Sorcerer's Son (15 page)

“Eh?” said the old man. He cupped a hand to his right ear. “My hearing isn’t what it used to be. You must speak loudly.”

Cray repeated his request, and the man bobbed another bow. “Oh, stay, stay if you like,” he said. “I haven’t guested a traveler in many a year. Many, many a year. You’re more than welcome to share my poor fare, though it is only yesterday’s porridge.” He smiled, showing a toothless jaw.

“A hot meal,” muttered Sepwin.

“I’ll hunt,” said Cray softly. “The rain will hold off for a while yet. He probably doesn’t eat meat very often.”

“Meat? He can’t chew meat without teeth.”

“We can make soup from some of it for him then. Or do you want porridge?”

“I’ve eaten worse in my life.”

“I’ll hunt,” Cray repeated firmly. “Take care of Gallant for me?” He took one of his magic nets from a saddlebag. “I won’t be long.”

“Can you hunt without that?” asked Sepwin.

Cray looked down at the gossamer-fine spidersilk in his hands. He hardly felt its weight, and in all but the brightest sunlight it was nigh invisible. “Why would I need to?”

“In case you lost it, of course.”

Cray shrugged. “They are easy enough to make. My mother taught me when I was very young. You could learn the process without any difficulty, I am sure.”

“Me?” said Sepwin.

“There’s a little trick to it, but nothing a diligent student could not master.”

“But I am not a sorcerer, nor even a sorcerer’s child. How could an ordinary mortal learn something like that?”

“Sorcerers were once ordinary mortals,” said Cray. “Or didn’t you know that?”

“But they live so much longer

”

“They became sorcerers through knowledge,” Cray told him. “Knowledge extended their lives as well as giving them power.”

Sepwin cocked his head to one side and regarded Cray with his one uncovered eye. “And you? Half of one sort, half of another—which life span will you have?”

Cray fingered the gossamer net. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t know of any others like me, so

I don’t know.” He laughed then. “We’re both a trifle young to be talking of death, don’t you think?”

Sepwin took up Gallant’s reins and those of his own mount. “I have thought about it,” he said. “Someone like me

thinks about it often.”

Cray clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, not now, Master Feldar. Not even though the day be cloudy and promising rain.” He grinned. “And on such a day, I must be off to the hunt without further delay.” With a last glance at the sky, he turned and jogged off into the trees.

As soon as he had passed well out of sight of the hut, Cray spread out his magic net. He laid it at the foot of a tall and gnarly oak, between mighty arching roots, where mushrooms sprouted. He baited the net with herbs from the woodland floor—thyme and marjoram sprigs elaborately knotted together. Then he climbed another tree and hid himself among its leaves to sit, quiet as a bluebird hiding in its nest from hunting hawks. Shortly, a pair of rabbits approached the oak roots; they circled the tree, nibbling bits of greenery that grew around it, sitting up sometimes, their pink noses twitching as they sniffed the air. First one, then the other edged toward the net, and neither seemed to notice it, even when they stepped upon the fine strands. When they stood head to head, their noses nudging the aromatic bait, Cray gestured with one finger, and the net wrapped about its quarry, enfolding them in webbing light as air but strong as steel. Again, the rabbits seemed unconcerned. Cray descended from his tree and dispatched them with his knife.

Back at the hut, Sepwin and the old man were getting on well, though Sepwin was swiftly becoming hoarse from so much shouting.

“His family is all gone,” said Sepwin, helping Cray to skin and dress out the two rabbits as their host looked on. “The oldest son died of fever, the youngest ran off to be a tinker, the daughters married away, and his wife died in childbirth with her eighth. He’s lived here alone for the past few years, and he wants us to stay for a month or two to keep him company.”

Cray grinned. “We thank you for such a kind offer of hospitality, good sir,” he said loudly, “but we cannot stay longer than it takes for the big horse to mend. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

“A few days then, young sir,” said the old man. “Just a few days. I haven’t seen a human soul since the last daughter left. Too lonely here, she said. She met a man when we took a bull calf to market in the town, and she would marry him, no matter that it meant her old father would be left alone.” He plucked at his short, scraggly white beard with fleshless fingers. “She waved all the way down the road, waved and waved, and then she turned her back and never waved again. I have been lonely, I can tell you.”

“Why not go to one of your daughters, then, good sir?” said Cray. “Live with one of them, with your grandchildren about you.”

The old man gazed at Cray with startled eyes. “And leave my home?”

“If you are so lonely

”

“I built this house with my own hands. I cleared my own fields, planted, cultivated, weeded, and when the horse died I pulled the plow myself, and one of the boys walked behind to guide it. My children were born here, and I will be buried here!”

Cray shrugged. “Then you must resign yourself to loneliness, I suppose. You can’t force your children to come back.”

The old man nodded. “I let them go. How could I stop them? Pen them like goats? Tie them to the trees? I let them go. Still

it is a lonely place.” He looked out over his land, which stretched in the shape of a triangle with apex at the hut and base against distant trees. At one time, when it supported a large family, it must have been planted with neat, parallel rows of tall grain and low vegetables. Now all but the portion closest to the hut was overgrown with weeds, and here and there a spindly sapling showed above the scrub, the forest reclaiming its loss. “I am the farthest settler from the town,” he said, his voice and his face suffused with pride in those words. “My father said that bandits would raid us, that wild boars would eat the grain, that wolves would kill my children; but none of that happened. We were too lonely even for those things. Certainly too lonely to guest many travelers.” He smiled at Cray. “But I have tried to keep the road clear for any who might pass. I knew they would be grateful.”

“Indeed we are,” said Cray. “And I hope that the fine soup we will make from this rabbit will be some small recompense for your labors. Have you a pot, good sir? One without porridge in it?”

“A pot? Oh yes. A pot.” He scrambled to his feet and ducked inside the hut to return in a moment with the twin to the porridge container. “This will do, won’t it?”

“Admirably,” said Cray, and he dumped bones and finely cut scraps into it, along with the herbs that he had used to bait his net. The old man added onions and carrots from his fields, salt from a small bag hung just inside the door of his hut, and water from his well, and they set the pot on the fire to boil. Cray was left with boneless rabbit steaks, which he wrapped in a cloth and stowed inside one of his saddle bags; they would be safe there, in case the old man had a dog or two about his place, in case there were weasels in the fields. Later, when the soup was done, Cray would broil the meat over open flames, and all three of them would share the evening meal.

When he turned back to the fire, the old man still sat there, stirring it and musing on the past, and Sepwin sat happily enough beside him, a green twig between his teeth. Cray settled beside them, lying down on his back on the bare, fire-warmed earth, arms behind his head, and he looked up at the sky, where the clouds had finally cleared away without loosing any rain at all.

“In twenty years,” the old man was saying, “I have had only four guests. Others have passed on the road and, I suppose, found my hut too poor to stop at; one even waved to me as he galloped by. He bore a blue standard in his hand, and I always wondered where he came from, where he was going in such a hurry.” He nodded, more to himself than to Cray or Sepwin. “Yes, some few have passed, but only four have stopped. You are two.” He counted them off on the index and middle finger of his left hand. “And the other two—they were here together, too, but not together, not companions like you. The one came first. He was a pleasant young fellow. My wife liked him. She was alive then, and some of the children were still here, the three younger ones, I think. She wanted to know if I thought him handsome, I remember. Oh, quite handsome, quite. And he chopped enough wood to last us the rest of the year. The other came later. I never saw his face at all—he kept his visor down, just shouted a challenge to the first. They fought on the road, right out in front of the hut. I never found out exactly what it was they fought about. The second one—he rode away right after it was finished, didn’t say another word. I had to bury the other one myself.”

“They were knights?” asked Cray.

“They wore armor. I suppose they were knights. It was some private feud. I kept the children away after the fighting began, though they wanted to watch. Two wild men they were, with their swords in their hands, and I thought it would be easy for a watcher to be killed.”

“Did they use only swords?”

“Yes, swords. And shields. And a mighty racket they made, too, bashing metal against metal. The loser’s sword was all notched, and the edges of his shield were bent. Every time I look at them, I wonder how a man’s arms can stand all that battering.”

“You have the shield and sword of the man who was killed?”

“Oh, yes, yes.” The old man bobbed his head. “I had his horse, too, to pull my plow until it died. The winner, he just rode off, never saying a word, leaving the dead body in the middle of the road. The bloodstains were there until the next rain.”

Cray frowned. “He should have taken the shield, at least, to send to his opponent’s lord. That would have been only courtesy. They did seem to know each other, did they not?”

“They knew each other well, I thought. Certainly, there was no time for them to argue before they met here and the fight began.”

“It was wrong to leave the arms behind them. And wrong not to bury the body as well.”

“Right or wrong,” said the old man, “I would not have stopped him to demand either. He was a big man on a big horse, and his armor was black as pitch, with no device, without a scratch upon it. He had never lost a fight, I knew that. I let him go, and I thanked good fortune that he had no quarrel with me. My wife cried when we buried the other. She said he was too young to die.” He shrugged, “Well, and so was she, and my eldest son. We all die, sooner or later. I think on that when I look on their graves, and I wonder why I have been spared so long. A grave is an excellent thing, to give a man pause in a long day, to remind him to be grateful for the little life given him. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know,” said Cray. “I’ve never seen a grave.”

“Never seen a grave?” The old man looked at him with bright, incredulous eyes. “Where have you lived that no one dies, young sir?”

“I have lived with my mother,” said Cray. “Just the two of us, and I have never known anyone who died.”

“But graves

surely the graves of your ancestors were somewhere nearby.”

“None that I knew of, good sir.” He did not mention that sorcerers, unless killed considerably before the normal span of their long lives, merely crumbled to dust and blew away at death. His grandmother, dead more than half a century, was part of the forest soil, and when Cray was a child one of his fancies was that she lived in every tree, in every herb, in every mushroom that sprouted there. His mother spoke of her sometimes, and Cray knew what she looked like from a tapestry that Delivev had woven before he was born.

Nor had he ever seen a grave in the webs. Delivev had no interest in graveyards.

“You may see a few this day then,” said the old man. “And every one dug by these hands.” He held them up, and they were knobby with age but still calloused. He rose. “Come. Come along.”

Cray shrugged and followed him, glancing back once at Sepwin, who stayed still by the fire.

“I’ve seen enough graves for my taste,” said Sepwin, and he stirred the soup with a clean stick.

Cray and the old man walked through the untended field, wading through coarse grass and grain gone wild that reached their waists and higher. Almost at the trees on the far side, they emerged from the tangle to a small open space, where the greenery was clipped short and scattered with wild flowers. Here were three graves, neatly mounded hillocks of earth side by side. The first was marked by a large stone cut into a rough slab, with symbols against evil incised deeply in the weathered surface.

“My eldest son,” the old man said.

The second grave had two stones at its head, one large, one small, with carvings in proportion.

“My wife is there,” said the old man, pointing. “And the baby, too. I thought she would not like to be separated from him.”

But Cray’s eyes tracked quickly past the first two graves, to the third. Its marker stone was rougher hewn than the others, rounded, more like an ordinary boulder. And tilted against it, their lower parts buried, anchored in the grass-grown earth, were a sword and shield. Both were rusty from long exposure to the elements, and much of the shield’s paint had weathered away, but still there was enough left upon it that Cray could make out the bearings of its owner: three red lances interlocked on a white field. He stood before the grave and stared down at that shield, and the old man babbled behind him, unheeded.

“It is a moving experience, is it not?” the old man was saying when Cray could hear his words once more. “I weep, too, every time I come to tend them. I miss her, though she’s been gone so long.”

Cray blinked and realized that his cheeks and lashes were wet with salty tears. “His name,” he said slowly, “was Mellor.”

The old man came close to him. “You knew the man? But this happened many years ago, and you are very young.”

“Fifteen years ago.”

“Fifteen?” He rubbed at his bearded chin with one hand, then ticked off the years on those fingers. “Perhaps fifteen,” he said after some moments. “Or fourteen. Since my last daughter left my house, I have not kept a careful count of the passing years.”