"Barbara Hambly - Windrose 1 - The Silent Tower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

The Silent Tower
Barbara Hambly
[02 jun 2001 тАУ scanned for #bookz, proofread and released тАУ v1]
[thanks to tai-pan-up for the proofreading help!]



CHAPTER I
"HAS THE ARCHMAGE RETURNED?"
The wizard Thirle looked up sharply at Caris' question, strongly reminding the
young man of a fat gray field rabbit at the crack of a twig. Then he relaxed a little.
"Not yet." He picked up the garden trowel he'd dropped when Caris' shadow had
fallen over him on the brick steps of his house, where he had been kneeling. He got to
his feet with the awkward care of the very fat and dusted off his black robe. "Can I
help you?"
Caris hesitated, his right hand resting loosely around the hilt of the sword thrust
through his frayed silk sash. He cast a quick glance at the doorway of the house next
door. Like all the houses on the Mages' Yard, it rose tall, narrow, and
cramped-looking from the flagstones of the little court, dingy with age and factory
soot. Two or three of the other sasenna, the archaic order of sworn warriors, lingered,
waiting for him on the steps. Like him, they were clothed in the loose black garments
of their order, crisscrossed with sword sashes and weapons belts; and like him, they
were sweaty, bruised, and exhausted from the afternoon's session with the
swordmaster. He shook his head, and they passed into the shadows of the carved slot
of the doorway.
"I don't know." He turned back to Thirle, noting automatically, as a sasennan
must, the tiny details-the sweat on his brow, the twitch of his earth-stained
fingers-and wondered what it was that troubled him. "That is . . ."
The look of preoccupied nervousness faded from the fat man's eyes, replaced by
genuine concern. "What is it, lad?"
For a moment, Caris debated about simply shrugging the problem off, pushing
it aside as he had pushed it aside last night, and returning to the only matters which
should concern the sasennan; serving his masters the mages and bettering his own
skills in the arts of war. "I don't know whether I should be asking this or not," he
began diffidently. "I know it isn't the Way of the Sasenna to ask-a weapon asks no
questions of the hand that wields it. But . . ."
Thirle smiled and shook his head. "My dear Caris, how do we know what the
dagger thinks when it's sheathed, or what swords fear in the armory when the lights
are out? You know I've never approved of this business of the sasenna being-being
like those machines that weave cloth and spin thread in the mills, that do one job only
and don't care what it is."
Under the warm twinkle in his eyes Caris relaxed a little and managed a grin at
Thirle's heresy.
Of the dozen or more houses around that small cobble-stoned court on the edge
of the ghetto of the Old Believers, only eight actually belonged to the Council of
Wizards; of those, three were rented out to those-mostly Old Believers-who were
willing to live near wizards. Few mages cared to live in the city of Angelshand. Of
those few, Caris had always liked Thirle.
The Archmage, Caris' grandfather, had been absent since Caris had come out of
the morning's training. If he did not return before dinner, there was little chance Caris