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

Cray shrugged. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Neither!” shouted Sepwin, and his horse started and tossed its head, and he had to soothe it with stroking hands. “Neither,” he said more quietly. “Yet I have been driven from every human settlement where I’ve shown both of them. I’ve been stoned, spat upon, kicked, flogged. No honest work for me, no friends; even my parents finally cast me out!”

“I don’t understand,” said Cray.

“Don’t you know what the evil eye means?”

“No.”

“Have you led such a sheltered life, Master Cray?”

“I suppose so. Tell me.”

Sepwin clasped his hands behind his back. “A cow dies, it’s my fault. A horse goes lame, a plow breaks, the children sicken, everyone blames me. They say I’ve gazed upon them with evil intent.”

“And have you?”

He looked up into Cray’s face. “I have willed evil a few times, for revenge. I have willed it with all my heart… and nothing has happened. The cows die and the children sicken and all the other unhappy things run their course without any help from me. These eyes lie, Master Cray. They have no power.”

“Very well,” said Cray, and he swung a leg over his saddle and jumped to the ground. He tethered Gallant to the nearest tree. “Now that we have settled that, Master Feldar, what do you say to a cheery fire and a hot supper? I stopped off some distance back and netted a fine pheasant among the grain. I’m sure that between the two of us we can pluck and dress it in a very short time.”

Sepwin took a single step toward him. “You are not an ordinary person.”

Cray pulled the bird out of one of his leather saddlebags. “Why? Because I believe you when you say you don’t have the evil eye?”

“An ordinary person would have left me to my fate back there in the village. After all, you don’t owe me anything.”

“I’ve vowed to be a knight,” said Cray. “How could I stand by and watch an innocent person killed?”

“I’ve been spat upon by knights.”

“Then they were not proper knights.”

“Who are you, Master Cray?”

Cray smiled. “No more than I seem—a boy looking to be a knight.”

“You are more than that.”

“Start the fire, Master Feldar, and I’ll begin the plucking.”

Sepwin stood motionless. “I’ve told you the truth about myself. Won’t you do as much?”

“What do you think I am?”

“A wizard of some sort.”

“Would you be frightened if I were?”