There is no shame, Saara," whispered Raphael. "And no failure. Not for you nor for me."

Lucifer found this conversation immensely distasteful. He completed the gesture which caused the tiny shape to vanish.

"She is now back where I found her," he announced.

Raphael's eyes grew a bit vague as he made sure the Devil spoke the truth. Then he glanced once more at the table. "You forgot her dress."

"We didn't bargain for the dress," snapped Lucifer. Then he strode away from the table and let the irritation of this minor defeat disappear in the satisfaction with the great victory it had bought him. He stared at Raphael with an expression of rapt wonder for some moments, knowing he had won. Knowing, despite his own accusation, that Raphael was true to his word and would make no effort to avoid what he had promised.

His. HIS. The beautiful and hated brother, symbol of all that feathered crew who had dared to conspire against him and to stand against him at the gates of eternity with their inane swords aflame! The Devil was trembling as Raphael had trembled, hearing Satan's terms. But it was neither fear nor disgust that caused him to shake, but a l.u.s.t that was nearly love: a l.u.s.t to touch once more, in the person of his brother, the very substance of heaven. A broad smile split Lucifer's face, exposing all his unangelic teeth.

Raphael also stood silent. Once again he did not seem fully aware of Lucifer before him. His eyes were almost closed. The angel's lips moved and he nodded, though no sound was audible in the chamber. Finally he came toward his brother. He held out his hand.

But now that the moment had come, Lucifer felt a desire to delay it. "A moment more, Raphael," he whispered. "Let me realize my success." His face was tight, and white patches stood out against his mottled cheeks. His jaw worked. His cloak of urbanity fell away from his face and form, revealing the demon tyrant that he was.

"You would have done better to go with me from the first, brother!" he hissed, and adderlike he struck out with both his blood-red hands, clasping Raphael's hand of ivory.

A shock pa.s.sed through the room, sending stinging pain through Kadjebeen's ears, and causing the little round demon to go rolling over the floor. It vibrated the dollhouse palace until its tiny turrets rattled.

Raphael gasped. He fell to his knees. But for the grip upon his hand he would have fallen flat on thefloor. His face was blank, like that of a man struck by lightning, and his mouth hung open. Wings beat spasmodically.

Lucifer's face was a mask of l.u.s.t as he gazed down at Raphael. His nostrils were distended like those of a pig, and like a pig his tushes overlapped his thin lips. His eyes became slits and he whined a b.e.s.t.i.a.l delight.

Two outstretched wings beat the floor stiffly, showering the walls and ceiling of the chamber with glimmers of pearl. The silvery pinions were twisted in disarray. Then, ceasing their convulsive movement, they fell twitching on the stones.

Lucifer grasped Raphaels hand harder, brutally squeezing it, and he panted with the effort of his satisfaction; his ashy breath fell gray and dismal onto Raphael.

Where the ashes fell the great wings smoked. Their l.u.s.ter faded to the color of snow, and like snow they melted away into the wind which scoured the room.

Under that dusty fall of ash the gleam of Raphael's gown, too, faded, till it was nothing but shabby linen cloth, and the radiance of his face went out.

With an audible pop the chamber a.s.serted its rights. The wind trapped within the four windows threw itself against the barriers and died.

There was nothing on the flagstones of the chamber but a yellow-haired man lying motionless: his eyes closed and his lips parted. Already a bruise was forming where his face had struck the floor.

Kadjebeen emitted a small grunt of unhappiness. He had really been very interested in those wings.

But it was a small grunt meant for his own ears only. He watched his master drop the pale hand, which slapped the flagstones limply.

Lucifer raised his eyes. He found he was still trembling. He paced over to the single chair and sat in it, waiting for the tremor to pa.s.s. Unaccountably he was tired-tired and somewhat shaken-somewhat at a loss. As though it had been he himself reduced to a thing of clay and blood, and not his enemy.

But he had his victory, and he stared down at it. Things could hardly be better. Of course Raphael's new shape was still beautiful, as measured by the standards of man. Lucifer briefly considered making alterations.

He could cut off the fellow's nose and ears, or put out his left eye. A hole in the cheek, perhaps, by which the food would dribble out. That would be amusing.

But frowning reflectively, he put away that further pleasure. Anything which changed that face would make him seem less like Raphael to Lucifer, and therefore damage rather than enhance his revenge. It was sufficient that his brother was reduced to the sc.u.m over whose interests he had dared oppose Lucifer. That was the main thing. And besides, there would be plenty of time later to add artistic touches.

Let him sing his songs of praise now, and boast of his close relatives in high places. As the Almighty hadn't lifted a finger in defense of his seraph up until now, Lucifer was confident that He wouldn't be quick to reach out a hand to an archangel of human clay.

Now-what to do with the fellow. Lucifer's first idea, when he had solidified his strategy, had been to keep his brother as he had discussed keeping Saara: caged in squalor, under his eye.

But he had had to toss that idea away, for even in the wretched form into which he had been locked, Lucifer didn't trust Raphael's influence upon the palace staff.

Not one of them was loyal, he reflected bitterly. Not a d.a.m.ned one of them, no matter how much he burned and beat them.

Least of all did he trust Kadjebeen, who had trundled out into the middle of the room and stood regarding the man on the floor. Kadjebeen was TOO handy, and inclined to have ideas.

But he was useful.

"Have this thing scourged," Lucifer growled to his servant. "I want him half-killed. Then find... find Perfecto of Granada wherever he is and sell the brute to him. If the slaver has no money, give Raphael to him anyway and tell him I'll collect later."He is not to refuse."

As Kadjebeen scuttled (albeit unwillingly) off to set the wheels of torture in motion, Lucifer regarded the fruit of his labor.

The fall of flaxen hair half hid Raphael's features-which were as always, except for the light which had gone out of them. But there was a pale dust of hair on the arm which poked out of the simple white sleeve, and a network of fine lines creased the flesh between the thumb and forefinger. The robe had fallen crumpled to one side, exposing one quite ordinary leg up to the knee. The man's breath came raggedly, and a trickle of blood ran out of his nose.

Lucifer chuckled to himself. As perfectly imperfect as any on the earth!

"Behold! I have made a man," he whispered aloud, and then he shook his head at his own cleverness.

"If that isn't creation," he added, "then I don't know what is."

3.

Dull anguish rolled over him like waves of an untiring ocean, pierced by bolts of lancing pain. But worse than the pain was a nagging conviction which lay beneath it that something was missing; something was terribly wrong. Confusion thwarted all of Raphael's efforts to think; he had no weapon with which to fight it, for he had never before known what it was to be confused.

"I am screaming at myself," he thought wonderingly. He heard the parts of his body-his wounded back, his bruised cheek, and savagely twisted hand-howling their protest against the rest of him. "I know," he replied to the pain. "I know what you are saying, but I can't help it. I can't."

Not for comfort exactly, but for understanding, he threw himself upon mercy.

"Tell me what it is, Father," he begged within himself. "Tell me how to hear this pain rightly. I'm frightened; tell me what it is that is so wrong, which I've forgotten and I know I must remember."

But this message only echoed in his ravaged head. No answer came.

No music, no words. No vision, comfort, chiding, or instruction. No touch of awareness at all. The Other within him was gone as though it had never existed. And suddenly Raphael knew that THAT was what had been wrong- wrong beyond pain and beyond confusion. A dreadful closed emptiness within him.

He flailed his arms, not knowing what the motions were. He made noises.

Lombardy in August could not hold a candle to the heat of the Moorish State of Granada during the same month. In Lombardy the gra.s.s was dry, but at least it was gra.s.s.

On the brown hills forty miles south of the Andalusian city the ground was crazed like pottery glazing.

The midday heat drove even the birds from the sky. Beasts of all sorts sheltered in the shadows of the rocks.

Beside a sheer walled table of stone (a divot laid carefully on the dry dirt) a single iron chain looped in swags through seven iron collars. Seven slaves had s.p.a.ced themselves out evenly like birds on a fence, seeking their own s.p.a.ce in the sliver of shadow left by the table's overhang.

Three of the women were Saqalibah: the pale, broad-faced people who had been slaves to the Moors for so many hundreds of years that they fell in the same cla.s.s with the Arab horse and other animals of pedigree. Two others had spoken Spanish as children, and one spoke Spanish, Arabic, and Langue d'Ouil, all of them badly, and was uncertain in her muddled memory which language had come first. The last woman, at the end of the chain, was a black, dressed in heavy desert indigo, complete with ta.s.sels and coins. She had been put at the end of the chain because she picked fights.

All the slaves were women. The merchants Perfecto and Hakiim specialized in women-women andeunuchs.

Hakiim gazed sourly at an eighth slave, who writhed over the sandy ground at the end of a separate chain. His partner, Perfecto, had brought him in about an hour ago, slung over the back of a pack horse, and dumped him there on the ground. Neither Perfecto nor Hakiim could bring himself to touch him.

"The currency of that one's understanding has been devalued, I think," Hakiim drawled to Perfecto.

"If it is not entirely counterfeit."

Perfecto could do little, but shrug. "I had reasons to buy him."

Hakiim didn't want to start an argument, for Perfecto was a man of chancy temper. And he was underhanded (like most Christians), and unpredictable. Hakiim was not a Spaniard, and he had no desire to gain enemies in a country where he had so few friends.

Still, that the fellow should wander off into the dry hills and return with THIS-this piece of damaged property, probably crazy to boot. Perfecto usually had good business sense, at least.

"Saqalibah?" mused the Moor, turning the blond head gently with a boot toe. "Either that or Northman, I imagine. We might as well claim he is Saqalibah; with a. eunuch, purity of line cannot matter.

"Were it not for the scars, he would make a good harem boy. Or... plaything. Fine face, to be sure, and the coloring is uncommon."

Perfecto regarded his prize with a jaundiced eye. Truth to tell, he liked his prize less than Hakiim did, having been forced to pay good money for him and to act grateful into the bargain.

And he shuddered, remembering the interview during which he had acquired the slave. Perfecto hated doing business with the Devil's crew. His fears ate through him like acid, worse and worse with every summons, and he longed for a graceful way to close the account which stood between the Devil and himself. But it had been almost twenty years now since Perfecto opened this account with a bit of casual homicide, and pay out as he might, the Spaniard always seemed to be in the red.

Perfecto wasn't at all sure what he had been forced to purchase. Was this pretty-faced imbecile a straight bit of goods-some court eunuch who had incurred h.e.l.lish displeasure, or the slave of some high official who had perhaps made contract with Satan and then tried to recant? He had a splendidly n.o.ble face, after all, or would have had, had any intelligence remained behind it.

Or was this but the Devil's bad joke on Perfecto himself, ready to change into a lion or a monstrous adder when least expected? Perfecto had certain nightmares...

He answered Hakiim grimly. "He must have been some man's little toy once. But he's a bit large for such cuddles now.

"And of course there will be scars on the back, especially with the way he's grinding the dirt in."

For the blond slave had stopped thras.h.i.+ng and lay quietly now in his much stained linen, directly on the wounds of his back.