Damiano sighed deeply and scratched his head. “You have a sword, Signor, and I do not. That is a strong argument in your favor. But much as I would like to avoid trouble with you, I cannot leave without seeing the lady Saara again.”
Ruggerio paused, a black shape against the sun. “I see, fellow. And that in itself is an argument almost as strong as a sword, for my lady is more beautiful than the new rose, and her speech is like water to a man in the desert. If I prevent men from Saara, it is because otherwise her garden would become a Utter of broken hearts.
“But, little wolf, with you the matter is different. It is not I but Saara herself who has ordered you gone from here. Isn't that enough,
fellow? You have seen my lady's face; how can you not now bend to her wish?” Damiano heard the practiced, smooth draw of the sword from its scabbard.
He stepped back behind his staff, as though it could conceal him. “I would indeed bend to her wish, Signor. Every wish but this one. If she told you who I am, she must have also told you why I am here.”
The sword reflected light like water. The long grass stood away from the base of Damiano's staff as though blown by wind. “Like your dog of a father, fellow, you covet my lady's powers,” said Ruggerio.
“I don't want her powers, Signore, but her help. I need her to save my city from destruction,” replied the witch, and he raised his staff off the ground. As the Franciscan in his homespun robes may raise the cross before some Muslim caliph, so Damiano raised his black staff before Ruggerio. And Ruggerio laughed.
“You have a pretty name for ambition, churl. I'll admit that.
“But enough, now. Go.” The sword made an abortive feint toward Damiano's midsection. “Or I'll prick you with tiny holes, like bedbug bites, that will get bigger and bigger as I lose my temper. You see?” The steel flickered in motion and was deflected by Damiano's staff. A sweet tinging like that of a bell cut the air. Ruggerio circled his wrist, and the sword lunged again.
Sparks flew as steel hit silver, and again the strike went wild. Ruggerio grunted in his throat.
Damiano's eyes (never very useful to him) went soft and vague as he turned his inner attention to Ruggerio. He swayed to the right out of the path of the swordsman's attack.
“I'm not about to let you stick me with that pin, Signor Ruggerio,” Damiano said aggrievedly. “Not even a prick like a bedbug bite.”
It was not agility alone that preserved the young witch, for with each sword thrust his staff called out to his opponent's blade and took the force of the blow upon its own wood and metal. Three more times Damiano evaded the taunting feints, till the tall southerner stepped back with a hiss of breath.
“You will drive me to kill you, fellow,” Ruggerio spat.
Cautiously Damiano stepped sideways, until he could discern the features of his enemy's face. “Is that what the lady said, Signore? That you were to kill me if I did not run away?”
The Roman snorted. “She didn't stipulate. Being a delicate creature, my lady leaves such necessities to me. I am very willing to...”
Ruggerio's sentence ended in a scream of rage, which turned to one of pain as ivory dog-fangs clashed against the bone of his ankle. He kicked, and Macchiata flew through the air above the meadow grass. Seeing the tip of the sword touch against the ground, Damiano stepped down upon it, but Ruggerio withdrew his weapon, slicing half-way through the wood and leather of Damiano's boot heel. “Leave us, Macchiata,” called Damiano. “I can handle him; you'll only get yourself killed.”
Ruggerio's cry was wordless. The edged blade flashed in a scintillating arc toward Damiano's head.
“Mother of God, help me!” whispered the witch, as he threw his staff into the path of destruction. The blade sparked and recoiled, while the wood itself sang like the reed of a cathedral organ. “Don't do that, Signore,” Damiano warned.
Ruggerio switched his sword to his left and stuck a numbed right hand into his belt. “Ah? So it's the stick you need, puppy. I forgot my lady said something to that effect. Then I'll cut it out of your hands or cut your hands off with it; that's the fitting punishment for a thief.”
The knowledge that Saara had given away his weakness hit Damiano like a slap. For an instant he heard the forest ring in its own silence and felt a weakness in his chest. Ruggerio swung again, scraping his blade along the surface of the staff. Damiano spun the ebony length just fast enough to escape with his hands. The knuckles of his left hand oozed blood.
But it was Ruggerio who cursed aloud at the pain that shot up his wrist and arm. “Let the staff be, Ruggerio,” shouted Damiano, drawing back a step. “Striking it is deadly.”
The tall swordsman stood motionless a moment, eyes intent, face expressionless. He swayed lightly, as though to music. “Is it, fellow? To me or to you, I wonder? Where will you be, if I cut off that pretty silver head with the yellow stones? Will your own head roll in the dust? Let's see.” And Ruggerio's blade whirled above his own head.
Damiano yanked sideways on the staff, and the sword flew clean. He started to step away. “No, Signore. You will only get...” And in that instant his torn heel caught in the grass and Damiano went down, falling flat on the body of the lute. He heard the snap of wood, Ruggerio stood above him, and the blade was falling.
“Mother of...” Damiano whispered, expecting to end the phrase in heaven or in hell. But the blade came down with terrible force not on flesh but on the silver head of the staff, where five topaz made a ring, almost directly on top of the single, small ruby.
The sword itself made a noise like a broken string that echoed through earth and air. Ruggerio dropped the weapon, shuddered, and put both hands to his heart. On his greyhound features was a look of embarrassed surprise. He dropped beside Damiano, who still lay with one foot trapped in the long grass. The witch saw the man's spirit, like light, like water, like wings, shake itself free of the body and be gone.
The wind made mumbling sounds in the grass. In the birch wood a single sparrow repeated “peep peep peep.” Damiano knelt before the body of the swordsman. He began to shake his head, though he himself didn't know why he was doing so. He closed the man's eyes and arranged the sprawled limbs, then he leaned back on his heels and folded his hands on his lap. He began a Paternoster, for want of anything else to do.
The wind grew louder, its wailing growing moment by moment until the wind became a white bird, which became Saara the Fenwoman. She took the body of her lover in her arms and cried out in a strange and bitter tongue. Her face was white and unbelieving. Her eyes stared, and she, too, shook her head at the sight of death.
Damiano shuffled back and rose to his feet. His jaw seemed to be locked; there was nothing he could say. He staggered, dragging one wooden heel held only by a strip of leather. Macchiata whined and thrust her head between his knees.
Saara looked up slowly. Her face was ashen and blank. Her eyes were dry. It was a long time before she saw Damiano standing there before her.
The single sparrow went “peep peep peep.” The wind sorted through the grass. Damiano noticed his left hand was red with blood. Blood from his knuckles had slicked the black staff, but the wound itself had no feeling.
Then Saara opened her mouth and began to keen.
Cold struck Damiano like so many blows to the face. His nose stung, and the roots of his teeth. Frozen air scraped at his lungs as he raised his hand to his face. In another instant the wind had knocked him from his feet, and he rolled on grass that snapped like ice beneath his weight. He closed his eyes to the cold and cried out.
His ears felt Saara's song as a deadly pain. Damiano screamed as his right eardrum burst. He clambered to his feet and ran toward the pine forest, horribly dizzy, stumbling as he went.
Saara's song reached before him, and the gentle air froze, leaving each green needle clothed in ice. There was a crackling like a fire, as branches too suddenly stressed broke and fell to the ground. Snow came out of nowhere and stole Damiano's breath. He fell again and gobbets of snow and frozen stream water pelted him from behind, beating him, seeking to bury him alive. From nearby Macchiata howled “Master!” He freed his face of the drift. He called to her.
Then the rough black tree trunk at his right hand cracked like a twig underfoot, and forty feet of pine loomed over Damiano and came crashing down.
He couldn't move, trapped under the weight of snow. But by instinct he twisted, and he raised his staff to the falling monster as he had done against Ruggerio's sword.
“No!” he shouted, with his foolish little protection waving above him.
The air crackled with a smell of burning metal. Damiano's hair stood away from his head, and the black wind whistled through his ebony staff.
The tree stopped falling.
Its mammoth bulk lay suspended in the air for three seconds, then it caught fire. Rude orange flames lit the shadow, and the sound of burning was like an enormous, damned choir. Damiano lay half-buried and helpless as the heat of flame warred with winter, and feathery ash fell upon his face. It began to rain in the covert.
And then the tree was gone.
He rose slowly, unhindered, and stared down at his bloody hand. He mouthed the words
“Dominus Deus!
Did I do that?” Wondering, he shook his head again.
Yet, even now, Damiano wasn't weary. Destroying the tree had been easily done. It was as though he had all the fires of hell to draw upon. The very idea of that made him shiver.
He peered all around himself at the blasted wilderness that had been a garden only minutes before. The red rocks glistened beneath jackets of ice, and the flowers in their tiny rock-bound plots lay frost-white and broken. The bed of the wandering stream gaped empty, while snow bent the grass double. Nowhere was there body or bird that could be Saara.
And it was quiet. Even the sparrow had ceased its din, either frozen or frightened away. Damiano stepped into the meadow again.
There was the body of Ruggerio the Roman, lying upon grass untouched by frost. And there, very near to it, was the little lute, broken like an egg. Damiano sighed and came closer.
As Damiano stepped his toe thudded into a lump in the snow. He caught his balance with difficulty and glanced down.
The snow was white and the lump was white, but there was a red spot like a bloodstain upon it. Damiano went down upon one knee and touched not blood but ruddy short fur and the hard, cold ugly bulk that had been Macchiata.
“Macchiata?” he said stupidly, and he turned the dog over. “Little dear?”
The body was stiff as wood, with three legs folded under and one held out, little toes spread like the fingers of a warding hand. The lips were pulled in a perpetual smile of terror, and the eyesâthe eyes were dull chestnuts, no more.
The obvious truth hit Damiano slowly. He took the frozen dog on his lap, hugging her to him. Then he grunted, dumbly, and for the third time he shook his head. His staff clattered to the ground, and Damiano wept like a child.
Saara came toward her enemy, stepping through the snow barefoot. Her face was colorless; her eyes round. Beneath the gay felt dress her small shoulders were hunched stiff, as though she expected blows.
One hand she raised, finger pointing, then she dropped it. She stood motionless and unseen before Damiano's grief.
“Ah, Macchiata,” he crooned to no one but himself, and he stroked the white head. It was like petting a piece of wood; even her little petal-like ear was stiff. “Little dear. So small a thing to be dead. Why does it have to be?”
And his unthinking question awoke in him the memory of Macchiata's own words as she mourned the murdered infant in Sous Pont Saint Martin: “It's so little. Can't it be alive?”
“No, Macchiata. It can't,” he had said. And with that memory his grief grew harder.
He looked up and saw Saara standing barefoot in the snow, hands at her sides. The simple, girlish figure wavered in his vision as though he were looking through water. He rose. The staff was again in his hand.
“He was my man,” she said. “He loved me. He thought I was beautiful. I'm not young, Dami. I'm old. Where will I find another like him?”
Damiano did not reply. Perhaps he did not even hear her. He heard the sound of fire in his ears, and he knew the flames were near, to be drawn through his staff like air through a flute. He tilted his head to hear what the fire was saying.
Saara looked at his face and turned to flee.
The white bird rose, but fire seared the sky like the lick of a whip. She dropped and dove, and a beast like a shaggy deer sprang away. It carried backswept antlers, and its hooves were wide like the pads of a camel.
It was true, Damiano thought distantly. She was not lying; there is such a deer.
A tongue of flame raced toward the pine wood; where it touched the snow, the air went white with steam. It reached the edge of the meadow before the leaping animal and flashed sideways, turning the reindeer, prisoning both it and its captor with a wall of deadly heat. Grass sizzled. The fire burned wood, earth, snow. It needed nothing but itself to burn.
I have only begun, thought Damiano without emotion. Hell is vast; I could char all this hill. All of Lombardy.
Saara turned at bay, and as she cast off her animal form, she was hidden by the thickening mists. It didn't matter. Damiano could feel her presence on his closed eyelids. He advanced toward her.
Suddenly the air dazzled and snapped with thunder. Above both witches the heavens convulsed, and a drenching rain smote down.
The ring of flame guttered, and for a moment Damiano saw Saara plainly: a small and slender figure kneeling on the flattened grass, streams of rain running along her long braids and down her breast. Her hands were raised to the sky. She was singing.
She was as fair as a dryad, as a child. Her beauty hurt him, and with his pain he built the fire higher. Saara screamed at the touch of boiling steam. Damiano felt nothing.