The Damiano Series (72 page)

Saara plucked at the red band around her ankle, but it was so much rusty iron. “Filthy liar,” she spat once more, somewhat wearily. “You cannot touch me.”

Lucifer giggled. “But my dear little pullet! Obviously I have touched you.

“And you made it inevitable that I should,” he added, in the tone of exaggerated seriousness which adults reserve for talking intelligently with children.

And which drives all intelligent children wild.

“If a man gives me the slightest encouragement, I am able to help him hither to my fastness. But you—how lovely it was—came here under your own power, almost against my very will.”

“I am not a man,” said Saara, sitting with one leg folded and the other knee propped. “And I still say you cannot touch me.”

Lucifer smiled wider than was his wont, until Saara could see the serrated edges of his teeth. “It doesn't matter that you are not a man, for ‘the male,' (he quoted) ‘embraces the female.' “ He laughed at his own rather stale wit and poked her belly with his little finger.

Saara had never been to a school in her life and her knowledge of grammer was embryonic. “What on earth are you talking about, you dirty thing? Nobody would embrace you!”

Then the whimsical light went out of his eyes. “Scrawny pullet,” he barked, and he ground his teeth at her. “I will derive a great deal of pleasure out of pulling you apart.”

Saara looked directly at him, and then through him, and finally turned her back on him and sat staring at the windowless wall of the model to which she was tied.

Lucifer's high color rose higher, from carnelian to the hue of fresh-butchered meat. Hissing, he plucked up the red thread and dangled the woman by her ankle. Her brown braids swung below her head, and her dress crawled up to her armpits. Sniggering, he pulled it off, leaving her to dangle naked. Bestowing this additional humiliation upon Saara did a lot toward restoring the Devil's temper.

Her body was lithe, and blushed like the skin of a peach.

“You know, little insignificant peeper, that you weren't even the sparrow I was out to snare? Not even THAT important.”

Saara climbed up her own leg and then up the length of red string until she hung upright by her two hands. She didn't seem to care or notice that she was naked.

“I know,” she replied. “It was pretty obvious you were after Gaspare. Well, you won't be able to use that trick on him again, dressing up like Damiano. Gaspare must have seen an eyeful.”

The red cord trembled with Lucifer's annoyance. “Have you no sense but to hang there and throw offense at me, savage? Don't you know how I'm going to make you suffer?”

“I know how you made Damiano suffer,” was her undisturbed retort. “Yet it didn't get you anywhere, did it?”

The tiny woman's body was spinning around with the natural movement of the twine, and the chamber of four windows passed under her review. She noted it as carefully as she could, especially the vista outside the window by which she had entered.

Obviously they were not really in the Alpine mountains. They were probably in no definite place at all; Saara had enough experience in the realms of magic to know that its geography was unpredictable. When her spinning brought her around to Kadjebeen, squatting in his dim corner, she actually laughed.

“What an unfortunate creature!” she cried aloud. “I wonder how it can manage, looking like that!”

The raspberry-shaped and raspberry-colored demon did not particularly like being laughed at, but he found some comfort in the knowledge that this stranger had immediate sympathy with his biggest problem in life. His Magnificence (who had had a clear hand in the molding of Kadjebeen) had never deigned to express any interest in his servant's consequent plight.

Still Saara spun, coming back around to face the Devil's perfect features and exposed fangs.

“So you noticed little Kadjebeen, did you?” Lucifer snickered, enjoying his captive's dizzying movement. “How would you like to be turned into another like him?”

But Saara had spent too much time as a bird to be made motion sick. “You can't,” she replied casually. “I am not afraid of hunger, so you have no power over my belly or mouth, and I am not afraid of YOU, so you cannot make me shrink like that against the ground. And as for his eyes—well, they must bug out from fear, as well, for he can have no great desire to be able to look back at that face of his!”

“Enough elementary lessons in transmigration,” Lucifer growled. He blew Saara into a faster spin.

“There is, after all, a reason I have brought you here.”

“YOU brought ME?” The spin added a peculiar tremolo to Saara's words. “A moment ago you said I came in spite of you.”

“Some of each,” replied the Devil equably, and losing interest, he dropped the whirling woman to the tabletop. “It is of no account by which way you came. Nor does it really matter that you're not Gaspare of San Gabriele. What matters is that you are a good enough bait to draw my brother Raphael to me.”

Saara had landed on her feet, still holding the length of red twine in her hands. She stared blankly at the huge carmine face above her. “Raphael? You mean the Chief of Eagles? You mean the music teacher?”

Lucifer's amusement spread all over his face. “We certainly have the same party in mind, little witch. Raphael the many-feathered warbler, who happens to be my disgusting lesser brother.”

The naked woman rolled a coil of twine and sat herself down upon it. She examined Lucifer appraisingly. “They say the eagle is kin to the bald-headed vulture—who also has a very red face, like yours.”

In an instant's ungovernable fury Lucifer spat at Saara: spat an incendiary spittle which exploded around her like Greek fire. She barely had time to roll herself into a ball before the flash was around her. To the stuffiness of the air was added the stench of burnt hair.

Saara uncoiled, slightly pinker than she had been and missing most of her braids. Her heart was pounding and she could feel the blood rushing into her face and even through her ears.

But none of this was fear. Instead she felt a mad exhaltation, as it seemed her long life had at last come to some point.

“You picked a bad bait to use, if you want to attract the Chief of Eagles,” she said casually, examining a slightly charred fingernail. “We haven't gotten along very well.”

“I wonder who you HAVE gotten along with, you tusked sow!” growled the Devil, but he was unable to hide the fact that this information displeased him. He drummed enormous fingers on the tabletop (his rhythm was off).

“That hardly matters,” he said at last. “Raphael is the sort who would not let a small thing like justly despising you stand in the way of self-sacrifice. He is quite perverse that way, my brother. In fact, a mortal he dislikes may be the better for my purpose.” Then Lucifer yawned.

“Likely ANY mortal would have done.”

Boredom recalled Lucifer to his own intention. “Why do I sit here communing with this bit of insignificant spleen?” he murmured. “I need only raise my voice now, and…”

Suddenly the witch on the table seemed infected by madness. She rose from her stringy chair and began to jump up and down, her round breasts jouncing in opposition to her movement. “He'll blast you, windbag! The Eagle will tear you limb from limb. He'll turn you into a bright-red leather handbag. He'll…” and then Saara stopped bouncing long enough to perform an extremely complex and obscene gesture which she had learned in the Italies. When she felt she once more had Lucifer's attention, she began to curse him in earnest.

Forbearance was not the Devil's strongest attribute. Yet his only visible reaction to this torrent of abuse was a momentary tightening of the jaw. “If you didn't believe I could damage this spirit you claim to hate” (Saara actually had claimed no such thing), “you would not be so eager now to have me kill you.

“You will just have to be patient,” he adjured the tiny woman, and turned from the table.

Lucifer looked out each of his windows in turn, wasting not a glance on Kadjebeen, who was still squatting obediently in his corner, feeling his mouth with his spidery fingers and staring ruefully at his stumpy short legs.

In the Prince of Earth a fierce emotion was rising: a satisfaction which thought itself joy but bore more resemblance to pride. Like a player of some intricate, slow-moving board game, he had plotted out a hundred future moves in this bitter duel with Raphael (more bitter because he suspected that Raphael was not even aware of it as a duel) and had decided that he could not lose.

Meanwhile the Lappish curses continued from the little witch tied to the model on the table. Only Kadjebeen listened.

“Raphael,” called Lucifer composedly, in a voice no louder than that he had used to call his servant. “Raphael, my dear brother, why don't you drop by and see me?”

There was a minute's silence. Lucifer knew this didn't indicate that Raphael hadn't heard him, or that the roads were bad. Sharpening his very flexible voice, the Devil added, “I advise you very strongly to make the visit, brother. You will find you are not my only guest.”

Suddenly a wind swirled through the windows of the chamber, as though whatever barrier had kept the airs of the world from entering had been breached. It was a confused wind, as the mint dryness of the Alps met the breath of orchids, while sand and sandalwood clashed with pine. But it was very fresh. It made Saara lift her head and sniff, and little Kadjebeen, in his corner, began to burble with worry.

The air flickered with a light like sun filtered through a net of pearls: a soft radiance which rippled and danced. It was the gleam given off by the white wings of Raphael.

The face was the same as Lucifer's, though perhaps there was a greater virility in the high, sharp set of Lucifer's cheekbones. Lucifer's hair, too, was a richer color, to match the more-than-ruddiness of his skin.

But Lucifer's eyes were a pale and watchful blue, while those of Raphael were summer evening itself, with stars shining through darkness.

He was dressed very simply, almost sketchily, in a white garment which Lucifer called (under his breath) “the same old undershirt.” He was shorter and slighter than Lucifer. But the thing which distinguished Raphael from his brother was, of course, that frame of enormous, opalescent, galleon-sail wings: wings which seemed to be nothing more than the radiance of his nature taking on form.

So although Lucifer was striking, Raphael was beautiful, and no creature who had ever had the luck to see him had denied his beauty, or had come away unaffected by the sight.

Raphael had never seen himself, nor had he ever had any desire to see himself.

Kadjebeen saw Raphael and his blue eyes yearned forward on their stalks. He regarded the face of light and the brilliant wings— yes, especially the wings—and he thought in his artisanly way that he'd like to build something that looked like that.

Saara gazed at Raphael with an expression akin to pain. She was not considering his face or form, however, but his danger. And as she remembered that Damiano had loved the angel, she also remembered that she had not always been understanding about that. She turned her head away.

Lucifer looked at his brother and flinched; the Devil himself flinched and uttered a strangled cry, for he was as sensitive to beauty as any creature born. It hurt him.

Raphael saw his brother's wincing without surprise. Lucifer always reacted to the sight of him like that. He regarded Lucifer with his own, quite different feelings. “What is it, Satan? What wicked deed is in your hands now?”

Lucifer's great eyes rounded and he lifted his hands in protest, if not to heaven, then at least to the sky. “And they dare to call me cruel! He convicts me of crime without knowing there has been a crime, and though he is kin to me, refuses me my proper name!

“Raphael, you are nothing but a bigot—a narrow-minded and conventional burgher among a similar rabble, fearing to be anything more or less than your neighbor.” Lucifer sighed with sad disapproval, but he found his eyes sliding away from that visage of light.

“But no matter, brother. I brought you here only to help me identify a creature. You have always been so interested in… animal husbandry.

“See,” he proclaimed, gesturing openhanded toward Saara on the table. “It attacked me in Lombardy and hung around my neck halfway home.”

As he approached the table; Lucifer waved his hand once more and a buff-colored dove appeared, wings spread and beak open in threat. At another motion of Lucifer's the dove became a snowy owl which blinked, hissing, in the light of day.

At a third command the bird swelled into a white bear, which, though miniature, was still large enough to yank Kadjebeen's model after it as it lunged wildly at the Devil's throat. The demon squeaked in apprehension.

“What do you suppose it is?” inquired Lucifer of his brother.

Raphael stood beside the table. His wings spread out sideways, almost dividing the chamber in two. His face was gentle.

“She is the greatest witch in the Italies,” he replied to Lucifer. “Perhaps the greatest in all Europe.

“God be with you, Saara of the Saami,” said Raphael to her.

As though she were throwing off a great weight, Saara divested herself of the shapes the Devil forced upon her.

“Get out of here, Chief of Eagles. It's a trap.”

Raphael met her eyes, but made no reply. Instead his wings rose slowly to the vaulted ceiling, and he asked, “Why did you do this, Satan? This woman was never any business of yours.”

Lucifer's sculpted eyebrows echoed the movement of the angel's wings. “Satan you call me, as though you were some grubbing mortal yourself! And you tell me what is my business…”

He strode across the room, his hands locked behind his back and his gaze wandering mildly out of the windows. “That is miserable manners even when the busybody is right, but in this case, Raphael, you are quite mistaken. There is in this little female a streak of bitterness and jealousy I can quite appreciate—jealousy of whom, I wonder, brother? But even if there were not… even if she were that rare, malformed, or brainless sort of mortal content with everything that befell him…