The Damiano Series

by R. A. MacAvoy

  The redhead had an aggressive chin and eyes of a peculiar pale sage green, in a face which had not yet settled into its adult proportions (if indeed it had any intention of settling). His Adam’s apple rehearsed his answer before he opened his mouth.

  “That’s so you don’t fall asleep.” Then he shrugged enormously and cast the question behind him. “What can I say? What do you expect me to say? That’s how the song came to me.”

  “Came to you?” echoed the chitarrist, who was a round-faced fellow with a bristling mustache and three fat little babies at home. “You made it up?”

  Gaspare drummed his fingers on the soundboard a trifle self-consciously and let his oversized eyes wander out the door as he replied. “Of course I made it up. Everything I play is my own.

  “To play another man’s music,” he added righteously, “is akin to theft.”

  One who knew Gaspare well—one like his sister Evienne, for example—might have fallen face first upon the dirt, hearing this statement uttered in this tone by Gaspare of San Gabriele. But Evienne was not in San Gabriele but in Avignon, tending her own fat babies, and the villagers Gaspare had left behind some years ago found it easy to forget the scrawny, light-fingered street dancer when looking at this insolent youth with his foreign manners and his exquisite lute.

  The chitarrist took this opportunity to run a fingernail down his strings. Signor Tedesco, behind his counter, perked up. But Gaspare had so cowed the round-faced man that he dared not go simply from the root to the fifth and then back again, as he had intended, so his endeavor led to nothing. The chitarrist stared glumly at his fingernails.

  “But what about the master musician of whom you are always speaking, whom you followed from Lombardy to France? I was under the impression it was his tunes with which you educate the village.”

  Gaspare’s eyes did not exactly mist over, for he had not the sort of eye for that, but they expressed a certain feeling. He slumped back, letting his lute he in his lap like an empty bowl.

  “Ah, yes. Delstrego. You know—while I was with him I never touched the lute. Never dared, I guess. And then afterward, though I have had my training at the hands of his own teacher, and it was my idea to sound as much like him as possible…”

  The redhead sighed. “It didn’t work that way.

  “And now I see that it could not, and I no longer desire to imitate him, for Delstrego was in a way a soft man. Whereas I…”

  The bristling mustache stood out like a hedgehog’s quills, as the chitarrist reflected on Gaspare’s lack of softness. Gaspare himself ignored the smile.

  “And when I tried to play Delstrego’s songs with my own hands and my own spirit, then they sounded like little birds that had been put in a cage of iron.” His long nose twitched and he sat up again.

  “So I let them go.” The redhead gestured theatrically toward the rough stone doorway.

  “Still, if Damiano Delstrego himself were to come stepping in that door out of the summer heat, with his little lute under his arm—then you would hear some music,” vouched Gaspare, whose self-importance, though considerable, had never been permitted to come between himself and his admiration for his first friend. “You would hear music more original than mine, and yet music even Signor Tedesco could appreciate.”

  The proprietor raised his head, frowning, uncertain whether he had just been praised or insulted.

  Gaspare, still with his hand raised, stared out the pale shimmer of the open door. Cold water seemed to trickle up and down his spine, unpleasant despite the heat, and he wondered if perhaps he had said something he should not have said.

  Behind the wineshop, and behind every other shop and dwelling in their nudging row along this street in San Gabriele, was a straight and narrow alley, which (since the battle of the same name as the town, four years before) led to nothing but a pile of rubble. Without a steady stream of feet to keep the clay packed, this alley had been conquered by grass, which had in turn suffered from a lack of sun. Summer had killed this unfortunate growth and dipped it in bronze, but still it held some value for a gelding who had discovered it in the process of avoiding the sun.

  This animal was black and lean. Its long neck was sinuous. Its long legs were… well, very long. One of its ears rested malevolently back against its head, but the horse gave the impression that its ill-temper was a chronic condition, not about to manifest itself into action on this stifling afternoon. The horse’s other ear made circles of uneasiness. He chewed half a jawful of yellow grass and let the remainder drop.

  Under the thatch of the wineshop roof sat a brown wood dove, colored such a pale and desiccated brown that she might have been molded of clay and left to dry in the sun. She was keeping a sort of uncommunicative company with the gelding. She was also listening to the music within.

  Doves are for the most part very conservative singers, and do not appreciate any music but their own. This dove, however, was only a dove part-time. She was a witch, and what is more, a singing witch. She listened to Gaspare’s lute playing with a quick and educated mind.

  It tended to give her a headache.

  Bird eyes regarded the stripe of uncompromising blue sky which was visible under the ragged thatch. She didn’t know what it was about the heavens which seemed so false, or at least dubious, today. She rather suspected that Gaspare was about to do something he shouldn’t. The boy was much wiser than he used to be—the Eagle Chief’s influence, if not her own—but still he had a long trail to sled before he could be safely left to his own devices.

  Saara could easily imagine Gaspare accepting a challenge to a duel: he who had never held a sword in his life. She could even imagine him challenging some other to a duel. Over some picayune point of music, of course.

  Some hot-tempered village maiden could run him through with a pitchfork. Or her father could. At least, being simple (not a witch born), Gaspare could not lose himself in the myriad dangers and seductions that came to a youngster with Sight.

  Saara felt a certain responsibility for Gaspare, born out of both friends and adventure shared. She shifted from foot to foot. Because she was a dove, this looked much like a round pot rolling from side to side on the table. She heard the chitarrist in the wineshop make his tentative dribble of sound and, like Signor Tedesco himself, she had hopes. But it seemed fated the man would not continue his plain, confident melody.

  The day would not permit.

  Festilligambe, the horse standing below, felt the same unease, for he wiggled an ear in the direction of Saara (whom he knew quite well, both as bird and as human) and he stepped out into the unfriendly sun.

  That white disk of light bleached the color of the soul, and it stole the will away. Even Gaspare (bright of hue and mightily determined) ceased playing. The two beasts heard the murmur of his voice seeping through the metallic-hot air. Then that sound, too, dried away.

  Someone was coming up the hill of San Gabriele, striding long-legged past the ruin of the village wall. The rhythm of his steps, and the regular thumping of his wooden stick, broke the cicada’s drone.

  He was dressed in black, and his hair was black, and as he lifted his eyes toward the yawning door of the wineshop, they, too, were black. His face was comely, though the nose was a trifle broad, and in those quick black eyes shone intelligence. From his staff flashed red and yellow, which shimmered, along with the entire figure, in the glare of the sun.

  Cold shock crept from Saara’s scaled feet up to her bare beak as she watched the form of her dead love approach. Her dun feathers fluffed into ridges. The horse below switched his tail and snorted.

  That Damiano, so wise beyond his years, and so hungry for understanding, should walk the scenes of his past like some miser riven from his horde… it was unthinkable. And unspeakably sad.

  “When I am dead,” he had said, “you must let go anything of mine which you hold. The dead should be dead.”

  But Saara’s sadness was reflective and momentary, for she knew that this apparition was not
Damiano. For one thing, Damiano did not wear black. For another, Saara herself had taught Damiano to do without his staff, and she did not believe that, once dead, he would go back to using crutches he had left behind in life.

  And more importantly, this Damiano shape stood now beneath her, in the wineshop doorway, and was unaware of her very presence. Even in his simple days, Damiano would have known Saara was near.

  The horse, who saw something different from that which Saara saw, and from that which Gaspare saw from within the wineshop (with all the hair on the back of his neck rising in protest), made no more sound, but turned his elegant tail and disappeared down the grassy alley.

  The apparition carried a lute, Saara saw now, leaning her sleek dove head over the ledge of stone where she sat. It was a marvelously ornate lute: Gaspare’s own lute, in fact. That made quite a paradox, as even now Saara heard the original of this spectral lute thumped clumsily upon the top of the trestle table within.

  “Delstrego!” gasped the youth, in tones of mixed joy and terror.

  This is how Gaspare is going to get himself into trouble, said Saara to herself, as she launched out from the eaves of the building.

  Chapter 2

  The Devil had his plans. He would work upon the unfortunate Gaspare with his twin needles of guilt and pride. The youth would provide no challenge, certainly, for his haughty and sullen tempers stood out like so many hooks on which the Devil could latch. Raise that hauteur, ruffle that temper, and there Gaspare would be, trussed like Sunday’s goose. Lucifer’s greatest worry so far had been that he would be required to play the lute as Delstrego had, which was a thing he could not do, having abjured music along with the heavenly choir.

  It was not that the prize in this game was Gaspare’s little soul; such as Gaspare was merely coarse bread and dry. But his peril was sure to bring Raphael fluttering in, for the angel watched his proteges like a hawk.

  So Lucifer was understandably surprised to find himself under the assault of not a hawklike angel, but a small dove, round of keel—at the moment of his subtle plan’s unfolding. With not the least peep of warning, this avian flew at his man-shape and pecked it smartingly under the eye. Lucifer flinched away from it, displaying very natural confusion and annoyance.

  The greatest of angels had no interest in the animal kingdom. The world’s furred, feathered, or finny creatures were as much beneath his peculiar temptations as the denizens of Tir Na nOg were beyond them. He was not even very knowing about animal behavior. Did this miserable atom think that Lucifer, wingless as he appeared in his present form, was yet a sort of greater bird and therefore a competitor? Did it have a nest nearby? He cast a glance around him, as the dove swooped to the ground at his feet.

  Even as Lucifer perceived the obvious truth, that the creature was not a bird at all but a human shape-changer, it had swollen to its full status: that of a woman almost as tall as he stood in his Delstrego form.

  “Liar!” she shrilled in his ear. “Filthy liar!” Curiously enough, she spoke a barbaric tongue of the far north.

  Lucifer had no idea what a Lapp would be doing in a Piedmont village by the Lombardy border. He was further piqued to discover he didn’t recognize this woman at all. Perhaps, he considered momentarily, he hadn’t given the tribal primitives of the earth their share of his attention.

  In certain ways they were so much like the beasts.

  And he reacted to this unknown creature in the way in which he usually reacted to anything which frustrated him or set back his plans. He turned color and hissed at her, and prepared to strike her to cinders where she stood.

  But, worse luck, this was not merely a shape-changer, but one of those unspeakable Lappish singing witches.

  He felt her puerile sing-song cutting through his disguise like a razor through hide. As shape fell away, he was obliged to grope for wyvern form to cover his nakedness. He shot at the woman a blast of pure, shriveling hate, only to see it deflected by a thread of melody. The malice shuddered sideways and scraped lime off the wineshop wall.

  She dared smile through her teeth as she said, speaking in heavily accented Italian, “You made another of your great mistakes when you took the face of Damiano, you greedy old man. I will crush you for it.” Then the bitch’s song actually did try to squeeze him. Though Lucifer himself was far beyond being hurt by the spell, the wyvern he wore could not breathe.

  With the vision of his spirit, the Devil was very aware of the round eyes and dropped jaws in the wineshop so near. Cursing, he gave up his present ambitions toward Gaspare and rose into the air, determined to escape this constraint and blast the beast-woman from the face of the earth.

  Certainly Lucifer had the power to destroy one silly witch, once he’d recovered from his surprise and from the unbearable feeling of having been cheated by this beast-woman’s popping from nowhere. Simple physical destruction was both Lucifer’s pleasure (albeit not his highest pleasure), and his right.

  The wyvern circled in the air, persecuted by the witch who was once more in dove shape. Lucifer snarled at the bird with the contempt he felt for all simple or straightforward creatures. Once lured out of human shape, the witch’s ability to sing (and therefore her power) was sadly curtailed. The wyvern drew a deep breath, gathering fire.

  But the bird’s anger was so insane as to approach the maternal,

  and she seemed unaware of her danger as she fluttered about the two-legged dragon-thing, pecking at its eyes.

  Lucifer, once collected to himself, was a very clever spirit, and excellent at drawing together odd threads of information and making tangles of them. It occurred to him that there was some connection between this creature and the matter at hand; after all, it was the shape of Delstrego that seemed to set her off.

  And then he remembered a small interchange with Damiano on the streets of Avignon in the mortal’s last days: an interchange not comfortably called to mind.

  He had dropped a gentle hint that the fellow had carried the plague with him into Avignon. (Not true, as it happens, but it very well might have been true, given the dreadful medical ignorance of the populace.) The man had dared to bray back at him a denial. “We were all clean. Saara said so.”

  And when asked who this Saara was, Delstrego had replied, “Someone you don’t know.”

  Now Lucifer laughed, and ashes sullied the hot air around him. So even that septic little trading of insults could be turned to good use.

  Someone he didn’t know. Perhaps. But such an oversight was quite easily rectifiable. He beat off the drab-colored dove (quite gently) with a wing as hard and as supple as chain mail, and he peered at her with new curiosity.

  A mascot of some sort? She could have meant little more, farouche as she was. Pretty enough, in human shape, but he knew quite well that Italians liked their women both clinging and coy. Probably a pet. Whatever, she was doubtless of some value to his sentimental brother, and Lucifer was not one to turn his face from fortune. He cringed from the bird and fled upward.

  Saara’s anger was like a wind which blew through every room of her soul, cleaning it of years of suffering.

  Not since she left the fens had she had an enemy she could fight with whole heart: an enemy she had no compunction about hurting. And she had no fear for herself, for after losing two children and three lovers to death, it was a very familiar presence to her. In fact, there was nothing more appropriate which could happen in her life now, after all she had been through, than to be given the Liar himself as target and a clear field of attack. Especially when she remembered the miserable confusion this breath of wickedness had caused in Damiano, both to the man’s head and his heart, before cutting short his life.

  Along with Saara’s slow-blooming happiness. Saara had never thought to ask herself why the Liar had oppressed Damiano so; she knew that too much interest in that demon’s mentations only invited him into one’s life. But still she could hate him for it.

  For she had loved Damiano and loved him still, not with the wise
passion Saara had felt for other men in her time, but with the sweet and choking emotion always before reserved for her children.

  Saara had neither hope nor plan for survival as she spun about the loathsome, heavy reptilian shape, buffeted by the wind of its wings and suffocated by fumes; survival was meaningless next to the chance to do harm to the Father of Lies. This wild and selfless fury with which a bird weighing all of three ounces flung herself at the Devil he mistook (as he always must) for lack of brain.

  Up they went in a flurry of wings, until the air about them grew cooler and lost the flavor of earth, and the sun spun about the sky as a dizzying white disk. Without warning, Saara traded her bird shape for that of an owl, and her talons raked the wyvern in its great yellow eyes. But the owl was half-blind in the light and the wyvern, disdaining battle, escaped it with a bob and dart to the right.

  Saara followed, her muffled white wings straining, and for a moment she hung above the wyvern, untouching. Then suddenly the witch flickered and changed shape again, not this time to any sort of bird but to an enormous white bear of the north, which dropped like stone onto the reptile’s back.

  The wyvern’s wings collapsed like sails of paper, and both beasts plummeted toward the earth.

  After his first shock at this attack, Lucifer decided to let the bear fall—he could escape the wyvern form before impact: let the witch do the same, if she could. But then he shrieked, for the bear had its massive jaws around the snake neck of the wyvern and those jaws were closing. He suffered a certain amount of pain before he could dissolve his physical form, fleeing Saara now with no more substance than a passing thought, nor any more ability to do harm.

  In an instant the bear, too, had vanished, and though it took Saara precious time to pull out of the tailspin caused by this last transformation, the pale dove skimmed the Lombard forest unharmed and returned to her pursuit, chasing nothing more than a nasty glitter in the sky.