Sorcerer's Son (34 page)

Cray looked down at his plate with skeptical eyes. “A fish that flies? I can hardly believe that.”

“It’s true enough. I have seen it myself.”

“A magical fish?”

She smiled. “Not at all. Merely one of the small marvels of the ordinary world. If you were a seafarer, Master Cray, it would not seem unusual to you.”

He finished the last morsel of fish and pushed his chair away from the desk, leaning back against the cushioned bronze. “Well, I suppose I will have to accustom myself to the unusual here in Castle Ringforge.”

“To more unusual things than a meal of strange fish,” Gildrum said. “Now, if you have quite done with eating, I will take you on a tour of the fortress, and of the doors that will open to you when you ask, and when my lord bids them so.”

Cray tipped a last measure of wine into his cup and gulped it down before rising. Then he went to the bed to retrieve his boots. “Tell me, Gildrum,” he said, easing the stiff leather over his heels, “if you are Lord Rezhyk’s greatest demon, why are you spending your valuable time on his apprentice? Surely you have other, more important tasks to perform for him.”

She slipped off the desk and stood by the open door. “Nothing is more important than his apprentice,” she said, raising one hand to touch the slab of bronze, leaning lightly upon it; the door did not move beneath her touch. “You are the first human being besides my lord to walk the halls of Ringforge. Until this day, the visitors’ room was the only one in which other people had stood. You are the first for whom doors will open, lights will blaze and snuff, meals will be prepared. You are not a guest but a resident. Of course you are important, Master Cray. That is why you are my charge. My lord desires you to be properly instructed in the ways of Ringforge, and there is no better and more trustworthy teacher here than I.”

Cray joined her at the door. “Trustworthy?” he echoed. “Does that mean, perhaps, that you are as much my keeper as my teacher?”

“You might consider me so,” she said, leading him into the corridor. “After all, you are a stranger to him.”

“Well, I hope to prove myself a diligent and trustworthy apprentice so that you may soon leave off teaching me and return to Lord Rezhyk’s other business.”

Gildrum glanced at him with one eyebrow raised. “You dislike my company, Master Cray?”

“Oh no, not at all,” he blurted, grinning sheepishly in his embarrassment. “Indeed, I feel that you are my one friend, so far, in all of Ringforge.”

She halted abruptly, her eyes seeking his, holding them in an unwinking gaze. “Master Cray, I am a demon,” she said. “You must not assume that I am able to be your friend, as a human would be your friend. I am my lord’s slave, first, always, and his word directs my actions.”

He frowned. “Can you not be my friend and Lord Rezhyk’s servant at the same time?”

“I can, so long as the two are not in conflict.”

“Well, I hope that they never shall be. I will do my best to stay on good terms with your master, as a proper apprentice should.”

“Remember,” she said, “only remember. Now look—” She pointed down the corridor, where two doors were opening in the mirror-smooth walls. “These are storerooms, Master Cray, where you will be sent frequently, to fetch materials for my lord. Gauge their locations by the distance from the head of the stairway, and when you stand before them and command, they will open for you.”

She watched Cray stride forward to look inside the nearest aperture. He walked, she thought, with a sense of power about him, as if still carrying sword and shield and chain mail. Youth was in his tread, vital but controlled. Gildrum could not help comparing his sure step with Rezhyk’s habitual nervous pacing. Would the one metamorphose into the other, she wondered, after a few years of apprenticeship?

Or is there too much of his mother in him for that?

She thought of Delivev with a pang, as if the human heart that she did not possess were being squeezed by a cruel fist; and she realized that she would always think of Delivev now, every time she looked at Cray.

Our son.

Ť ^ ť

Cray was awakened by the simultaneous flashing on of all the lights in his room, and by a loud knocking at the door. He stretched, rubbed knuckles into both eyes, and assumed by his easy wakefulness that it was morning, though all times of day seemed equal inside Castle Ringforge.

“Let the door open,” he said loudly.

The panel swung aside, admitting Gildrum, who carried a tray in her arms. “I think you’ll like to break fast with this,” she said. “You slept well?”

“Well enough, even though I lacked a window. All that tramping about yesterday, up and down the stairs, tired me out, as I suppose you intended.” He rolled out of bed and padded barefoot, clad only in a long shirt, to the desk, where she had set the tray. The covered dishes yielded hot buttered porridge, bacon crisp-fried, soft-boiled eggs, and fresh bread. “Looking at your wand-slim lord, I would never have expected the lavish food that has been served me. I’ll have a belly big as a washtub before I’ve been here a year.”

“My lord will keep you running, I think. As for himself—he eats well and never gains weight. He is a man of considerable energy. He will require that you match him in that.”

“I shall do my best.”

“He awaits you in the workshop. As soon as you have done with the meal, dress quickly and descend the stairs. I will be waiting for you at the bottom.” She smiled at him and glided out the door.

He found his gear in the cabinet, and in addition to his own clothing, which had been cleaned and neatly stacked on one of the lower shelves, there were fresh garments of similar cut—tunics and trews and hose, and even a pair of boots made to his measure, the leather smooth and unscuffed, even the heels. He chose from the new apparel, which felt crisp against his skin, not worn soft like his old things, which shredded at a touch too violent. He gazed at himself in the wall, purposely for the first time in his stay at Ringforge, and he turned this way and that to see himself from all angles, all around the room. He thought he looked different from the would-be knight who had traveled so far in a quest without a resolution. He had been as worn as his clothing, and now the fresh garments gave his body a fresh posture, his face a fresh expression. Now he felt ready to begin his new life as apprentice to Lord Rezhyk the sorcerer.

He galloped down the stairs, and at the bottom he grinned at Gildrum and linked his arm with hers to go to the workshop.

The entry was at a location along the mirrored wall of the ground floor, and like all the other doors, it was not marked in any special way, save that it opened to Gildrum’s voice.

“It will open to you, too,” she told Cray, “when my lord wishes you to enter.”

Rezhyk stood in the center of the huge room, at a long table; he leaned upon it with both elbows, his hands interlaced as a support for his forehead, and between his elbows rested a thick book, open. He did not look at Cray and Gildrum as they approached him.

Cray loosed his hold on the demon and bowed from the waist. “My lord, I am here as you called.”

Rezhyk did not bother to look up. “Clean out the kiln.”

“Come,” whispered Gildrum, plucking at Cray’s arm. “I’ll show you how.”

The kiln was large enough to house a man, its walls made of double layers of red brick. In its lowest section, beneath a coarse steel grate, was a mound of fine-sifted powder, ruddy as terra-cotta, dry as desert sand.

From a nearby cabinet, Gildrum drew a wide-mouthed leather sack, a bronze trowel, and a horsehair brush, and she bade Cray scoop and sweep the powder into the sack. “Even the last faint film of dust must be removed, if you have to use your bare hands to gather it up; the kiln must be clean for the next firing.”

“What is this?” he wondered, filling the sack carefully. “Smashed pottery?”

“Something of the sort,” said Gildrum,

“But where are the ashes?”

“Fire demons produce no ash, Master Cray.” She directed him to tie the sack up tightly with a thong, leaving a long, loose end hanging, and then she looked back to Rezhyk. “Is the label ready, my lord?”

He nodded without raising his head, his hand pushing something small and flat across the table toward her. Cray retrieved the object, a palm-sized square of bronze incised with symbols meaningless to his eyes. In one corner of the metal wafer, a small hole had been punched, and through this he threaded the end of the thong, knotting it securely at Gildrum’s instruction. He lifted the sack in his arms. “Lead,” he said to Gildrum. “I will follow.”

The sack’s destination was immediately next to the workshop, a long narrow room lined with shelves, that Cray had not seen the day before. The shelves were deep, row on row, and the lowest were stepped, one above the other, so that a person could climb them like stairs to reach the highest. Sacks lay upon the shelves, most of them singly, with wide intervals between neighbors, a few clumped together like sheep huddling against the cold. Some of the shelves were entirely empty: Gildrum led Cray to one of these and had him deposit his burden there.

“What is all of this?” he asked. He peered at the labels of several of the closest sacks but could read none of them any better than that of the one he had delivered. “How does Lord Rezhyk use this powder, and why does he save it? And why could it not be gathered up by the lowest of his demons?”

“It may not be contaminated,” said Gildrum. “You will find, Master Cray, that there are certain things in Ringforge that no demon may touch, certain procedures that must be carried out by human hands alone. Until now, my lord has handled all these matters himself, low and time-consuming as some of them may be. His apprentice can do many of them just as well, and I presume that he will delegate those to you.”

“Gathering up dust?”

“These are demon residues, not ordinary dust. As long as my lord has any use for the contents of one of these sacks, it may not be touched by any demon save that one it represents. And this particular demon is away on my lord’s business right now.”

Cray looked all about him, wide-eyed. “These are demons? These

flour sacks?”

“No, only demon residues. These are the bodies that my lord has fashioned for his servants, but not the servants themselves.” At his puzzled expression, she added, “You will understand better when my lord shows you the process.”

“And you can’t touch any of them, not even the outsides of the sacks?”

She smiled. “Well, I could have carried the sealed sack in here, Master Cray, but you were so eager to do it yourself

”

“It was a heavy load for a slight thing like you, Gildrum. I assumed you meant me to take it.”

“I am stronger than I appear,” she said, and wrapping one hand about the thong-tied neck of the sack, she lifted the great weight without strain and held it steadily at arm’s length. ‘I’m sure you would become quite bored in the time that I could stand here like this. And my lord would surely wonder what had become of us.“ She set it down carefully. ”He will have more work for you. Come.“

Rezhyk had begun to wonder already. He straightened as they re-entered the workshop. “I expect your tasks to be accomplished a bit more swiftly in the future, Cray Ormoru. You have much work ahead of you and little time for dawdling.”

“My fault, my lord,” said Gildrum. “I was convincing him that he cannot judge demons by human standards.”

“Come over here, lad,” said Rezhyk. “I want to teach you the first thing you must know about sorcery.”

Cray approached him.

Rezhyk slapped the open book that lay on the table before him. “This is the source of all knowledge, lad. Look well, and understand what you see.” He pushed the book at Cray. “Tell me what it is.”

The volume was larger than any Cray had ever seen, either in the webs or with his own eyes—as tall as his forearm and equally broad, and thick as his four fingers together. The pages were heavy vellum, covered with close, crabbed writing, some of it in plain language, some in incomprehensible symbols. Occasionally, as he turned the sheets, he saw diagrams, but what they signified he could not guess. He tipped the book shut to examine the cover—it was rich red leather, emblazoned with the large numerals “54” tooled deep in the surface and embellished with bronze leaf. He opened to the first page and found that empty save for the numerals repeated in black ink and Rezhyk’s name writ in large letters at the bottom, followed by a date several years gone.

He peered at the name and then at the first page which was filled with words. “My lord,” he said, “is this perhaps your own handwriting?”

“It is.”

He turned a few more pages, noting that each had a date written at its head, and not all were completely filled; some had blank space at the bottom, though nowhere else. He skipped through the sheets more quickly and found the final entry, dated the previous day, followed by a score or more of unused pages. He closed the book once more.

“These are your records,” Cray said. “This is the fifty-fourth volume to record your work.”

Rezhyk pulled the book back close to himself, laying one arm across it in almost a protective gesture. “You are near it, lad. Not precise, but near. This is indeed a record of my work, but only of a particular project, the fifty-fourth I have undertaken. There are other volumes and other projects, more of them than I think you could guess. This is not the most recent I have begun. I am careful to keep them separate and detailed. That is the first lesson you must learn, Cray Ormoru— careful record-keeping. You must never lose track of where you are.” He pulled open one of the many drawers beneath the table; inside lay a volume of similar size and appearance, but plainer, in black, and without a number on the cover. He drew it out of the drawer and proffered it to Cray. “This will be yours. In it, you will record everything you learn, every sorcerous move you make, every lesson, every drill. I will examine it from time to time to make certain it is properly done. I expect you to write legibly and to draw clearly.”

Cray hefted the tome, then swung it under his arm. “This is a different sorcery indeed,” he said, “from that I know. My mother keeps no books of this kind.”