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

The hazel eyes darted quickly away, then returned, catching and holding the gray. For a moment the two wizards stood on opposite sides of the ritual bounds, graying-haired men who had known one another since they were teenagers, Antryg in a tawdry glitter of cheap beads, crystal earrings, round-lensed glasses flashing where they caught the late slant of the sun, Daurannon somber and elegant, the straight black fall of his robes broken only by the killing sword scabbarded at his waist.
"You know the Master-Spells might just as easily fall on Bentick."
Daurannon waved off the suggestion impatiently. "He hasn't the strength."
"He has more than you're giving him credit for," Antryg said. "And in any case someone lured me out to the Green King's Chapel and set me up to be attacked; and when she comes 'round, Rosamund will certainly tell you that I got her away from the hunters and lured them from her."
"Or simply went off with them," Daur returned. "And disappeared at a convenient moment, which argues for at least the ability to work more magic than the geas should allow. Why haven't you been sleeping in your room in the Pepper-Grinder?"
Antryg tilted his head inquiringly to one side. "Why have you been watching the place?"
"Because you're our prisoner." Daurannon's gaze lingered for a moment on the brown mark Antryg bore in the pit of his throat, the mark left by the accursed Sigil of Darkness. "And because you are not to be trusted."
"I don't sleep there because I'm afraid I'll wake Kyra with my dreams," Antryg replied gently, and Daurannon looked away.
"Then where do you sleep?"
"Oh, tut, Daur, that's not a question one gentleman asks another." Antryg grinned and propped his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose. "As for the Witchfinder, I should say that within twenty-four hours we should have the problem more or less in hand. His sasenna might even come in useful for searching the Citadel. I'll want a marked map of every passage and chamber, from the bottom of the Vaults to the top of the observatory platform, with the locations and natures of every Gate, wormhole, spell-field, reality fold and patch of alien moss, once the whole business is stabilized and they aren't appearing and disappearing."
"Why the Citadel?"
Antryg blinked, surprised. "Why not? The more information we have, the likelier we are to come to a correct conclusion. But I shall need it done quickly." He nodded back over his shoulder to Aunt Min, who had moved a few feet along the curve, still rocking on her heels and muttering, like a woman tying intricate, invisible bows of light one at a time along some mighty fulcrum beam.
"The Citadel is built on a conjunction of the ley-lines, on top of probably the biggest collecting-maze in the western world, though I'm told there's a cave system in Djovangg that's been worked up into a bigger one. They shelter sheep in it these days, for of course the fortress it was once a part of is long in ruins and forgotten. But with that kind of energy to draw upon, once the balance is established between the magic circles and the electronics of the stabilization field, I'd rather not give that kind of a double-feedback loop too long to build up."
Daurannon sniffed. "And you really think that nonsense you wrote will have any effect at all? Other than getting poor Aunt Min to half kill herself pouring her strength into the kind of thaumaturgical rathole you invented?"
"Kill myself? Kill myself?" Aunt Min tottered fiercely over to them, ruffled like an offended hen. "You think I am no judge of my own strength or of another wizard's spells? You think because I'm an old lady, I can be deceived to my harm by a young man's pretty eyes? Pssh!" She made shooing motions with her hand and cane, waving Daur toward the outer doors. "Go away, you tiresome boy! Smile and be nice to the Inquisitors, since your teeth are so white. Come back at midnight, when this shall be accomplished. Go." She waved her cane again, like a farmwife chasing ducks. "Go."
Daurannon went, nearly colliding with Seldes Katne in the doorway. The librarian got hastily out of his way, clutching a sheaf of notes to her heavy bosom; she looked after the Handsome One as he crossed the vestibule and passed through the outer doors to the arcade outside. Thus only Antryg saw how Aunt Min's face changed, drooping from anger into sudden lines of exhaustion as she groped with her free hand for the support of his arm.
He caught her quickly, but an instant later she shook him off as the librarian came into the room. "No," Aunt Min hissed, pulling free of Antryg's grip. "No, I am well; I only need a little rest. A little rest. Here ... " She fumbled the knife from where it lay beside the ritual entry to the field and with a hand that trembled unmade the seals. "Go out and speak to her. I only need a little rest." And she stumbled back to where her knitting basket lay and sat down beside it, abruptly, as if all the remaining strength had gone from her legs.
Doubtfully, Antryg stepped outside the field and crossed to the doorway where Seldes Katne, notes still clutched in hand, waited beside the heap of his coat and shawl.
"I've brought you all I could find so far," she said, as he slipped gratefully into the threadbare velvet. Though sunlight still blazed in its concentrated frieze of squares high on the wall, the plastered stonework left the hall far from warm. The wet, heavy heats of the Sykerst summer were still some weeks off, and in the badly mended bones of his fingers Antryg could feel more rain on the way. "It isn't complete, by any means."
"Hmmn." He thumbed quickly through the overwritten palimpsests of Seldes Katne's tiny, orderly writing. "Otaro has two, Issay one, Nandiharrow one ... 'said to be that owned by Spurentas the Blind ... ' But Spurentas' was the one called Wolperth, which was allegedly 'inhabited by a purple spirit,' and vanished at his death. Nandiharrow's, I believe, was the one called Varverne, which used to belong to Berengis the Black and could call around itself the illusion of its owner, which could talk to people who came to his rooms and even do magic for them. Now Malvidne the Herbwife, four centuries ago, had one which had similar powers, though it was smaller than Berengis' by all accounts-and that, I believe, was the one they walled up in the vaults during Tiamat's time because fires tended to break out in the rooms where it was stored. And as far as I know, Bentick has two, and there's no mention here of Vyrayana, the one Phormion got from Simon the Lame. Curious-Vyrayana was one of the most powerful, but perhaps Phormion had it walled up somewhere; it was always the old ones that became unstable. And I recall some other queer stories about Vyrayana. Still," he added, smiling assuringly down at her dismayed face, "it is a start, and considering how many volumes you've had to go through to get the histories of these, it's amazing you've gotten so much. The seven that Suraklin had, by the way, we can discount-I now what became of those. I'll write it down for you one day when I have time, if Daurannon doesn't sell me to the Inquisition first."
Her dark eyes widened with alarm. "Will he?"
"Not as long as Aunt Min's alive." He glanced back over his shoulder, to see that the old Archmage had taken a loose wad of yarns and silks from her basket and, laying it down as pillow, had curled up and fallen asleep on the floor among the sigils and curves of power. Antryg sighed. He knew exactly how much concentration, how much raw power, was needed for the conjuration to be lone that night, and there was a grayness to the old woman's face that made him deeply uneasy. By the height of the sun patches on the wall he knew the afternoon was drawing on; the long Sykerst twilight wouldn't fade until less than two hours short of midnight itself, and after that, he reminded himself, there would still be the search to do. At least, he reasoned, it was a good excuse not to go to sleep.
"Kitty ... " She spun as if startled. She, too, had been looking at the Archmage. "Could you bring us some bread and honey and coffee-strong coffee-from the kitchen, and maybe a little brandy for Aunt Min?"
"Of course."
"And if you see Captain Implek or Sergeant Hathen, could you arrange for guards to be placed in the vestibule here, and around the Rotunda, and the stores-cellar entrance to the Vaults? Once midnight passes and the Circles of Power link with Ninetentwo's stabilization field, I don't want anything breaking the balance."
After she closed the great oak doors behind her, he could hear her heavy, rather clumsy tread going off across the little vestibule and the almost-soundless creak of the iron hinges as she let herself out into the arcade. Wearily, Antryg sank down to the floor, his back to the slender pilasters beside the door and his head tilted to rest against the stone behind him. Whatever happened, he thought, it was going to be one hell of a long night.
In about an hour Aunt Min woke up. By that time the lattice shadows were fading. Light still lingered broad in the sky outside, but it no longer streamed into the hall. Min and Antryg worked in gathering gloom, for the Archmage was unable to spare the concentration to summon light; the only illumination came from the phosphoric blue flicker of the light-circles drawn by the old woman's finger. These spread out like shining concentric ripples among the other Circles of Power-the Circles of Water, of Smoke, of Silver and Earth and Blood-weaving all together into a glowing maze, eerily reminiscent of the maze of darkness far beneath their feet. The magic that seemed at all times to hang whispering in the air of the Citadel thickened, like the scent of hay on a hot night, and now and then Antryg could see veins of light beneath the plaster of the wall or gleaming like streaks of niter on the pillars and in the wood grain of the door.
Power was drawn down, called up, summoned forth from the leys that crossed the earth and from the patterns of the stars overhead. Power spread out, slowly, through the stones of the Citadel itself, through sandstone, tile, and granite, through terrazzo, marble, and glass, thready silver webs of it impregnating the igneous bedrock of the tor itself. Deep in the Vaults below, Antryg knew, Ninetentwo the Dead God would be checking his equipment, wiring oscillators, field generators, backup batteries and resonating screens, aligning them as if there were energy present that could be polarized, matching them to the strange patterns of the maze, the sparking points of long-buried glass and bone. In his mind, or in some corner of his senses, he could see the immense, bony form, like the mummified skeleton of a dragon, more hideous than the most insane tale-weaver's imaginings, moving among the banks of dark metal components, the orange eye-blink of lights glittering on breathing tubes, weapon fittings, and the alien, glossy hide.
Power reached out to power. Fingers of lightning readied themselves to touch.
In the vestibule, those sasenna who were also novices of magic could feel it. If he closed his eyes and listened, Antryg could hear their voices mutter and whisper. Farther off, by reaching out his senses to the whole of the Citadel, other sounds came to his mind, other whispers: Silvorglim the Witchfinder saying, "It is abominable! Abominable!" Brighthand's voice: " ... hasn't eaten in two days and won't touch what I bring him." A thread of a whisper murmured in darkness: "Dear God, what am I going to do?" And, somewhere deep in the Vaults, a thin, despairing shriek. Around him in the hall the darkness deepened, the sky beyond the lattices the strange, holy blue that seemed deeper even than night's starry darkness. Min's face by the foxfire glow of the runes appeared to thin into a strange little skull, framed by the flaring white halo of her hair. The bent old fingers drew at the power, knitting it, as she knitted yarn, into a glowing net, and in his mind Antryg saw again the ancient tree of her soul, its black steel roots the roots of the mountain, drinking iron strength from the iron heart of the earth.
Outside the first stars gemmed the night. Somewhere in the Citadel he half heard a thick, guttural muttering about poison, plots, and death-then it was gone like smoke when the wind turns. In the vestibule Kyra murmured, "Can you feel it?" and though Antryg himself felt the coming of midnight in his heart and bones, still he glanced at his watch, counting down the seconds as he hoped the Dead God's instruments were likewise counting them down.
Aunt Min, he thought, were she not so absorbed in the horrendous effort of summoning and directing power, would slap his hand for looking.
In the trained, piercing shriek of a wizard's power the Archmage cried out, rising to her knees and spreading out her skeletal arms, power tunneling down around her like glowing smoke, sparkling like a queen's treasure of jewels. At the same moment Antryg, his hands, bare for once, spread out on the stone of the wall, felt the energies within the stones shift and change ...
A deep shudder seemed to pass through the very stones, so profound as almost to frighten him. The next instant he jerked his fingers away as a new energy, like fine-drawn, fast-moving wire, seemed to slice his flesh.
With a sensation of crushing, of dark weight redoubled, he felt the lowering presence of the Void.
In the courtyard beyond the Cloister, the clock finished singing out its twelve tinny chimes.


Chapter XVI
As for the ancient practice of exposing children at their birth, it is utterly forbidden upon pain of anathema that any parent shall cast out, or cause to die, any child of their bodies, from the day they first enter the world.

But it is understood that if the child be monstrous-that is, given to perversions, or to base and abject cruelty to other children, or to the torture of animals, or if that child be found to be mageborn-then, should the parents cast the child out, or cause it to die, anathema shall not be pronounced.
-Inquisition of Kymil
Advice to local priests

"There is something being hidden in this Citadel, I tell you-some great plot or secret, whose evil weights the very air."
At the sound of the Witchfinder Silvorglim's voice, Antryg slowed his steps. "What on earth are you doing up at this hour of the night?" he breathed, a sound no louder than the droning wing-flutter of the giant brown moths that beat themselves on the window frames of the Polygon's turret stair behind him. "You ought to be in bed like decent folks."
He tiptoed forward, a disjointed rustle of velvet and beads, to the concealment of one of the archway's heavy wool draft curtains that had not yet been taken down for the summer. By angling his head, he could look down the hall and see into an amber-lit corner of the Steward's office.
The entire Polygon was dangerous territory for him. The darkness of its stairways and passages would give him no concealment from the hasu, the red-robed Church wizards in Silvorglim's train, and it was at least even odds they'd know who he was. The Bishop of Kymil had changed guards in the Silent Tower frequently enough that half the Magic Office would recognize him, by his height and his spectacles if nothing else. Despite the rather elaborate procedure of breaking, skinning, slicing, and disemboweling detailed in the Regent's warrant for his death, he suspected that Silvorglim would simply settle for slitting his throat on sight, rather than risk his escape on the way back to Angelshand and a formal execution. An unpleasant thought at the best of times, he reflected, but with an artificial energy field building up on top of the looped feedback of a collecting-maze, were he not around to supervise its dismantling before disintegration set in, the results could be disastrous.
Even through his shoulder, pressed to the linenfold panelling of these upstairs halls, he could feel it a little. Resting his fingertips on the wood, sinking his mind through to the sandstone underneath, he could feel it still more: the searing cold, as if his flesh were being scored by a thousand razors moving too swiftly for pain, and beneath that, a gathering heat.