The Damiano Series (82 page)

“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.

Saara chuckled ruefully. “The edge of the world hit us, Gaspare. For me it was the second time, though it is easier when one is a bird.

“But be glad. It means we are on the right path.”

Gaspare ignored all this, for Saara was capable of talking as crazily as Delstrego in his prime. He stood up and stared at a welter of broken points of rock. “It doesn't look the same from down here,” he said, and then he shivered.

“From up here,” Saara corrected him. “And it shouldn't, for we've come a very long way, I think.”

After a short cold night's sleep they were on their way again. Saara took bird form and made a sweep of the bare windy peaks, while Gaspare led Festilligambe along the only path they had.

It was a poor path and the beast was very hungry.

By the time the dove fluttered down again the horse had refused to move. Gaspare, weary of fighting and mistrusting his own temper, was seated on a bare stone. His back was turned toward Festilligambe, while his gaze rested along a gore of the mountains, facing south. There the Alps tumbled away to a low, mauve horizon. He started as Saara spoke.

“There is a tunnel ahead, boy: not natural, I think. The path descends into it.”

“Not natural!” Gaspare swiveled to find Saara seated on the horse's back, sidesaddle. “You mean it was made by… You mean we have found the doorway into hell?”

“I do not think so, for the hall I entered was high above ground in all its windows. Yet it is significant, I am sure.”

Gaspare proceeded on tiptoe, though with Festilligambe's castanet hooves behind him he might have saved himself the trouble. Saara's little bare toes made no sound at all as they gripped rock and gravel.

“Odd,” whispered the redhead, “that we've seen no one at all for days. We're not THAT far north, are we?”

His hissing voice echoed along the pass, amplified by some trick of sound. The noise continued long after he'd stopped talking.

“I have no idea where we are,” answered the witch equably. “Not since we fell sideways off the rock. But I know it's where we want to go.” Now the sound in the air mimicked high wind, though no breath ruffled Festilligambe's mane. Then suddenly it was cut short, and the subsequent silence was even more ominous.

Saara slipped down from the horse, sniffing delicately. “What do you smell, Gaspare?”

The youth snorted obediently, and then again through curiosity. “I don't know, my lady. Sandalwood, perhaps?

“Or, no: What's wrong with my nose to say that? I think it's a stable.”

Saara did not laugh at these conjectures. Instead she wrinkled her brow. “More like fresh cut wood than horse dung, I think. But there's something animal in it, also.”