Sorcerer's Son (52 page)

“What? Kill her?” No!“

“A direct order, no way to twist it into something else. I must obey. I must! Remember the shirt is proof against metal and weaving!” The demon flashed away, a bright spot against the blue sky.

“Stop! Wait!” Cray shouted. “Arvad, Yra, help! Gildrum mustn’t reach my mother!”

From their individual battles, Arvad and Yra heard Cray’s call and streaked toward Spinweb, a dark cloud and a ball of fire. They caught Gildrum above the castle and grappled there, rolling and plunging.

“Down, Elrelet!” said Cray. “Set me at the gate of Ringforge!”

They swooped to the ground, and behind them, Rezhyk’s forces broke away from their Free opponents and rushed to Gildrum’s aid, and the Free followed until the whole battle had shifted to the sky above Spinweb. Cray glanced over his shoulder once, just before his feet touched lightly among the spiders that still swarmed toward the walls, and he could not distinguish Gildrum in the whirling miasma of cloud and mist, flame, snow, and lightning.

The gate was open, the massive panel warped and buckled by the prying vines that choked the aperture. Cray peered inside, tugged tentatively at the greenery; it did not yield.

“I’m going in,” he said to Elrelet.

“What will you do? You have no weapons that can touch him.”

“I have my hands.” And he bent over, fingertips brushing the ground, and shrank and shrank until he was one with the milling spiders. He scuttled out of his tumbled clothing and into the jungle of vines, into Ringforge.

The anteroom was filled with ivy, with morning glories, with the prickly stems of climbing roses. They hid the smooth floor and walls, they encrusted the wooden chairs, they climbed past the sconces, now dark, even those small demons lured away to battle. Cray traversed the chamber quickly, leaping from stem to stem, leaf to leaf, and at the opposite side he found the door that had been flush with the wall ripped open as by a giant’s hand. Vines spilled beyond, into the mirror-walled corridor, and he scurried onward, along the interlacing stems. Here he found the ivy moving, prising at the walls in search of doors; many had already been forced open, the rooms filled with vegetation. One of these was Rezhyk’s workshop.

Cray launched himself inside, seeking the sorcerer among the myriad leaves. The vines had entered through a window as well as a door—a window whose existence Cray had never suspected. The worktable was festooned with ivy, drawers pulled out, their contents spilled and enveloped; the kiln was full of leafy green; the ever-burning brazier had been overturned, its coals scattered upon the floor, browning a few morning glory blossoms as they died. One sconce glowed upon the wall.

Rezhyk was not there.

The sun was red—too red. Gildrum felt its pull and dropped low over Spinweb, low in the roiling multitude of frantic demons, then slid into the shadow of one tall tower and descended to the ground. There, the pale glow of the demon coalesced into human form, and Gildrum was Mellor once more, dark-haired and lithe, clad only in a light shirt and hose and soft shoes, all well smudged with soot. His back snug against the stone of Spinweb, he edged past charred and broken trees toward the gate and, reaching it, poised upon the threshold gazing in. The wooden panel had burned away, its ashes strewn inward across the polished stone of the gateroom floor. The tapestries that lined the chamber were charred here and there from the sparks that had blown in with that burning. The doorway was now hung with fine spiderweb.

“Delivev,” he whispered, “Delivev,” knowing that her creatures would bring her word of him.

In the corridor once more, Cray resumed his human form to stand naked among the vines. They were knee deep about him and rustling with constant movement. The main flow from the gate and the smaller masses that had burst through shuttered windows and even wrenched narrow passage through the very seams of the building, had converged in the corridor, and clusters of stems were even making their laborious way up the staircase. Cray followed, overtaking them with his long, human legs, but at the top of the stairs he found that other vines had already entered through openings at that level. He raced upward, and on the third floor, at the base of one of Ringforge’s towers, he found Rezhyk.

Even here there was ivy, climbing the walls in narrow ribbons, trailing from the ceiling. As Cray watched, a hanging strand snaked about Rezhyk’s neck, but instead of tightening to strangle him, it lay limp and loose upon his flesh; he cut it away with a bronze knife he had formerly used only for slicing meat at dinner. Though they destroyed his castle all about him, Delivev’s creatures could not touch the enemy who wore the golden shirt

As he cast the ivy from him, Rezhyk saw Cray. “You!” he shouted. He raised his free hand, rings glittering in the light that spilled down the tower stairs. Above them, the sound of wrenching metal was a piercing scream that made Cray’s flesh crawl, but Rezhyk seemed hardly to notice it. Nor did he notice the light increasing where he stood, as the wall behind him opened to the reddening sky. Ivy eased in through the aperture, cascaded down the stairs to lie limp at Rezhyk’s feet

“Cray Ormoru!” he shouted, the fingers of his outstretched arm pointing stiffly. “Your rings shall turn against you, your demons shall burn you, freeze you, drown you, blast you to pieces!”

“I wear no rings,” said Cray, walking slowly toward Rezhyk, his eyes on the knife. He could see that the bronze blade was wet with greenish plant juices, and fragments of ivy still clung to it where Rezhyk had cut through the clutching stems.

Rezhyk backed up the tower stairs. “Stay away.” Ivy waved about his feet, but he stepped firmly, surely, crushing the leaves with his studded boots. “Stay back.”

“Your castle is crumbling about you, Rezhyk,” said Cray. “Call back your demons and give your rings over to me.”

Rezhyk’s lips curled back from gritted teeth. “I should have had you killed the first day you came here!” He turned and lunged upward, taking the stairs two at a time.

Cray followed, one hand scrabbling at the bronze rail to aid his progress. He was younger, faster; his pumping legs rapidly closed the gap between them. He clawed at Rezhyk’s ankle, at his knee. Rezhyk stumbled, falling heavily on the steps, then bent sharply at the waist and swiped at his pursuer with one fist. A gem-set ring caught Cray’s cheek, laying it open almost to the bone, and he recoiled from the shock, hands clutching his bleeding face.

Rezhyk staggered on.

He heard her step first, and then he saw her. She wore black, glossy black feathers from neck to knee. For me, he thought, and he felt hot tears rising behind his eyes. Involuntarily, his arms reached out for her, but the spiderweb door and the invisible carrier against demons stopped them, leaving him standing with empty, open hands lifted as if in supplication.

Seeing him, she halted, one foot forward, her weight coming down heavily upon it. Her right hand rose to her breast as she stared at him.

“My dearest love,” he whispered, and the tears spilled forth upon his cheeks.

For a dozen heartbeats she stood frozen. The ordeal of the day showed in her face, the pouches deep beneath her eyes, the skin pale, lines etched about the mouth. Fatigue was written there, and vulnerability.

She called his name, his human name, a name never inscribed on any ring. And then she went to him, lifting the silken door aside with one hand, to clasp him in her arms and lay her head upon his shoulder and to murmur that name over and over again.

Cray felt dizzy and faint, and his stomach churned at the sight of his own blood all over his hands. He leaned on the bronze steps, breathing raggedly, shuddering at the tickling sensation of liquid oozing across his jaw, down his neck. Then he took a deep breath and pushed himself upright to continue his chase.

Rezhyk was at the next landing, where ivy had broken through a window and choked the stairwell. He was in the midst of it, hacking at the tangled strands. At Cray’s approach, he glanced out the ruptured window at the reddening sky. “You haven’t long to live, Cray Ormoru. Count your heartbeats.”

“Count your own,” said Cray, crouching warily, his eyes on the knife.

Rezhyk’s lips curved in a slow smile. “I know you have a certain training. I know you think you’ll take this knife away from me. But it will do you no good. You can’t turn it against me, You’ll have to kill me with your bare hands.”

Instead of answering, Cray leaped for him, one hand at his wrist, the other at his throat.

They fell, rolling in the vines, which covered them quickly in a green cocoon.

“Come, come to me, Serpit, Anara, Zelabas!” Rezhyk shouted, ripping Cray’s hand from his throat. He was strong, thin but wiry, and the fingers that had shaped figures from clay were like metal claws at Cray’s own flesh. “Come to me, all but Gildrum!”

In answer to his summons, the sky about Ringforge boiled with demons. The storm of their presence made the weakened walls of the castle creak and moan, and the tower where Cray and Rezhyk fought swayed like a sapling in the wind. About the tower demons surged, air and water, fire and ice, hot drafts and cold, rain, sleet, snow and hail, and dust and char picked up along the way. But none entered the tower to help Rezhyk; they were too busy with each other.

“You see, sorcerer,” gasped Cray, “you have no one to depend on but yourself!”

“So be it!” Rezhyk groaned, and he opened the hand that held the knife, letting the bronze blade drop among the vines. Startled, Cray loosened his grip on that wrist for an instant, and Rezhyk jerked it free, plunging the hand to Cray’s throat. “So be it!” And then the second hand joined it.

Cray’s arms were too short to reach the long-limbed Rezhyk’s face, and his legs were too tangled in vines to kick effectively. He snatched at Rezhyk’s fingers, managed to insinuate one of his own beneath two of the sorcerer’s ring-laden claws and pull sharply. He heard a bone crack, but Rezhyk seemed not to care, only squeezed, squeezed, while Cray’s hands scrabbled and ripped at the flesh of his fingers and cut themselves bloody on the gems of his rings. Cray’s head filled with a rushing noise, above which he could barely hear the sound of the window beside them, and of windows and seams all through Ringforge, being ripped open farther, ever farther by the tenacious ivy. With each rent, the spell of the castle thinned, and now the attacking demons beat upon the very bronze with all their powers, waiting for the moment of entry. A sudden burst of sleet splashed through the gaping window onto Cray and Rezhyk, followed by gravel-sized hail that rattled and rang against the exterior walls. Cray snapped another finger, but still he could catch no breath.

And then there was a thumping and clattering all around him, and voices were shouting his name over and over again. Icicles had replaced the hail that showered through the window. Icicles dagger-length and slim, falling on the massed vines by the armload, glinting in the low sunlight. Some shattered as they struck; a few glanced off Rezhyk’s back, ripping his tunic but turning aside from the golden shirt as from chain mail. With one hand, Cray still pried at Rezhyk’s stony fingers, but he tore the other loose to grope wildly among the icy shards. Above him, Rezhyk’s face began to dim, to take on a ruddy tinge, and some small part of Cray’s mind found time to wonder if that were a trick of the oncoming dusk or merely the ebbing away of his sight and his life.

His human-seeming hands had tightened on her, though he had willed them otherwise. He felt nothing, not the smoothness of her flesh nor the heat of her body nor the light touch of the feathers she wore, nothing but the solid, steady beat of her heart. Only ten more beats, he told himself. She murmured to him, enfolded in his arms, but he could not hear the words, only the imminent breaking of her bones, real already in his imagination and loud as the end of the world. Ten more beats, ten more. He could no longer see her hair so close beside his cheek, only the red, red sun of dusk, looming, filling his eyes with blood. His hands tightened again.

Gripping the blunt end of the dagger shape as tight as any sword hilt, Cray drove the icy point toward Rezhyk’s throat. It gave him the extra reach he needed, entering the flesh just beneath the chin.

Rezhyk’s eyes widened at the impact, and his mouth opened, but no sound emerged. His fingers flexed convulsively, loosened, and Cray caught at them with all his strength and thrust them away, gasping air at last. With both hands, then, Cray began wrenching at the rings, hoarsely chanting the words that Gildrum had taught him. They rolled over, Rezhyk’s fingers working spasmodically, not at Cray’s throat anymore but at his own, clutching at the frozen blade that pierced him while Cray fought to gain his demons. Blood came to the sorcerer’s lips, frothing pink with saliva as he tried to cry out, as he gurgled instead of speaking. They rolled again, and the vines wrapped tight about them; and at last Cray had collected all the rings, closed his left hand upon them, and found another sharp shard of ice with his right, for the coup de grâce.

Release came so abruptly that he staggered and would have fallen if not for her support.

“Mellor?” she cried. “Mellor, what’s wrong?”

He covered his eyes with one hand and stood swaying against her. “Nothing,” he whispered, and then he clutched at her, encircled her with both arms and held her tighter than before, but of his own free will. “Nothing is wrong, my darling.”

Cray pushed the dead body aside, brushed the clinging vines from his limbs, and lurched to his feet. His breath was fire in his throat, and he shook uncontrollably. Over the ringing in his ears, he heard his name being called loudly, insistently, from the window, and at last he turned and stumbled over the high-piled greenery to answer.

Just beyond the window, the Free were massed, clouds and crystals, flames and milky pearls. They pressed toward him, tendrils of themselves reaching through the aperture to touch him.

“Will you come now?” said Elrelet’s voice. “Ringforge is falling!”

And all around him, he heard the agony of the bronze giving way, plates screaming as they collapsed against each other. The tower shuddered and quaked, and the floor tilted under his feet. He gripped the window frame and the buckled shutter, heedless of the sharp-edged metal biting at his fingers. With one foot up on the sill, he slid through the opening and stepped into the air, into Elrelet’s grasp. When he looked back, the tower was folding in on itself, sagging, beginning a slow slide to the ground. Gray dust puffed upward as the walls of Ringforge settled into a jagged heap of ivy-covered metal