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

“She might notice immediately.”

Gildrum spread her hands, palms upward. “I have no other suggestions.”

“We would have to work quickly. A month is too long. Could I do it in a week?”

“Working night and day, my lord, working with perfect efficiency, you might possibly do it in a week. At the end, you would be exhausted.”

“I have no choice.” He opened the drawer where he kept his stock of ring-metal. Gold lay within, and silver, copper, iron—wooden boxes held chips and chunks of each, surplus from old rings, and a few small ingots. “I have a gold bar, never used. Will that be enough?”

“Yes.”

He hefted the bar in one hand. ‘This will be a heavy garment.“

“You will grow strong wearing it.”

He set the metal on his workbench. “We have only one problem, my Gildrum.” He

glanced up at her. “How to bring about this pregnancy.”

Gildrum smiled. “Leave that to me.”

Rezhyk’s gaze traveled the length of the demon’s girl-body. “You suit me well, but for her… for her we must give you another form.”

“Tall,” said Gildrum. Tall and lean and just past the first flush of youth.“

Rezhyk worked two days and two nights to model Gildrum’s new form in terra-cotta.

Life-sized he made it, strong of arm and broad of shoulder, sinewy and lithe, the essence of young manhood. Other sorcerers, when they gave their servants palpable forms, made monsters, misshapen either by device or through lack of skill, but Rezhyk molded his to look as if they had been born of human women. Complete, the figure seemed almost to breathe in the flickering light of the brazier.

Satisfied with his work, Rezhyk set his seal upon it: an arm ring clasped above the left elbow, a band of plain red gold, twin to the one he wore on his finger, incised with Gildrum’s name. Gently, but with a strength that would seem uncanny in so slight a body, were it truly human, Gildrum lifted the new-made figure in her arms and carried it across the workshop to a large kiln whose top and front stood open. She set the clay statue inside, upon a coarse grate.

Rezhyk nodded. “Enter now, my Gildrum.”

The demon-as-girl smiled once at her lord’s handiwork, and then she burst into flame, her body consumed in an instant, leaving only the flames themselves to dance in a wild torrent of light. Billowing, the fire rose toward the high ceiling, poised above the kiln and, like molten metal pouring into a mold, sank into the terra-cotta figure and disappeared. The clay glowed red and redder, then yellow, then white-hot

Rezhyk turned away from the heat; by the light of the figure itself he entered its existence, the hour, and the date in the notebook marked with Gildrum’s name. By the time he looked back, the clay was cooling rapidly. When it reached the color of ruddy human flesh, a dim glow compared to the yellow of the brazier, if began to crumble.

First from the head, and then from every part, fine powder sifted, falling through the grate at its feet to form a mound in the bottom of the kiln. Yet the figure remained, though after some minutes every ounce of terra-cotta had been shed—the figure that was the demon, molded within the clay, remained, translucent now, still glowing faintly from the heat of its birth. The ring that had been set upon the clay now clasped the arm of the demon, its entire circle visible through the ghostly flesh. Then the last vestige of internal radiance faded, the form solidified, and the man that was Gildrum stepped forth from the kiln.

He stretched his new muscles, ran his fingers through his newly dark hair. “As always, my lord,” he said in a clear tenor voice, “you have done well.”

“I hope she thinks as much.” He slipped the ring from Gildrum’s arm and tossed it into the drawer from which he had taken the gold bar. “There must be nothing that smells of magic about you—above all, nothing to link you with me.”

Gildrum nodded. “I shall steal human trappings, I know of a good source.”

“You must not fail.”

“Have I ever failed you, lord?”