"Sorcerer's Son" - читать интересную книгу автора (Phyllis Eisenstein)

“No, I can walk.”

She took his arm and laid it across her shoulders and bore most of his weight as they moved from the workshop to his bedroom. She eased him to the wide bed and stripped off his clothes, save for the new shirt and the thin overshirt that concealed it.

Rezhyk drew the covers up to his chin. “Wake me tomorrow for dinner.”

“My lord,” said Gildrum, leaning over him. “I would ask a favor of you.”

“A favor?” He opened one bloodshot eye. “What?”

“Let me go home for a little while. I need to get away from humans—I have been among them too much lately.”

Yawning, Rezhyk shook his head, burrowing deep into the pillow. “I cannot do without you, my Gildrum. Not now. I need you to watch over me.”

“You have other servants who can do that.”

“Not like you. You always know what I want. We’ve been together so long.”

She blew out the candle that illuminated the room. “Yes, my lord,” she said. “I will be near if you need me.” Silently, she glided from the room. She had a chamber of her own, on an upper floor, where she sometimes sat to watch the sky and wait for Rezhyk to summon her. She went there now. There were tasks to be done around the castle—there were always tasks—but she did not feel like doing any of them at this moment.





CHAPTER THREE


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She called him Cray. She bore him without another human hand to help, while her animals looked on from a ring about her bed. When he was free of her body, cloths washed and swaddled him and laid him upon her breast, and the soiled bedding eased itself away from her, rolled into a ball, and tumbled away to burn itself in the fireplace while fresh sheets crept beneath her and fresh blankets tucked themselves about her and her new son. She slept then.

He was a happy child, laughing early, reaching out with curious but gentle fingers for the brightly colored flowers and birds of the garden. He grew fast and sturdy, with his mother’s eyes and hair, with no hint of the young knight about him save for a love of fighting men. He would sit before the webs for hours to watch armored warriors strut across the view, to glimpse a sword and shield. He begged his mother to make her spiders move their webs outdoors, where he could watch sword practice and jousting, and she indulged him, as she did in most things. When he asked for a toy sword, she made it with her own hands, of a straight branch with a guard of twigs lashed to one end.

She made a shield, too, a light frame covered with cloth, and she embroidered his father’s arms upon the cloth—three red lances interlocked on a white field, just as they were upon the tapestry.

The tapestry was long completed. It hung in the room of its manufacture, the room from which the empty forest track could be seen. Delivev no longer climbed the stairs every day to look at either. But sometimes, late at night, after Cray was supposed to be asleep, she would visit the tower room and weep before the portrait. On those nights, she remembered the songs of troubadours too well. She listened to them less often these days, preferring to find absorption in her plants, her animals, and her son.

Cray had followed her to the tower a few times and crouched outside to hear her tears.

He knew why she wept, and even when he was very young he wondered why any man

would leave a woman to do that.

“He had pledged himself,” his mother explained. “When a person makes a promise, he must fulfill it.”

“Even if it means hurting someone?” Cray asked.

“Even so. That is the nature of a promise, Cray.”

When he was older, he said, “He must have found Falconhill by now, Mother. He must have given his message. Why hasn’t he returned? He promised you, too, after all.”