Part 25 (1/2)

The Archangel Raphael shone in the sky like truth revealed and in his hands was a sword. ”Come, Satan,” he called, and his voice was sun striking a field of ice. ”See what your malice has bought you.”The wyvern took to wing again but the brilliant air rejected him. He sank to the earth and his stiff wings fell from him to lie like the wings that ants shed in their season and that one finds in the morning gra.s.s, covered with dew.

As Raphael descended, Satan rose once more as the red king-King of Earth-and he shouted, ”You interfere! Again! It is unfair! It is not your right, Raphael, for the earth is MINE and all upon it!”

Still the angel descended. The burned hillside grew bright as crystal. ”I do not interfere, Morning Star.

I am sent against you.

”For not all upon the earth is yours, nor ever will be.”

The sword of light struck once and the Devil's gold crown went rolling over the turf Lucifer lifted his arms in defense. ”I am given no weapon against you. It is not fair!””

But the angel made no reply. His blinding wings drew forward and round his brother and encompa.s.sed him. ”Go!” cried Raphael, and once more, ”Begone from this place, and torment these children no more!” and he touched Satan with his hand.

The Devil was not there.

The heavens lightened slowly and the glory went out of the sky. Gaspare drew a breath that rattled along his throat.

Saara looked about her at the daylit plain, and she saw Raphael as she had seen him many times before, a figure of alabaster and feathers, no larger than a man.

”Chief of Eagles,” she greeted him gravely.

But he did not reply, for he had not heard Saara at all, nor seen her. Raphael's eyes were on the keening Berber woman, and the body she had covered with her tattered clothing.

He stepped over to her and went down on one stainless knee beside her. ”Djoura,” he whispered for her ear alone.

Through her grief that was the single voice which had the power to reach her. She stiffened. Turned to him.

Her sloe eyes widened as she took in what he was. Who he was. ”Djinn!” she gasped. ”The great Djinn.”

And after a moment. ”Raphael?”

He cupped his hands around her face. ”Your Pinkie. Always.” He lifted her to her feet.

Djoura blinked around her. Her eyes were tear-blind. She seemed to wonder where the Devil had gone. Then she glanced at Raphael again and lowered her eyes.

She turned away.

”Isn't that like me,” she mumbled to herself ”One man I can stand, out of all the cursed world. One silly pink fellow is all, and he turns out... turns out to be...” She shook her head till the coins in her hair rattled. ”Well, not for me, anyway.” She sought again the body of her friend, but it was not to be found, but only the black shawl with which she had covered it.

She kicked the crumpled fabric. She took a step. Another. Tears streaming down her face, Djoura strode away from the scene of battle as though she were beginning a journey which promised to be long.

But Raphael was beside her, and in his face was a loss which did not belong on the features of an angel. He trapped her hands in his and she was forced to raise her head. ”What, then?” she said roughly.

”Does the great Djinn want Djoura to wash pots for him?” And she laughed at the idea. Harshly. Like a crow.

Wings flashed back with a sound of cymbals. Raphael threw his arms around the woman and pressed his head to hers. The angel gave a short, sharp cry like that of a hawk and the wings plunged forward, crashed together.

Raphael was gone from under the sky.

So was Djoura.

After a few stunned moments Saara, Gaspare, and the dragon crept forward. There was nothing tobe seen on the Pyrenean hill, neither angel, nor devil, nor black Berber woman.

There was nothing to see but burned dry gra.s.s. Nothing to hear but the call of a horse in the distance.

”Well,” commented Gaspare, fiddling nervous fingers over his tuning pegs. ”It's not everyone's idea of courts.h.i.+p.”

”No,” replied Saara wearily. ”Not everyone's. But as long as it suits...” She ran her hands through her heat-damaged hair.

The dragon cleared ten feet of throat. ”Madam, I would like to suggest we catch our missing cattle and leave this place-before anything else untoward happens.”

”Nothing else will happen,” Saara replied, wearily but with great conviction. ”And if it did, they wouldn't need OUR help!” She let Gaspare help her onto the broad black back of the dragon.

Epilogue.

Two men walked up the hill toward San Gabriele. This village was surrounded by a bank of dirt and stones which might once have been a wall, but was now reduced to a mound that harbored gra.s.s and wild alpine pinks. Beside the road leading into the village rose a single oak tree, much the worse for wear.

The old man, dressed loudly in vestments of Tyrian purple, with sleeve bobbles picked out in silver, stopped to lean against the tree. It was an action appropriate to both his years and the difficulty of the climb, but his att.i.tude, along with a certain hauteur in his lean face, gave the impression he had halted only to gaze out over the tilled valley below.

The younger man, perhaps twenty years of age and dressed demurely in black, felt a p.r.i.c.k of guilt at having used his great-uncle too hard. His neat, smooth-shaven Provencal face darted a glance at the other's bitter features. But how to apologize, when old Gaspare would never admit he had felt tired?

Great-uncle made it difficult to feel sorry for him.

Now the old man's fierce green eyes rested on his companion. ”Why do you call yourself Caspar, when you are supposed to be named after me?” he asked. His leathered mouth pulled sideways, as though he tasted something foul, and two white points appeared on the bridge of his nose.

The story was that Grandmama and Great-uncle Gaspare were the illegitimate children of some Savoyard n.o.bleman. It had always seemed silly to Caspar-the sort of story any b.a.s.t.a.r.d might make up-but looking at old Gaspare, he found it more credible. From where else had the old man come by that hawk face and those obnoxious manners?

”Caspar is the same as Gaspare, grand-oncle, and comes easier to a Provencal tongue.”

The ancient green eyes narrowed. ”I didn't want you to be called Gaspare at all.” Caspar scratched nervously under his skintight black jerkin and wished once more he hadn't come to visit, namesake or no.

”I wanted you to be called Damiano.”

Caspar hit one hand with the other and snapped his fingers in the air. His gestures were Provencal, not Italian, and Great-uncle Gaspare regarded them with suspicion. ”That's it! The name my grandmother keeps forgetting, of the lute teacher you had as a boy.”

Gaspare, through the years, had grown quite a set of unruly gray eyebrows. He raised them both. ”He wasn't my teacher, boy, but my good friend. And your grandmother has no business to forget his name.

Not with what he did for her.”

Caspar's eyes slid to the packed earth beneath the tree. Again that business. Caspar himself would rather have come from a family of no pretension, conceived between lawful sheets. ”You mean that Grandmama Evienne and he... that he might be my...””NO!” spat Gaspare, glaring at his namesake's small, very French features. ”Your grandfather was Cardinal Rocault, certainly. Almost certainly.”

The old man flung himself away from the tree and proceeded with great, gasping energy into the village. Caspar followed, drumming his fingers against his thigh uncom fortably. He heard his great-uncle mutter, ”I could only wish...”

Since there was a hint of softening in that voice, Caspar humored the old man. ”You told me about that one when I was a little boy, hein, grand-oncle? He was the one who talked to animals, yes, and G.o.d sent wounds of flame into his hands, and an angel comforter? He tamed a wolf that had ravaged the village.”

Gaspare's look of incredulity settled into scorn. ”That was Saint Francis.”