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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 attitude 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 massaged his button 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 fashion. "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?"
Kadjebeen was sitting on the table. He had both hands laced around his middle. Now his color was
returning, and he looked more like a raspberry and less like a bag. "Because the Master gave him away."
"Gave him away?" echoed Gaspare. He struck his bony fist on the tabletop. The greasy grapes
bounced. "He gave away an angel of God?"
"Watch out for the image," mumbled the demon reflex-ively. "It's a perfect correspondence, you see,
and one has to be careful." Then the demon realized that Gaspare's attention could not be diverted from
his goal.
"Yes. He melted off his wings and gave him to one of his toadies uh, servants. Perfecto the
Spaniard, the man's name is. I imagine your Raphael is in Granada now."
Observing the dusky flush of Gaspare's face, Kadjebeen added, to console him, "The wings were
gone by then, anyhow. "
Gaspares impersonal glare sharpened. "You must take us to him!"
The demon squeaked, and drew in both hands and feet, so that nothing but his trembling eyes
disturbed his rotundity. "Oh, I couldn't! The Master would never let me! He'd be so angry if he even
knew you'd asked!"
Gaspare, whose own fear had somewhere been left behind, strode to the window, where the dazed
horse stood placidly, seeing nothing. All sounds of battle had faded, but in his heart was growing a
conviction that the battle was already won: a conviction which had nothing to do with Saara's magic, or
the length of the dragons teeth.
"Your master, little insect, is nothing but scum!"
"Oh dear, don't," quailed Kadjebeen, as his ears and eyes rotated nervously. "He is the Prince of the
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