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

“Master Feldar, you know that spiders eat insects.”

“Y-yes.”

“Then why are you worrying? Get on your horse.”

After one more moment’s hesitation, Sepwin mounted, and his horse followed Gallant’s easy pace out of the market, eastward.

There was no obvious dividing line between the ordinary land and the swamp. The cultivated fields about the market gave way to a wild growth of grass pocked by occasional trees, and finally wet patches appeared, sparkling in the sunlight, ponds choked by cattails, streamlets sluggishly winding. The road turned muddy; in some places it disappeared entirely, drowned, only to reappear a few paces farther on. For a time, the way was well churned by hooves and the feet of human beings, but the longer they rode the less traveled the path became, until there were no marks at all of anyone else’s recent passage.

“You’re sure this road goes all the way through the swamp?” said Sepwin.

“The map shows it so.”

“You’re sure the mapmaker was telling the truth when he drew that? He wasn’t just…

being playful?”

“My mother is following my course, Master Feldar. If anything happens to me while I use this map, the sorcerer who had it made will be the first target of her anger.” He looked down at Sepwin from the vantage of Gallant’s height. “My mother would be a very dangerous person, angry. He would not dare to give her or her son anything but an accurate map.”

“I am reassured,” said Sepwin. “Now we only have to worry about the insects.”

“Come,” said Cray. “It’s late enough to stop for the night already, and our sleeping preparations will take a little longer than usual.”

“Will they?” asked Sepwin.

“You’ll see.”

They dismounted where a large tree overhung the road and the ground was reasonably dry, and Cray tethered the horses there. He climbed the tree then, and cracked the first broad bough so that it dipped to the ground while still partially attached to the trunk, forming a support for a lean-to large enough for two young men and their horses. He climbed higher after that, to break off leafy branches for the walls, and back on the ground he wove them together half by magic and half by the dexterity of his hands. Well before sunset he had completed the latticework structure and led the horses inside through an opening barely large enough to admit them. His final task was to plait a door for that aperture, and when that was ready to set in place, he turned to Sepwin with a smile.

“Will you step inside, Master Feldar?”

Sepwin eyed the lean-to uncertainly. “I know excellently well that this will keep the rain off, but… what spell have you woven into it to keep the insects away?”

“None,” said Cray.

“I shall smother if I must sleep wrapped in my cloak from head to toe,” said Sepwin.

“You shall not smother. Enter. The sky is fading.”

With a last furtive glance at the setting sun, Sepwin obeyed.

Inside, Cray set the door securely in place, then laid both of his hands against it and closed his eyes. From his sleeves, the spiders scuttled, more than a score of them, all colors and sizes. They swarmed over the branches and immediately began spinning.

Slowly, a fine net, layer upon layer of silk, spread over the walls and floor until a gray cocoon surrounded Cray and Sepwin and the horses. Gallant was not disturbed by the spinning, but Sepwin’s horse swayed nervously from foot to foot, and its master had to soothe it until the last rays of sunlight had ceased filtering through the gray curtain and it could no longer see the moving spiders.

“I’ve slept in rooms this small,” said Sepwin, “but never before with such a feeling of imprisonment.” He laughed nervously. “But of course, this is hardly a prison; I could tear these walls apart with my hands, after all.”

“Not these walls,” said Cray.