Sorcerer's Son (36 page)

“Not quite right,” he said. “Too much copper.” He glared at Cray. “How many times must I tell you to be more careful?”

Cray sighed. “My lord, I am sorry. I will try again.”

And so the first months of his apprenticeship passed, with Cray studying much but rarely completing his lessons to his master’s satisfaction.

“Am I so incompetent, Gildrum?” he asked her. He sat on the floor of his workroom, a brick of the inevitable brass on the floor in front of him. He leaned forward and nudged it with one finger. His hands were red and raw from scrubbing the kiln that afternoon; Rezhyk had been sharper with him than usual after examining the latest piece of brass and had found fault even with his scrubbing, making him do it twice over for good measure.

Gildrum had just entered the room; he had seen her image in the bronze, a small, light-footed form poised at the open door, and he had bid her enter before she had a chance to ask. Even then, he did not look directly at her but stared glumly into the space between the brass brick and the near wall.

“This is not an easy art you seek to master,” she said, standing behind him. “You cannot expect to learn everything in a few short months.”

“I expect to learn something. I thought that I had. But no. Nothing comes out right for me. Yet

I don’t know what greater care I can take. Perhaps I should give up,” He frowned painfully. “He is a harsh man, your master, and I know he is not well pleased with me.”

“He is harsh,” said Gildrum.

“I can see the contempt on his face. Contempt for me and my failure. Sometimes I think he wants me to admit defeat and give up, stop wasting his time.”

She sank to the floor beside him. “Do you want to give up?”

“I can’t. There is no other way to find the answer I must have. But it seems farther away than ever.” He gazed sidelong at her. “What shall I do, Gildrum?”

Gildrum drew her knees up and clasped her hands about them. Softly, she said, “How can I give you advice, Master Cray? To tell you to give up would be to contradict your own desires, and to tell you to persevere would be a betrayal of my own kind.” She bent forward to rest her forehead on her knees. “I know what you want me to say, but do you really expect me to encourage you to enslave other demons?”

Cray sighed deeply. “I haven’t any interest in enslaving demons. I only want an answer. One answer.”

“It will not stop there, Master Cray. Power will awaken greed in your heart. After the question is answered, you will find other desires that demons can fulfill.”

“No.”

“You are young to be so sure.”

“I have no other reason for apprenticing to Lord Rezhyk. Afterward

I don’t know. That depends on the answer. But I never wanted power, Gildrum, I swear it.”

“My lord was something of that sort once. He only wanted knowledge. Still, he only wants knowledge. But he has needed demons to gather it for him. There are scores of us in this fortress, slaves to him. We had lives of our own, before. Now we live for him alone, at his whim every hour of the day. Some he lets go back to the world we came from for shorter or longer visits, but the rings always call them back eventually. Some, like the demon-lights, never leave the human world.”

“Like you.”

She nodded, her forehead rubbing against her cloth-covered knees. “I have seen very little of my home since he called me to him.”

“Do you miss it, Gildrum?”

Her face turned toward him, and one long braid slid over her shoulder to drape against her neck. “There are things that I miss. Home is one of them.”

“And what are the others?”

“While I serve my lord,” she said, “they do not exist.”

“I pity you, Gildrum.”

She smiled a trifle. “No more than I do myself, I’m sure.”

“You know, Gildrum, if it were not for you, I would be tempted to leave here. You are my only friend in Ringforge. You are more human than he is.”

Gildrum straightened. “I’m sure my lord would disagree with you on that.”

“In your heart.”

“Well, I haven’t any heart, Master Cray. Don’t forget that. It is this young and pretty body that charms you. If I had the semblance of an ugly old crone, you would undoubtedly rush me off quickly every time I came near you.”

“No, I would not, for the Gildrum inside would be the same. But perhaps I would treat you with more deference, as befits a grandmother.”

“I am old enough to be your grandmother and more.”

Cray looked at her closely, as he always seemed to be looking at her, every time she reminded him that she was something other than human. And as before, he found no flaw in her appearance; he saw beside him only a girl several years younger than himself, just barely beyond childhood. “How long have you served him?”

“Since the beginning. I was the first. He worked seven years on the rings that captured me.”

“And you have not aged.”

“He would not allow this form to age. And, in demon terms, I am still young.”

“How long do demons usually live?”

‘Far longer than human beings, even sorcerers.“

“Then you will outlive Lord Rezhyk?”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“And after he dies

will you be free, or will you pass to the next owner of the rings?”

“I’ll be free, at least until some other sorcerer claims me as Lord Rezhyk did.”

“Is that likely?”

Gildrum shrugged. “I’ll be free for a time; who can say how long? Perhaps the rest of my life. Perhaps not.”

“But you’ll be able to go home then. For a while, anyway.”

“Yes,” she said hollowly. “Home will be there, waiting for me.”

“And

the other things?”

“I have no hope on that account.”

Hesitantly, he touched her shoulder. “Poor Gildrum,” he murmured. “Is it some demon lover who won’t wait for you?”

She raised her head slowly, and he was startled to see a tear in her eye. “Master Cray,” she said, “let us speak no further on these matters.”

“So demons cry,” he whispered.

“This demon cries. It has been too long among you.” She scrambled to her feet, wiping away that single tear with the back of her hand. “I ask you not to tell my lord that you have seen me weep, Master Cray. I know he would not wish to think his most powerful demon as weak as a real human being.”

“I won’t tell him.”

She bent to grasp his shoulder with one tense hand. “I wish you luck, Master Cray. With everything.”

“I’ll need some,” he replied.

Rezhyk examined the rough-cast ring closely, holding it up to his eye with two fingers; the unpolished surface appeared to be covered with a fine yellow powder. “It goes well indeed, my Gildrum,” he said. “Another year, I think, with this one, and we’ll be ready to conjure.” He waved at the demon with his free hand. “You’d better make some more entries for me in the false notebook. Something about lead.”

Gildrum fetched the volume marked “54” from its special drawer and set it on the end of the worktable, open to the first blank sheet. From another drawer she took a quill and inkpot that her master did not need for his real work, then climbed onto her stool and hunched over the book to inscribe it with a perfect imitation of Rezhyk’s crabbed script. “What shall I say about lead?”

“Add a little to the ring that’s described there. As much as you like, it doesn’t really matter.”

“You’ve never added lead to your gold.”

“So much the better. We’ve concocted a truly creative ring in those pages. What a pity it’s so useless.”

“You know, my lord, you needn’t bother to keep this notebook anymore,” she said, writing more quickly than her master would. “He’ll believe whatever you tell him.”

“I want to stay consistent, my Gildrum. His lessons may be a sham, but they are a logical sham. What do you have there?” He peered over her shoulder. “Good. Good. It certainly sounds likely. Very good.” He picked up a round steel file and began to stroke the inner curve of the ring. “Do you think he is beginning to feel discouraged?”

“He has expressed his self-doubts to me several times, my lord, but he always finds the strength to continue.” She waved her hand above the page, shedding enough mild warmth upon it to dry the ink without need for sand. She closed the book. “He has a strong will, that lad.”

“This last task I set him—he did very well with it, my Gildrum. He has the touch, the exactitude the art requires. He could do well as a demon-master. I expressed my disappointment most strongly.”

“He told me, my lord,” she said, leaning her elbows on the red leather cover of the volume.

“Perhaps this should be the last chance I give him. I can tell him that he’ll never do any better than with this most recent work.” His lips tightened into a travesty of a smile. “And it will be true, certainly.” He fell silent, and for a long time the only sound in the room was the rasping of the file against the gold of the ring. Soon fine golden dust speckled Rezhyk’s hands and the slate surface over which he worked.

“No, my lord,” Gildrum said at last. “It is too soon to turn him out.”

“Too soon, my Gildrum? Almost a year already. The weather has come around pleasant again, good traveling weather. It would be no cruelty to send him on his way now.”

“I said too soon, my lord. What is a year in a sorcerer’s apprenticeship? If he does not object, his mother surely will. She will say that you have hardly given him a chance.”

Rezhyk sighed over his filing. “You are right, of course, my Gildrum. He has barely begun his apprenticeship.” He frowned. “But I cannot be comfortable while he is near me. It is as if she were here. My flesh crawls when I see him, and I want to shut him away and be done with him.”

“I shall endeavor to keep him out of your sight, my lord, if you wish it I can even oversee most of his lessons.”

“Yes. Yes, do that.”

“You have been with us a year today,” said Gildrum, leaning close to Cray’s elbow to watch him write. His script had shrunk in the time he had been keeping the notebook, and each day’s work required less space than the previous, though it was no less lengthy. He had nearly filled the volume Rezhyk had given him.

“Has it been so long?” he muttered. “Without the passage of the seasons to gauge time by, I have lost track.”

“You have the date on every page.”

“That is just a number. Winter has come and gone, it tells me, but my body still lives in the summer of my arrival. Ringforge is always the same, summer and winter. I might have been here a year or a hundred years.” He measured the thickness of the used pages with a finger and thumb. “Sometimes it seems like a hundred.”

“A year only, and it is summer again.”

Cray blew on the writing to dry it. “A whole year—and I have not once been outside these walls. I, who used to spend my days in the open air.” He shook his head ruefully. “I have grown pale.”

She peered into his face. “Your cheeks are pale,” she agreed.

“My heart, too.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Well, I think my lord might agree to a brief holiday, for this anniversary afternoon, if you are so inclined.”

He smiled at her. “I am inclined, but I have too much work to do. I have this batch right at last, I’m sure; he’ll find no fault this time. If I can persuade him to look at it.”

“Oh, he’ll look at it, no doubt about that, Master Cray. I’ll take it to him myself as soon as it’s cool.”

“He must be quite disgusted with me, to avoid me as he has lately.”

“He has been very busy.”

“So busy that he stays away from his own workshop when I am there?”

“There are other rooms in Castle Ringforge, Master Cray. He does not spend every waking hour in the workshop.”

“And he takes care that my work there shall be completed in those hours that he is absent.” Cray tipped his book shut. “Well, I find I cannot blame him. I have hardly become the sort of apprentice that would make him proud.”

Gildrum turned to saunter away from him, around the table, one small hand brushing lightly along the smooth surface. She turned two corners and came to a halt directly opposite him; she leaned toward him, arms crossed upon the table, her eyes following the motions of his hands as he scrubbed the top clean of many-hued powders. “He hasn’t given you much help,” she murmured.

“Apprenticeship has been a trifle lonelier than I expected.” He grinned at her. “Which has made me more grateful for your visits, Gildrum.”

“You will get no more personal attention from him in the future than you have in the past. Less.”

“Oh, after he sees this batch of brass, I think his attitude will change.”

“Are you so poor a judge of human beings, Master Cray?”

He laid his hands upon the book. “A little success

”

“He is a harsh man. You think your success will make him less so?”

“Well

yes, of course.” His brow knit quizzically. “Why take an apprentice if you find no joy in his successes?”

With one slim finger, she swiped at a speck of dust, giving the gesture a long moment of her attention, as if it were intrinsically fascinating. Then quietly, she said, “You think my lord took an apprentice to build himself a rival?”

Cray stared at the top of her blond head. “Well

no, perhaps not. Perhaps just to sweat for him at tasks he no longer wishes to do himself. Still, he is bound by custom to teach me his art in return for my labor.”

“Is he?”

“Of course.”

“You say that so easily, Master Cray. Have you learned nothing in this year?”

“What are you saying, Gildrum? That he cares nothing about teaching me sorcery? That he apprenticed me

as a human slave to do the things that his demon slaves must not?”

She gazed at him from beneath raised eyebrows. “Can you bear to think that?”

Cray shook his head sharply. “He wouldn’t do that. It’s

it’s dishonorable.”

“Is the sorcerous breed such an honorable one?”

“Why are you saying such things, Gildrum? What trick are you trying to play on me?”

“No trick, Master Cray. I only wonder how you have lived in Ringforge a year now with your eyes tight shut.”

He wheeled away from her but was confronted with her image and his own in the wall. He looked down at the floor, where only his own foreshortened self stared back. “You are his creature, Gildrum. Why are you trying to turn me against him?”