Damiano - Raphael Part 10

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 p.i.s.s! 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 effects 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 sows 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 makes.h.i.+ft halter rope.

Saara had no intention of allowing Gaspare to beat the horse. To exercise one's pa.s.sions 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 gra.s.s, 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 lip. 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 gra.s.s."

Gaspare looked at the horses 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 a.s.sociation 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 h.e.l.l 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 Gaspares 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 sowas 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 s.h.i.+vered.

"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 swivelled to find Saara seated on the horse's back, sidesaddle. "You mean it was made by... You mean we have found the doorway into h.e.l.l?"

"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 Fes-tilligambe'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 pa.s.s, 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."

They pa.s.sed between a tower of granite and a sloping drop of some hundred feet, and there before them was white stone with a round black hole cut into it, and it was from this source that came both the odd wind noise and the smell.

Festilligambe balked. So did Gaspare. "We cannot go in there, Saara. It is altogether dark, and may pitch us down a cliff!"

The witch bit her lower lip and studied the entrance. It was regular and very smooth, but round as a foxhole. The rim of it was rounded and full of hardened bubbles, as though the rock were mere dried mud. "Not altogether dark. Unless it is very long, there will be some daylight in it. Give my eyes time and I will see what I need to see.

"You wait here," she said grandly, and she stepped under the arch.Instantly Gaspare's refusal to continue warred with a contradictory anger at being left behind. He watched her glimmering slim figure fade into the depths. "Gaspare of San Gabriele," he growled aloud, "you ought to be ashamed. Really ashamed of yourself.

"And you too," he added spitefully to the trembling horse.

Dark, dark. Daylight faded much more quickly than Saara had expected. The witch had never studied bat form (not foreseeing that she would one day find herself in the velvet blackness at the heart of a mountain far above the plains of the earth), but she had studied the high art of making do, and she used every one of her human senses to test her progress.

The floor was smooth as a well-made roadbed and round as the sides of a barrel. The walls, scarcely fifteen feet apart, ran smooth. Saara was tempted to give up a slow hands-and-feet approach, trusting the pa.s.sage to remain level and intact. But Gaspare was right: there might be holes. If this tunnel had been built by the Liar (surely it was built by craft), there would likely be surprises of some nature.

Within, the smell was stronger: musky (like a stable, Gaspare had said) yet tinged with a dry perfume like that of no beast of her knowledge. The hissing wind came louder, and in regular gusts.

Surprises of some nature.

Saara resisted the temptation to change shape. What was the use in becoming a bear before one knew bear qualities were needed? It was hard to think, when one was a bear, and if she were forced to confront the Liar himself it would be wiser (if anything about confronting the Liar could be wise) to do so in her true image.

On. It was unnaturally dark, though Saara could smell no sorcery around her. (No human sorcery, she qualified, for the deceits of the Liar were subtle.) There was only the musky sandalwood smell, and that grew no thicker, never approaching rankness.

Either her eyes adjusted between one moment and the next, or there was light ahead.

Air eddied roughly in the pa.s.sage, like streams of water which smash against a stone wall. Saara turned to look over her shoulder at the still blackness she had crossed. Had she had the luck of pa.s.sing through the tunnel without encountering its heavy-breathing occupant? How, when her witch sense hadn't hinted of any side pa.s.sage?

Gray day shone on granite, sparking tiny lights like jewels. A dead end?

No, merely a right-angle turn. Saara crawled over something colder than stone. It was an enormous ring of iron, anch.o.r.ed into rock. A chain stretched from it, so heavy she could not budge one of the links which twisted down the tunnel, toward the light.

Sunlight and the smell of cinnamon, sandalwood, cedar: a dry, sharp smell.

The tunnel was not at an end, but here was a cleft in it, a break clean and cruel as though struck by a heavenly ax. One hundred feet away, on the far side of this splash of yellow, the foxhole continued, black and round. But in the middle of the sunlight sprawled the heavy-sighing wearer of the chain.

He was not coiled: not like withies are coiled to make a basket. His metallic length lay in a sort of G-clef pattern, and though in the sun he glinted in a rich array of red, green, and indigo, his color was black.

Black except his head, which was golden horned, his face framed by a whole series of scaly spiked collars, yellow, scarlet, and indigo, giving him the appearance of a chrysanthemum with a long, bare stem.

He had four legs, no sign of wings, and a crest like little burnished flames which ran from neck to tail tip, some ninety feet in all. His eyes were enormous, gold, slitted like a cat's, and staring down at Saara from great heights.

The greatest witch in the Italics had seen dragons and wyverns before, and would have recognized many fell beasts on sight, but she had never seen anything like this. She stood stock-still while she framed in her mind what might be the greatest power song of her life. Or the last one.

The creature pulled iron-black lips from teeth the blue-white of skimmed milk. Each of these was the size and shape of a scimitar, and his tongue between them was forked. The noise of forges increased. A movement began at the creature's tail and traveled up the serpentine length of him, like the flood crest ofa river when the dam has gone.

Yards of gold crest vanished, to be replaced by flat, l.u.s.trous belly scales. Four long legs curled up, their etiolated, thumbed paws exposing claws the size and shape of cow's ribs. Last of all the ornate head flipped over and hit the stony ground, until it was gazing madly at Saara, upside down. The eyes were now at her level.

"Bonjour, madame," he said very correctly. "Comment al-lez-uous aujourd'hui?"

She blinked. "I don't speak Langue d'Ouil," she answered in Italian, wondering if the beast's purpose was to distract her, and feeling he had certainly succeeded. "I don't speak any languages but Fennish and Italian."

"Fennish and Italian!" The dragon (if he could be called a dragon) chuckled. "Many people speak Italian. No one speaks Fennish but a native of the Fenland," he stated, speaking that tongue. "Therefore I presume you to be an emigree of the Fens residing now in the Italics. The north Italics, if your accent is any indication."

Hearing the clear, comfortable sounds of home from this huge bizarrity struck Saara nearly dumb. But her wit returned to her in time to allow her to reply, "Then you, too, must be a native of Fenland. The south, however, I would say by your accent."

"Lappish is equally familiar to me," the creature replied, s.h.i.+fting his voice more into the nose. His five-fingered paw scratched belly scales reflectively.

"But it would be ludicrous to attempt to convince you that I come from the land of ice and snow. I am merely an exception to the rule I myself stated." Amber eyes hooded themselves complacently, and then the dragon rotated again, in the same direction, so that his jaw rested on the ground twenty feet from Saaras feet, while his body rested quite comfortably with a half twist in it.

"There ARE dragons in the north," stated Saara, taking the chance on his species.

Window-sized nostrils dilated and the creature emitted a huge snort. The dry, woody smell thickened.

"Dragons, perhaps, but not such as I," he stated, pique shading his voice. Suddenly the beast flipped to his feet and his neck arced above her, coiling like black smoke in the air (which had grown very hot).

"Do I have a barrel like an ox's, wings like a plucked chicken's, breath like rotten eggs, and incrustations both dorsal and ventral?

"Furthermore, have I attacked you with inhospitable fury on the suspicion that you "come to rob me of some possession-not that I have any, mind you?"

With a song of seven words Saara created a forty-foot wall of blue ice between the dragon and herself. It was an arduous spell, though quickly done, and her heart was left pounding.

The dragon watched, then casually he leaned over the wall and laced his fingers together. "Really, now, madam. Can you claim that any of the graceless creatures who inhabit their charred holes on the steppes have more than the slightest resemblance... I do not mean to sound egotistical, but I am no more like your European dragons than you are like the Emperor's monkey!"