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

“I am grateful for that promise, fair lady, but can you be certain… ?”

“I control them completely, I assure you. There is nothing in this castle that lies beyond my will. Except perhaps the pony.” She smiled at it. “And you, of course, Master Lorien.”

He inclined his head. “I, too, am yours to command.”

“Then ply your trade, troubadour. Sing!”

He sang the tale of an endless quest through summer heat and winter frost, from one end of the world to the other. She had heard the song before, at a distant hearth, though not by him. She had heard it, she thought, before he was born. She sat in the sunlight and she listened, and she could almost imagine that he sang from a web spun in the garden, save that he looked at her as the music flowed from his lips.

When he was finished, she said, “Yes, I have always thought you sang quite well.”

He laid the lute on the bench beside him. “Your pardon, lady… but we have never met before.”

“No, we have not, but I have heard you.”

“Ah… magic.”

“Sing again.”

“My lady… I would know for whom it is that I sing. You have a name, surely?”

“Surely. I am Delivev Ormoru, sometimes called the Weaver. Have you heard that

name?”

He shook his head.

She smiled. “I have some local reputation. All undeserved. After you leave Spinweb, you may hear some people speak of me with fear. I hope the impression you carry with you will give you cause to discount their views.”

“You have been only too kind to me, my lady, so far.” He rubbed with two fingers at the varnished surface of his lute. “And I am reassured when I hear you refer to experiences I might have after leaving your castle. In truth, I was not sure that you intended for me to leave.”

“I have no spells that require a troubadour’s entrails, Master Lorien. I deal in quite a different sort of sorcery. Sing again; it’s a beautiful day for singing, is it not?”

“It is a beautiful day,” said Lorien, and he sang.



Outside the castle walls, the gray squirrel heard music rising from the garden. Gildrum had not seen the arrival of the vine-steed and its rider, and now the demon wondered if Delivev’s spiders had spun a web in the garden instead of the web chamber, for her to view some distant scene. It wished it had a bird’s form, to fly with seeming innocence close above the castle. But Rezhyk had never given it wings, and it could only fly in its true form. It looked up at the sky; a few clouds floated near the sun, but none across. The squirrel vanished as Gildrum passed from the human to the demon world, its normal mode of travel over long distances; it re-emerged as a flame against the sun, a bright spot invisible in the glow of that brilliant disk. It hung above the castle, far higher than the tallest trees, and below it Spinweb was laid out like a child’s toy fortress. It could see Delivev, a doll-figure seated on a garden bench, and Cray’s old pony stood close beside her. On another bench was a man, a lute cradled in his lap; from this height the music of both voice and strings was lost.

A man.

Gildrum perceived he was an ordinary mortal with an ordinary aura, no sorcerer. The flame that was Gildrum grew hotter, whiter even than the sun, and some moments

slipped by before it recognized the emotion it was feeling.

Jealousy.

Gildrum returned to Ringforge, to the tower room that was its own, to the form of the girl with blond braids. She threw herself on the cold stone floor and wept hot, human tears.