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

settlement, to the track that had brought him there. He could not see the forest save in his mind’s eye, but he knew that afternoon would bring him to it. He would have one of his spiders spin a web then, between two trees, and he would tell his mother of his success. He hoped she had not waited up all night, worrying about him while her webs remained blank.

The chain mail in his saddlebags rustled to the rhythm of Gallant’s pace, a metallic lullaby for a boy who yearned for knighthood. He daydreamed as he rode, of the years that lay ahead, of the feel of chain upon his body, of the heft of sword and shield. He would work hard and grow strong and sure, and then he would leave Spinweb for the wide world. Somewhere out there was his father, perhaps dead, perhaps alive and imprisoned by some enemy or enthralled by another woman—Cray would follow the

trail to Falconhill, to the East March, to wherever it might lead. His mother had said she did not wish to know his father’s fate, but Cray could not rest so. He had to know the truth, no matter how painful.

He did not plan to tell her of his quest, only that he intended to search for a teacher to help him be the best knight he could. She would weep anyway, when they bade each other farewell. He thought it better not to burden her more than that.





CHAPTER FOUR


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From the shelter of a tree hollow, a gray squirrel watched Cray practice combat against empty air. Its small head was turned sideways, one lustrous eye following the glint of the sword, both ears pricked to the sound of swinging chain mail. Its tiny paws balanced, humanlike, on the crumbling bark that rimmed its hiding place, and its broad, fluffy tail twitched over its back in rhythm to the boy’s movements. The squirrel came often to that tree, and to others nearby, to watch Cray fight imaginary foes in the dappled sunlight of the forest outside Spinweb. It would have come more often yet, but it had a master who required its frequent presence at his castle, in the form of a young, blond girl.

Gildrum could see Spinweb’s walls from that perch. It had come to the forest to see them, to catch a glimpse of her standing at the gate or the parapet or leaning from a window. It had come as a squirrel, many months after leaving as a man. In those intervening months, the demon had sought to drown itself in work, to fill its days and nights with fetching and carrying and traveling to the far corners of the world, to blot her face from its consciousness. It had even taken over tasks that would normally be assigned to lesser demons, on the pretense that Gildrum could do them better, faster, more precisely the way the master wished them done. Yet her face had been with it always, and at last it succumbed to her lure. Rezhyk never knew that there was a day after which every errand that took his faithful Gildrum from the confines of Castle Ringforge included a brief stop outside Spinweb.

It could not enter, not as squirrel nor as flame. No demon could enter a sorcerer’s home without the owner’s invitation, unless its own master were within. The knight could have gained admittance, of course, but Gildrum could not face the elaborate fabric of lies that would be necessary to explain visits only long enough for a greeting and a kiss.

Rezhyk’s command of secrecy still held; his servant could not reveal its true identity.

Rezhyk had given Gildrum the squirrel form once, that the demon might move among humans unobtrusively, and never had it used that shape so much as in the forest about Spinweb. It learned to know the other squirrels, the deer, the rabbits, the wind that whipped the castle walls and the rains that drenched them. It saw Spinweb in moonlight and in moonless starlight, in sunlight and storm, and at last that intermittent vigil was rewarded, on a bright spring morning when the dew was still fresh on the grass, shining like diamonds scattered beneath the trees: she stepped from the castle gate, the feathers of her dress rippling in the light breeze, a small child clinging to her hand.

Gildrum gazed long at the child, a brown-haired boy so like Delivev that he could be none other than her son—a sturdy, laughing boy who let go her hand to run barefoot through the wet grass. Cray, she called him, and she told him not to run out of sight. The gray squirrel chittered as they passed by its tree, and the child looked up eagerly and began to make small chittering noises of his own, holding his hand out to lure the squirrel closer. Gildrum was tempted for a moment to go to him, to be cuddled against that small breast, perchance to be touched as well by Delivev herself, but time weighed heavily against the demon; it had watched as long as it dared, and now it had to turn, to scamper back along the branch and dive into a hollow of the tree, to transform into something else, somewhere else.

It did not tell Rezhyk where it had been, what it had seen. Rezhyk, never dreaming that Delivev would bear the babe they had given her, never asked. He had other interests now that he was safe within his shirt of gold, and he had put her out of his mind.

Cray grew straight and strong and more interested in the world beyond Spinweb’s walls than his mother was, and the gray squirrel saw her seldom and him often, if fleetingly. It saw him feed deer from his bare hands and tumble on the moss with wild rabbits. It saw him ride his pony through the dense woods, ducking low in the saddle to keep from being swept off by overhanging boughs. It saw him take up arms, first wooden ones and then steel, stalking the forest as a battlefield, slashing at the trees as if they were his mortal enemies. It saw… and Gildrum the demon found itself proud of Cray’s

accomplishments, as if the boy were its own child.

Gildrum knew other demons would laugh at that notion, as they would surely laugh at its love for a human woman; they would say Gildrum had lived too long among humans, that he had absorbed some of their madness. Yet Gildrum wondered why Rezhyk should be any more a father for giving the seed than a demon was for planting it.

My son, it thought, watching with dark, squirrel eyes as Cray rode his great gray horse away from Spinweb.



“I would not wish you to think that I am spying on you,” said Delivev.

Cray sat patiently while she bound his hands to the loom with threads of many colors. “I understand, Mother. You have a right to know where I go.”

“I don’t care where you go, only that you are safe there. The tapestry will trace you like a map, recording not just the motion of your body but that of your heart as well It will show me your joy and your anguish; it will let me share your triumph and your danger.

And should you forget your poor mother for too long, it will show me where to send reminders of my love for you.”