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

not explain the note of fear in his voice.
At dinner that night Thirle was absent-odd, for though the wizards in general
ate plainly, the little botanist was still very fond of the pleasures of the table.
There were seven wizards and two novices who lived in the Court. The fourteen
sasenna who served them regularly traded off dinner duty, some serving, some
standing guard, as there were always sasenna standing guard somewhere in the
Yard-a few still sleeping, or just waked and ready to go on night watch. Though few
of the thieves and cutpurses that swarmed the dark slums of Angelshand would go
near the Yard, the mageborn had long ago learned that it never paid to be completely
unguarded.
A little uneasily, Caris noted that the Archmage had not yet returned. His place
at the high table had been taken by the Lady Rosamund, a beautiful woman of about
forty, who had been born Lady Rosamund Kentacre. Her father, the Earl Maritime,
had disowned her when she had sworn the vows of the Council of Wizards-not, Caris
had heard rumored, because in doing so she had revealed herself to be mageborn in
the first place, but because the vows precluded using her powers to benefit the
Kentacre family's political ambitions. Undoubtedly the Earl had known-his daughter
had been nearly twenty when she had sought out the Council-and had probably
arranged to have her secretly taught in the arts of magic by one of the quacks or dog
wizards who abounded in such numbers in any major city of the Empire. But for Lady
Rosamund, the half-understood jumble of piesog, hearsay, and garbled spells used for
fees by the dog wizards had not been enough. To obtain true teaching, she must take
the Council Vows, the first of which was that she must never use what she had
learned either to harm or to help any living thing.
"He should never have gone without a guard," she was saying, as Caris bore a
tray of duck and braided breads up to the high table.
Beside her, the thin, tired-looking Whitwell Simm protested, "The Regent
wouldn't dare . . ."
"Wouldn't he?" Cold fire sparked in her green glance. "The Prince Regent hates
the mageborn, and always has hated us. I'm told that the other night, after a ball in the
city, he was getting into his carriage when an old man, a shabby old dog wizard,
accidentally brushed up against him on the flagway. Prince Pharos had two of his
sasenna hold the old man while he almost beat the poor wretch to death with his cane.
The rumors of what goes on in the dungeons of the old Summer Palace, which he has
taken for his own, are a scandal. He is as mad as his father."
"The difference being," remarked Issay Bel-Caire on her other side, "that his
father is not dangerous, except perhaps to himself."
At the foot of the table, the two novices-a short, redhaired girl of seventeen or
so and a creamily dark, thin girl a few years older-said nothing, but listened with
uneasy avidity, knowing that this was not merely gossip, but something which could
easily affect their lives. Near them old Aunt Min, the most ancient of the mages who
dwelt in the Yard, sat slumped like a little black bag of laundry in her chair, snoring
softly. With a smile of affection for the old lady, Caris woke her gently up; she lifted
her head with a start and fumbled at the tangle of her eternal knitting with hands as
tiny and fragile as a finch's claws, muttering to herself all the while.
Whitwell Simm said, "Even if the Prince hates us, even if he believes our magic
is nothing but charlatanry, like that of the dog wizards, you know he'd never dare to
harm the Archmage. Neither the Council nor, as a matter of fact, the Church, would
permit it. And we don't know that Salteris has gone to the Palace . . ."
"With the Regent's sasenna everywhere in the city," retorted Lady Rosamund