Sorcerer's Son (40 page)

The demon took a single step toward him. “You’re leaving?”

He drew on his boots, then knelt to pack his saddlebags, empty save for that other, rusted sword and shield, wrapped in soft linen during the years of his apprenticeship. The garments he had been given in that time filled the remaining space. “If you would be so kind as to summon the bronze bird, I would appreciate it. Or if I must, I shall walk away from Ringforge.”

She ran to him, long skirts swirling about her legs, and she fell on her knees beside him, halting his hands with her own. “No, please. Master Cray. You have so much more to learn. You are such an apt pupil. In a few short years more you could free me, I know it!”

He shook his head. “You will be no more worse off than when I came.”

“Oh. yes, much worse. When you came, I saw hope. Now you’ll take it away with you. Master Cray, you know what hope is!”

“And I know what sorrow is, too.” In spite of her clutching hands, he finished packing and strapped the bags shut. “I cannot stay here, Gildrum. Not even to help you. You’ll have to find someone else for that.”

“Who will help a demon, Master Cray?” She caught at his head, one hand on either cheek, and she held it tight so that he was forced to look at her. The expression on her face was one that he had seen on his own in the mirror-bright bronze. “I have nowhere else to turn.”

He pulled away from her. “I can’t think now, Gildrum. I only know I must leave. How much longer would Lord Rezhyk keep me, anyhow? We have stretched this failed apprenticeship further than I thought possible. I must leave. I must get out from behind these walls, to the open sunlight, and think.” He cast her a stricken glance. “I never promised, Gildrum. Remember?”

Still kneeling, she murmured, “No.” Her body sagged, until she lay prone. “I remember.”

He swallowed with difficulty, clutching the saddlebags, the sword and shield in his arms. “I must think,” he repeated. “Afterward

perhaps I will come back

” He felt his eyes brimming. “Gildrum, I must think.”

She did not rise. “Go,” she said. “Go now. The walls will not keep you in. You’ll find the bird waiting to take you back to the lady Helaine. You need not even say good-bye to Lord Rezhyk, He will understand.” There was a catch in her voice, as if she, too, were weeping, but she did not look up at him, so he could not see any tears on her cheeks. “Go,” she said. “I cannot hold you.”

“You have been a good friend to me, Gildrum.”

“Go.”

The door opened for him, and he raced down the half, down the stairs. At the end of the first-floor corridor he could see the entry to the antechamber waiting ajar for him, and as he passed through the tiny room, he saw that the two chairs were still there, still facing each other as they had on his very first day in Ringforge. In the farther wall was the only ordinary portal in the castle, a massive door of bronze, studded and figured in high relief; it swung wide at his approach, and a brisk, damp wind entered through the opening, engulfing Cray in its tenuous embrace. He welcomed it and welcomed the dank, gray sky of morning twilight. The instant he stepped beyond the threshold, the gate of Castle Ringforge clanged shut behind him.

The bird was waiting. It took his baggage in its cavernous beak and raised its hackles for Cray to mount. When he was settled in the straps, it swooped into the dawn, feathers rustling in flight like coins jingling against one another in a heavy purse. Cray closed his eyes and let his tears of anguish mix with the mist of the sky, knowing that they could never corrode that shining plumage.

When Rezhyk woke, he found Gildrum standing by his bed, as on many another morning, holding a breakfast tray. He sat up, accepting the meal onto his lap, eating swiftly. Between bites, he said, “I need a piece of cinnabar today, my Gildrum; there’s a fine deposit of it in the west, not far from the falls of the river Beorn. The vein runs deep, though it may give you a bit of trouble.”

Gildrum focused her gaze on the foot of the bed, on the bar where Cray had once hidden in spider guise. “He is gone,” she said.

Rezhyk looked up at her. “Gone? Who? Where?”

“Cray Ormoru gave up his apprenticeship this morning. I have sent him back whence he came.”

“The boy? Gave up?” He pushed the tray aside and rose from the bed, flinging a light mantle over his shoulders. “How did it happen? Why?”

Gildrum transferred her gaze to his face. “Why not, my lord?” she murmured. “After so long? He was unhappy when I saw him this morning. He felt he could no longer stay in Ringforge. He said

he wanted sunlight.”

Rezhyk clasped himself with arms crossed over his chest. “Good enough. Better this way, by his own choice, than if I had dismissed him. I did wonder when the years of failure would begin to tell on him.” He smiled, showing his teeth like an animal snarling. “There has been a pall hanging over Castle Ringforge these years. Now it has lifted. We can resume our normal life, my Gildrum.” He turned away from her slowly, toward the cabinet which held his clothing. “Still,” he said, “I shall miss another set of human hands about the place. I have grown lazy these years, not needing to do certain things myself.”

Gildrum leaned against the bedstead. “You could take another apprentice.”

His head jerked around, and the eyes that glared at his servant from that swarthy face were ice and molten steel at the same instant. “No more apprentices,” he said. “Never again.”

“As you say, my lord.”

Rezhyk dropped his mantle and slipped off the light nightshirt he had worn to bed. Against his naked skin, the cloth-of-gold shirt gleamed warm; he looked down at it for a moment, the tunic that would cover it clutched in one hand. He looked down, and then his free fingers touched the golden threads lightly, over his heart. “Where have you sent him?” he said.

“Back to the lady Helaine, from whom he came, my lord.”

“The Seer. What will he tell her, I wonder? And what will she tell him?” He glanced sidelong at the demon. “Do you think he suspected what we were doing, my Gildrum?”

Gildrum replied, “I am sure that he thought he was being taught proper sorcery, my lord. I did my best to convince him so.”

Rezhyk shrugged the tunic over his head. “Still, perhaps he thinks another sorcerer might be a better teacher.”

“I don’t know, my lord. He said nothing about seeking one.”

“He’s a stubborn lad. Only a stubborn one would have stayed so long in the face of so much failure.” He pulled on trews and hose and stepped into his boots. “I think she might tell him to try another teacher.”

“My lord, how will she be able to find him a better one than yourself? Surely she will tell him there is no hope for him.”

“Surely?” Rezhyk belted his tunic. “Are you so relieved at his departure that your reason no longer functions, my Gildrum? There is nothing sure in this world. The longer I live, the more uncertain I grow. ”Except of one thing.”

Gildrum frowned. “My lord?”

His thumbs hooked over his belt on either side of the bronze buckle, and his fingers tightened on the leather till the knuckles showed white. “Death, my Gildrum,” he said coldly. “We all die. Even you. Even Master Cray Ormoru.” He turned his face toward her, and his expression was hard. “Kill him for me, my Gildrum, before he finds a new master, and make sure the deed hasn’t any look of sorcery about it.”

She met his eyes, and softly she said, “My lord, do you think that’s wise?”

“Do you think not? No one will suspect me. I have done my best over these years to teach the boy my art. I had faith in him. I was sorry to see him go. Why would I kill him?”

Gildrum inclined her head. “As you will, my lord. He is with the lady Helaine already; I presume you do not wish the deed done in her home.”

“No. She would sense your presence, you mustn’t enter there. But you said he wanted sunlight.”

“Yes, my lord, he told me that.”

“Then he won’t be spending much time inside her cave. She won’t find him a new teacher tomorrow or the next day; there will be time for him to roam outdoors, and he’ll be restless enough for it, with nothing to do but wait. Go there, my Gildrum. Find yourself a hiding place nearby and watch for your opportunity.”

“And

if there is no opportunity?”

“Then you must make one.”

She vanished, and in her own bright home in the demon world she paused, an inhuman flame blazing anger, hate, and helplessness. I am only a slave, my son. Only a slave.

A moment later, high in the tree that was the entrance to the Seer’s cave, a squirrel leaped among the branches, chittering in the sunshine.

Ť ^ ť

The great bronze bird shrugged him off and spat out his possessions, and then, without a word of farewell, it rose again on flashing pinions, swooping upward into the sun. He watched it dwindle in the distance, one hand shading his eyes from the glare of day, and it had disappeared before the dust stirred by its passage had cleared from the summer air. Cray coughed, scrambling to his feet, slapping the yellow powder from his hands and clothes. The giddiness of flight ebbed as he stood there, swaying, and he was soon sure enough of his balance that he could scoop the saddlebags into his arms and start for the nearby entry to the Seer’s cave. The tree was in full leaf, as when he had left, and if it had added some feet to its prodigious height in the time he had been gone, he could not tell. He stepped through the arch in the trunk, into the light, cool breath of the cave.

She was waiting by the pool, looking toward the corridor from which he emerged, and he knew at once that she had been expecting him.

“It is not good news, I see,” she said, “that brings you back to me.”

“Has the pool told you that?” he asked, letting his burdens slip to the pale sand.

“I need no pool to tell me; it’s written on your face, Come, sit down, Cray Ormoru, and share some wine with me.”

“Gladly,” he said, and he perched on the rim of the pool facing her. Involuntarily, he glanced at the dark waters, and he saw his own reflection there, but it moved with him, not magical at all. The far door opened, and Feldar Sepwin entered, carrying a carafe and cups. He was taller than Cray remembered, and better fleshed out, and a drooping mustache hid his upper lip. He grinned at his old comrade and poured wine redder than blood into a mug. “Welcome,” he said, offering the cup. “Welcome indeed.”

Ignoring the wine, Cray threw his arms around Sepwin and gave him a bone-crushing hug. “Feldar, you’re here!”

“I never left,” Sepwin replied, laughing. “Here now, go before we dye the sand red.” He stepped back lifted the full mug up to Cray’s face. “Take it, you don’t expect me to hold it forever, do you?”

Cray seized the mug and drained it, and while he did so, Sepwin poured other mugs for himself and the seer, which they raised in silent toasting.

When Cray caught his breath, he said, “What do mean, you never left?”

“I am apprenticed to the lady Helaine,” Sepwin replied, nodding toward her.

“And a good apprentice he is,” she added. “I saw it in him before you left, Cray. I thank you for bringing him to me.”

Cray looked into his friend’s face. “Your eyes—they’re as they were.”

“We never found a sorcerer to make them match,” said Sepwin. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. People expect stranger things of a Seer than mismatched eyes.”

Cray set the cup down on the pool rim and took his friend’s shoulders between his hands. “You’re happy here?”

“Yes.”

“Then some good came of our quest after all.”

Sepwin’s grin softened to sympathy. “Not for you?”

“I came to the end of it.” His hands dropped to his sides, suddenly heavy. “I found my father.”

“That was what you wanted.”

“Yes.” He turned to the Seer, and his smile had pain in it. “But you were right. It didn’t make me happy.”

“Knowledge seldom does,” she said. She swept two fingers across the dark surface of the pool. “They come to me in fear, Cray, to hear me say that what they fear is false. Most of them don’t even look for happiness, only relief.”

Cray sighed. “I did not even find that, lady. I could almost wish that I had never discovered the truth.” He sank down upon the sand at her knees and leaned his head against the cool rocks that restrained the pool. His grip on the cup loosened by degrees, and at last the vessel tipped over, shedding one drop of red wine, like blood, upon the pure white powder. “I have more questions than I had before, more doubts, more confusion. Now I have truly come to a dead end, and I don’t know where to turn. I only know that I can’t tell my mother who he was.”

“Do you want to tell us?” asked the Seer.

Cray pulled his knees up, clasping them with both arms, and he did not look anywhere but at the sand between his feet when he spoke. “Lord Rezhyk is my father,” he said. “Lord Rezhyk himself.” His voice broke on the last word, and then the whole tale of his strange apprenticeship poured out of him in a wild, disjointed torrent— demons, ores, mirrored walls, failure, success, all, until Cray was clutching at the sand as at a spar floating in the open sea. But the sand ran through his fingers, and he was left only with his own flesh, and his nails bit deep into the calluses of his palms. When he gave over speaking at last, he slumped, head falling forward to his knees, exhausted by the very telling of the tale.

The lady Helaine let a soothing silence cloak the three of them for a moment, and then she said, “And you did not confront Lord Rezhyk with your knowledge?”

Cray shook his head. “Were you afraid?”

Cray shook his head again. “I couldn’t betray Gildrum. It would have gone hard with her.”

“Noble sentiments, Cray; but now you will never know why.”

“I don’t think I want to know.”

“Oh, come—that is precisely what you want to know. And you could know

by continuing your apprenticeship under the demon until you were strong enough to free her from her silence. Obviously, she knows everything you want to know; she is the key. Why have you run away from her, then?”

He raised his head to gaze at her. “How could I stay? How could I spend another night under the same roof with him? I am not a son to him. I am not even another human being to him. I am a slave for his convenience. How could I work for him and know that he would never claim me, never show a spark of father’s love?”