Sorcerer's Son Read Online Free PDF Page B

If you had a father, he would instruct you, of course
    if you had a father.” Her voice broke and she clasped him ever more fiercely. “How can I bear to lose you, too?”
    “Mother, every fledgling must fly from the nest at last.”
    “I never flew, not I!”
    “Well, this one will.”
    She nodded, and tears leaked from her eyes.
    Some days later, a vast dark cloud swept out of the east, blocked the sun above Castle Spinweb briefly, then descended, condensing, to the ground before the gate. By the time Cray and Delivev opened the portal, the dark and roiling mist was a sphere no more than ten feet in diameter. At their approach, it oozed back against the nearest trees, exposing the great horse that had been hidden in its depths. The horse whinnied and tossed its head, dancing restlessly on hooves as big as dinner plates, but it allowed the humans to touch it—indeed, it relaxed as their hands moved upon its sleek gray flanks.
    “Very good,” Deliver said to the cloud. She nodded toward the open castle gate, and a pair of rolled tapestries cartwheeled out to the grass. They spread themselves flat for the cloud’s inspection, and it seemed satisfied, for it covered them and rose skyward with its new and lighter burden.
    “I have never seen a demon yet that would say thank you,” muttered Delivev. “Well, what are you waiting for? This is your horse—take it inside.”
    “I had not expected it to be
    so large,” said Cray.
    “You will be heavy in your armor, my son; it must be large to bear your weight.”
    Cray stroked the horse’s neck. “I shall call him Gallant.”
    In the misty dawn of a spring day, he saddled Gallant for the journey to the nearest town.
    Delivev pressed silver money into his hands, to pay for the arms he wished to buy. “Don’t flash the coins about,” she warned him. ‘There are some men who would try to take it from you.“
    “I shall be careful, Mother. I’ve seen a few things in the webs, after all; I know there are evil folk out there. I have my knife and a stout staff, and no fear of using them.”
    “And don’t worry about finding a chain shirt of perfect size; buy one too large and I’ll refit the links to you better than any tailor could.”
    “I don’t doubt it.” He kissed her quickly, then grasped his horse’s mane and pulled himself into the saddle.
    “I want to hear from you, my son. Let one of the spiders spin a web each night just before sunset so that we may speak to one another.”
    “I will try, Mother. But if I am among ordinary people, it might be better that I avoid such sorcery.”
    “It might. I would worry
    but you must do as you see fit. You have my love always. Hurry back.” She waved till he disappeared down the forest track.
    At first Cray traversed ground that he knew as well as his mother’s castle, but soon he passed into unfamiliar territory. The nature of the forest did not change—it grew no denser, no darker, the trees did not bend over to clutch at him as, in younger days, he had thought they might. Smiling, he recalled other childhood fancies: that there was no world beyond a narrow stretch of woodland ringing Castle Spinweb; that the castle stood upon a disk of earth whose edge was the horizon, a cliff overlooking infinite depths. He had thought the scenes of the webs to be conjured from his mother’s imagination, stories told for his sole benefit He had assumed his mother and himself to be the only human beings in the universe, and when he viewed the tapestry portrait of his father, he thought that the handsome young knight had ridden too close to the edge of the disk and fallen into the vast nothing. When he finally spoke of these notions to his mother, she laughed and began to instruct him otherwise. Yet still, in his dreams, he sometimes peered over the edge of the world, and trees swayed close behind him, urging him to jump. In his dreams, he knew that his father was waiting, whole and strong, somewhere below.
    He thought about his father more often than he would confess to