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

would be able to speak with him until tomorrow.
It was not the Way of the Sasenna to fear, and Caris did not think he could
endure another unsleeping night with the secret of his fear gnawing his heart.
But having spent the last five years in rigorous training of muscle and nerves,
he was uncertain how to speak of fear. Nervously, he ran his scarred fingers through
his short-cropped blond hair, now stiff with the drying sweat of training. "I don't
know whether I should speak of this," he said hesitantly. "It's just that-A weapon
wasn't always what I was." He struggled with himself for a moment, then asked, "Is
there any way that a mage can lose his magic?"
Thirle's reaction was as unexpected as it was violent. A flush of anger mottled
the fat cheeks and layers of chin. "No!" He almost shouted the word. "We are born
with powers, some greater, some lesser. They are like our flesh, like our souls."
Confused at this rage, Caris began, "Not even . . ."
"Be silent!" Thirle's face had gone yellow as tallow now with fury. "You might
have been mageborn to begin with boy, but your powers never amounted to anything.
There's no way you could know about power. You are forbidden to speak of it.
Forbidden!" he added furiously, as Caris opened his mouth to explain.
To be sasenna is first to serve; when, after three years' grueling training in the
arts of war and the sneakier deaths of peacetime, Caris had made the last decision of
his life, he had sworn his warrior's vows to the Council of Wizards. The vows held
good. He closed his mouth, willing himself not to feel the scathe of astonished hurt,
and made himself incline his head.
His hands shaking, Thirle picked up his trowel and watering can and hurried
through the door of the house, slamming it behind him. Standing on the step, Caris
observed that the little wage had been so agitated that he'd left half his beloved
pot-plants, which clustered the step and every windowsill within reach, unwatered.
Across the city, the big clock on the St. Cdr fortress began striking five. Caris would
have less than an hour for dinner before going on duty in the refectory when the
wages ate.
Confused, Caris moved down the step with the sasennan's lithe walk. He felt
shocked and stung, as if he had been unexpectedly bitten by a loved old dog; but then,
he reflected a little bitterly, it was not the Way of the Sasenna to pat even a loved and
toothless old dog without one hand on one's knife. He made his way to the house next
door that was shared by the novice wages and the sasenna of the Council with the
frightening chill that lay in his heart unassuaged.
It was years since Caris had even thought of himself as mageborn. He was
nineteen, and for five years he had given himself, heart and soul, to the Way of the
Sasenna. But he had originally entered it, as many mageborn did, only as the gateway
to greater learning which had never materialized.
His powers, he knew, had never been much-a sharpness of sight in the dark and
a certain facility for finding lost objects. In his childhood he had desperately wanted
to become a wage and to take the vows of the Council of Wizards in order to serve
and be with his grandfather, who even then had been the Archmage. From studying
the Way of the Sasenna as a means to an end, it had become an end in itself; when he
had realized, as he eventually had, that his powers were insufficient to permit him to
become a wizard, he had remained as a sasennan. When it had come time to take his
warrior's vows, it was to the Council that he had taken them.
Was that why Thirle had refused to reply? he wondered. Because Cans, having
what he had, had turned from it?
It might have explained his refusal to answer, but, thought Caris uneasily, it did