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

something else.”

Delivev looked at her son. “I know one who thinks otherwise.”

“I was born of two worlds, Mother,” he said, “and I made my choice.”

“Your choice, yes. Your free choice.”

From behind her, Lorien said, “I thought I heard voices down here.”

She whirled to face him, one arm stretched out to keep him from the room. His own clothing became his prison, frozen in the doorway, and he could not move against it.

“That is Lorien,” Cray whispered to Sepwin. They had to look over Delivev’s shoulder, for she stood in front of the web, barring it from the troubadour’s view.

“You are not welcome in this room,” she said. “Turn around and go back to your tower. I will call you when I want you.”

Stiffly, without his volition, Lorien’s clothing turned him about and walked him away.

“That was hardly a proper way to treat a guest, Mother,” Cray said when the troubadour was gone.

“I will not share this room with him.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and clutched her shoulders, as if feeling a sudden chill. “Only those I love may come here.

Let him find some other entertainment for himself in Spinweb. Let him play his lute and divert me. The webs are not for him.”

Cray bent and picked up a half-plucked pheasant from somewhere below the web’s

view. “We’re about to prepare supper now, Mother. And soon the light will fail.”

“I can watch you by fireglow,” she said. “Make your supper. I’ll just sit here by the web, as if I were with, you.”

“As you wish.”

“Just for a little while.”

The velvet coverlet was too smooth for her imagination to transform into the coarse grass she saw all about them, the air of the chamber too close to pass for night-damp.

Nor could she reach out to touch her son as he readied for bed, to kiss his forehead as she had for so many evenings through his life. He gave a last wave in her direction and rolled in his blanket by the fire. He slept quickly, she knew, and deeply. Sepwin seemed to do the same.

A gesture of her hand made the web opaque. She rose from the wide bed and made her way to the corridor. She paused at the foot of the stairway to the tower where the troubadour waited. Almost, she walked on, her mood too heavy for music, but after much hesitation, she climbed instead.

He lay upon his bed, the lute at his side, slow, mournful notes rising from it

At the doorway, she said, “Please accept my apology for treating you roughly, Master Lorien.”

He sat up. “Will you come in?” he said.

She inclined her head, entered, and seated herself at the table. “You interrupted a conversation with my son. He has been gone some time now, and I don’t speak to him often.”

“Please accept my apology for interrupting,” said Lorien. “Had I known, I would never have done so.”