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

“And don’t worry about finding a chain shirt of perfect size; buy one too large and I’ll refit the links to you better than any tailor could.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He kissed her quickly, then grasped his horse’s mane and pulled himself into the saddle.

“I want to hear from you, my son. Let one of the spiders spin a web each night just before sunset so that we may speak to one another.”

“I will try, Mother. But if I am among ordinary people, it might be better that I avoid such sorcery.”

“It might. I would worry… but you must do as you see fit. You have my love always.

Hurry back.” She waved till he disappeared down the forest track.

At first Cray traversed ground that he knew as well as his mother’s castle, but soon he passed into unfamiliar territory. The nature of the forest did not change—it grew no denser, no darker, the trees did not bend over to clutch at him as, in younger days, he had thought they might. Smiling, he recalled other childhood fancies: that there was no world beyond a narrow stretch of woodland ringing Castle Spinweb; that the castle stood upon a disk of earth whose edge was the horizon, a cliff overlooking infinite depths. He had thought the scenes of the webs to be conjured from his mother’s imagination, stories told for his sole benefit He had assumed his mother and himself to be the only human beings in the universe, and when he viewed the tapestry portrait of his father, he thought that the handsome young knight had ridden too close to the edge of the disk and fallen into the vast nothing. When he finally spoke of these notions to his mother, she laughed and began to instruct him otherwise. Yet still, in his dreams, he sometimes peered over the edge of the world, and trees swayed close behind him, urging him to jump. In his dreams, he knew that his father was waiting, whole and strong, somewhere below.

He thought about his father more often than he would confess to Delivev. They had a tacit agreement between them that this one topic was not to be examined closely, but Cray could not help speculating, could not help measuring his life against the one he imagined his father had known. He could not remember when he had first vowed to be of his father’s kind and not his mother’s. He could not remember when he had first realized that he wanted his father to be proud of him.

The forest around Spinweb had few visitors. Its only hunters were Cray and his mother, and because they used magical nets that captured prey and carried it to the castle without human help, the forest dwellers had no fear of human beings. In his rambles, Cray had found deer to eat from his hands, and squirrels and rabbits to climb upon his lap and nuzzle him. His pony, too, had never frightened them, but before his great gray horse they now scattered, and all he saw of woodland creatures was an occasional rustle of leaves in the undergrowth. He had no hunting plans, for his saddlebags held food enough and more for the whole round trip of six days, but he would have liked the

companionship, however brief, of a deer or two. Instead, he had only a pack of spiders, and they were scant company, hiding in his boots, beneath his collar, behind the rolled brim of his hat. He held one on his finger for a time, but it didn’t care for the breeze of his horse’s motion and soon scuttled to the shelter of his sleeve. A couple of birds had followed him at first, flying around his head, lighting on his shoulder, but they had turned back before the morning was half gone. At noon he stopped at a spring, letting Gallant drink while he filled his flask; then he climbed the tallest tree he could find, to search behind him for Castle Spinweb. But it was gone, even its highest spire swallowed by the forest, which seemed to spread out in every direction, unbroken. Cray had never felt so alone in his life. He felt frightened by that, and elated, all at once.

That night, he camped in a grassy glade, and he set a spider to spin in a clump of rocks.

Almost as soon as the web was done, its center blurred, and his mother’s features coalesced upon the silk. They spoke briefly, she wished him good weather and a good night’s sleep, and as her image faded, he caught the glitter of tears upon her lashes. He sniffled a bit himself, but only after she was gone. He missed her as much as she missed him, but not enough to turn him back.

On the third day, the forest track merged with another, wider one, and he began to encounter signs of humanity: an axe-cut tree stump, an abandoned shelter made of stout branches, rusted horseshoes, a lone, cracked wagon wheel. Soon the road acquired twin ruts where carts frequented it. At mid-afternoon he passed a hunter, the first human being he had ever seen face to face save his mother. The man wore deerskin leggings and a woollen shirt; he carried a longbow slung over his shoulder, and a quiver of arrows fletched with white goose feathers.

Cray meant to hail him politely, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He wanted to ask the distance to the town. He wanted to exchange civilized pleasantries. Instead, he could only wave and ride on quickly. The man watched in silence as he passed.

The reins felt suddenly slippery in Cray’s hands, the leather wet with the new sweat on his palms, and he tightened his grip. Gallant felt the change in touch and tossed its head.

He halted the animal, then turned in the saddle to see if the bowman was staring after him. He was not. He was walking the other way. He had seen nothing worth staring after in a boy on a large horse.

Cray kicked his mount to a trot. He was ashamed of himself. He had assumed that seeing a human being in the flesh would be no different from seeing him in a web. He had never thought to practice greeting as he had practiced fighting. Now he whispered as he rode: “Good morning, friend. How far is the town, good sir? Fare you well on this fine day, good wife.” He hoped his heart would ease its clamor before his next encounter on the road.

The forest gave way to barley fields. Cray thought he saw a man standing among the grain, but on closer inspection the figure turned put to be a scarecrow. The afternoon was waning by the time he saw another human being—three of them at once, walking single file at the side of the track, bent-backed under huge bundles of wood. By that time he did not need to ask how far the town might be; he could see its walls in the distance, on high ground.

“Good morrow,” he said as he trotted past them. They made some sort of reply, but he scarcely heard it, could not have said whether it was greeting or curse. He only knew that he had spoken to them, and with those two small words he felt some barrier dissolve within himself. He sat straighter on his horse after that, though he was tired from the day’s riding, and he whistled a cheerful series of bird calls. As the road approached the town, other paths converged on it, and foot traffic from these as well as that he had caught up with enveloped him. He smiled and nodded at one and all, guiding his horse carefully through them, and when someone nodded a tentative return, Cray made a verbal greeting. Soon he was speaking to everyone he passed, and if only a few

answered with more than a tilt of the head he was content.

The town gates were open; his horse was so tall that Cray had to bend at the waist to pass beneath their arch. Immediately within was the marketplace. It was quiet so late in the day, only a few woodcutters hawking their wares against the cool of the coming night Cray dismounted near one of them.

“Good even, sir,” he said. “Can you tell me where I might buy a sword?”

The woodcutter looked Cray up and down. “A bit young for a sword, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps now,” said Cray, “but the years will mend that. Can you direct me?”

The man shrugged, “The smith might know. Up that street.” He gestured with a thumb.