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

As they stood there together, the Archmage was quiet, too, considering, as he
often seemed to do, what he could say to one who did not have the training in magic
ever to understand fully.
Then he nodded. "Yes," he said quietly. "And I very much fear that what you
saw, my son, was a Gate such as Aunt Min described-a Gate through the Void that
separates world from world."
Caris stammered, "I-I've never heard of such a thing."
A faint smile flicked those thin lips. "Few have," the Archmage said softly.
"And fewer still have crossed that Void, as I have-once-and walked in a world on its
other side." For a moment, the dark eyes seemed to gaze beyond him, as if they saw
past the stones of the Yard, past the dawn sky, past the cosmos itself. "As far as I
know, only two men in this world have ever had an understanding of what the Void
itself is, how it works, and how to touch and feel it, to see across it to its other side.
One of them is dead . . ." He hesitated, then sighed again. "The other one is Antryg
Windrose."
"Antryg?" Caris murmured. "Thirle said that name . . ."
Salteris glanced at him quickly, and the long white eyebrows quirked up. "Did
he?" A moment's doubt crossed the dark eyes, then he smiled. "He would have, if he
thought-as I do-that some danger might be coming to us from across the Void.
Antryg," he repeated, and Caris felt a stirring in his memory, like an old story
overheard in childhood.
"Antryg," Lady Rosamund's derisive voice echoed behind them.
Caris turned. Darkly beautiful, she stood in the doorway of the house behind
them, her slender white hands folded around the buckle of her belt, her dark curls
lying thick on her shoulders like a careless glory of raven flowers.
Memory seemed to filter back to him of things spoken across him, without his
understanding, by the mages. "He was a wizard, wasn't he?"
"Is," the Archmage said. He shifted his dark robes up on his thin shoulders, and
his eyes, again, seemed to look out across time.
"A dog wizard." Lady Rosamund's voice could have laid frost-flowers on glass.
"Forsworn of his vows and no more than the dog wizards who peer into treacle and
asses' dung for the secrets of gold and immortality at the bidding of any who'll pay."
"Maybe," Salteris said softly. "Except that he is, beyond a doubt, the most
powerful mage now living. Thirteen years ago, he was the youngest member ever
elected to the Council of Wizards-three years later he was expelled from the Council,
stripped of his rank, and banished for meddling in the quarrel between the Lords of
the Wheatlands and the Emperor. Since that time, he has been reinstated and banished
again, and I and the other mages have had occasion to hunt him half across the face of
the world."
Caris frowned. Half-recalled childhood memories ghosted into his mind, framed
in amber hearthlight-the Archmage sitting beside the brick chimney oven of Caris'
grandmother's house, and beside him the tall, thin young man he'd brought with him,
gravely constructing a pinwheel by the light of the kitchen fire, or telling horrific
ghost stories in a deep, extraordinary voice that was beautiful and flamboyant as
embroidered brocade.
"Is he evil?" Caris did not remember evil.
Salteris thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't think so. But his
motives have always been obscure. No one has ever, as far as I know, been able to tell
what he would do, or why. He is, as I said, more powerful than any mage now living,
including myself. But his mind is like a murky and bottomless well, into which all the