Sorcerer's Son (49 page)

“I can teach you,” he said at last, “in return for something.”

“What?” asked the demon he had fought.

“Your help.”

Some of the demons murmured to each other, and then one of them said, “What kind of help?”

Cray felt Elrelet’s light touch upon his back, and he knew that the demon was floating behind him, dark and oversized, ready to pull him inside to safety if the crowd became threatening. “I don’t want to enslave any of you,” Cray said. “I never did. I only wanted an answer to the great question of my life. I never dreamed where that answer would lead. And now I must enslave some of you, as many of you as I can, to do what I must do. Unless

you will help me of your own free will.”

“Help you with what?” asked a demon.

“Help me defeat Lord Rezhyk.

One demon eased forth from the crowd, and in a deep, familiar voice said, “What would you have us do, human—give you our names? Perhaps even make the rings ourselves that would enslave us? So that you may command us for your battle with Lord Rezhyk

and ever afterward? Do you take us for fools?”

“No rings,” said Cray. “I would not command you, only ask you. You would obey me for the battle only, until Lord Rezhyk was overcome.”

“Till he was dead,” said Elrelet.

Cray pursed his lips. “I had not planned to kill him.”

“If you arrange this bargain with the Free instead of making rings, you dare not let him live. After the battle, you would have no power to prevent him from killing you.”

“He would have no rings, either, when I was finished with him.”

“But how would you prevent him from making fresh ones? You cannot take his knowledge away from him.”

“I could imprison him.”

“And worry all your life that he might break free?”

Cray bowed his head and sighed. “You are right, of course. I had not planned to kill him

yet in my heart, I knew that I would be forced to it. Even with my hands covered by rings

my intention was always to free my slaves when their work was done, and that could not be while Lord Rezhyk lived. So I will kill him, or he me.” He looked up, out at the gathered demons. “Will you help me?”

The Free held silent, all their attention on the human being. Cray felt their silence beat against his ears, in rhythm to the throb of his own bean. When he had waited for an answer for a time that seemed to stretch past eternity, he pivoted on the hand that clutched the doorjamb and pushed himself into the house. “If you will excuse me,” he said, “I have work to do.”

He was well inside, had cast away his sword and shield and helm, had stripped off his chain and tossed it, chinking and rattling, into the alcove, when the voice of his demon opponent called after him.

“Teach me, human,” it said, “and I will join your war.”

He looked over his shoulder, saw the demon, human-shaped again, come forward to float in the doorway. It had re-formed its sword and shield, and now it held them up as in a salute.

Cray smiled. “I thank you for your offer, but Lord Rezhyk has many slaves—perhaps as many as there are Free here before me. And he has a castle of bronze to hide in, while I have nothing. One demon, no matter how powerful, will not suffice.”

The demon laughed, a deep, rumbling laugh that seemed to fountain outward from the cloud body, entering the house and bouncing from wall to invisible wall. The other demons backed off a little from the sound. “Train me,” said the demon, “and I promise you these others will not stay away. They will not dare allow me to become the greatest champion of this new game!”

Cray squinted at the speaker, hesitated a moment, and then said, “Yes. Yes, I shall train you, and I welcome whatever help you will give me.”

And suddenly all the other demons were crowding forward, demanding training, demanding to be allowed to help Cray in his fight against Rezhyk.

“Tell Gildrum,” Cray said to Elrelet, pitching his voice to carry over the tumult. “Tell her I will be ready soon!”

Elrelet sent a tendril of cloud after the sword, shield, helm, and chain. “You’ll need these,” the demon said, guiding them toward Cray. Then, close to his ear, Elrelet murmured, “You would be wiser to trust to rings.”

“You have no confidence in the promises of the Free?”

“I don’t know. They have never done a human’s bidding before. Perhaps they will balk.”

“I hope they will grow used to it during their training,” said Cray.

“Ah, yes, the training. They will have to do your bidding there, won’t they?”

“Yes.” He slipped the chain over his head, donned the helm. “Very well!” he shouted to the gathered demons, his voice taking on the inflection of the armsmaster of Mistwell, his own teacher. “The first thing you must do is form a double line along this wall, that I may observe your progress without difficulty. Go on all of you, go on

except one—my friend who volunteered. I shall pair with that one myself, for now.”

The demon he spoke of waited by the doorway while the others organized themselves; when Cray emerged from the house, he and that one were quite close together. The demon turned a rudimentary face toward Cray, a face newly formed since their fight—two depressions for eyes, a lump for a nose, a slit for a mouth. The mouth opened to speak: “Your friend?”

Cray grinned. “I hope so.”

Behind them, Elrelet sighed softly.

Ť ^

She turned to spiders at last, to find out why he stayed so long in the forest. She found webs among the leaves and bade their spinners move and spin anew. They showed her trees, moss, mushrooms, and the thick loam of the forest floor. They showed her butterflies and honeybees and squirrels and rabbits, and even a deer, peacefully unaware of watching human eyes. They showed her rain and wind, sun, moon, and starlight. But not her son.

Gildrum found Cray drilling his troops. A flickering candle flame in form, the demon spoke with the voice of the girl with blond braids: “I would feel more secure if you wore rings. We will have only this one chance, Cray; we must make the best of it.”

“We’re doing well,” Cray replied. “Every time I look, there’s a new demon in the line. And they know that if anything happens to me, they’ll get no more lessons.”

The flame brightened a little. “Perhaps that is the best approach—appeal to their greed.”

“They are not so different from human beings, Gildrum.”

“I suppose not

in some ways.”

“I have so much to learn about their powers, so much to know before I can use them as well as Rezhyk uses his. But we’ll be ready soon, I know it. Sooner than I could ever cast enough rings, Gildrum, especially here, where the lack of weight makes it so much more difficult than in my own world.”

“The techniques I explained to you may never have been used before, but I know they will work.”

“I don’t doubt that. Still, they are complex, and I’m glad I won’t need to use them.” He raised his voice momentarily: “Fifth along the line—raise that shield higher there!”

Gildrum watched the demons hack at each other for a time, then said, “I can’t stay much longer. My lord received a message from your mother today, and I must deliver the reply.”

Cray frowned. “What sort of message?”

“She asked if he knew where you had gone.”

“And the reply?”

“That he sent you back to the Seer long ago and knows no more about you.”

“She’ll ask the Seer next. She’ll hear about Gallant turning up without me.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“I must speak to her, Gildrum. She mustn’t worry.”

“I can’t take you back before you’re ready for battle. There is too much danger of him discovering us.”

“Take me with you when you deliver the message.”

“I’ll only leave it by the gate,” said Gildrum. “You know I can’t enter.”

“Then leave me there, too. I’ll speak to her and you can bring me back.”

The flame dimmed, and Gildrum’s voice was correspondingly softer. “He keeps a watch on Spinweb these days. No one can enter without being seen.”

“A watch? Why?”

“He grows more fearful of your mother every day, Cray.”

“But why? He thinks I’m dead, he has the golden shirt—why should he fear her at all?”

“I don’t know. He has become

different lately. More difficult, harder to please, more petulant. He has been conjuring demons more quickly, too, as if

as if he knows that some great battle looms. Lately he had me strengthen the walls of Ringforge.”

“But he can’t know,” said Cray. “Or else he would have punished you.”

“He knows

something. It has to do with your mother, surely, or why the watch on her castle? Beyond that, I cannot guess. His mind is closed to me these days. He used to talk to me as if I were his brother, wife, child; now he rarely says anything, except to conjure or command. He sleeps in the workshop, too, when he sleeps. He never leaves it.” The flame wavered, compressed. “Cray, do you know what madness is?”

Cray frowned. “You think Lord Rezhyk is mad?”

Gildrum sighed. “Who am I to judge? Only a demon. Perhaps I am the mad one, at least by my own people’s standards. But mad or sane, I would be free of my lord Rezhyk. Learn swiftly, Cray. Now that I know it will be soon, I am impatient beyond belief!”

“I would not cause her grief, Gildrum!”

“Nor would I, Cray. Not again. But it will be short-lived grief, will it not?”

“As short-lived as I can manage.”

Under his guidance, the demons became passable swordsmen. Now their matches lasted longer and were noisier, as sword clanged against shield time and again, in fair imitation of steel. The demon whom Cray had called friend had improved faster than most, earning Cray’s praise and considerable personal attention. In return, the demon gave Cray instruction in the powers of his kind and convinced ice, water, and fire demons to do the same. Gradually, Cray began to grasp the scope of the battle that was to come, and the extent of the forces that Lord Rezhyk had at his command. And he began to understand why Rezhyk had chosen fire as his province.

“The demons of Fire are the best of us all,” said Elrelet, “though you’d find few but them to admit it. Quick, clever, vastly destructive when they wish to be.”

“I have few of them,” said Cray, scanning the sword-swinging Free along the wall,

“Of course,” said Elrelet “They are much sought after. More of them have been enslaved than any other kind. I think that must be what makes them so melancholy; every fire demon knows what the future holds. Perhaps that is why they play the game even more seriously than we of Air. Lord Rezhyk is well protected, Cray—never doubt that.”

“And you have no confidence in my scheme, have you?”

Elrelet exhaled a gust of wind. “I know only that a slave must obey the master. But the Free

I see only one in all this crowd that has ever known what a master was. Curiosity, I suppose, has drawn that one to try the new game; it rejoined the old one as soon as its master died. But will curiosity lure it, or any of the others, into your battle? I don’t know. We shall have to wait till the moment, and hope. Just now, I wish I were Free. Well, I wish it for the usual reasons, but in addition because, if I were, I would help you.”

Cray gazed at the thunderhead no larger than his own body. “Elrelet, you have given me more than I can ever thank you for. I can think of only one repayment great enough: when your master dies, come to me and show me how to make the rings that summon you, and I shall set you free.”

Elrelet sighed. “All the more reason for me to wish you luck.”

Rezhyk had called all of his demons, from the tiniest spark that lit a seldom-used storeroom to the blazing glory of Gildrum’s like. They filled his workshop with their light, reflected a hundredfold in the polished bronze walls, till the chamber could almost have passed for a corner of Fire itself. In the pulsating illumination, like the interior of a furnace, yet cool as night air, the rings Rezhyk wore glittered and flashed with the sharp, tense gestures of his two hands. In one shaking fist he held a fragment of ivy, its tendrils curling against his wrist.

“Your objective,” he said in a high-pitched, strident tone, as if he were speaking to an unruly mob of children instead of a silent throng of slaves, “is to destroy Castle Spinweb and Delivev Ormoru with it!”

And he cast the ivy into the brazier, where it puffed away to ash.

She woke to the acrid smell of smoke. She frowned, blinking her eyes, rubbing at them with the backs of both hands. The room was dim as with dawn twilight, and she wondered if she had wakened so early to escape her dark, disturbing dreams, of Cray lost and calling for her, of herself reaching for him but unable to cross the infinite gap that separated them. She glanced toward the fireplace, thinking that a sudden draft had driven soot back down the chimney and into the bedchamber, but the ashes were cold, with no signs of disturbance. The smoke trailed in through the window—she could see it there eddying against the pale stone. She threw the bedclothes aside and went to look out.

The forest that surrounded Spinweb was ablaze.

The sun was high, the time full day, but gouts of thick black smoke veiled the bright sky, and the ruddy flames that roared about the trees were faint compensation for daylight. Among the burning boughs, Delivev could make out the wildly dancing forms of fire demons, and as she watched, more than one mass of pure flame leaped to an untouched tree to set it alight.

“Rezhyk!” she shouted, raising both fists to his minions. “Only a coward attacks without warning, Rezhyk!”

She pushed herself away from the window and raced down the stairs to the garden. There, the birds were circling restlessly, reluctant to leave their nests yet anxious to fly far from the smoke. The snakes and spiders were moving, too, clustering, edging toward the pond. In its stall, the pony whinnied, nervous, pacing with clattering hooves. At Delivev’s arrival, the loose animals swarmed to her, spiders climbing her legs, snakes twining about her feet, birds alighting on her outstretched arms. They followed her to the pony’s stall, where she placed her bird-laden hands on its quivering muzzle.