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

What right have I to deny her a human lover? she asked herself. None. None.

Still, she wept. Gildrum had never wept before.





CHAPTER FIVE


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The ochre beeswax had all run out of the clay mold, which was now ready to receive molten metal. Rezhyk drew the long-handled cup from its small oven and tilted it carefully above the clay; liquid gold spilled in a thin, steady stream from the spout, filling the channels that led to the ring form. The air above the flow shimmered with its heat.

“This will be a fine one,” said Rezhyk. “I can feel it in the smoothness of the pour.”

“You have a steady hand,” said Gildrum. She sat on the high stool by the brazier, holding the cloth with which he would wipe his sweating face when he was finished.

“Have there been any but fine ones in the last dozen years?”

“There was the one we did the night of the storm.”

“I don’t count that one. Even I was startled by that clap of thunder.”

“I count it,” said Rezhyk, setting the spoon on a trivet and reaching for the cloth. “Many a good hour of spell-casting was wasted on that monstrosity.”

“You could have used it still. You could have trimmed and polished it and set the stone in it. Only |your own desire for perfection made you destroy it.”

Rezhyk shook his head. “Even with your great experience, my Gildrum, you don’t know everything. Nor do I, I confess it. I could not take the chance that the slave might use the imperfection to break free and do me some mischief. Not with that one. He was too powerful. And too angry at being caught.”

“We are all angry at first,” said Gildrum. “It fades.”

“Does it? Well, perhaps with some. You, my Gildrum—you are not angry with me any more, are you?”

“You know the answer to that, my lord, or you would not care to keep me by your side.”

“Not even a little?”

Her clear blue eyes gazed straight into his. “I bear you no grudge for summoning me.

You have given me an interesting life in the human world, and I have learned much from it and from you.”

Rezhyk turned his back to her. “Yet, when first I summoned you—how you raged! You would have liked to burn me to a cinder on the spot.”

“Wouldn’t you have felt the same, my lord, in my position? Stolen from home and friends, enslaved? I would have burned you. Truly, I would have, save for that ring on your finger.”

He faced her. “The ring, yes! Can you doubt that it must be flawless?”

“Like all sorcerers,” said Gildrum, “you know less about demons than you suppose.