Raphael Read Online Free PDF

pointed to a far corner of the room, to which the demon retired.
    Saara was dumped onto the tabletop, where she lay panting and blinking. After a moment or two Lucifer found the sight of the tied dove less than interesting. He gestured vaguely toward her and her bird shape melted into Saara shape, complete with bare feet and embroidered blue dress, but no bigger than the dove had been.
    Saara plucked at the red band around her ankle, but it was so much rusty iron. “Filthy liar,” she spat once more, somewhat wearily. “You cannot touch me.”
    Lucifer giggled. “But my dear little pullet! Obviously I have touched you.
    â€œAnd you made it inevitable that I should,” he added, in the tone of exaggerated seriousness which adults reserve for talking intelligently with children.
    And which drives all intelligent children wild.
    â€œIf a man gives me the slightest encouragement, I am able to help him hither to my fastness. But you—how lovely it was—came here under your own power, almost against my very will.”
    â€œI am not a man,” said Saara, sitting with one leg folded and the other knee propped. “And I still say you cannot touch me.”
    Lucifer smiled wider than was his wont, until Saara could see the serrated edges of his teeth. “It doesn’t matter that you are not a man, for ‘the male,’ (he quoted) ‘embraces the female.’ “ He laughed at his own rather stale wit and poked her belly with his little finger.
    Saara had never been to a school in her life and her knowledge of grammer was embryonic. “What on earth are you talking about, you dirty thing? Nobody would embrace you!”
    Then the whimsical light went out of his eyes. “Scrawny pullet,” he barked, and he ground his teeth at her. “I will derive a great deal of pleasure out of pulling you apart.”
    Saara looked directly at him, and then through him, and finally turned her back on him and sat staring at the windowless wall of the model to which she was tied.
    Lucifer’s high color rose higher, from carnelian to the hue of fresh-butchered meat. Hissing, he plucked up the red thread and dangled the woman by her ankle. Her brown braids swung below her head, and her dress crawled up to her armpits. Sniggering, he pulled it off, leaving her to dangle naked. Bestowing this additional humiliation upon Saara did a lot toward restoring the Devil’s temper.
    Her body was lithe, and blushed like the skin of a peach.
    â€œYou know, little insignificant peeper, that you weren’t even the sparrow I was out to snare? Not even THAT important.”
    Saara climbed up her own leg and then up the length of red string until she hung upright by her two hands. She didn’t seem to care or notice that she was naked.
    â€œI know,” she replied. “It was pretty obvious you were after Gaspare. Well, you won’t be able to use that trick on him again, dressing up like Damiano. Gaspare must have seen an eyeful.”
    The red cord trembled with Lucifer’s annoyance. “Have you no sense but to hang there and throw offense at me, savage? Don’t you know how I’m going to make you suffer?”
    â€œI know how you made Damiano suffer,” was her undisturbed retort. “Yet it didn’t get you anywhere, did it?”
    The tiny woman’s body was spinning around with the natural movement of the twine, and the chamber of four windows passed under her review. She noted it as carefully as she could, especially the vista outside the window by which she had entered.
    Obviously they were not really in the Alpine mountains. They were probably in no definite place at all; Saara had enough experience in the realms of magic to know that its geography was unpredictable. When her spinning brought her around to Kadjebeen, squatting in his dim corner, she actually laughed.
    â€œWhat an unfortunate creature!” she cried aloud. “I wonder