"Eisenstein,.Phyllis.-.Sorcerer's.Son" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eisenstein Phyllis)

From the balcony of the highest spire of Castle Spinweb, she could see the tapestry if she turned toward the roomЧthe horse's legs were complete, and the grass beneath and behind them; she would not reach the face for some time, though she could see it every moment in her mind's eye. K she turned away from the room, she could see the forest, and the path he would take returning to her. She had chosen the tower room because of that view. As he was leaving, she had thought of sending spiders with him but decided against it; she could not hang such chains upon her love, could not bear to torture herself with looking over his shoulder but never being able to touch him. The tapestry, an instant of his life frozen upon the threads, suited her better.
And now she carried his child. She pressed her hands against the flesh of her belly, as if she could fee] the burgeoning life within. Her mother had told her
19
j
how it wasЧthe blindness to the outside world, the sense of being cut off from the creatures that had been her own, like losing the use of arms and legs for nine months. Her mother had accepted the experience once, for love, but never again, not though her father raged for a son to match their daughter.
She could rid herself of the child now. That was a simple matter. She could abort it and return to her usual life, and the feeling in her stomach would be gone. Instead, she sat down before the tapestry and began to weave. She touched his spurs today, twining her woollen strands with silk to give the metal silver highlights. The tapestry would be finished when her time came, she thought, and then she would have flesh of his flesh as well as the portrait.
Summer passed, and winter, and she was still alone when she bore the child.
"Good work, my Gildrnm, is it not?** said Rezhyk, admiring the cloth-of-gold shirt one last time before slipping it over his head. It was supple, finely wovea, and lighter than he bad expectedЧa piece of the gold bar remained unused. "I have never known such exhaustion.1* His cheeks were sunken, his eyes circled and pouchy, his beard grown out in disarray. He had paused from his weaving only to bolt the bare mh> imum of food that would sustain his strength. He had not slept at all hi eleven days.
"Good work, my lord," said Gildrum. '"You would make an excellent weaver."
"Bah! A tedious vocation, and I am glad to be rid of it How long shall I sleep now? Three days?" He blinked and rubbed his eyes. By magic he had stayed awake so long, but still he was unsteady on his feet, and his hands shook. "Help me to my bed."
"Yes, my lord." Gadrum, as the fourteen-year-old girl, climbed down from the high stool from which she had guided her lord's activities. "Shall I carry you?"
"No, I can walk."
She took his arm and laid it across her shoulders and bore most of his- weight as they moved from the workshop to his bedroom. She eased him to the wide
20
bed and stripped off his clothes, save for the new shut and the thin overshirt that concealed it.
Rezhyk drew the covers up to his chin. "Wake me tomorrow for dinner."
"My lord," said Gildrum, leaning over him. "I would ask a favor of you."
"A favor?" He opened one bloodshot eye. "What?"
"Let me go home for a little while. I need to get away from humansЧI have been among them too much lately."
Yawning, Rezhyk shook his head, burrowing deep into the pillow. "I cannot do without you, my Gildrum. Not now. I need you to watch over me."
"You have other servants who can do that.**
**Not like you. You always know what I want. We've been together so long."
She blew out the candle that illuminated the room. "Yes, my lord," she said. "I will be near if you need me." Silently, she glided from the room. She had a chamber of her own, on an. upper floor, where she sometimes sat to watch the sky and wait for Rezhyk to summon her. She went there now. There were tasks to be done around the castleЧthere were always tasks Чbut she did not feel like doing any of them at this moment
CHAPTER THREE
She called him Cray. She bore him without another human hand to help, while her animals looked on from a ring about her bed. When he was free of | her body, cloths washed and swaddled him and laid him upon her breast, and the soiled bedding eased
21
itself away from her, rolled into a ball, and tumbled away to burn itself in the fireplace while fresh sheets crept beneath her and fresh blankets tucked themselves about her and her new son. She slept then.
He was a happy child, laughing early, reaching out with curious but gentle fingers for the brightly colored flowers and birds of the garden. He grew fast and sturdy, with his mother's eyes and hair, with no hint of the young knight about him save for a love of fighting men. He would sit before the webs for hours to watch armored warriors strut across the view, to glimpse a sword and shield. He begged his mother to make her spiders move their webs outdoors, where he could watch sword practice and jousting, and she indulged him, as she did in most things. When he asked for a toy sword, she made it with her own hands, of a straight branch with a guard of twigs lashed to one end. She made a shield, too, a light frame covered with cloth, and she embroidered his father's arms upon the clothЧthree red lances interlocked on a white field, just as they were upon the tapestry.
The tapestry was long completed. It hung in the room of its manufacture, the room from which the empty forest track could be seen. Delivev no longer climbed the stairs every day to look at either. But sometimes, late at night, after Cray was supposed to be asleep, she would visit the tower room and weep before the portrait. On those nights, she remembered the songs of troubadours too well. She listened to them less often these days, preferring to find absorption in her plants, her animals, and her son.
Cray had followed her to the tower a few times and crouched outside to hear her tears. He knew why she wept, and even when he was very young he wondered why any man would leave a woman to-do that
"He had pledged himself," his mother explained. "When a person makes a promise, he must fulfill it"
"Even if it means hurting someone?" Cray asked*.
"Even so. That is the nature of a promise, Cray."
When he was older, he said, "He must have found Falconhiil by now, Mother. He must have given his message. Why hasn't he returned? He promised you, too, after all."
22
"He did. He said, when his duty was done. Perhaps there was more than just the message itself. He never wished to speak of it, and I didn't press him." She Was working on another tapestry now, with Cray as its central figure, but he was growing so fast that it no longer portrayed the Cray standing before her. "I will wait here and raise you, my son, waiting." She smiled sadly. "I never had better plans, before he came to me."
In a small voice, Cray said, "Do you think he's dead, Mother?"
She sighed. "I don't want to think that, Cray."
"Well, what else could have happened to him?*'
'Terhaps he found some other woman he could love more than he loved me."
"More than you?" He threw his arms around her and hugged her tight. "How could anyone love someone else more than you?"
She kissed her son. "Someday, you may love someone more than you love me, and you will understand."
"Never!"
"Don't say never, Cray, not with a long life ahead of you."
He looked into her eyes. "Why don't you try to find him, Mother?"
"It would be difficult after so many years.**
"You could tryf"
She shook her head. "No. I told myself once that I wouldn't do that, and I have not changed my mind. He has some good reason for not returning; whether it be death or another woman, I have no desire to know.*1
With a new and heavier wooden blade, Cray practiced swordplay against a tree in the garden and then, when he learned a few of his mother's tricks, against a moving, man-shaped bundle of cloth. It dodged and ducked among the flowers, bucking a latticework wooden shield against him, occasionally tapping at him with a branch covered in leather braid. He had some trouble controlling its movements, but that was to the good, to his mind, because it made the bundle an unpredictable adversary. Unfortunately,' it bad a tendency to fall limp to the ground during Cray's moments of intense concentration on his own swords-
23