Sorcerer's Son (33 page)

“Wouldn’t candles be simpler?” said Cray, watching her flaming fingers with fascination.

She shrugged and flipped the fire away as if it were water dripping from her hand; it sailed in a smooth arc to the sconce and settled there, burning without ash, without soot. “When one is a demon-master,” she said, “demons are simpler than anything else. My lord has no desire to waste his time in the making of candles. We would use quite a lot of them, you know.”

“The demons could make candles.”

Gildrum. laughed softly. “Why make flames when you are a flame?”

Cray peered at the sconce, at the warm, steady flame, yellow as butter, and then his gaze shifted to Gildrum, whose hair matched the flame. “You

really look like that?”

“Not quite like that, Master Cray. I am rather grander than that.”

“Larger?”

“If I wish to be.”

“Can I

can I see you as a flame?”

“That is for my lord to say, not me.” She turned away from him, crossed the room to open a cabinet taller than herself. Inside were deep shelves, empty save for bed linens. “When your belongings arrive, you can put them in here. If this is not enough room, we can easily provide another cabinet.”

“I’m sure it will be enough.” He looked about the room, trying to ignore the walls. It was a large room, seeming larger with the multiple reflections, and it was sparsely furnished. Aside from the cabinet, there was a bedstead in one corner, a desk and chair in another, a washstand with pitcher and bowl in the third. All the furniture was of brass, save the mattress and the cushions of the chair; even the pitcher was shining yellow brass, a harsh hue beside the mellow walls. Cray strolled over to the desk and chair. “I have never seen furniture made of brass before.”

“We had quite a lot of brass,” said Gildrum, “and my lord directed that the apprentice’s furniture be made from it, rather than bronze, which he reserves for himself.”

“There’s quite enough bronze in this room already. Quite enough metal of any kind, in fact. Is there no possibility of something

softer-looking? Wood, perhaps? A wooden chair and desk?”

Gildrum closed the cabinet. “Fire demons do not get on well with wood, Master Cray.”

“There are wooden chairs in this castle. I sat on one today.”

“They are reserved for that room. They are not used elsewhere in Ringforge.”

Cray eased himself onto the desk. “What of tapestries, then? To cover these bare walls and keep out the winter drafts?”

“There are no winter drafts in Ringforge. I built it stout, and it does not leak.”

“You built it?”

Gildrum straightened her back and set her fists on her hips. “I did, and there is no fault to be found in it. Don’t let this human frame deceive you, Master Cray. I am a powerful creature, the greatest my lord commands.”

Cray shook his head slowly. “He chose an unlikely vessel for those powers.”

“That is something you must discuss with him.” And in a lower voice, she added, “But I would suggest that you wait until you know him better before you broach the subject.”

Cray pushed away from the desk and stood in the center of the room, looking down at his image in the floor. “That still leaves us with the question of tapestries for the walls, and a rug to hide this mirror floor.”

“We have nothing of the kind in Ringforge.”

He tilted his head sidewise to look up at her. “My mother could provide them.”

“No.”

“There would be no cost, not for her own son.”

“Again, no. I’m surprised you dare ask that.”

“Ordinary tapestries. Nothing magical about them.”

“My lord would never allow them in his home. Other sorcerers may take in magics not their own, but he does not.”

“Not magic, I said.”

“You won’t be able to convince him of that, Master Cray.”

He spread his hands in helplessness. “I haven’t enough money left to go to a town and buy them of an ordinary weaver.”

“That hardly matters,” said Gildrum. “Even if you had the money, he would not allow it. With your background, he could not be sure that you would not use ordinary weaving magically.”

“I wouldn’t. I said I would never use my mother’s powers inside these walls.”

“Best you not be tempted.”

“Tempted? With tapestries? As well I might be tempted with my own garments. Tempted to do what?”

“I don’t know, Master Cray. Neither does my lord. Still, he would not understand the hanging of tapestries.”

“I shall not be able to sleep in this room.”

Gildrum smiled. “Of course you shall, with the lights out. They’ll obey your commands, you know, individually or in concert. Try it. Speak, or just point. These demons understand language quite well.”

“I believe you.” He ambled over to the bed, sat down, sinking deep into the feather comforter. He punched the pillow. “You have woven things everywhere here, you know. Even your own clothes. I would not have your master suspecting I would use them for sorcerous purposes.” He curled his fingers about the closest bedpost. “Perhaps I am the wrong sort of apprentice for him.”

“He will be watching you,” acknowledged Gildrum. “All of us will be watching you.”

Cray pointed to the wall opposite the bed. “Even those demon lights?”

“Even they.”

“Everything I do?”

Gildrum smiled with one corner of her mouth. “Only my lord has privacy in his own home.”

Cray sighed. “Well, then, I shall have to show him what a fine apprentice I can be. I mean to work hard, Gildrum. I mean to make him proud of me, proud that he chose to take me in.”

“I wish you luck, Master Cray. And now, if you wish, you may rest here, sleep, wash, whatever you like, until the midday meal. Afterward, you shall see more of Ringforge. If you should need anything while I am gone, call my name, or simply ask the air for assistance; I will come.” She moved toward the doorway, open all this time to the light of the corridor.

“Don’t close it behind you!” he called out sharply. “I don’t know how to open it!”

She glided across the threshold. “The door will do your bidding, Master Cray, If you wish it closed, you must command it so.” She passed beyond the aperture and beyond his sight, though her image in the opposite wall remained visible for another moment. Cray leaned sideways to follow it, wondering if she would transform into a flame outside the room, but the image was only that of a human girl, and it slipped away as a human reflection would, as the original walked on. He decided against running to the door to watch her longer.

“The door may close,” he said, and it obeyed silently. When it was sealed, he could not see the line of its juncture with the wall.

He kicked his boots off and lay back on the bed. He saw his own image in the ceiling, encased in the billowing comforter. “Let all the lights go out but one,” he said, and the sconces darkened obediently, except for the nearest to him. He could no longer make out his reflection, save as an indistinct shape above him. But all about him, that single flame shone ghostly upon every surface. “That final light,” he said at last, “out.”

The blackness was profound. Cray knew that beyond the walls of Ringforge, bright summer scorched the land, the high sun dazzling the eyes of travelers. Yet inside his room was moonless, starless night. He listened, straining for the sounds that moved commonly throughout the rest of the world—rustlings of vermin, birdsong, wind, waving grass and trees. He heard none. Ringforge was silent. The very air was still. Cray found his breaths deepening, as if his lungs could not fill, as if the cool air were close and hot and palpably thick. He felt the room crowd in about him, the walls bending inward, the ceiling looming till it hovered just above his face. He reached out to push it away, feeling foolish with the gesture, for there was nothing but emptiness as far as his arms could stretch. Yet, lying there enveloped in the comforter, he found himself smothering.

He sat up abruptly and called for light. Flames sprang into existence in every sconce, brilliant to his dark-widened eyes, each doubled by its nearby reflection in the bronze, and tripled, quadrupled in the other mirrored surfaces. Cray clutched at his throat, which was constricted, squeezing his voice like a pair of strong, evil hands. “Are there no windows in this room?” he demanded of the empty air. “Open the door! Open the windows!”

The door gaped, but none of the other walls was breached. Cray rolled from the bed, padded barefoot to the aperture and looked out into the corridor. Nothing stirred there; in all the expanse of uninterrupted mirror, there was no motion save that of his own image. “Gildrum!” he shouted. “Gildrum, where are you?” He strode down the hall, started down the staircase, and had nearly descended the entire flight when she turned in at the foot.

“Why do you shout, Master Cray?” she asked, climbing four steps to meet him. She caught his arm. “I can hear your normal tone well enough when you speak my name, no matter where I am in Ringforge.”

“I would have a room with windows,” he said. “I’m not

accustomed to being so closed in.”

“You are not closed in. The room is large. There are larger still; I can speak to my lord for you and perhaps change you to one of those, if you wish.”

“If it has a window. I feel in need of air.”

She tightened her grip on his arm. “Are you ill?”

“No

” He hesitated, not quite able to express the sensations that had overwhelmed him inside the darkened room, nor willing to admit to a fear that, in retrospect, seemed childish. At last, he sat down on the steps, perforce pulling her with him, for she would not relinquish her hold. “I have lived a great part of my life outdoors,” he said. “And my mother’s castle has many windows. The prospect of being sealed into that room every night

it seems unnatural to me. I would prefer to be able to look out at the sky and the trees, to breathe fresh air and not be trapped into staring at myself repeated in all the walls.” He smiled thinly. “A window instead of a tapestry—is that a fair enough exchange?”

“The air in Ringforge is fresh, Master Cray. We demons keep it so.”

“I don’t doubt that. Still

I would prefer sunlight and starlight to firelight.”

She let go his arm, dropping her hand to the step, palm flat on the metal, and she leaned there, looking down, not at his face. “I am sorry. It is impossible.”

“How so? There are windows in Castle Ringforge. I saw them myself, high up along the walls.”

“They are closely shuttered.”

“Surely the shutters will open.”

“Only to my lord’s command, and he prefers that they be closed.”

Cray stared at her. “One small window

”

“No.”

“But why not?”

Gildrum shrugged. “My lord commands, and I obey. I know no more than that.”

“Does he never open them?”

“He did, many years ago. Not lately. Not for a long time. He has no need of the outside, save what we demons bring him of it.”

Cray’s brow creased in puzzlement “Do you mean

that he never goes out?”

“He has set no foot beyond the walls of Ringforge in some time.”

“He stays inside all day, all night? He never opens a window? He never sees anything but himself reflected a million times in these walls?”

Gildrum’s lips quirked in a brief smile. “I doubt that he notices those reflections, Master Cray. He has too much to keep him busy.” She rose from the step on which he sat, and she lifted one foot to the next, her blue-covered knee close beside his face. “As you will, Master Cray, I promise you. You will be too busy to look at yourself in these walls, and too tired as well, when you go to bed at night. Your apprenticeship will not be an easy time. Remember, I said you would not have time to spare on a horse. Nor, I think, will there be much to spare for lying on your back under an open sky. Today, you may dwell on such notions; tomorrow they will be pushed out of your mind by work. Come now; if we return to your room, the meal will still be hot.” She offered her hand to help him up, and he took it, marveling at the strength that was in that frail-seeming girl’s hand.

They climbed the stairs, and only then, though he had been walking on the bronze some time in his bare feet, did he realize that the metal floor was warm to his skin, not cold as he had expected.

In his room, the lights blazed brightly, and the brightest were above his desk, almost as glaring as sunshine, accenting the tray that waited there—bronze, crowded with bronze-domed dishes. He lifted one of the covers, found a broiled fish beneath it, a fat fish with four large fins; he did not recognize the variety, but its sweet aroma brought saliva to his mouth and a sharp rumbling to his stomach. He pulled the knife from his belt and fell to.

Gildrum seated herself on the desk beside the tray and pulled the lids from the other dishes, revealing steaming vegetables drenched in butter, new-baked bread, and fruit preserves. She poured white wine from a carafe and offered Cray salt from a crystal bowl.

“Will you join me?” Cray asked between mouthfuls. “There seems to be plenty here.”

“Demons don’t usually eat this sort of food,” she replied.

“Oh? What do demons usually eat?”

She handed him the wine cup. “It isn’t precisely ‘eating,’ Master Cray. We absorb certain forces from all around us. Beyond that, I don’t really think I can explain it to you.”

“Do you like

human food?”

“I like my own cooking. In my travels about the world, I have been able to observe human beings considerably, fine cooks among them. My lord says I cook well, so there are two of us of that opinion.”

“Did you cook this?”

“Not directly, but I taught the kitchen staff most of what it knows.”

“The kitchen staff?”

Gildrum nodded. “Demons, of course. Cooking comes easy to fire demons. And why should it not?”

“This fish is excellent,” said Cray. “I have never tasted fish quite like it before. Nor seen any. Where did it come from?”

“From the tropic ocean,” said Gildrum, “where it spent its days flying over the waves like a bird. Almost like a bird. It splashed into the water occasionally. An easy fish to catch, for a demon fisher, and my lord relishes it.”