Sorcerer's Son (51 page)

“Thank you,” said Cray. “I fear you will fail; if the promise of freedom was not enough for them, what could be?”

“We will do our best. Farewell.”

Cray lifted a hand. “Farewell.”

Abruptly, all the thunderheads that hovered about the field of battle vanished, and the cushion of air that had supported and protected Cray disappeared as well, leaving him as weightless as in the demon world for the instant before Elrelet enveloped him. He coughed, having inhaled a whiff of smoke in that moment, and his vision blurred as tears welled up to cleanse his eyes. When he had done blinking, he realized that Yra and the other fire demon that had been with him, that he had not known what to do with, were also gone, and he assumed that the ice demons had followed. Below, the fire raged stronger.

“They are fools,” said Elrelet. “Sometimes I think all demons are fools. Only fools would play the. game.”

“You don’t think they’ll be able to convince the other Free, do you?”

“I don’t know. Their offer will be

tempting. Foolish and tempting.”

“What offer?” asked Cray.

“The one which your human ears couldn’t hear them discuss. Each of them intends to offer to take on the names of all the demons of its kind who will join you here. They trust you, Cray Ormoru. If you free them, those names won’t matter. A demon freed by a sorcerer never has to answer the summons for any name. As I said, a tempting offer.”

“And why foolish, Elrelet? It seems bold and clever to me.”

Elrelet sighed. “Foolish once because it may yield too little return to win the fight yet still leave them shackled with extra names. Foolish twice

because they are trusting a human being.”

Cray closed his fists on empty air, on the body of Elrelet surrounding him. “Is it so very foolish to trust a human being?”

“When rings are involved

yes.”

“I am as good as my word, Elrelet.”

“Gildrum thinks so. But Gildrum is desperate. I will wait, and I will hope. I will hope very hard, Cray Ormoru. But I am glad I am not one of the Free who must chance your trust.”

“I shall prove myself, I swear it.” He gazed down at the burning forest. “We are not all greedy and self-centered.”

“Perhaps I know more sorcerers than you,” whispered Elrelet

Amid the beating heat, Delivev waited for death. She had retreated within the walls of Spinweb when the spiders covered the turret she stood upon with webwork. Now she saw that webbing as her shroud. All the windows of Spinweb were covered, all the doors, all the thick stone walls, but still the heat seeped in, like the strongest summer sunshine in the garden.

She sat in the web chamber, a different scene on every side, and fire in all of them. Here, from her own walls, she could see the forest raging and the fire demons bringing ever more wood to throw upon the blazing trees; they were hard against the stone now in some places, making of Spinweb a victim being burned at the stake. In other webs she viewed the battlefront at Ringforge from a dozen angles, and from none of them was that castle itself visible beyond the flaming barrier that held her forces at bay.

So many tiny lives, she thought, sacrificed for mine. Would it have been better, she wondered, if she had let herself die without ever calling them, since she would die anyway, at the last. Soon. She could feel the walls of Spinweb beginning to yield about her, bit by bit, to the fiery onslaught. Already cracks were showing behind the webbing, cracks that admitted the terrible heat. Baked alive, she thought, or perhaps suffocated first, for the air was growing close as well as hot. She lay back upon the velvet coverlet, wondering if she would be able to find the strength and the, courage to climb the stairs again, to throw herself from one of the high windows before the heat became too much. She turned her face to one of the webs. Almost, she wanted to give up, disperse her army, and bring the end quickly.

Almost.

She rolled over on her elbow and lifted a hand to the web. She had seen a place along the perimeter about Ringforge where the fire was sparser. She thrust her forces through there, willing them to push and push, willing them to dodge the flames and surge across the open space that was covered with the cooling remains of their fellows.

She shook a fist at the web, a fist glistening with sweat “Coward!” she cried. “You haven’t killed me yet!”

The air was rent with clap after clap of thunder as great dark masses materialized out of nothingness all around Cray. In spite of Elrelet’s protective envelope, he was tossed like a leaf in the storm, jerked one way and another by savage winds, spun, tumbled, till he thought his bones would rip apart. And then he was left behind in sudden calm as the darkness descended below him and he saw for the first time that gigantic human shapes of cloud, with cloud-swords and cloud-shields, marched through the summer day. A hundred times larger than he had ever seen them, the Free of Air roared down upon the burning forest, flattening trees and smothering flames with their weapons. They grappled with fire demons, whirling upon them like dust devils and sweeping them skyward till they looked to be so many sparks against the night of smoke.

Water demons appeared then, like a string of milk-white pearls, with shields as big as ox carts, rounded, full of water which splashed down upon the flaming forest, over and over again, while ice demons swooped low, cooling the steaming ground till frost formed on the scorched stumps.

“Spinweb!” shouted Cray.

A rushing sound by his right ear made him look in that direction, where he saw Arvad, man-sized, with that peculiar near-human face. “Done, even as we speak,” said the demon, and its slit of a mouth curved upward at the corners. “The fire is fading, and Lord Rezhyk’s minions have been wrestled to the sky by Free fire and air demons, and there they will stay until Lord Rezhyk himself is finished.”

“And my mother?” Cray demanded.

“Judge for yourself,” said Arvad, who waved a sword of steel-gray cloud downward, toward the blackened line of combat.

The living carpet moved again, green and black, plant and animal. It flowed over the crumbling stumps of trees, over boughs that fell to ash when touched, over soot that was the bodies of earlier attackers. It flowed to the walls of Ringforge and began to climb the polished surfaces. The bronze was smooth as glass, but spiders could lay the sticky strands of their silk upon it and mount the bronze as easily as porous stone. Ivy could follow, with spiderweb purchase, and find rivets not set quite flush with the surface as well, and junctures between the bronze plates to pry at with inquisitive tendrils, in age-old plant fashion. Soon vines festooned the walls of Ringforge, which creaked and rippled before the steady, insinuating pressure.

Rezhyk stood in his workshop, his back to the table, to the glowing brazier. All around him, he could hear Ringforge yielding in agony. The very walls groaned from the warping of the structure, and a sound almost like a human scream marked the wrenching of each copper scale from the window shutter; inside the room, the bronze sheet that covered the window opening and made it seem to be nothing more than another portion of the smooth wall bulged with inward pressure. But Rezhyk’s attention was focused on the door to his workshop, and he perceived these other things only peripherally. He stared at the door, a panel closely matching the rest of the wall, save for a slit of space beneath, where it was not snug against the floor. It was an impossibly narrow slit, so thin that a hair could just pass through, but as Rezhyk had always known, it was wide enough to admit spiders. And, one by one, they entered now.

He stamped upon them at first, his teeth gritted, knowing they were no ordinary spiders. He suspected there had never been any ordinary spiders in Ringforge. He stamped. But there were too many of them, pouring through the slit now, and from the window, where the bronze plate had given at one corner. Dozens of spiders. Scores. Hundreds. He could not count so many. They swarmed upon him and he tried to hide his head in his arms, but they crawled down his collar and into his hair. He cupped his hands over his nose, to keep them from his nostrils.

They sat on him. They did not bite.

After a time, he raised his head. His breath quieted, though his skin shuddered beneath a coating of dark, scuttling bodies. He glanced at himself in the nearest wall, and all he could see was a man-shape and two dark eyes peering out. His clothing and skin were hidden. Yet they did not bite.

Though Ringforge crumbled about its lord, the spell of the golden shirt held.

He lowered his hands, and the spiders made no move to clog his nostrils. Instead, they milled aimlessly, and after a while they began to fall off. He helped them a little, shaking his arms and legs one at a time. And then he began to stamp on them again, methodically, each blow a little harder than the last, and he began murmuring to himself in a singsong voice, garbled words with no meaning. He was stamping hard enough to make the floor ring, and he was waving his fists about his head when at last he summoned Gildrum.

The demon took some time to appear. When the blond girl had coalesced from the ball of flame, she apologized immediately. “I had to use considerable strength to break away from my opponent, my lord. The fight does not go well for us. Had I not been retreating, I doubt that I would have won away at all.” She gazed at the floor, at the spiders milling over the crushed bodies of their fellows, at Rezhyk’s booted feet crushing more, ever more. “What will you, my lord?”

Rezhyk looked up from his task, looked into Gildrum’s innocent face. “You have advice for me now, my Gildrum?” he rasped. “You have your usual good advice?”

Slowly, she said, “Your demons are stalemated, my lord. We cannot take Castle Spinweb while it has so many defenders. And the lady Delivev’s forces are at this moment breaching Ringforge. My advice is

that you throw yourself on her mercy.”

Rezhyk pointed a finger at Gildrum. “You built this castle, demon! Why did you not build it stronger?”

“My lord,” said Gildrum, “bronze has its limitations. And so have I.”

“You! You! You never told me she commanded demons!”

“She does not, my lord.”

*Then where do they come from?“

“She has an ally, my lord.”

“And who would that ally be?”

Gildrum pursed her lips against the answer, but it forced itself from her mouth. “her son.”

Rezhyk left off his stamping, and his eyes blazed with a fire hotter than any demon. “Her son! How can that be? You rid me of him. You killed him.” He cocked his head to one side. “Did you not?”

Gildrum whispered, “No, my lord.”

“But you had to! I commanded you to kill him!” He shut his mouth tight, till the lips showed white and cracked, and the chin began to quiver with his anger. “No,” he said in a thin, taut voice. “I see now that I did not quite command you to kill him. What was it I said, O clever Gildrum, that you twisted to suit your pleasure, to betray me?”

Gildrum’s fingers curled at her thighs, clutching the fabric of her dress. “You said to kill him before he found another master.”

“But he did find another master.”

“No, my lord.”

“Then how did he learn the art, Gildrum? How?”

Very softly, she said, “I taught him, my lord—here in Ringforge and after he left.”

Rezhyk’s eyes were wide, whites showing all around the irises, and his cheeks were sunk deep beneath his sharp cheekbones. “O my Gildrum,” he whispered hoarsely. “O my first and best servant. O my youth’s companion

conspiring with her son against me.” He leaned back, clutching at the worktable for support, his fingers clawing stiffly. “Why? Why? You were like my own flesh and blood, my Gildrum, Why?”

Her chin lifted defiantly. ‘That he might free me, my lord.“

“Free you? For what?”

“For her.”

Rezhyk’s eyes narrowed. “What of her? What is she to you?”

“My lord, I love her.”

“Love?” Rezhyk pointed a shaking finger at Gildrum. “Down on your knees, demon slave! Down on the knees that I fashioned for you with these two hands! There is no human flesh in that body—what would a human woman want with such as you?”

Gildrum sank to her knees among the spiders. “You have found use for this unhuman flesh,” she murmured.

“Love, you say?” Rezhyk shouted, and his tips curled back from clenched teeth. “Know what love will bring you, demon! I know an incantation that even my death cannot sunder. At the center of the earth, where the very rocks flow like hot pitch—there shall you find a prison for the rest of time!”

Gildrum bowed her head and clasped her hands against her forehead. “My lord, I beg you—”

“But first you shall serve me once more, better than you have ever served me before. You shall go to your beloved Delivev, and you shall kill her, and after that you shall kill her son. And as proof of your work, you shall bring me their heads before the sun sets today! Now go!”

Gildrum lifted a pale face to look at him. “But my lord,” she whispered, “Delivev is within her stronghold, where no demon may enter.”

“No demon, perhaps,” said Rezhyk, “but you, Mellor, handsome young knight—she will not keep you out! Go!”

The slight blond girl vanished.

Cray had been alone for some time, save for Elrelet, watching the battle rage about him in the sky and on the ground. Even Arvad, who had been bringing him frequent reports on the progress of the allied Free was busy with some energetic foe—Cray could see them in the distance, spinning and tumbling, a ball of flame entangled with thick, black cloud like greasy smoke. Other, similar dark clouds spotted the battlefield, but the true smoke had nearly dissipated, though fresh gouts occasionally billowed from the forest as one of Rezhyk’s minions broke loose of its assailants and plunged into the trees.

Below, the bronze of Ringforge gleamed no more. The walls, turrets, towers were all choked with climbing greenery.

“It shudders,” said Elrelet “It will fall, at the end.”

“When?” asked Cray.

“Sooner than Lord Rezhyk hopes. I’m sure.”

A flame sprang into being before Cray’s eyes, white as the sun, blinding him for a moment, and the familiar girl-voice of Gildrum burst from it, tighter, tenser than he had ever known it: “Cray! He has ordered me to kill her!”