Sorcerer's Son (30 page)

what you may consider greater things. You will be wrong, of course, but you may think so anyway.”

“Mother, I would never look down upon your sort of sorcery. Nor any sort. I would not pretend to compare your sphere with any other, any more than I would compare horses to flowers.”

“I hope it will be so.”

“It shall be.”

“And Cray—I will always be your friend, I promise you.”

“Mother! You have no need to say such a thing.”

“Other parents and children have not remained friends in our art, Cray, when they separated as you and I are about to do.”

“I shall always be your friend, Mother, no matter what happens.”

“I am glad to hear it. Take care of yourself, my dear.” Her voice cracked on the final word, and she could not help lifting her hand to her throat, to soothe the pain that was building there. “You must forgive me,” she whispered. “I can say no more.”

“I’ll speak to you soon, Mother, to tell you how the interview was.”

She nodded. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

The web darkened, but Delivev was no longer looking at it. Her sight turned inward, her eyes seeing her son as a babe, as a child, as a youth on his great gray horse. And she marveled that she could be losing him a second time. His father, at least, she thought, I only lost once.

The eagle swooped down out of the sky, its feathers glinting bronze in the dawnlight. Had it been a true bird it could have perched in the branches of the great tree that was the entrance to the Seer’s home; but it was huge, vaster than fifty eagles rolled together, and its feathers were truly bronze, not merely the color of the metal. It landed on the road instead, then, and its enormous wings brushed the dewy grass on either side of the path before they folded at its sides. It opened its beak, but instead of emitting a bird’s cry, it called Cray’s name in thundering tones.

The Seer and Cray and Sepwin had been waiting just inside the arch in the tree trunk, wondering what form Rezhyk’s demon transportation would take. Now Cray emerged and announced that he was ready, and the lady Helaine and his companion of so many months stayed within the shady shelter of the tree, peering out.

“You will take care of Gallant while I am gone,” he had said to Sepwin,

“As if he were my own.”

They had shaken hands then. “I’ll ask him if I can bring you with me. I’m not afraid to ask. Do you truly want to come?”

“Yes, of course. But he won’t—”

“Hush, Feldar. I will do my best to convince him.”

Sepwin looked into his eyes. “I fear I will not see you for a long time, my friend.”

“I’ll see you after the interview,” said Cray, and he walked out to the dawnlight.

The great eagle dipped its head toward Cray, turning first one dark eye upon the lad and then the other. When he was close beside it, Cray perceived that there were handholds among the metal feathers of its back, and straps to fasten the passenger securely aboard.

“I am ready,” said Cray. “How shall I mount, O bird?”

“You may not mount,” replied the bird, and its voice stirred the leaves on the Seer’s tree and made the dew shake loose of the grass at the roadside.

“How not?” inquired Cray. “Have you not been sent for me by the sorcerer Smada Rezhyk?”

“For you,” rumbled the bird, “but not for those others.”

Cray flicked a thumb in the direction of the tree entrance. “They are not coming with me, O bird.”

“Not those humans. But the others.”

Cray frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Those that ride your arms and chest, that hide in your collar and huddle in your sleeves. They may not mount me, nor enter Castle Ringforge. None but you may enter, Cray Ormoru, so leave them behind or stay yourself.”

Then Cray knew that the eagle meant his spiders, those other companions of his travels, that he carried without any thought. “Very well,” he said, and he knelt upon the ground, placing his hands flat on the hard-trodden road, and from his sleeves the spiders scuttled. They paused a moment at his splayed fingertips, but when he rose to his feet once more, they scattered into the grass. “Wait for me here,” he murmured. He felt twice naked now, without either spiders or chain mail. He gazed into one of the bird’s great eyes. “I am ready now. Will you take me?”

In answer, the eagle sank to the ground, its bronze breast upon the rutted road. One wing stretched halfway out, and wide-placed metal feathers rose upon that surface, a crude ladder. “Climb,” intoned the bird. Grasping the upraised metal struts, warm with morning sunlight, Cray scrambled to the eagle’s back.

“Fasten yourself tight,” said the bird. “We will be flying high and swift.”

Cray buckled the straps about his legs and torso and clasped the handholds firmly. When he was settled thus, the huge bird spread both wings to their fullest, lifted them once, and with a powerful down-stroke was airborne. Cray was pressed against the bronze feathers and buffeted by a great wind; his stomach felt as if it had been left behind on the ground, and his cheek, where the metal feathers lay hard against his flesh, ached from their blunt edges. The tallest of the forest trees dropped away from his sight as if yanked by the hand of a giant. Blue sky rushed close, and then clouds engulfed him, their moisture instantly soaking his clothing, their whiteness blinding him to his own movement.

Once within the clouds, the eagle rose no longer but soared on almost motionless pinions. With difficulty, Cray lifted his head. The wind was a hammer against him, from the front now, rather than above; he could scarcely keep his eyes open against it, and he could see nothing but whiteness, parting before him to reveal yet more whiteness waiting. He laid his face down again and closed his eyes. He spoke: “How long will we fly?” But the rushing wind whipped his voice away, drowning the words from even his own ears, and if the metal bird heard him, it did not deign to answer. “I would rather ride Gallant,” he muttered, “no matter how long the journey.”

He shivered, and not just with the chill of the clouds. He had never felt so alone before in his life.

Ť ^ ť

He caught his first glimpse of Ringforge when the great bronze bird tilted one wing down and slipped sideways through the air, describing a wide, swooping rum. Cray saw the ground then, tipped crazily to his eyes, roaring toward him with terrifying speed; he saw a broad, flat, circular open space, fringed by trees, and in the precise center of the circle was a huge building made of metal so highly polished that it flashed the sun back skyward from a dozen surfaces. A glimpse was all Cray managed at that moment; he could never have counted the turrets or walls, or even guessed the nature of that metal from its brilliant hue, for he was busy holding his breakfast behind his teeth. He closed his eyes as tight as the muscles of the lids would allow, but he could not shut out the vertigo that claimed him, that throbbed through his ears, his head, his throat. Every sinew of his body ached with the agony of that effort by the time a tremor, like the touch of a dinner dish on the smooth wooden surface of a table, marked the end of his journey. Shaking, sweating, still engulfed by the misery of motion sickness, Cray did not realize that his steed had ceased to move until he heard a voice. While his stomach still churned, some small portion of his mind marveled that he could hear anything above the rush of the wind. And then he realized that the wind no longer rushed. He opened his eyes and beheld a steady world, distant trees whose leaves seemed scarcely to move under the impetus of the mildest of summer breezes. Closer, the ground was yellow and sunbaked, just as it had been outside the Seer’s home.

“Master Cray?” came the voice again. It was a young voice, feminine, light, high.

Cray turned his head slowly, and the air seemed to spin about him. He groaned. His breakfast, which had not settled back to his stomach since the bronze bird began its descent, pushed at the back of his throat once more, and he tasted the bitter acid of it before he swallowed thickly. He laid his cheek against the metal feathers, gasping, and when his vision ceased its rocking, he found himself looking down on the bronze wing, extended in a ramp for his descent, and at its far end waited a girl in a long blue gown.

“Are you injured, Master Cray?” she inquired in her high, musical voice. She was small in stature, with blond hair plaited in two braids that fell forward upon her bosom. She appeared to be quite young, younger even than Cray himself, and he wondered who she might be. Rezhyk’s daughter was the first answer that leaped to his mind, but it only raised another question in its wake—if Rezhyk had a child, why would he offer someone else’s child apprenticeship?

“Master Cray?” she said again, stepping forward to poise on the endmost feathers of the wing. “Shall I help you down?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m a little dizzy,” he confessed.

She climbed the ladder of bronze feathers and bent to unstrap him. “This one is not accustomed to bearing human cargo,” she said, nodding toward the bronze bird’s head.

The creature turned its gaze upon them, and the feathers of its neck squeaked loudly as they scraped against each other for that contortion. “The human is not injured,” it thundered.

“No, no, I’m all right,” said Cray, holding the girl’s arm to rise from his bronze perch. “Just a little shaky.” He wobbled down the ramp and stepped heavily upon the solid yellow earth. “I’ve never flown before,” he muttered, trying to smile.

“I would think not,” she said. “Shall I fetch you some tea?”

He shook his head, grimacing as the motion set the world a-sway once more. “No, nothing, thank you. I’ll just sit down here for a few moments.” He sank, cross-legged, to the dust and held his head in his hands.

As if from a great distance, he heard the girl scolding the bronze bird for giving its passenger too rough a ride, he heard it answer in low rumbling tones, heard the vast pinions shift and shuffle, smelled the flicking clouds of dust raised by those gestures. Still caught up in his own misery, he marveled at the temerity of a puny human being raising her fragile voice to a monster that could slash her in two with one stroke of its beak; he marveled that she was master of the situation, that the bird sulked apologetically. Presently the voices fell silent, and soon after that the universe righted itself, leaving Cray able to look up, wan but steady.

The bronze eagle had vanished. Cray had not heard its wings surge in flight, had not felt the gust of wind that must have marked such an exit. The girl merely stood alone where the eagle had once rested, and she watched Cray.

“Where did it go?” asked Cray.

“Where demons go.” She walked forward till she stood above him, and then she stretched out her hand. “Are you well enough to rise?”

“Yes.” He took her hand and scrambled to his feet

“Welcome to Castle Ringforge, Master Cray.”

‘Thank you. And what might your name be?“

“Gildrum.”

He smiled. “A pretty name.”

“Is it? I hadn’t thought it so.”

“A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

Gildrum smiled then, but she only said, “Come. My lord awaits us inside.”

And Cray thought that she could not be Rezhyk’s daughter after all, for she would not call her father lord.

Ringforge towered skyward behind them, sheets of bronze vying with the sun for brilliance, crenelations sharp as if cut with a diamond blade, like teeth biting at the birds that passed in the summer sky. Cray could not resist touching the clean, bright line where two faces of a rampart met, to see if it would slice his flesh, and he scarcely felt the stroke, until dark, seeping blood began to sting the wound.

“What a surprise is this for an enemy,” he murmured.

Gildrum drew him away from the knife-edge juncture. “There are no such dangers inside,” she explained. “Your place is there, after all, Master Cray.”

“So I hope,” he said, and he let himself be ushered through the massive portal. Gildrum closed it silently behind him.

Within was mellow dimness. The room was small, the walls made of brushed metal that scattered the light of a few sconced candles as clouds scatter moonlight. Two chairs faced each other across the width of the chamber—plain, straight-backed chairs of ordinary wood; Gildrum bade Cray take one.

When he had sat for some few moments, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the low illumination, his body beginning to squirm on the hard, flat, unyielding seat of the chair, he turned to Gildrum, who stood nearby, her hands clasped upon the girdle of her gown, her eyes downcast. As if sensing his gaze, she raised her eyes to his at the instant he looked at her face, and for a moment, in his surprise, he lost the words he had been about to utter. They both smiled at the seeming coincidence. Then she broke the silence.

“Shall I fetch you something now, Master Cray? Some wine? Or even a cup of pure, sweet water? I think you must have had a thirsty journey.”

He shook his head. His throat was thick and his mouth dry, but he did not wish to be left alone in the small, bare room. “Where is the master of the house?”

“He will come.”

“Is he watching me, perhaps, by his magic?”

Gildrum shrugged. “You are of the sorcerous breed, Master Cray. You know how they are.”

“Are you not one of them?”

“I? No, I am just a servant.”

Cray looked all around him, even to the ceiling, which was as softly brushed as walls and floor and suffused with the same pale glow. “What a strange place this is. Are there always these two chairs here, or have they been set here specially for the occasion?”

“Sometimes there are more than two,” said Gildrum. “This is the only room of Ringforge that visitors may enter.”

“How many of them have come here?”

“A few.”

“Sorcerers? Or ordinary mortals?”

“A few of each sort. A great king once sat where you are sitting now. In that very chair.”

“Did he bring his own cushion?”

Gildrum smiled more broadly. “No, and his rump was soon as stiff and sore as yours will be.”

“Well,” said Cray, “it will make a good match for my arms, which are stiff and sore already, from clutching at your master’s bronze steed.”