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

gray world, not even bitter. It was as if all things had decayed to the color and texture
of dust-as if the color had been bled even from his dreams.
He had heard the mages speak in whispers of those things by which a mage's
power could be bound-spell-cord and the sigils made of iron, gold, or cut jewels,
imbued with signs that crippled and drained a wizard's powers, leaving him helpless
against his foes. But there was nothing of that in this terrible emptiness. His soul was
a mold with the wax melted out, into which no bronze would ever be poured-only
dust, filling all the spaces where the magic had been.
He would have wept, had the Way of the Sasenna not forbidden tears.
Unable to bear the hot, close darkness of the sasenna's dormitory another
moment, he pulled on his breeches and shirt and stumbled downstairs to the door. The
Way of the Sasenna whispered to him that he ought also to put on his boots and his
sword belt; but with the loss of his magic, all things else seemed equally trivial and
not worth the doing. The fresher air out on the brick steps revived him a little. Across
the narrow, cobblestoned Yard, he could hear the sleepy twittering of birds under the
eaves of the houses opposite. Among the squalid alleyways of the Old Believers'
ghetto, a cock crowed.
Thirle had said that it could not happen-ever. But it had happened to him last
night, a few moments' sickening waning that had wakened him, his heart pounding
with cold terror. It was something he knew even then should not happen, as Thirle
had said . . . And now magic was gone completely.
He leaned against the carved doorframe, hugging himself wretchedly,
wondering why he could feel almost nothing, not even real grief-just a kind of
hollowness that nothing, throughout the length of his life, would ever again fill.
Looking across to the tall, narrow windows of his grandfather's little house, he
wondered if the old man had returned. The windows were dark, but that would not
necessarily mean he was asleep-he often sat up reading without light, as the mageborn
could do. Perhaps he would know something Thirle did not.
But at the same time, it seemed pointless to speak of it now. Gone was gone.
Like his long-departed virginity, it was something, he told himself, that he would
never recover. To the west, a drift of noise floated from the more populous streets of
Angelshand, from the bawdy theaters on Angel's Island near the St. Cyr fortress, and
from the more elegant gaming halls near the Imperial Palace quarter. Carriage wheels
rattled distantly on granite pavement; voices yelled in all-night taverns.
 Almost without thinking of it, Caris found himself descending the brick steps,
feeling for the purse in his breeches pocket, knowing he was going to go over to the
Standing Stallion and get drunk.
Get drunk? He stopped, surprised and disgusted with himself. There was no
stricture against the sasenna drinking. If need arose, Caris could hold his own against
most of his mates when they went to the taverns; but on the whole, he preferred to
remain sober. It was the Way of the Sasenna to be ready to fight at all times, and
Caris had never believed in blurring that edge.
But now none of it seemed to matter. He was dimly aware that what he wanted
was not the wine, but the numbing of his awareness of grief, and he knew also that it
would do him more harm than good. But, after a moment's hesitation, he sighed, not
even caring that he was unarmed and hadn't put on his boots, and continued down the
stairs.
As his bare foot touched the uneven cobbles of the court, he heard Thirle's voice
cry desperately. "NO!"
Five years of training had inculcated into Caris the automatic reaction of drop