Raphael (14 page)

Yet she said nothing, for among the Lapps (who were all song wizards), to tell a person to stop his music was to tell him to stop his being. She merely wondered if the twigs of the alpine willow would be effective against headache.

Gaspare, who had been raised (or who had raised himself) in the shadow of the mountains, drank deep lungfuls of air scented with evergreens, and he turned his eaglet's face to the stony north. He felt sparks of energy within him like the sparks the horse's feet made hitting stone. Gaspare had only the vaguest idea where they were going, but he had confidence.

Saara did not, for she had no faith in their present course.

It was not that she doubted the words of the spirit, but she knew that there is no translation as difficult as that between the living and the dead, and what Damiano had meant by saying Gaspare knew the way to the Liar's hall might be something completely different from having the boy lead her there.

In fact, would Damiano—who had died rather than let her risk herself—have sanctioned bringing this clumsy young fellow into danger of body and of spirit? If he HAD meant for Gaspare to fling himself against Satan, then the dead were indeed a different order than the living. And though Damiano's suggestion was little more than Saara had protested that same night on her own behalf—that one must not keep a soul from its proper risks—still she found it difficult to extend that liberty to others whom she felt were not fit to meet the challenge. Gaspare, for instance. What could he do against pure wickedness, and how could he survive?

Saara shuddered over the ruthless understanding of the dead.

But perhaps it was all in error. Perhaps he had meant she would find the path by looking in the boy's eyes, or in some ceremony of their Christian church. She had never studied these Italians' rites. Perhaps Gaspare was right in supposing that the Devil (this time) lay in the south.

Perhaps, perhaps. Doubt, like black water, seeped into her small feathered body and chilled her. She felt old.

She WAS old: old and past her prime. Off on a fool's errand, and caught in a battle of spirits which would have been too great for her strength anytime. She would be trodden underfoot, and Gaspare—he would fly screaming, only to be taken by the Liar and twisted beyond recognition. It would have been better not to have come. It would be better now to turn back. To Lombardy or farther. All the way back to the frozen fens of home.

The dove's heart tripped and pounded. Her vision swam and her wings grew numb. She felt the cold, groping fingers search toward her, impelling rout.

She felt rather than saw Gaspare raise his head from his instrument. He made a noise in his throat.

“Play, Gaspare,” the bird cried. “Don't lose the beat!”

Gaspare obeyed out of a musician's reflex, counting silently and coming down heavy on the bass, while Saara retreated into the simple, incorruptible thoughts of a bird. After a moment or two the vile blind fingers passed over and faded.

Saara sighed and fluttered to the stones of the road. In another moment she was human again. She clutched her head in both hands. “Gaspare,” she began, her voice quavering like that of an ancient. “Gaspare, young one. You keep your lute handy; it is your greatest protection.

“Do you understand me?” she added, for Gaspare was staring blankly down at her braided head.

He did not answer directly, but asked in turn, “What do you mean, protection? Has something happened?”

Saara herself was shaking. She slid down against a rock and hid her head in her arms. “Yes, of course. Didn't you feel the attack? I can still smell it in the air!”

Gaspare shifted his scarecrow anatomy on the horse's black back. “I feel only that my butt is a little sore. And smell?” He took a deep snort. “I smell the air of the mountains. It's very good.”

Saara's hazel eyes pitied his obtuseness. “Nonetheless, young one, there has been great danger here.”

She bit her Up. “It is as I feared. All the while we are looking for the Devil, he is looking for us.”

She was quite correct; Lucifer was attempting to repair his neglect of the primitives in this world, at least to the extent of locating Saara and dealing with her.

And though he had enjoyed Raphael's misery with good appetite, it was the angel's confusion and sense of abandonment which really pleased his palate. After a little while that confusion subsided, because even in the form of a human slave Raphael could not be kept wholly apart from grace. In fact, the most satisfying waves of desperation in the little drama were coming from the Spaniard Perfecto, and such anguish was a cheap drink and unsubtle.

So now Lucifer was taking the time to seek out ants, which is to say, he was looking for the bothersome Saara. He had not forgotten the teeth of the bear in his neck.

But Saara, though powerful, was not a terribly complex person. She was not prone to greed, and understood neither sin nor sanctity. She had no more shame than a bird on a branch.

Consequently, she was very difficult for Lucifer to find.

He stepped away from his window. “Kadjebeen,” he whispered sweetly to the air. “Kadjebeen, I have a bone to pick with you.”

The raspberry demon waddled unhappily out from under the table. His eye stalks were wilted as he regarded his infernal master. “I'm sorry, Your Magnificence,” he squeaked nervously. “Whatever it was, I will not do it again.”

Lucifer's blue eyes flickered. “You won't disarm me so easily, you mountebank. I thought I told you to beat that scum till he was half-dead.”

“Yes, well, so I did, Lord.”

Lucifer's elegant brow rose in feigned surprise. “You did? Then why, may I ask, can I perceive him from out this window, trotting quite competently down a road in Granada, only four and twenty hours later?”

Kadjebeen's eyes (also blue, like those of a scallop) stared at one another and blinked. They knotted together in thought, and at last the demon replied, “Your Magnificence, it is difficult to know exactly how much of life or death makes half. I thought that if I erred, it ought to be on the conservative side.”

“You have always got an answer,” drawled Lucifer, frozen faced, and he raised his carnelian hand. The raspberry demon ran (rolled, really) across the floor at great speed, but he was not fast enough.

“What use IS the stupid beast!” spat Gaspare with childish disdain as he and Saara together tried to haul a scrabbling Festilligambe up the slick bulge of a road-blocking boulder. On the other side of this obstacle lay miles of broad, flat land and a choice of roads, but it seemed that near was no closer than far, for they had been struggling with the horse all afternoon. The gelding's frantic pants left little crystal clouds in the air.

“Do not blame him,” chided Saara. “He cannot help that this is no road for horses.” With what would have been suicidal confidence in a less stock-wise person, she got behind the horse, next to his dancing hind feet, and pushed. Festilligambe wedged one hoof securely into a crack in the stone and his sweating black quarters rippled with effort.

He was up.

Gaspare, who was still pulling, was knocked flat and overrun. Festilligambe's hooves slipped and skidded around Gaspare's head.

The redhead rose howling, both hands clapped to the back of his head. “Murder! Son of a sow! Bladder full of piss! You touch me once more and I'll knife your black belly!”

Saara put her hand against Festilligambe's shoulder, averting the horse's natural hysteria. She herself was scandalized. “Gaspare! What shame to threaten a fine, useful beast—who didn't even step on you!

“Control yourself, young one. It was you who wanted him to come.”

Gaspare did not often remember his mother or her abortive efforts to discipline him. As a matter of fact, the woman was best forgotten, but Saara's maternal correction sent him into a rage.

“Wanted him? Yes, I wanted to ride, but the sow's son has dragged his feet for all of a week. He is spoiled meat, and overdue for the whip!

“The whip!” he repeated, snapping his fingers by his right ear. The words had given rise to the idea. But Gaspare didn't have a whip, so frantically he grabbed for the end of the makeshift halter rope.

Saara had no intention of allowing Gaspare to beat the horse. To exercise one's passions on a beast of burden was one of the worst crimes of her nomadic society. She could stop Gaspare with three words sung in ascending melody, and she opened her mouth to do so.

But Gaspare needed no spell to freeze him, for he stood still with the rope end raised in one shaking hand, while the horse rolled his eyes at him. Silence was broken only by the sweet calls of the alpine birds. He shook his head, as though denying something which was being said to him.

And there was something in the heavy flush of Gaspare's face and the shallow glint of his mad eye which pulled a memory from Saara. That carnelian visage, and that cold light of hate…

Saara raised her head and sniffed the air. She felt no attack, no approaching hand of despair over her.

It was Gaspare's personal battle.

And it seemed the boy was at loggerheads with himself. His shoulders were hunched and his fists balled, as though he would throw himself at some invisible obstacle. His lips trembled and his hairless chin went slick with sweat. Saara watched with guarded pity, too wise to interfere. What was the Devil's weapon here: pride, as Damiano had warned him, and the anger that it nourished? Saara could not know. Nor did she want to know, for it was none of her business.

Without anything obvious happening—neither change in the light of afternoon nor in the interrogative calls of the birds—the battle was ended. Gaspare straightened. His large eyes softened from steel-white to green, and his hands relaxed. He gave a great exhausted sob.

“Gaspare,” whispered Saara. He turned to her.

“Look about you now,” she commanded. “And tell me which way.”

The young man did not ask for an explanation. With a weary face he peered into the distance first right and then left. Finally he pointed directly north. “This way,” he grunted. “There is no doubt.”

Gaspare had not picked an easy path. After a few miles there was some doubt he had picked a path at all. The travelers found themselves in a cleft of round stones between jagged piled cliffs. There were few trees and little grass, though Festilligambe plunged his black muzzle into any damp-looking crevice he saw.

Coming to a crest in a trail which seemed to have been created only by the rain, they found themselves in the reverse of the position they had been in only an hour previously. The ground dropped suddenly by at least six feet, and the fall was almost sheer to bare stone below.

“We cannot take the horse down this,” announced Saara. “We must retrace our steps and go around.”

“Go around what?” asked her companion, with an ironical lift to his eyebrows. “The Alps?” He gestured from the slab of granite on their left to that of basalt upon their right. Evening light had turned the west to gold, while the black basalt loomed uncomfortably close.

Saara bit her Up. She was not feeling especially confident, and it was late in the day for decisions. “Back to the crossroad then. At least there is flat ground on which to sleep, and some grass.”

Gaspare looked at the horse's ribs. “Yeah. He could use it,” he grudgingly admitted. He took the animal's halter in his hand. “Although I'd rather be beat by fists than have to endure that upsy downsy one more time.

“Come on, boy,” Gaspare said to Festilligambe. “You can't help being a dumb, clumsy horse who can't climb hills.”

Festilligambe did not have a speaking tongue, and even after the association first with Damiano and now with Saara, he did not understand Italian.

But he did understand something, for with a twist of his sinuous neck he freed himself from Gaspare's grip. He gathered his quarters under him and threw himself off the little cliff and into space.

Festilligambe was an excellent jumper. He had once cleared an eight-foot wall burdened by two (very skinny) riders. But he had never before flown, so when Saara and Gaspare saw the gelding give a great kick with his hind feet, twist in the air, and disappear, they could do nothing but stare.

Gaspare flung himself face down at the edge. “He's… he's not there!” the redhead exclaimed. “Not running away, not broken on the stones. Where the hell DID he go?”

Saara, though she stood wide-eyed, was thinking. After a few silent moments she motioned to Gaspare. “Don't worry, young one.”

“What do you mean, don't worry? The brute has my water bag on him. He has my LUTE!”

Saara only smiled. “Trust me, Gaspare. Trust me as I trust you. And I do trust you, for you are a true and faithful guide. Take my hand.”

Gaspare glared dubiously at the witch, for after all her motherly proddings and botherations he could not believe she had suddenly perceived him as an object of romance.

She was forced to snag his hand by the knuckles. “Now, Gaspare. If you want to find your lute again.

“We go one, two, three, and…

“Jump!”

Gaspare had no choice. She dragged him to the edge and leaped off. He could either follow or be pulled head first.

A wrench. White granite blurred and twisted. Black basalt spread over the universe. Down went sideways and he hit on his hip and hands.

It was still evening. Festilligambe stood before him, with Gaspare's bag still safe, though it had slipped over the gelding's neck and hung like a heavy pendant. The horse stood on three feet, resting one hooftip gingerly on the ground. He nickered.

Saara was beside him, climbing slowly to her feet. Her dress was dust-coated up the back and so was her hair. “I am not a cat,” the witch stated regretfully, rubbing the back of her neck.

“What happened, my lady? What hit us?” Gaspare inched his knees up under him. They were unwilling, seeming to belong to someone else.