"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Dog.Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)
And found it, rolled like a lumpy teddy bear of Indian fringe and bunny fur in her lap. She thought she'd made a final snatch for her purse, which contained, among other things, her Swiss Army knife and a small can of Mace. What she really wanted was a flashlight. Her small, square hands sorted deftly through the contents with the ease of long practice till they closed around the short, smooth cylinder.
She drew it out and flicked the switch.
And nothing happened.
"Son of a ... " She dropped the flashlight back and dug out one of her six boxes of matches.
It was when the matches didn't work that panic stole back on her, a chilly spot of something she didn't want to think about, as if she'd swallowed a neutron star the size of an apple seed and it lay there, ice-cold, heavy, tiny, and dead in the center of her chest. She shrank back into her corner-the join of two smooth unseen walls, facing God knew how large a chamber, occupied by God knew what-and wrapped her arms around herself, though the air was not particularly cold.
Good thing, she thought, with the oblique part of her mind not occupied by terror, bafflement, the helpless cry of What the hell is going on?
These pajamas aren't the warmest things in the world.
But the bafflement and fear of knowing that neither the batteries in her flashlight nor the friction of the matchboxes worked here-wherever here was-wore off, too.
What was her Uncle Morrie's favorite proverb? God protect us from what we may one day get used to.
Somebody will have to come for me eventually.
And then, what felt like hours later ... Won't they?
But they didn't.
After a time-but how much time?-she stood up, feeling along the corner toward a ceiling her fingers never reached. That didn't mean much, of course; at barely five feet she couldn't even get into the top shelves of her own kitchen cupboards-unlike Antryg, the show-off. Hunkering cautiously down to the floor again, she moved outward, passing her hands along the smooth surface in wide sweeps until they contacted another comer, this one the exterior, rather than the interior, of a square turn, meaning she'd been in the angle of an L-shaped room or hall.
When you can't figure out everything, figure out the next thing.
So far, so good.
She had groped her way a hundred and twenty of her own footsteps along the wall when she found another turn; feeling across in the darkness, she ascertained that the opposite wall was still there. Either a corridor or a hell of a long, narrow cell.
And still no light, no sound, no trace of either rescue or threat. No change of temperature in the lightless space around her, no movement of air ... not even smells, she thought. No alteration of the smooth surface beneath her bare feet. Her exploring fingers had found no crack or irregularity to tell her whether the walls and floor were of stone or wood-or Fiberglas, for that matter. Her mouth quirked a little: Imprisoned in the Formica Dungeon.
Well, hell, she thought. If they're not coming for me, I'm going to have a look around. She had several granola bars in her purse, though she felt no hunger. The thought of water passed uneasily through her mind, but she pushed it aside: there was nothing to be done about it at the moment. Time enough to worry when she got thirsty. After a moment's consideration, she fished in her purse for a spool of thread and a roll of masking tape.
Just call me Theseus.
Hitching her purse more firmly onto her shoulder and hoping to hell she would smell or hear a minotaur before she stumbled over it in the dark, she set off to explore.
Chapter V
Suraklin the Dark Mage's greatest power lay in the fact that it was years before anyone, even his victims, realized that he was doing them harm. It would do to remember this in all dealings with wizards.
Witchfinder Extraordinary of Angelshand
"It's quite true that I was badly brought up." Antryg leaned one shoulder against the rounded, uneven stones of the Pepper-Grinder's windowsill; the day's last brightness flashed wanly in the crystal dangling from his ear. He'd acquired a pair of much-discolored fingerless writing mitts to keep his hands warm in the silvery sharpness of the Sykerst spring; with his ragbag shawl and his age-darkened snake oil-peddler coat, he had the look of a dilapidated macaw in molt.
"And, as Aunt Min says, I was taught all the wrong things. But it wasn't entirely my fault. It's very good of you to do this for me, Kitty."
"I haven't managed to do anything yet. And you're blocking the light."
Antryg turned from the window, his spectacles gleaming like the eyes of a deranged tarsier. At the table, among a battlefield of ruined supper dishes, Seldes Katne angled the main facet of her scrying-crystal to the daylight. Beyond the window the shadow of the tor could be seen, an enormous cloak of slate blue silk, softening the contours of the Valley of Shadows and blurring still further the dark spruces in their scrim of white river mist. Overhead the sky still held a chilly brilliance and would for hours to come, and though the air was sharp, already it breathed with the peculiar wildness of the wide steppe summer-life gorging itself on warmth against the knowledge of the long winter waiting.
"Perhaps if I'd been taken in by a Council wizard instead of by Suraklin," Antryg continued thoughtfully, "it wouldn't have come so easy to me to use magic against what everyone agrees was a gross injustice being done in Mellidane. And once I'd started ... "He shook his head.
"There are those who'd point out," the librarian said, her attention still on the crystal before her, "that it was gross injustice to use magic against the non-mageborn, for whatever purposes. I sometimes think that's why we tend to live among ourselves, not going into the world much at all."
"Well," Antryg pointed out with a faint grin, "the rocks thrown at us in the streets, and the Inquisition, have a good deal to do with that, too."
She frowned, looking up at him with a kind of indignation. "Well, of course," she said. "But it's just too easy to take sides. And once a mage starts taking sides out of belief in the lightness of his or her own cause, how great a step is it to take sides for pay?"
"As great, I suppose, as the step to taking one's own side out of belief in the absolute priority of one's desires over everyone else's." He returned to the table and selected a strawberry from the painted clay dish Pothatch the cook had sent up with bread and stew from the kitchen. "First one's desires," he added quietly, "and, later, one's whims. Yes means yes under any circumstances, no means no under any circumstances ... and the great problem with strawberries is that one is never able to dispose of the hulls gracefully. I wonder if Q'iin ever perfected her spells to ripen peaches in the wintertime? Nyellin the White was said to be able to produce any sort of fruit at any time of the year, including bananas and mangoes-she could have made a fortune in the fancy market of Angelshand, if her Council vows had permitted her to do so. And I'd accept the Council's judgment of me," he went on, veering back to the original topic with an insouciance that made Seldes Katne blink, "if it weren't for the fact that one of them is lying."
The stout librarian looked up in surprise. "One of the Council?"
Antryg nodded, settling himself into one of the chairs and choosing another strawberry from the dish. "I felt it, when they," his voice hesitated infinitesimally, then went on, "when they put the geas on me. Some secret ... some darkness, concealed from the others and from me. One of them took Joanna, I know that-only a member of the Council would have had the strength to cross the Void."
He picked up the square of white pasteboard that had been under Seldes Katne's fingers as she'd scried in the crystal-one of Joanna's business cards, on the back of which was scribbled the start times of "Karate Masters Versus the Invaders from Outer Space" at the Van Nuys Cineplex 24. "If you're trying to keep something secret from a wizard, it probably isn't wise to engage in theurgic gang rape; the victim is as aware of the perpetrator as vice versa. And perhaps that is why it is so seldom that such a geas is invoked ... other than the obvious difficulty in getting the entire Council to agree and getting the culprit where the entire Council can operate in concert-something which hasn't happened for hundreds of years."
Seldes Katne frowned, turning the small chunk of white quartz over in her fingers. "But you have no idea who?"
"Not the foggiest."
Through the open window the voices of the Juniors floated up to them as they returned from dinner in the refectory on the second floor of the Polygon. With the exception of the Mole Hill-the squat, shabby cottage where Issay Bel-Caire lived, buried save for its low door under an impenetrable tangle of honeysweet and taiga laurel-the houses on this spur of the tor were given over to the lesser members of the community. The Pepper-Grinder, the Cat Lair, the Cave, the Dungeon, the Isle of Butterflies, and the Yellow House were all connected by an interlocking maze of cellars, windowed galleries, covered bridges, and connecting stairways; in the wintertime, Antryg recalled, no one thought twice about hearing one's neighbors trot through one's downstairs hallway or across one's attic on the way back from dinner or class.
But now their footfalls thumped softly on the wooden steps that led up the sharp slopes from path to doors, or creaked on the jury-rigged plank bridges over the vine-choked gullies and drops. His red-haired housemate Kyra would be out at evening weapons-training-"Going dancing with Miss Maggie," the novices called it, Miss Maggie being the nickname for the garishly colored Harlot-or else drinking cocoa and talking till late with her friends in the Juniors' Commons. Antryg smiled, wondering if they still engaged in "practicing spell-casting in an emergency"-i.e., while falling-down drunk-as he and Daurannon had done on several memorable instances. Save for an occasional murmur from outside, and the soft, patient rhythm of someone in the Cat Lair playing beginners' scales on a harp, the round stone house was quiet.
"I'm sorry," Seldes Katne said as the daylight began to fade. "I thought that because this house is on the main Vorplek Energy Line I'd have a little more chance at this, but that doesn't seem to be the case." She put the crystal from her and did not meet his eyes; Antryg leaned across the table and put his big, bony hand over her fleshy, age-spotted one.
"What's more likely is that she's being kept somewhere that's spelled against observation." Seldes Katne's crystal, he recalled from somewhere, had belonged to the wizard Gantre Silvas two hundred years ago-the slip of rune-inscribed silver around its base had been added by that mage to increase its receptive powers. "God knows there are any number of places in the Citadel itself where she could be kept a prisoner unknown to anyone-any of the guest quarters above the Great Assembly Hall, or the attics above those, the clock-tower, one of the treasury rooms, the old South Hall. There must be a hundred places here where no one ever goes, and that," he added quietly, his voice sinking as he turned his eyes toward the window again, where he could see the Conservatory flash like an absurd diamond on the Library's granite flank, "isn't even counting the Vaults. And I'm very much afraid that that's where she is."
"It would make sense," the librarian agreed. Then she frowned again, her heavy brows pulling down over her nose once more. "But ... that's where the disturbance is centered. That's where the Moving Gate is."
"It's more than that," Antryg said, getting nervously to his feet and beginning to pace, his movements restlessly graceful in his sweeping coat, like some bizarre wading bird. "Most people believe that the labyrinth in the Vaults was dug as a defense-a place where, in the event of catastrophe, the wizards might hide. But the Citadel lies on the node of four energy-tracks, at least one of them-the Vorplek Line, which runs through the Library as you know-extremely powerful. And while in the west, mounds at the nodes of such lines were frequently built with collecting chambers underneath them to hold and channel the traveling energies of the leys, in the east and north they used mazes."
"I've heard that theory," Seldes Katne acknowledged, sitting up a little in her chair and putting back her braid, which had strayed forward over her shoulder again. "But no one has ever proven that the mazes worked."
"Perhaps because we have no idea how they worked." Antryg leaned on the windowsill again, gazing out into the tangle of vines below. There was a murmur of voices from the windows of the Cat Lair, and someone else took the harp, calling the huge black-and-orange butterflies that had been feeding from the starlike blooms of the honeysweet to swirl upward into a drunken, dancing cloud.
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