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

Pharos' ear and many other friends there as well. I think I can learn something."
"Good." Salteris got to his feet and clapped Skipfrag lightly on the arm as the
big man rose, dwarfing the Archmage's slenderness against his blue-coated bulk.
Caris, hurrying before them to open the outer door, saw in the watery dawnlight
outside that Thirle's blood had already been washed from the cobbles in front of
Stinking Lane; the puddles of water left by it were slimy and dismal-looking. The
swordmaster and the two novices still stood on the brick steps of the novices' house,
talking quietly, all three wrapped in bedgowns, though, Caris noticed, the
swordmaster had her scabbarded blade still in hand, ready for action.
It occurred to him suddenly to wonder, as he watched Salteris usher the
physician over to his waiting gig, what Thirle had been doing abroad at that hour of
the night at all? For that matter, what had Rosamund been doing up; she had been
fully dressed, her hair not even crumpled from the pillow, so she must have been so
for some time. He glanced back into the room behind him. Aunt Min, too, was
dressed, though her thin, straggly white hair was mussed-but of course, reflected
Caris, with rueful affection for the old lady, it always was.
Had they all, like himself, been restless with the damp warmth of the night?
Tepid dawn air stirred in his close-cropped, fair hair and stung the tender cuts
on his cheek, where the assassin's bullet had driven brickchips into his face. The day
was beginning to blush color into the houses opposite, the black half-timbering of
their shabby fronts taking on their daytime variation of browns and grays. The jungly
riot of Thirle's pot plants was wakening to green in daylight their owner would never
see.
Down in the Yard, Skipfrag was climbing into his gig, adjusting his voluminous
coat skirts and gathering the reins of the smart bay hack that stood between the shafts.
Salteris stood beside the horse's quarters, talking quietly to him. The physician's voice
came clearly to Caris where he stood on the steps. "It's best I was gone. My reputation
as a physician might carry off experiments with electricity, but it would never
recover, if word got around I believed in magic. I'll learn for you what I canтАФdo what
I can, at Court. Until then, watch yourself, my friend."
Salteris stepped back as Skipfrag turned the gig. The iron wheels clattered
sharply on the stones. Then the Emperor's physician was gone.
The Archmage stood still for some time after Skipfrag was gone. The brick
steps were cool under Caris' bare feet, and the dawn air stirred his torn and muddied
shirt. He looked down at his grandfather in the paling light of the Yard and noted
again how the old man had aged in the eighteen months since Caris had taken his
vows and come to live at the Mages' Yard. When he had last seen the Archmage
before that time before he had gone into training in the Way of the Sasenna-the old
man had had a kind of wiry strength for all his age. Now he seemed like antique ivory
worn to the snapping-point. With a sigh, the old man turned back, stopped, and
looked up when he saw Caris on the steps.
"What did Aunt Min mean?" Caris asked softly. "About other worlds? About
the Void and the Gate in the Void?" He came down the steps and offered the old man
his steadying hand. "Are there worlds, besides this?"
This time Salteris took the hand. The cold, thin fingers felt delicate as bird
bone. Not a big man, Caris was conscious as he had never been before that he stood
slightly taller than the Archmage, this gentle old grandfather who had once lifted him
up in childhood. Though it was not his way to think much about the passage of time,
he felt its fleeting shadow brush his thoughts. He was silent as he helped the old man
to the top of the steps.