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

“It might be a good place to winter, the East March.”

“It might,” said Cray. “Warm and dry, at any rate.”

Sepwin peered at the parchment. “Where is your mother’s castle?”

Cray smiled slightly. “You will not find it marked on any map. Sorcerers do not reveal their homes so. And I have no need of a map to find the place where I was born.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” said Sepwin. “I was only curious.”

Cray clapped him on the back. “I understand, Master Sepwin. Now shall we find

ourselves some lunch and then get on with our journey while the sky is still light?”

“By all means,” replied his friend. “All this talk of traveling has given me a considerable appetite.”

Eastward they rode, through the hot days of summer, and every cultivated field they passed bore grain stalks taller than the last. Some days it rained, and they sheltered with peasants, returning labor for hospitality, chopping wood or milking goats; or, if no humans lived nearby, Cray fashioned a lean-to of leafy branches woven so tightly together that the wet could not penetrate. On those rainy days in the lean-to, they played games with pebbles Cray had gathered, games ranging from the simplest of children’s diversions to the most complex contests of strategy that Delivev had ever taught her son.

Sepwin proved an apt pupil, and soon he and Cray were so evenly matched that one game could encompass an entire rainstorm. And sometimes the two players remained hunched over the pieces long after the rain had done.

“So this is how sorcerers amuse themselves when they don’t feel like moving

mountains,” said Sepwin one gloomy afternoon.

“Not sorcerers, Master Feldar,” said Cray. “Kings and queens. I have seen them in the webs, and learned some of my own strategy from them. Sometimes they even wager on the outcome.”

“Well, I think I shall pass that opportunity, unless you’ll accept a few leaves as a decent wager.”

Cray laughed. “I’ve no doubt we’ll see such wagering at the East March castle. My mother said it was a great holding, and I have noticed that the great holdings are always wealthy places indeed.” He weighed a pebble in his hand before adding it to a half-finished pattern. “I think I’m a rather good player; I might be tempted. I have a little silver.”

“You might have less after such wagering.”

“I used to win sweets from my mother.”

“And what did you offer on your side of the wager?” asked Sepwin.

“Kisses.”

Sepwin laughed then. “Didn’t you like kissing your mother?”

“Oh, I liked it very much. Sometimes I kissed her even if I won. Have you ever made a wager, Master Feldar?”

“Only once. I lost. I had to spread manure on the fields for days afterward. I have had no great desire to wager since then.”

“But you play quite well.”

“So you say, Master Cray. But perhaps if I played someone else, I would learn

otherwise.”