Sorcerer's Son (2 page)

Inside, warm and dry and surrounded by the things she loved, was Delivev Ormoru, mistress of Castle Spinweb. She expected no visitors, neither on a stormy night nor a clear one; no one had knocked at the gates of Spinweb in many years, and she was pleased with that state of affairs. But when the ivy curled in her bedroom window, when a small brown spider scurried across its tendrils to report a stranger outside, she was curious. The stranger had not requested entry, had not pounded on the heavy wooden gate or shouted or beat sword upon shield to attract attention through the noise of the storm, yet why would he be there but to enter? She looked out her window, but the outer wall was too high for her to see anything close beneath it. She could have spun a web to view there, but walking would take no greater time, so she went.

The gateroom was wide, floored with polished stone, and hung with thick tapestries against drafts. Even so, she felt the storm there. Through a peephole in the carven portal, she saw darkness, streaming rain, and then, by a flash of lightning, him lying on the ground, the horse grazing nearby. She opened the door. Her first impulse was to step outside and turn him over with her own hands to see if he were dead, but she stifled that and sent a few snakes instead, in case he should be shamming with evil intent. The snakes were not happy to be out in the wet, but they obeyed. They nosed about the body, which did not move, and they reported it warm and breathing and leaking blood. She waved an arm, and they wriggled under him, a living mattress, living rollers to move him over the rain-slick grass. They conveyed him through the door. The horse shied at the snakes, rearing wide-eyed and snorting, and Delivev had to grasp its bridle in her hands and murmur many calming words before she could coax it inside. She locked the gate behind it then, locked the storm out and the stranger and his horse in her home.

She led the animal to the roofed-over courtyard that sheltered many of her own pets and left it there with a mound of towels rubbing it down sans human assistance. She returned to the gateroom to find the snakes arrayed in a ring about the injured knight, who lay unmoving upon the floor, his limbs at odd angles, water dripping from his flesh and clothing. A red stain was forming at his left side. Delivev found the wound quickly, guessed it a mighty sword cut so to cleave through heavy chain mail, and wondered why the young knight’s opponent had not finished him. Because the linking pattern of the chain lay within the province of her magic, though the metal itself did not, she scattered it with a nod. His clothing parted as well, exposing him naked to her ministrations, and while she bound his side she could not help admiring his youthful beauty. She felt of his head for fever and found none, though her fingers lingered long upon his cheeks. She leaned her ear against his chest and heard his heart beat strong and steady beneath the smooth skin, beneath the firm muscle. She chafed his wrists and spoke softly to him, and at last his eyelids flickered.

His eyes were the deepest blue she had ever seen.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“I am Delivev Ormoru. Your horse brought you to my home.”

“You are kind to take me in.”

“I could not leave a wounded man to the storm.”

“My name is Mellor,” he said, and then he gasped and clutched with weak hands at his side.

“You must not speak. There will be time for that later.” She summoned a blanket, wrapped him in it, motioned the snakes to crawl under him once more and transport him to an inner room and a couch. His eyes widened at the sight of the snakes, at their undulating touch, but he said nothing. “I am a sorceress,” she said. “These are my servants, and they will not harm you.”

He smiled his trust, and she smiled back, and as the snakes bore him into the heart of her castle, he found himself staring at her. She walked beside him, her gown of green feathers swaying with each step. She wore feathers, he knew, so that no one could turn her magic back upon her person, and even her hair, cut to many lengths, seemed like a crown of brown feathers on her head. How beautiful she is, thought Gildrum, who called himself Mellor.

Ť ^ ť

She found him walking in the small garden that her castle walls enclosed. The day was sunny and warm, the climbing roses were in full bloom, the morning glories just closing their, petals to the noon light

“Don’t you think it too soon to be so far from your bed?” she asked, stepping close to take his arm and support him.

“I was feeling well. I heard the birds singing and I couldn’t lie still any longer.” He wore the robe of blue silk she had woven for him, to match his eyes.

“You look well,” she said. “You heal quickly. Youth always heals quickly.” She smiled. “Come, sit down with me. Don’t push yourself too far; a wound like that needs gentle care.”

“I can never thank you enough for your gentle care, Delivev.” Stiffly, he eased himself to the sun-warmed stone bench. “I would have died that night if not for you.”

“It was a foul night for swordplay.”

“The swordplay was in the daytime, under a clear sky. It was quite finished when the storm began.”

From the lush growth at her feet, she plucked a handful of varicolored flowers and began to twine their stems together in a wreath. “You have not told me your tale yet—where you come from, how you received that wound, what happened to your adversary. I have waited patiently while you slept the days away and drank my soup. I hope I won’t have to wait any longer.”

“I don’t consider it a very interesting tale.”

“Let me judge it.”

“Very well. I am the younger son of a younger son, so far removed from nobility that I inherited nothing but the right to become a knight. When I gained my arms, I left home to travel the wide world. Since then, I have roamed far, serving petty men in their personal wars, surviving partly through skill and partly through luck. Most recently, I swore two years’ allegiance to the Lord of the East March, a better man than some. I had been with him almost a year when he entrusted me with a message to his cousin at Falconhill—I was on my way there when I was stopped on the road and challenged by a rather large and angry-looking knight. I don’t know what I did to provoke him; perhaps his teeth hurt and he was trying to find something to take his mind off the pain. We fought on foot, sword to sword, and he was a good fighter, but I was better. He did catch me in the side, but it was too late for him: at almost the same instant I struck him a mortal blow. At first, I hardly noticed that I had been touched, but when I tried to dig a grave for him, I almost fainted. I knew then that he would have to remain unburied, and I climbed on my horse and started out to look for help. I remember the sky darkening and the rain wetting me, but no more until I woke in your castle.”

Delivev settled the wreath on her hair. “Knighthood,” she said. “You like it?”

“I know nothing else.”

“There are other trades. Safer trades.”

“My father was a knight; I have no entry to another trade. Nor do I know of one that pleases me as well. Would I wish to be a tinker or a smith? I think not.”

“You enjoy risking your life for petty men? You yourself called them petty.”

He plucked a single blossom and held it cupped in his hand, looking down at its pale yellow against his ruddy flesh. “Someday I will find a lord I can love, and him I will serve without complaint.” He glanced up at Delivev. “Shall I hear your tale now, my lady?”

“Mine?” She shook her head. “I have none to tell.”

“What, a sorceress all alone in this,” he waved an arm to include the whole of Castle Spinweb, “and no tale at all? Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I am a sorceress. They call me the Weaver sometimes. The castle was my mother’s, and her mother’s before her. None but my family have ever lived here, and I seldom leave. I lead a quiet life—you see all my world around you.”

“The Weaver. What does that name mean?”

She pointed to a nearby trellis, cloaked with climbing roses. “You see the pattern there, the interlacing tendrils, the stems weaving in and out of the wooden support? Those roses are mine because of the way they grow. I could make them climb to my topmost tower in a few moments, or I could make them reach out to you, envelop you in their thorns, scratch your life away. Birds are mine, too, if they weave their nests, and snakes because they twine like living threads, and spiders that make webs—you’ll find them in every room of Castle Spinweb.”

“And cloth?” asked Gildrum.

“Cloth of course,” and she nodded toward him, causing his silken robe to tighten in a brief embrace.

He laughed. “Do your guests ever worry that the blankets on their beds might turn against them?”

“If my guests meant me harm, they would do well to worry so. But I rarely have guests. You are the first

in a long time.”

Softly, he said, “Is that your choice, my lady?”

“I have no need of human companionship. I have my plants, my pets.” She gazed about her garden, stretched to pluck a rose from the trellis; carefully, she stripped the thorns from its stem and then presented it to Gildrum. “Perhaps you would be surprised at how all this fills my life.”

He accepted the rose and twined its stem with that of the yellow bloom he had plucked himself. “I wonder that you shun human society. Ordinary mortals, yes, I can comprehend how they might bore you, but there are other sorcerers—I know of several, at least by reputation, and once I even saw one from afar, casting a spell for the lord I served at the time.”

“We know each other, we sorcerers, but we do not keep company. It is better so. Such powers would make for wild arguments, would they not, for even friends argue sometimes, and surely married couples do so. An argument over the seasoning of the soup might light the sky for miles, uproot trees, flood the land, destroy all that both of them held dear. Of what use would such a match be?”

“If that is your view of marriage, kind Delivev, then I, who have never married, cannot disagree.”

“Between sorcerers, yes. The sorcerous breed have quick tempers, Mellor. They are happier solitary.”

“You speak as if from experience. Forgive me if I pry, my lady, but

did you ever marry?”

She shook her head. “My mother married, to her sorrow. I saw, for a few years when I was very young, what life could be like for a sorcerous couple. We were better off, she and I, after my father died.”

“And your mother? What happened to her?”

“She died, too. She was very old when I was born, though of course you could not tell from looking at her.” She looked into Gildrum’s eyes. “I am old, too, Mellor. Much older than you imagine. We sorcerers are a long-lived stock.”

He held the flowers out to her on his open palm. “You are younger than these blossoms in my sight And far more beautiful.”

She took the blooms from his hand, her fingers resting warm against his flesh for a moment “Is a flattering tongue part of your knight’s weaponry, Mellor?”

“One learns soft words when the object is worthy of them, my lady.”

“You should be a troubadour, then, instead of a knight, and spread soft words about the world instead of blood.”

“What do you know of troubadours, my lady who rarely shelters a guest in her home? Are troubadours the lone exception to your aversion to humanity? If so, I might consider the change.”

“I need not let the world into my castle; I can see it well enough if I wish, and hear it, too. Shall I show you a marvel?”

“Yes. I haven’t seen many true marvels in my travels.”

She rose. “Can you walk now?”

“I think so.” He stood shakily.

“Lean upon my shoulder.”

“With pleasure.” He let his weight fall lightly upon her, just enough to let her feel that she was helping him. They moved slowly through the nearest doorway, down a corridor, and into a large room. Light spilling through a high window revealed the walls of the room to be festooned with spiderwebs. Gildrum hesitated at the threshold. “How long has it been since you last visited this place?”

“A few weeks,” she said. “These webs are not signs of abandonment, merely of busy spiders. They do their best to satisfy my needs.”

“How do spiderwebs satisfy your needs?”

“In many ways. You shall see one of them shortly. Come, sit down; you must be exhausted from that walk.”

“Somewhat exhausted,” he said.

The center of the room was occupied by a wide bed with thick velvet coverlet and mounds of cushions. Delivev seated Gildrum and herself upon it, and all around them the webs formed gossamer curtains. She pointed out one of the spiders, a tiny black creature sitting in the center of a web. At a gesture from its mistress, it scurried down a strand to spin a patch in a large open section of the net.

“Breezes sometimes break the silk,” said Delivev, “or a bird or a snake will wander in here.”

“Why don’t you close off the room, then, and seal the window?”

“How would insects enter if I did that? My spiders have to eat, Mellor.” She pressed him back against the cushions. “Relax now, and watch that web.” She pointed to a fairly symmetrical segment of the drapery, eight strands radiating from a central point, joined by a myriad of closely spaced concentric rings. She stretched her hand out toward it, fingers splayed, palm parallel to the flat of the web, though many feet from it. Her hand moved slowly in a circular pattern, as if wiping a vertical surface with an invisible cloth. The center of the web became hazy, the strands blurring together into a uniform gray sheen, and upon that sheen dim shapes began to coalesce. As from a great distance, voices sounded in the web-draped room, then words, indistinct at first but growing clearer, as if the speakers approached. The dun shapes turned into men, and their lips moved to match their voices. Gildrum and Delivev viewed a scene in the main hall of some castle as they would see through a window into the courtyard of Castle Spinweb.

“Pay no attention to their conversation,” said Delivev. “Those two never discuss anything interesting. But there in the back—” One slim finger pointed to the left side of the scene. “There is the troubadour who is spending this season at the Castle of Three Towers. He will sing soon; it is almost time for dinner there.”