"Barbara Hambly - Windrose 2 - The Silicon Mage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

hiss of the bellows being worked for him by a girl apprentice whose sleeveless shift showed biceps
like a man's. She, too, was shaved bald, as was the big, clumsy looking woman in gray velvet robes
who stood before the hearth, perspiration trickling down the fatty rolls of her neck. The smell of
unwashed wool, wet earth, and smoke lay heavy on the air.
That fat woman was looking, not at what the smith was doing by the fire, but at the doorway
opposite, a low black arch of shadows, sinister as the maw of some Boschian beast.
In time, there was movement in that dark, and the fat woman in gray folded her hands over her
stomach and smiled.
The man they brought in was taller than all but two of the guards who held him. When Joanna
had stood in the circle of his arms, her head had not come as high as those broad, bony shoulders.
Framed in a tangled explosion of graying brown hair, his face was chalky with exhaustion, the wide
gray eyes in their bistered hollows dilated with drugs.
The big woman stepped forward, her eyes like pieces of chipped blue glass in the pouchy flesh.
"Antryg Windrow," she said, and the prisoner raised his head.
Without his spectacles, Joanna knew he was half blind. She saw the swooping network of lines
raying back from eyelids to temples and down over his cheeks tighten as he tried to get her into
focus.
"Antryg Windrow, do you confess to the crimes of which you have been accused?"
He drew in breath to speak, then paused. Sweat shone in the torchlight on his upper lip, the
preposterous arch of his nose, and the pit of his throat, visible through the tattered collar of
the coarse robe he wore. Asleep, dead fifty years from now, Joanna knew she would recognize his
voice in her dreams.
"Herthe, I don't care what you do to me, but please believe that killing me will not remove
the danger you're all in. Suraklin..."
A guard behind him did something to one of his pinioned arms; he cried out and the other guard
caught him as his knees buckled. In the crazily leaping shadows, Joanna could see that the first
guard was Stonne Caris, the Archmage's grandson.
The woman Herthe stepped forward as the guards dragged Antryg upright again. "Do not name your
master to us," she said softly. "And do not think to frighten us into letting you live. You have
already signed the confession of your crimes." Her voice sank lower, cold as poisoned ice. "Is it
necessary that, as Bishop in charge of this Inquisition, I require you to do so again?"
He looked away from that flat stare, and a shudder went through his body. His voice was almost
inaudible. "No."
"Do you confess to violating the first law of the Council of Wizards, to breaking your vows to
the Council never to use your powers, either for ill or for what seems good, in the affairs of
humankind?"
He nodded, still not meeting her eyes. "Yes."
"Do you confess to attempting to murder the Prince Regent Pharos by means of magic?"
"Yes."
"Do you confess to the murder of Salteris Solaris, Archmage of the Council?"
He closed his eyes, fighting within himself against grief, guilt, and despair. It was a long
time before he could speak; and then, it was only the soundless movement of his lips. "Yes."
The Bishop signed to the blacksmith beside the hearth. He straightened up, holding in his
hands the thing he had been forging. Those of Antryg's guards whom Joanna recognized by their
black robes as wizards fell hastily back. Caris, too, a wizard born, flinched and averted his face
from it, though he did not release his grip on Antryg's arm.
Panic and despair flooded the mad wizard's gray eyes. "No," he whispered desperately, and
tried to back away; Caris twisted his arm again, brutally forcing him forward. "Herthe, that isn't
necessary. The Sigil of Darkness is on the Tower door; that is enough. I can't touch it, can't
pass it, no wizard can..."