Raphael by R. A. MacAvoy

Author:R. A. MacAvoy [MacAvoy, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780759297548
Google: ke2Qyq03_ZkC
Amazon: B00J48FDPG
Barnesnoble: B00J48FDPG
Goodreads: 77312
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1984-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Saara’s second procession through the worm hole was less eventful. The dragon was gone, but Gaspare stepped out into the cleft of sunshine, where that creature had so long been chained, and squinted. And sniffed.

“Doesn’t smell bad, considering.”

Saara didn’t bother to turn. “Why should it, when he wasn’t fed for twenty years?”

Gaspare made a worried noise at that, and followed Saara into the next dark tunnel. “Speaking of which, do you think we can trust its —his—promise, not to eat Festilligambe?” His words rang and echoed through the darkness so that they were barely understandable.

“He didn’t eat you,” was the Fenwoman’s reply, and then she put her fingers to her lips for silence.

Gaspare didn’t see the finger. Indeed, he saw very little of anything in the deepening gloom, and soon began to stumble. The witch was forced to take his hand.

It was long, this tunnel, and as sinuous as a serpent. But like a serpent it was smooth. It became more and more difficult for Saara to walk cautiously. But the amiable builder of the tunnel had been chained in the middle of it since its first construction. The Liar might very well have made changes; the very regularity of the walls and floor might well be designed to delude the wanderer away from caution, so she goaded her ears to hear and her skin to feel.

While feet are moving, time is passing, but neither Gaspare nor Saara had any sense of time’s progression, and the weariness of their black march turned into irritability.

Gaspare fell, twisting his body like that of a cat in his effort to keep the lute from striking the ground. The instrument was saved, but its back-curving neck smacked Saara sharply on the thigh as it fell. She hissed her annoyance.

Gaspare himself whispered his curses to the floor, but as he clambered to his feet again (disoriented in the darkness), he remarked very calmly that a witch ought to be able to call fire to hand at need.

Delstrego had.

Saara was still massaging her leg, but this implicit criticism stung her worse than the blow. “I have heard a little bit too much about Damiano Delstrego lately,” she said between clenched teeth. “And what a great witch he was. There is a difference between accomplishment and simple talent, you know. Or perhaps you don’t know!

“Of course Damiano could call fire. He had fire coming out of the top of his head! But it took me to teach him to make clouds.”

Gaspare snorted. “So who wants to make clouds, except a peasant in a drought?”

Both had forgotten the necessity for quiet and for caution as well. Gaspare strode bullishly down the corridor, one hand tracing the right wall for support.

Until he fell again.

Saara heard the thunk, followed by a small weary whine like that of a child. All her anger melted away.

“Don’t get up,” she told Gaspare, and she lowered herself beside the young man. “And don’t talk. Give me a minute to think.”

Damiano ran through Saara’s memories like a bright but tangled thread.

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