Part 17 (1/2)
Ahead of him a spur rose at the right of the road, amidst the scree, so there would be protection from both sides. Protection from the wind, at any rate. Gaspare tweaked Festilligambe's ear and prodded one thumb knuckle into his ribs, but the horse did not respond. At last he drew back, c.o.c.ked his foot, and spun around, landing an impressive roundhouse kick just below the gelding's limply hanging tail.
Slowly the horse swayed forward. Slowly he began to move.
Gaspare entered the protection of the rocks. When the road veered away to the left, following the base of the peak, he clipped the skin of Festilligambe's nostril between two fingers and led him around.
A shrieking roar blasted the rocks. Gaspare gazed up in time to see the dragons, white and black, rise twining into the high air. A horrid glory of flame brightened the evening sky.
Gaspare fell to his knees, not knowing it was Satan himself who a.s.saulted his friend in the air, but knowing it was terrible. ”I am useless,” he whispered, his teeth chattering. ”By G.o.d and all His saints, I want to hide!” He hid his face in his hands.
The bellowing faded as the combatants rose farther from the road itself. Gaspare, folding his hands in half-shamed prayer, looked ahead and beheld the yellow light of a lamp.
In front of him, along the road itself, was a window. It extended from the gravel and dust of the earth to a peak at least twenty feet up, and the stone trim around it was as neat and pretty as that of a church.
It was the kind of window one could walk through, having neither shutter nor gla.s.s. Inside it was a room.
As Gaspare stood perched on the sill, a light spatter of flame licked the stone of the road behind him.
Acid hissed and crackled against stone. The youth hopped through.
down the two-foot drop to the interior floor, which was tiled quite fas.h.i.+onably in the Italian manner.
”So,” he said. ”Even as Delstrego described it.”Delstrego had visited the Devil. He had told Gaspare all about it. But the redhead hadn't listened, exactly, because it had been back in the days when he thought Delstrego was... well, confused.
But he DID remember that the Devil's high chamber had been big-so big that a man might sit on a table as large as a ballroom floor. ”Not quite as Delstrego described it,” Gaspare amended.
Here was a table. Gaspare put his hand upon it. About two arm spans by one-and-a-half, he judged.
On it were two things: a rather impressively made model of a fortress, and a bowl of grapes. Besides the table, the only furnis.h.i.+ngs in the room were a single high-backed chair, various loud and busy scarlet embroideries on the walls, and a red leather bag hanging from the ceiling lamp.
Gaspare's curious fingers played with a tiny steel shutter which hung on one of the few windows of the model. It worked. He peered inside the arched windows on the tiny cupola which topped the model.
There was something in it, but he couldn't make out what. By habit he plucked a grape from the bowl and brought it to his mouth.
But there was something about the fruit, something greasy, perhaps, or was it the color which was not quite right? Gaspare put it down again and danced nervously through the room.
No doors, just three other windows. Two of them looked out onto blackness (night fell so abruptly in the mountains). Gaspare peered out of the fourth window, hoping to spy Saara and her dragon.
After a brief glimpse he backed away again, reeling. Gaspare's stomach didn't feel too well. He cursed a prayer, or prayed profanely (from the time he had been a street urchin, the two actions had blurred into one for him), and returned his attention to the toy on the table.
IT had no doors either. ”No doors,” he mumbled. ”No way out.”
”Go out the way you came in: that's my advice. And do so as quickly as possible,” said the red leather bag hanging from the lamp.
Gaspare leaped squealing into the air and his arms flailed. One hand struck the bag, which was soft and saggy, and which began to swing back and forth. Two blue eyes, on stalks, moved in opposition to the swaying. ”Don't do that,” the bag complained. ”You might hurt the image.”
Gaspare blinked from the speaker to the work on the table. I'm sorry,” he blurted. 'Who... what are you?”
It had a mouth, set above the blue eyes. It had a blobby big belly, with sticklike arms and hands tied together behind it. (Tied in a bow. With red string.) It had feet set at the very top of the belly, one of which had been tied with red string to the lamp cord.
”I am Kadjebeen,' stated the bag. ”I am an artisan.”
Gaspare made a discovery. ”You're upside down,” he informed the bag.
”Yes, I am, ' replied Kadjebeen equably. ”I'm being punished.”
”For what?” asked Gaspare, but before the demon could answer, Gaspare had untied the sticklike arms and was working on the knot in the lamp cord. Such was his att.i.tude toward punishment.
The little horror was lowered to the table. It rolled over so that its blue scallop-eyes were upmost. ”I was supposed to have someone whipped half-to-death.” His small raspberry-colored mouth emitted a sigh.
”What is 'half-to-death'?” Kadjebeen asked Gaspare, but did not wait for an answer before adding, ”Life is neither distance nor volume, that I can take out my weights, levels, or my measures and get it exact. What was I to do?”
Gaspare didn't answer. The demon ma.s.saged his b.u.t.ton head in both hands. ”Better to be conservative, don't you think? I mean, one can always whip a little more, afterward, but if the man is dead, one can scarcely whip a little LESS, can one?
”Besides... I did so admire those wings.”
Gaspare, who had been listening to Kadjebeen's complaint with a certain lack of sympathy, suddenly lunged forward. ”Wings? Angel wings?”
Kadjebeen cringed back, hiding his eyes in his hands. (One in each.) ”What'd I say? What'd I say?Don't hit me! I'm only an artisan!”
Gaspare repeated his question more moderately.
”I don't know what kind of wings you're talking about. These weren't like regular demon wings. Not leathery. They had feathers like birds'. Whitish.”
”Raphael!” cried Gaspare, and when Kadjebeen threatened to withdraw once more, he shook him.
”Yes, yes! Raphael was his name. Nice guy, he seemed. Well put together. Looked a lot like the Master.”
Seeing Gaspare's exultant face, he asked, ”You interested in wings too?”
”I am... interested in Raphael's wings,” warbled Gaspare, dancing another little dance of excitement.
”Raphael is my friend. My teacher. We have come from San Gabriele in the Piedmont, looking for him.
”Through cold and wind,” Gaspare chanted. ”Past dragons and enchanted boulders we have come, and not all the Devil's wiles could stop us!”
Kadjebeen sighed again. ”Then he must not have been trying very hard.”
Gaspare was stung. ”I'm sure he was! If he had any sense he was, because we are justice itself on his trail.”
The skin at the back of his neck twitched, as Gaspare remembered where he was and to whom he was speaking. ”You... LIKE him? Your wicked master? In spite of what he did to you? You'll tell Satan I was here, and everything I said?”
Kadjebeen's eyes made independent circuits of the room. ”Like... the Master?” Then in a rush he replied, ”Of course I don't. Who could like him? But I'm sure I will tell on you. He'll torture me till I do.”
The round demon sighed. He walked over to his toy and fiddled with it in proprietary fas.h.i.+on. ”And then he'll torture me some more, I guess.”
Gaspare's courage, working as it did by law of opposition, rose as the demon quailed. ”It doesn't matter if you do tell, you miserable insect. We've come for the angel and won't leave without him!” He pirouetted around the table, slicing most gracefully with an invisible sword.
”Well, I'm very sorry, then,” mumbled Kadjebeen.
Between one florid step and the next, Gaspare stopped dancing. ”Sorry for what?”