Sorcerer's Son (3 page)

“How are we seeing him?” asked Gildrum.

“There is a spiderweb on the wall beside the fireplace. The scullery maid cleans it off occasionally, but the spider keeps spinning afresh. It is a very industrious spider. The troubadour doesn’t know that it hides in his pack every time he travels to a new castle.”

“We are seeing this through that spiderweb?”

“Yes. And hearing, too. Ah, listen now; he is really quite a good singer.” She leaned back on the cushions beside him and closed her eyes for the music. “You see,” she said between songs, “I am not so isolated as you thought.”

“Can you see anywhere in the world?”

“Oh, there are limits. I must know where to look, I must be interested in looking there. I know of many places that I could look, but I wouldn’t want to bother. There must be spiders, of course. I will never see the kitchens of certain very cleanly cooks because they don’t give spiders a chance to spin more than a strand or two before they kill them. My curiosity is not piqued by such kitchens. And then there are the homes of other sorcerers—we respect each others’ privacy, although I could look in on them if I wished to be rude.“

“I can’t imagine you being rude, my lady.”

“Ssh. He sings again.” He sang of love, as he had before, most plaintively. “I will weave a tapestry for that song someday,” she murmured. “I see it as red and gold and brown—autumn colors.”

“And send it to him?”

“Send it? Why should I? What would he do with it, a troubadour? Carry it on his shoulder from castle to castle?”

“Give it to someone, I suppose, to display for him. To insure that his memory outlives him.”

“I shall remember him after he is dead. I don’t care beyond that.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “There are others, some better even than he.”

“You have spiders traveling with them, too?”

“Yes. Though there is one of them that keeps finding the creatures, and they don’t all escape his foot.”

“How did you find them all?”

“With difficulty. The first was an accident: I was watching court politics in the bedchamber of a certain king, and he summoned a troubadour for diversion. I, too, was diverted, and I gave the singer a tiny companion for his travels. After that, I began to look for them. Now, through them, I see more of the world than ever before. Troubadours know no boundaries, after all, no politics, no loyalties, not if they wish to continue their travels. And none of them ever know that I am riding with them.”

He gazed up at her face, so near his own, leaning upon the open palm of her hand. Her hair almost brushed his shoulder. “You cannot touch them, my lady Delivev. They are like images in a mirror; you reach out, but the surface is flat and it gives back no warmth. Nor will they speak to you, for you are like a ghost among them—less than a ghost if they never sense you at all, not even by some inexplicable shiver running down their spines.”

“So much the better,” she replied. “I see and hear them, yet I need not tolerate their presence.”

“I cannot believe that you so despise all other people.”

“I despise no one. But I do not care to share my life with anyone I have ever seen in the web.”

“Hosting a troubadour would hardly be sharing your life.”

“A small part of my life.”

“And yet, you took me in, a stranger, knowing that you would be sharing your life with me until I healed.”

“I would have done the same for a wounded dog.”

Lightly, he laid one hand upon her shoulder. “You are not as chill as you wish to seem. Your parents gave you an ugly view of life, but you know that what they had was not what might have been. Two people mismatched, nothing more. How can you judge all the world by them?”

“I have seen more than you suppose in my webs. I have seen great lords and their ladies, and they were different from my parents only in the limits of their powers—dishes thrown instead of lightning.”

“And you must also have heard songs of great love from troubadours.”

“Great loves that ended tragically, yes. Great lovers that died before they could drive each other mad.”

He shook his head. “If your view of life were true, then no one would ever marry.”

“I am not responsible for the mistakes of others. Only for my own. You are very young, Mellor. I would expect you to believe in many things that I have outgrown.”

“I believe that individuals may love each other.” He turned on his side to face her, very close, and she did not draw away. “I believe that I could love the kindest and most beautiful lady I have ever met.”

“Mellor, what a foolish thing to say.”

“And I believe that she could love me in return.” His arms slid around her, and he pulled her to him. Her mouth was warm and yielding, and the cushions were soft beneath their bodies, the velvet coverlet voluptuous against their flesh. She whispered concern for his wound, that it might open from such exertion, but he sealed her mouth with his own and nothing more was said. Afterward, they slept in each other’s arms on the bed surrounded by spiderweb draperies, and above them a troubadour in a distant castle sang of love.

From the balcony of the highest spire of Castle Spinweb, the stars seemed bright and hard and close enough to touch. Gildrum watched for hours as they wheeled about the Northern Star, as Delivev lay sleeping so far below in the bed they had shared this score of nights. Gildrum needed no sleep, of course, but he could feign well enough, and he had found great pleasure in holding her in his arms each night. Now he denied himself that pleasure. Now he found something inside himself griping like acid, like a small animal with sharp claws. His task was completed, and the will of his lord demanded his return to Ringforge. Not that Rezhyk knew what his servant had done—there was no communication between them while Gildrum was inside the walls of Spinweb—but that did not matter. The imperative was within Gildrum himself, the imperative of the ring, and he had no choice but to obey.

He did not wish to leave. In all the years he had been slave to a sorcerer, he had seen the human world, he had dealt with men and women in human guise; he thought he understood them better than any demon he knew. Sometimes he wondered if he no longer understood his own kind quite so well, for he had rarely been among them since he was captured by the power of the ring. He knew Rezhyk best, of course, through long contact, and he had puzzled over the sorcerer’s proposal of marriage to Delivev the Weaver when first it was made. Rezhyk was a somber man, given to long nights alone in his workshop, poring over books brought him by his demons from the hidden corners of the world. He sought knowledge; material things meant little to him, except as the necessary comforts of life. Gildrum had thought a demon consort was the only sort that could please him, available when desired, in precisely the form that his mind could envision and his hands mold, never making demands, never impinging upon his life as a mortal woman would. And yet, the moment he had opened his eyes to Delivev, Gildrum had understood her attraction, compounded of cool serenity, beauty, kindness, and more than a touch of melancholy. He had never thought that a demon could love a human being, and though he spoke of it eloquently—for he, too, had listened to troubadours’ songs, and to other things, in his travels about the earth—he was not sure that he knew at all what love was. He had never thought that a demon could want to be a man and stay forever with a human woman. He wanted that now, and if that was love, then he was a lover.

In the morning, he thought, I shall use my well-planned excuse.

He wished upon the fading stars that morning would never come, but the sky continued to brighten in spite of him.

“I understand” she said, but she sighed anyway. “You pledged yourself to carry the message to Falconhill, and you must go. I will not try to keep you against that pledge.”

He took her hands between his own. “Never doubt that I love you, sweet Delivev.”

“I have no doubts.”

“I shall return as soon as my duty is done. I would that were tomorrow, believe me.” He pressed her close against his heart. “I would not leave you out of choice, my love.”

“I will be here tomorrow, and the next day,” she murmured. “Whenever you return, I shall rejoice.”

He kissed her lips one last time, and then they parted. His horse was ready, shuffling from hoof to hoof in animal impatience to be moving. He led it out the gate and mounted. His cleaned and mended surcoat rippled about his thighs in the fresh morning breeze, and his remade chain mail rustled at every move of his body. He lifted a hand in farewell, then wheeled and rode off into the forest. He did not look back. He did not see the tears that welled up in Delivev’s eyes as the forest swallowed him.

She turned back to her home, bolted the door to shut the world away once more. Slowly she climbed the narrow flight of steps to the topmost tower, and there she set up her loom, to begin a tapestry to while away the days till he should return. She chose her colors carefully: pure black for the horse, white and red for the surcoat, and the deepest blue she had ever seen for his eyes. It would be a large tapestry, a long time in the finishing.

She did not discover her pregnancy very soon, for the tapestry held her attention and she lost track of time. One day, however, her stomach bothered her and she decided to lie down instead of working, to listen afar instead of dreaming along with her fingers. She lay down in the web-draped room, gestured with her hand, and the web she sought to transform into a window remained as it was. At first she thought the web at the other end of the rapport had been broken, and she tried another, and then another, but none responded. A little more testing showed her the newly circumscribed limits of her power, and then the roiling of her stomach and a swift count of days revealed the cause.

From the balcony of the highest spire of Castle Spinweb, she could see the tapestry if she turned toward the room—the horse’s legs were complete, and the grass beneath and behind them; she would not reach the face for some time, though she could see it every moment in her mind’s eye. As she turned away from the room, she could see the forest, and the path he would take returning to her. She had chosen the tower room because of that view. As he was leaving, she had thought of sending spiders with him but decided against it; she could not hang such chains upon her love, could not bear to torture herself with looking over his shoulder but never being able to touch him. The tapestry, an instant of his life frozen upon the threads, suited her better.

And now she carried his child. She pressed her hands against the flesh of her belly, as if she could feel the burgeoning life within. Her mother had told her how it was—the blindness to the outside world, the sense of being cut off from the creatures that had been her own, like losing the use of arms and legs for nine months. Her mother had accepted the experience once, for love, but never again, not though her father raged for a son to match their daughter.

She could rid herself of the child now. That was a simple matter. She could abort it and return to her usual life, and the feeling in her stomach would be gone. Instead, she sat down before the tapestry and began to weave. She touched his spurs today, twining her woolen strands with silk to give the metal silver highlights. The tapestry would be finished when her time came, she thought, and then she would have flesh of his flesh as well as the portrait.

Summer passed, and winter, and she was still alone when she bore the child.

“Good work, my Gildrum, is it not?” said Rezhyk, admiring the cloth-of-gold shirt one last time before slipping it over his head. It was supple, finely woven, and lighter than he had expected—a piece of the gold bar remained unused. “I have never known such exhaustion.” His cheeks were sunken, his eyes circled and pouchy, his beard grown out in disarray. He had paused from his weaving only to bolt the bare minimum of food that would sustain his strength. He had not slept at all in eleven days.

“Good work, my lord,” said Gildrum. ‘“You would make an excellent weaver.”

“Bah! A tedious vocation, and I am glad to be rid of it. How long shall I sleep now? Three days?” He blinked and rubbed his eyes. By magic he had stayed awake so long, but still he was unsteady on his feet, and his hands shook. “Help me to my bed.”

“Yes, my lord.” Gildrum, as the fourteen-year-old girl, climbed down from the high stool from which she had guided her lord’s activities. “Shall I carry you?”

“No, I can walk.”

She took his arm and laid it across her shoulders and bore most of his weight as they moved from the workshop to his bedroom. She eased him to the wide bed and stripped off his clothes, save for the new shirt and the thin overshirt that concealed it.

Rezhyk drew the covers up to his chin. “Wake me tomorrow for dinner.”

“My lord,” said Gildrum, leaning over him. “I would ask a favor of you.”

“A favor?” He opened one bloodshot eye. “What?”

“Let me go home for a little while. I need to get away from humans—I have been among them too much lately.”

Yawning, Rezhyk shook his head, burrowing deep into the pillow. “I cannot do without you, my Gildrum. Not now. I need you to watch over me.”

“You have other servants who can do that.”

“Not like you. You always know what I want. We’ve been together so long.”

She blew out the candle that illuminated the room. “Yes, my lord,” she said. “I will be near if you need me.” Silently, she glided from the room. She had a chamber of her own, on an upper floor, where she sometimes sat to watch the sky and wait for Rezhyk to summon her. She went there now. There were tasks to be done around the castle—there were always tasks—but she did not feel like doing any of them at this moment.

Ť ^ ť

She called him Cray. She bore him without another human hand to help, while her animals looked on from a ring about her bed. When he was free of her body, cloths washed and swaddled him and laid him upon her breast, and the soiled bedding eased itself away from her, rolled into a ball, and tumbled away to burn itself in the fireplace while fresh sheets crept beneath her and fresh blankets tucked themselves about her and her new son. She slept then.