Sorcerer's Son (32 page)

“He will go to another master then.”

“After seven years? Or ten? Or whatever limit you may set? He is a human being, my lord. He will run home to his mother and surrender himself to her tutelage, I think, when he has failed at yours.”

Rezhyk covered his face with his hands. “Perhaps you are right,” he said between his fingers. He nodded. “Yes, it is a good plan, my Gildrum. I cannot think of a better.”

“And it gives you time, my lord.”

“Yes. Time. To prepare

for whatever lies ahead. For her.” He rubbed at his eyes, grinding the pads of his fingers against them as if they were full of grit, as if he were just rising from a deep sleep, or had been awake too long. “I feel,” he murmured, “like a man standing at the brink of an abyss. I see doom before me, my Gildrum. We should never have done it. Never. I should have searched further for a way to deal with her.” He sighed. “No, I can’t blame you. I grasped at it myself. It seemed

so likely at the time. Not your fault, my Gildrum. You have always given me the best advice you knew. It is my choice, after all, whether to take it or no.” He heaved himself to his feet. “I suppose we must tell him the good news.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Gildrum, and she followed her master’s slow and heavy step out of the workshop.

Rezhyk let the wall swing aside for him, but he did not enter the tiny, dun chamber. “Well, Cray Ormoru,” he said quite loudly, “there is room for you at Ringforge, if your mind is still bent toward apprenticing to me.”

Cray bowed low, smiling a trifle. “It is, my lord.”

“Then there are certain rules that you must know. First among them is that no other sort of magic than my own may be practiced within these walls. If ever I catch you using any tricks your mother might have taught you, your time at Ringforge will be ended. Second, you must obey me in all things, without question and without quibbling; I know far better than you do what you must learn and how you must learn it. Third, there are chambers in this castle that you may not enter; their doors will not open for you, so do not attempt to force them or find some other means of entry—if I find you prowling about them, I shall mete out proper punishment. If any of these rules seems unjust or overly harsh to you, speak now.”

“My lord, this is your home, and I am your guest. I would not abuse your hospitality.”

Rezhyk nodded stiffly. “Gildrum will show you to your quarters, then, and all the other places in my castle where you may roam freely. I leave you to her mercies.” He turned abruptly and took one quick step away before Cray’s voice halted him.

“A moment, my lord?”

Rezhyk glanced back over his shoulder. “What is it?”

“I have a friend, my lord,” Cray said. “He and I have been together for many months now, shared many adventures, and we would share this one as well.”

The sorcerer gazed at Cray with narrowed eyes. “I take only one apprentice, Cray Ormoru.”

“Not as an apprentice, sir, he would never expect that. But he would serve willingly in the castle, I know. And he has no family, nowhere to go save with me.”

“He will have to find somewhere then,” Rezhyk replied. “He shall not come here. One outsider is enough.”

“He is a most unusual fellow, my lord—diligent, faithful, and he is accustomed to sorcery now.”

“An ordinary mortal, is he?”

“Yes.”

“Then all the more reason to bar him from my home.”

“Not even

as my own personal servant?”

“We have plenty of servants here, Cray Ormoru, and none of them with weak, human limitations.”

“My lord, he is like a brother to me.”

Rezhyk scowled at Cray, his lips pursed to whiteness in his dark face. “Would you prefer to find some other master who will take you both?”

Cray bowed again. “No, my lord. It shall be as you say.”

“Very well.” Rezhyk stalked away, leaving the wall open for Cray and Gildrum to follow.

Gildrum waited until Rezhyk was well gone, and then she turned to Cray and said, “His anger can be bitter. You would do well to keep silence when he is displeased. It passes then, more quickly than if you continue to speak.”

“I had to ask,” replied Cray. “I promised.”

“Your friend will simply have to find his own way in the world from now on.”

“He predicted it would be so. He was wiser than I in this.” He looked questioningly at the demon. “What of my possessions, the things that I left behind me with the lady Helaine? I have a pair of saddlebags full of clothing.”

“We shall send for them, never fear. The bird can carry saddlebags as well as a human being. Better, since they don’t become ill on the way.”

“I have a horse, too.”

“Ah, a horse.” Gildrum touched one finger to her lips. “We haven’t any stable for a horse here at Ringforge. My lord never uses the creatures.”

“I can build a shelter for him just outside the walls.”

Gildrum shook her head.

“Is there some spot inside, then?”

“I fear you will have to give up the horse, Master Cray.”

Cray started back one step, as if physically repelled. “Give up Gallant? No!”

“Yes.”

“Never. He has been my constant companion for years.”

“You will have no time for him here.”

“I will make the time.”

Gildrum shook her head again. “You have no concept of the sort of work that awaits you, Master Cray. It leaves no room for the exercise that a horse requires, for the grooming and feeding.”

“Will he forbid me to have the horse here?”

“He will forbid you to waste your time caring for it.” Gildrum glanced at the opening in the wall. “As you have seen, he is a severe master. You would be wise to bend with him instead of trying to stand firm. A horse is such a little thing to give up, if it makes your life smoother.”

Cray eyed Gildrum, eyed the slight, fair form that appeared even younger than himself. “Have you served him long that you know him so well?”

She nodded.

“Are you

related to him somehow?”

“No.” She smiled at Cray. “I am a demon, like all the other servants you will meet in Ringforge. There are only two human beings here—you and my lord Rezhyk.”

“A demon?” Cray found himself peering at her more closely, searching for some sign of her origin in the form or texture of her body. “You look

completely human.”

“My lord gave me this shape. He is very good at such things.”

“May I

may I touch you?” Cray lifted his hand toward her, halting the gesture in mid-air, an arm’s length away from her face.

“If you wish.” She stepped forward, took his hand in her own and laid the palm flat against her cheek. “I am not cold and slimy, I promise you.” She smiled. “Fire demons rarely are.”

Cray traced the line of her jaw and then drew his hand away slowly. “It feels like human flesh.”

“Of course. My lord is master of his art.”

“But are you not

made of fire?”

“Yes. Sometimes. I am sure you will learn about me in the course of your apprenticeship. Eventually, you will be able to conjure others of my kind yourself. That is what you wish, is it not?”

“Yes. That is what I wish.”

“I will show you to your room, if you will follow me, Master Cray, and after that I shall send the bronze bird for your saddlebags.”

Cray sighed. “But not

my horse.”

Gildrum’s voice softened. “Will he be well cared for, do you think, at the lady Helaine’s home?”

Cray nodded. “My friend will look after him.” He hesitated a moment. “Can I send a message with the bird?”

“Instructions for the care of the horse? And

a farewell to your friend?”

“Yes. And my thanks to the lady for all her help. And one other thing: a request to tell my mother that I am here, well, and accepted for apprenticeship.”

“Ah, yes,” said Gildrum. “Your mother would certainly want to know.”

The tapestry ended abruptly at Castle Ringforge, that many-turreted structure represented by a simple brown-edged rectangle, empty in the center, the pale warp strands untouched by weft. As long as he stayed within those sorcerous walls, she would know nothing of his life, his health, his hazards: He might even die, and no sign would mark the cloth. The weft threads hung loose, the bobbins dangling beneath the fabric like spiders hanging from their own silk, swaying gently in the breeze created by her passage.

In the garden, his pony waited for the touch of her hands. Its head came up at the sound of her step, and flower petals dripped from its slowly moving jaws. She had begun to reprimand it, gently, for eating these small, immobile companions of her loneliness when a scurrying spider apprised her of a message in the chamber of webs. She bolted from the garden, startling the pony, flowers forgotten.

The image in the web was dim, and it rippled constantly, like a reflection in restless water. The face was pale, the hair pulled back in a tight, white braid. The mouth was motionless, transfixed tunelessly upon the web until a listener should arrive and bid it speak. Delivev recognized the lady Helaine and gestured that the message might begin.

“Lord Rezhyk has accepted him,” said the Seer, her eyes staring out of the web, seeing nothing, attempting to see nothing. “He sends you his love. He is a good lad and has much enterprise. I think he will do well.” The eyes closed, and the image faded away, leaving only blank strands of gossamer behind.

Delivev bowed her head. Then I will hear nothing more, she thought, and the finality of those words, silent as they were, brought the tears to her cheeks that she thought had been all spent on Cray’s behalf. She realized then that she had been hoping against hope that Rezhyk would reject him, that all demon-masters would find him somehow unfit for their service, that he would be forced by that to come home at last and give himself back to her. Now she had to put that hope aside, once and for all; and with that final inward gesture, instead of finding the bleak agony that she had feared, she found a faint pride: pride in her son, that she had borne and raised alone, who had until recently known no other sources of instruction than herself and the images she conjured for him in the webs—pride that such a child could be considered worthy by one so different from herself as Smada Rezhyk.

He will be a man of power, my son, she thought. She reached out to the nearest web, grazed the silk with her fingertips, and it clung, nigh weightless, to her flesh. A spider skittered across the lattice, a brown-and-white mite no larger than her smallest fingernail; it came to rest on her upturned palm, and it, too, was as light as air, its tiny legs tickling at her skin like the merest puffs of air. She regarded it with tender eyes, with softly curving lips. “You must be my child now,” she whispered. “You must all be my children, as before.”

She tipped the creature back onto the web, then crossed her arms over her bosom. She thought of her own mother, dead so many years, dead so soon after passing the last of her knowledge to her daughter. Delivev was young; her life and her son’s would overlap for a long time. When he is a man of power, she wondered, will he still know me?

Walking the central corridor of Castle Ringforge, Cray knew that he would be slow in adjusting to his new surroundings. His eyes were already baffled by the soft illumination from sconces that bore no candles and from the reflections of those sconces in many a polished wall. He thought himself in a maze of intersecting hallways, until he perceived his own image and Gildrum’s walking among them and understood that most of them were phantoms in the flawless bronze, ruddy and dim as his own flesh was ruddy and dim when he raised a hand before his eyes.

“I’ll soon tire of the sight of my own face,” he remarked to Gildrum, who guided him to a staircase where they climbed close beside their reflections. The staircase was long, requiring half the length of the corridor to rise to the second story, and its steps were shallow, ridged with a bold pattern of parallel lines that provided a better purchase for booted feet than the smooth, level floor.

“You’ll stop noticing it after a time,” said Gildrum. She seemed to glide up the stairway, her skirt sweeping lightly behind her—it would have stirred up dust on a less perfectly clean surface. Cray suddenly felt dirty in his shirt and trews, his worn boots, and he wondered at the enormous effort of scrubbing and polishing that must be expended in the keeping of Ringforge.

“I have never seen bronze so bright,” he said. “Almost like pale gold. How long has Ringforge stood, that it has not yet begun to darken with age?”

“A long time, Master Cray. My lord prefers it bright, and so his servants keep it for him.”

“I feel as if I’m walking inside some great jewel.”

She smiled back at him over one shoulder. “You may have divined my lord’s intention, Master Cray. Of all the substances of the earth, he loves gems best.”

“I saw—on his hands.”

At the top of the stairs they turned left sharply, into the corridor that lay directly above that on the first floor. Gildrum paused after a few paces. “Here is your room,” she said, pointing to the bare, smooth wall with one index finger. A section of the surface, rectangular, taller and broader than the biggest man, swung aside to reveal a dark interior.

Cray glanced from the aperture to Gildrum. “Are there no ordinary doors in this castle?”

“None with knobs and locks, Master Cray. My lord says such would mar the symmetry of the place.” She gestured toward darkness. “Will you go in?”

“Have you a candle?”

“We need no candle. Step across the threshold.”

He did as she bade, and the instant that he entered the chamber, sconces on every wall came alight, their images multiplied in polished bronze on every side, above and below. He squinted at the nearest sconce. “What is the source of that light?”

“Fire demons.”

“I would rather have a candle.”

“We don’t use candles in Ringforge.”

“There were candles in the room where I spoke to Lord Rezhyk.”

“Were there?”

“Of course. I saw them.”

“You saw what outsiders see, Master Cray.” Standing beneath the light, she stretched up on her toes and passed her hand through the flame; when she pulled back, the fire was on her fingertips instead of in the sconce, and it played there, bouncing from one finger to another as she held her hand before his eyes. “A very minor demon,” she said. “It can look like a candle if it so desires. It has a few other little tricks, too. Not much. My lord has any number of such creatures.”