"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Dog.Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

"LTRX2-449-9102 is a perfectly respectable particle physicist and I'm shocked by your parochial attitude about his appearance."
"Whoever and whatever it is, you at least have obtained weapons and magical implements in secret, scarcely demonstrating either good faith or innocence. Whatever it is you're seeking here, it's clear to me you'd rather the Council didn't know of it. Now hold out your hands." The younger mage's hazel eyes glinted with a hardness that completely belied their usual facile charm. "As you know, I am perfectly capable of cutting off your breath to the point where you'd barely have the consciousness to be dragged after us, should you wish to accomplish this the hard way."
Antryg regarded him mildly from behind his massive spectacles. "It's a long way up all those stairs," he pointed out. "And if I'd obtained such a power from some lost secret down here, you wouldn't be able to do that anyway, would you?"
Daurannon opened his mouth to reply, then seemed to change his mind, and shut it again.
"Come on." Brushing aside Gyrik's still half-extended blade, Antryg put a friendly arm around Daurannon's shoulders and started back toward the reality-fold near the Twisted Ways. "It's too damp and cold down here to stand about talking and, as I said, I really would like some breakfast."
However, despite Antryg's protestations that the reality-fold would take them back up to the second level far more quickly, Bentick and Daurannon insisted on returning to the stair by which they had come. Bentick walked ahead, the tip of his staff unlit-Antryg wondered if the omission was because, being mageborn, they all could see in the dark, or from fear at what the light might attract-and the three novice sasenna followed noiselessly behind.
"And have you found anything in your searches?" asked Daurannon after a time, the echoes of their footsteps whispering after them up a short flight of steps, down a corridor whose walls dripped with yellow slime and stank of strange, sweetish rots. "Anything of this Moving Gate which Otaro saw, or of the powers which might account for its appearance?"
Antryg hesitated, remembering the drifting balls of red and purple light, and how they had hovered before him; remembering Daurannon's purported absence from the Citadel at the time of Joanna's disappearance.
"Or is that the reason you choose to seek that Gate-and to summon your ... friend ... alone?" Dark though it was, he could see his former comrade's eyes narrowed with suspicion; see how he carried the lead box of the spell-written manacles under his right arm, so as to leave his left arm-his fighting arm, in Daur's case-free.
"Would you like me to carry that for you? You're sure? Is it just that you're afraid I'll find some implement that will let me practice magic in spite of the geas, or do you still suspect me of being Suraklin?"
"I haven't dismissed the possibility."
"Not even after seeing into my mind to lay the geas on me?"
"Suraklin had great power," said Daurannon softly. "There was no accounting for what he might have been able to do-even as there is no accounting for you. Nandiharrow and Issay contend that with your powers bound, there is no harm in you walking the Vaults alone, but even were that so, I'm not so certain that whatever information you give us would be true."
Antryg sighed, shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, and looked around him at the walls of the chamber through which they passed-nearly black with mildew, but painted over with a pattern of snakes disturbingly reminiscent of patterns half-guessed within the labyrinth itself. "And I'm not certain at all that whatever information I might tell the Council wouldn't be used to the detriment of the situation by whoever's behind this-whoever it was who kidnapped Joanna."
"A convenient excuse for keeping things to yourself," sniffed Bentick. "Why on earth would a Council member stoop to taking hostages in the first place?"
"Perhaps because he or she feared that I could persuade someone-let's say Aunt Min for talking purposes, if they considered her to be getting a little foolish in her old age-to lift the geas and let me investigate as I pleased? Perhaps to get me to do their bidding against certain other members of the Council?"
"That's preposterous!" snapped Daur.
"No more preposterous than that I-were I Suraklin, that is-would engineer a rip in the Void smack in the middle of the Citadel of my enemies simply to disrupt their lives."
"Not 'simply,' " Daurannon said grimly. "The Citadel lies on the major ley to Angelshand and connects with most of the major cities of the Realm. I presume the Witchfinders are on their way here as a result of abominations that have appeared in that city."
"Oh, I shouldn't doubt it. They'd hardly be coming to talk about the Imperial government's subsidies to the Citadel."
Daurannon stiffened with outrage at the casual mention-in front of the novices-of links known only to the Council.
" ... or for the Council to set them on some dog wizard who's gotten too powerful."
"That's a ... "
"Be that as it may, Daur, the fact remains that something-or someone-caused the experiments of the Council with the Void to go dreadfully wrong; that the situation is worsening steadily ... "
"You say," cut in Bentick's thin voice.
" ... and that somewhere in the Vaults a wormhole has opened through to some world whose atmosphere is water." They had reached the bottom of the upshaft, a stone chimney ascending three levels and entered by three small, crooked doorways. Quiet though they were, their voices reverberated up the long vent above them and back into the darkness spidering out behind, the darkness that was weighted with the uneasy vibration of the nearness of the Void.
Antryg turned to face Daurannon, and there was desperate intensity in his voice. "Daur, if it is you, or Bentick, who has kidnapped Joanna for purposes of your own ... "
"How dare you!" the Steward gasped, and the young sasenna looked shocked.
" ... please, please, move her out of the Vaults if that's where she's being kept. Even without the-the things-that I've seen down here, it's only a matter of time before the lower levels flood." In the graying tangle of his hair his face was haggard and thin, smudged with blue beneath the eyes and streaked with a dried thread of blood from the cut on his forehead.
"Ninetentwo-my friend-said he couldn't get a reading of her presence in the Vaults, but there's always the chance of a shield of some kind around her cell, some spell that protects against any kind of detection. Like you, there are things about this situation I can't account for, nobody can. If she's here, Daur, move her ... or organize a search for her."
"So that all the Senior mages in the Citadel-the ones who know the Vaults well enough to search-will be kept busy?" The younger mage leaned one shoulder against the rusty iron staples of the ladder, looked up into Antryg's face, the opaque suspicion in his eyes concealing whatever might lie behind. "We've searched before-for the Moving Gate, for clues-and have found nothing comprehensible. What makes you think ... "
Shreb, the tallest of the three novices, screamed, "Look out!"
Antryg and Daurannon swung around in time to see something huge and soft and dreadful come bursting out of the right-hand doorway into the upshaft, something that sprang with the horrible swiftness of a leaping spider but whose soft, billowing body spread like a jellyfish to reveal a ciliated mass of wriggling, saw-toothed tongues. It showed only for a second, yellow, filthy, wet, and virtually odorless-Daurannon slashed his hand toward it ...
And nothing happened.
No lightning, no power, no help.
Antryg was ripping the novice Shreb's sword away from her even as the abomination fell upon Gyrik, wrapping the boy's body in an obscene billow of dripping flesh. The boy screamed, thrashing and tearing desperately-Daurannon was still staring in shock and unbelief at his hand. Bentick brought up his staff to hurl a bolt of power at the thing, a bolt of power whose destroying nimbus would have undoubtedly enveloped Antryg as well, had any such thing actually issued from the staff. But none did. The third novice, a young man named Nye, had sprung forward, sword flashing like Antryg's, to hack at the bulging membranes of the monster's body.
But the thing was tougher than it looked, and all the while Gyrik was screaming, shrieks of agony and horror passing over into blind animal howls, appallingly muffled in the sticky folds. Blood had begun to run down his legs, and an instant later he collapsed to his knees, Antryg and the two sasenna hacking and tearing at the heaving, clinging flesh of the thing while Daurannon and Bentick stood back, armed only with their magic, making signs that called no power from the black air, speaking words made nonsense by the agonized shrieks that greeted them.
Gyrik stopped screaming with a sobbing gurgle; the creature, its hide slit and shredded by its attackers' swords, backed and rippled from the prostrate body, and slithered away in long, shredded sections that moved independently, like flat, blubbery worms, leaving something that caused Bentick to go suddenly white and Shreb to turn away and vomit. Antryg knelt beside the eaten mess that was left of Gyrik's head and upper body, touched the stripped flesh of the boy's face. After two more sobbing gasps, Gyrik stopped breathing.
"See to Shreb, Bentick," Antryg said softly, as Daurannon dropped to his knees beside him.
"I couldn't even call fire." Daurannon's lips were gray with shock. "I couldn't ... I can't ... "
"Then I suggest we all get ourselves out of this immediate vicinity as quickly as we can." Antryg stood up-his hands, where he had touched the bloodied pulp that had been Gyrik's forehead, burned a little, and he quickly pulled off his mitts and wiped his fingers on his faded plum-colored coat skirts. "And let's hope this is just a small field effect, like the cat spell or that area of cold Tom told me about on the stairway between the Upper Gatehouse and the Library, or we're all going to be in a lot worse trouble than I care to think about when the Inquisition shows up."
By the time they had ascended thirty feet up the shaft, both Daurannon and Bentick were able to summon small feathers of burning blue witchlight to the air above their heads; in the phosphor gleam, the older man's high, smooth forehead glistened clammily and the younger man's graying black hair was stringy with sweat. Later the fabric of Antryg's coat skirts turned brown and crumbled in the streaks where he had wiped his fingers, and the following day his fingers were blistered.
But by that time the knowledge that pockets existed where magic's strengths were negated, or reversed, was the least of anyone's worries.


Chapter XI
A young wizard named Truvas sought to play a prank on his master by setting up a spell that would cause him to get lost in his own house. The master entered the door, and after a week, young Truvas went in to seek him. Neither was ever seen again.
-The Book of Tethys the Brown

"Curse him ... oh, curse his name ... curse him, oh, curse his name. Oh, dear God, send someone to get me out of here ... oh, curse his name ... "