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

It said, “My lord.”

“Inscribe your name upon the ring,” commanded Rezhyk.

The creature drooled. “It is done.” Its voice was harsh and grating, as if torn from a throat that had not known speech in many years.

Rezhyk pulled the ring from his finger. On the inner surface of the band, the name Harolando now appeared. “Welcome to Ringforge, Harolando,” he said. “You may go now, until I have had time to make a more pleasing form for you.”

“As you wish, my lord,” said Harolando. And then its head lifted and its tail twitched, and all of its many eyes gazed past Rezhyk’s shoulder, to Gildrum, who still labored with hammer and chisel on the stone vault. “Greetings to you, cousin,” the new demon said. There was no trace of cheer in its voice.

Gildrum, who had averted her eyes during the conjuring process, looked toward the brazier now, briefly. She did not know this demon. She guessed that it had not existed when she herself had been caught. Still, she said, “Greetings, cousin.” The new demon flared into flame and vanished. It left the coals glowing behind it, and Rezhyk had to remove the large ring from them with tongs. The name Harolando was inscribed on its inner surface.

He turned to Gildrum. “Are you finished with that yet, my Gildrum?”

“Almost, my lord.” And she struck the chisel so hard that the remaining vertical section of the vault sheared away clean, leaving the small mass of lava that directly encased the sheets standing exposed on a dark stone pedestal. “Just a little more,” she said.

She found herself remembering what her own first call had been like, so long ago, the summons that had cut her off from the other free demons forever. Before that moment, she and they had scorned the slaves; afterward, she had never looked at them without seeing their scorn. She pitied Harolando—the adjustment to captivity was not an easy one. But at least Harolando had demon companions about Ringforge. There had been no cousin slave to greet Gildrum, just Rezhyk himself, standing in a glade in the woods where Ringforge was to be built.

She could scarcely remember her own earthly form, save that it had been large and many-limbed. She had never used it beyond that once, the first time she had ever visited the human world. It must have been ugly, for Rezhyk had bade her stay in the flame-body until he could fashion a more pleasing one. By the time Ringforge was finished, he had given her the form she wore now, the first of many.

Already, he was molding clay for the new demon’s first human semblance.

Delicately, Gildrum chipped at the dark stone. She had discarded the large hammer and chisel in favor of a very small pair, and with these she reached the thin layer of black that had been oxhide and then the metallic surface itself. As the lava crumbled under her taps, she perceived a pattern of markings incised on the steel.

“Ah,” she said, and instantly Rezhyk was at her shoulder, brushing powdered lava from her work space with a tuft of camel’s hair, reading the ancient words as she uncovered them. The first sheet was the hardest to clean; the rest were nested so snugly against it and each other that no lava had seeped between them—only their edges were sealed with once-hot stone.

“Gently, my Gildrum, gently,” said Rezhyk. “The metal surely lost its temper during the slow cooling, and a sharp blow might crack it.”

“I know, my lord.”

“They are not… welded together, are they?”

“I think not,” the demon replied, easing a thin blade between the top two sheets. “The lava was cooling by the time it reached the vault, and I suspect that it was never hot enough to weld steel. There!” The top plate separated from the others as the last bits of adhering rock broke.

Rezhyk snatched the freed sheet away, to examine it under the strong light of an oil lamp. “Fortunately,” he said, “the sorcerers of Ushar recorded their wisdom on the most durable material they could find. If they had chosen copper instead of steel, this book would be a solid block of metal instead of individual, still legible pages.”

Gildrum pulled the other sheets apart with little difficulty, passing them to Rezhyk one at a time until there were no more, and then she went to look over her master’s shoulder.

“I’ll be many months in deciphering all this,” said the sorcerer. “But it appears, from the little I can make out, to be exactly what I was seeking.” He smiled at the demon. “Once again you have served me well, my Gildrum.”

“I made certain assumptions from my knowledge of Ushar as to the most likely locations for such books. We have legends of the city, too, we demons, and they are perhaps not so garbled as human legends, for they have not passed through so many generations.”

“Ah, you would be perfect if only you could read these inscriptions as well as bring them to me.”

She bowed her head. “I am sorry, my lord, but they who could have read those words are gone, every one of them. Even demons die at last.” She peered up at Rezhyk through lowered lashes. “Nor do I think, were they alive yet, that they would reveal this ancient and powerful language to one who served a sorcerer. Freed by the destruction of Ushar, they would not wish to chance being enslaved again.”

“Well, you and I shall puzzle this out.” He brushed a trace of clinging powder from one of the sheets. “Look here—these are familiar lines: the conjuration of a minor fire demon, if I am not mistaken. Yes, yes.” He bent close to make out a portion of the inscription that was not engraved as deeply as the rest. “But here he recommends a far greater proportion of nickel to gold than I have ever attempted. And this symbol here…

do you think it might stand for jade? Could the sorcerers of Ushar have conjured demons with opaque stones as well as translucent? Bring me my notebook, Gildrum, and those sheets I bought from Klarinn. He may have thought ancient history useless, but I suspect it shall aid me in this translation.”