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

A search had to be organized, and soon. That Bentick obviously had done nothing in that direction-or, if he had, was concealing it from Antryg-was enough to make him take the risk of bearding the Steward in his office, despite the danger of being seen on the way.
"The Citadel is a place of secrets," Daurannon said, his light, pleasant voice smooth with reassurance. "That was the reason of its establishment-that secrets too heavy for the untaught, the uninitiated, might be kept in safety, sparing humankind their misuse."
In the saffron rhombus of candlelight he could see them: Bentick at his tall, slanted desk, upon whose polished surface every inkpot, every quill, every pricker and pumice stone and candlestick ranged like neat-uniformed guards at attention, winking in the starry glow of the lamp overhead; Daurannon standing beside him, his gestures as refined, as expressive, as an actor's. And Silvorglim, taut suspicion in those fox-colored eyes.
"A fine lot of good it has done," the gray-clothed Witchfinder snapped. "Witches and sorcerers still haunt every large city of the Realm."
"Dog wizards only," Daurannon replied easily, "who call themselves sorcerers out of envy of the powers they cannot touch without our teaching."
"But wizards still." Silvorglim's arms were folded tight over his broad chest, and his gaze darted sharply over the books that ranked the circular room floor-to-ceiling, neatly arranged in their curving shelves. They were, Antryg knew, only the Citadel's ledgers, but it was clear from the Witchfinder's expression that to Silvorglim they were volumes of arcane secrets, forbidden learning lying in wait like those balls of dough-coated nightshade that professional poisoners dropped down wells, waiting to go to work when the culprit himself was long gone.
"But this," Silvorglim went on, "this evil, these creatures which have been appearing, abominable and terrible ... you cannot claim this is a matter brought about by those without power. And now your Archmage refuses to see me, you refuse to give me proper accounting of what is taking place within these walls ... "
"Within these walls," Bentick cut in crisply, "we owe you no accounting. After the Battle of the Field of Stellith it was agreed that you of the Church would go your way, and we would go ours, not attempting to meddle with humankind."
"On our sufferance!" Silvorglim's voice grew softer rather than louder, but with the contained rage in his voice, the words might have been a shout. "On our sufferance, and by our leave, were the Council's wizards allowed to depart."
"There was no such ... "
"Gentlemen ... " Daurannon raised a hand, then went to the Witchfinder's side and dropped a friendly pat on the wide, stiff shoulder in its close-fitting gray coat. "It's late in the night to be arguing about who said what to whom one afternoon six hundred and twelve years ago, you know. And it's certainly late to go calling on the Archmage." Antryg saw his eyes move, touching Bentick's, then returning, with casual naturalness, to Silvorglim's. "She'll be asleep, if she's finished with her studies and meditations."
"Studies and meditations!" The deep voice, so at odds with the spare smallness of Silvorglim's frame, tightened like the steel bands of an Inquisitor's screwed boot. "Something is going on in this Citadel. Some power was called forth at the hour of midnight-Elberard and Tobin, the Saved Ones who accompanied me from Angelshand, have sensed it."
"Of course." Daurannon widened those expressive eyes, as if surprised that the Witchfinder needed to make a point of the matter-he did it, Antryg thought, quite well. "Anyone here would have told you that the powers of the universe's balance can be brought to bear on the accomplishment of great magics, usually at the hour of midnight. But I promise you it has nothing to do with any affair of humankind. Certainly nothing to do with the purposes of your visit. Come ... "
He put a friendly hand on the back of the Witchfinder's arm-as he had, Antryg recognized with a smile, on his own arm that first day-and steered him with the same coaxing pressure to the door.
"The Archmage will make it all clear to you in the morning."
Not if Rosie has anything to say about it, thought Antryg, slipping deeper into the concealment of the curtains as his old friend guided Silvorglim into the hall.
"She had better." Silvorglim had taken one of the five-branched bronze candelabra from the top of Bentick's desk as he'd left the room, in spite of the white cone of glowing light Daurannon had politely summoned over both their heads. The Witchfinder's eyes, pale brown almost to yellowness, flashed in the glare like those of vermin in an outhouse. "Does she not, I warn you now that I will order my troops to tear this Citadel to pieces, to find what it is that you are hiding from us."
"Look," Daurannon said in a lowered voice, "if she doesn't, I can promise you that I'll give you all the cooperation you need. I know this Citadel's secrets better than any, and I promise you that whatever happens, you shall have the truth."
Or at least a convincing sop to stop you from asking awkward questions, thought Antryg, watching the master-wizard's back framed in the arch at the far end of the hall, the bobbing glow of the candelabra diminishing in the wider stairs at that end. From his position in the curtain Antryg glanced back, to see Bentick, still sitting at his desk.
The old man had lowered his face to his hands, the high, bald curve of his forehead catching a spot of the lamplight's sheen; after a moment he drew a long, thick, shaky breath, like a man steeling himself against sobs. He gripped it as a man would grip a lifeline-then let it out, measured and controlled, as he measured and controlled all things.
Dark robe billowing about him, Daurannon returned down the hall.
"Has she gone to her house?" Bentick spoke without looking up, barely audible through the constriction of his throat.
Daurannon nodded. "I saw them crossing the gardens together just after midnight. I would have intercepted him the minute he'd left her, except that Silvorglim came up to me."
"Damn." The Steward's long, nervous hands snapped into fists as his head lifted with a jerk. "And now we've lost him."
"I've sent for the guards," Daurannon said quietly. "One thing that stabilizing field will mean-if the thing actually exists, after all this-is that we won't have to worry about a Gate opening in his cell and letting him disappear again. But of course," he added, as Bentick started to speak, "chains and drugs, nevertheless."
The old man nodded, satisfied; Antryg noted with interest how his hands trembled as they fussed with the golden watch, how his dark eyes darted to the younger wizard's face and then away. "And Rosamund?"
"She's asleep; she won't be up for days, especially if I report to her that everything's going well. The Witchfinders will be gone before she knows anything."
"Daurannon ... " Bentick caught his sleeve as Daurannon turned to go with that same natural air of conclusion with which he had ejected Silvorglim.
Daurannon's brows arched inquiringly. Antryg could almost hear him saying, Me pinch the cakes, Pothatch?
"You aren't by any chance going to turn him over to the Witchfinders, are you?"
"With the field stabilized," Daurannon pointed out in his most reasonable tones, "we don't need him. We know what we're looking for, now: Circles of Power involving a teles. And what with the abominations that have appeared in Angelshand, we may need some kind of spectacular favor to sweeten the Regent's temper."
"You're not going to go ahead with the search NOW!?" Bentick demanded, horrified. "With the Witchfinder's men pecking about the place, ready to pounce on the first indication of something amiss?" His voice stammered a little, and as he turned his head again to avoid Daurannon's suddenly inquiring eyes, Antryg could see the silvery glitter of beard stubble on the long, usually immaculate jaw. He went on hastily, "We ... we'd have them running roughshod through every chamber, every workroom, every study and hallway, disrupting everyone's studies and experiments."
"Then we won't search until they're gone," Daurannon said agreeably. "And if we give them Antryg, you see, they'll be gone all that much sooner."
Bentick started to stammer something else, some other protest; Daurannon shook his head. "We have to buy our peace in the coin of the Realm," he said softly. "Quite literally, if you like: you know as well as I do where the money comes from to run this place, and the Regent and the Inquisition could do a sight more damage to us by confiscating rental properties and cutting off donations than they'd ever do by rack and wheel. I don't like turning one of ours over to the Inquisition any more than you do-it sets an awkward precedent-but he isn't one of ours anymore, really, is he? Only a dog wizard." The younger mage smiled a little, the cupid-bow mouth flexing with a bitter little quirk, and laid a suave hand on Bentick's wrist. "And don't worry," he added gently. "I know Antryg well enough to make sure that when they take him, he won't be able to talk."

Avoiding Daurannon's patrols-at this point, mostly the night-watch sasenna anyway-it took Antryg slightly more than an hour to rally as much of a search party as he could. Tom and Pothatch he found asleep in their respective alcoves off the dark cavern of the kitchen; Q'iin the Herbmistress and her novice Gilda, in the herb garden at the bottom of the tor, gathering arnica by the light of the late-rising moon. Kyra and Nye he found on guard duty in the vestibule of the North Hall, Cylin and Mick swilling tea and passionately arguing spell-casting technique in the otherwise-deserted Junior Parlor. Brunus was raiding the kitchen, and Brighthand, his gaunt face hollowed still further with weariness, sitting awake over a pile of books in the darkened downstairs chamber of the Island of Butterflies.
With these ten Antryg searched the Vaults until dawn, marking the locations of every Gate into darkness, every strange anomaly of time and space, every cul-de-sac where alien moss grew thick, every field of coldness, or strange vapors, or the tingling sense of unknown magics. Water was flowing now down two of the main stairways, lapping with uneasy whispers and curls of strange-smelling steam in the downshafts. The weight of the Void pressed heavy everywhere, a constant presence, an unseen stalker waiting in the shadows, chained now, but patient.
On the fourth level, Antryg introduced Cylin and Mick to the Dead God and left them guarding the round, painted chamber where he had set up his oscillators and reflecting screens by the pallid glow of four small lumenpanels wired to the glass pillar in the chamber's midst. "We'll be back with other patrols later in the morning," he promised, leaning against the jamb of the room's low doorway, his face gaunt and his eyes black-circled with fatigue in the sickly light. "No one must be allowed to disturb your machines here, Ninetentwo, nor must they be allowed," he added, looking back over his shoulder at Kyra and Nye, "to enter the North Hall, or tamper with the Circles of Power that keep the magical end of the equation in balance."
He reached uneasily to touch the granite of the chamber's wall. Under the smooth plaster, and the queer, garish scenes of judgment, torture, and death painted upon it, he could feel still more strongly the sear of the channeled energies and the slow, building heat of power-from the leys, from the maze, from the Void itself-trapped and growing within.
"Have you ever played ring-of-roses?" he asked quietly, looking from the looming, insectile form of the Dead God to the faces of the young people grouped in the passage behind him. "Do you remember how it all works, the circle spinning faster and faster, until someone lets go? We've brought the power up, and stabilized it, and we can bring it down again."
"What happens if it breaks?" Brighthand tipped his head a little to look beyond him, fascinated, at the cold columns of glowing machinery in the chamber's shadows.
"The problem is that we can't be completely sure," Antryg said, and scratched the side of his long nose. "Let's just be certain that it doesn't."
Before he slept in the hayloft above the mule barn, to which he earnestly hoped he hadn't been followed, Antryg scanned through the crude sketch maps his Irregulars had drawn for him of the portions of the Vaults they had patrolled. Some of these had registered as dark blurs on the Dead God's multiscanner, others-reality-folds, cold spots, places where strange clangings could be heard-did not, though whether this was due to a flaw in the scanner or to ancient fields of magic in the walls, he did not know. Since he knew now that it was possible anyone in the Citadel, not merely the members of the Council, might be at the bottom of the problem-and there was an outside chance that it was someone like Pothatch or Tom-he knew the possibility existed that one of the maps was false. Still, with a dozen of them searching, and all but three of those unlikely to be deceived by illusion, the odds were good that these maps were reliable.
He frowned. No sign yet of the Circles of Power he knew had to be holding open a Gate-perhaps the moving one, perhaps not. True, it might be down on the lower levels, filled with water now, the enchantments still holding in the haunted dark.
Neither had anyone reported the cloying smell of roses, which all of them had been instructed to flee at once-to flee, and to fetch him. And though four minor Gates-wormholes two or three feet across at most-had been sighted, held by the stabilization field in uneasy stasis in the blacker dark of the twisting maze, no one had reported anything like a Gate the size of the one the librarian, Phormion, and Otaro had seen, nor had anyone heard the confusion of voices and cries all three had witnessed in conjunction with that Gate.
A voice crying out, Phormion had said. I heard someone shout something ... 1 do not remember what it was, but I remember the fear.
Was it significant that both Phormion and Otaro had forgotten?
It crossed Antryg's mind suddenly that he hadn't seen Otaro lately.
He shuffled to the next map, noted a reality-fold between the tunnel that led to a minor spiral on the fifth level and the long stretch of tunnel on the second where a line of pillars ran down the center. The searcher-Tom, by the laborious and ill-spelled handwriting-had not actually been able to search that spiral on the fifth level. And a small, localized area of thick fog near there, knee-deep.
He shook his head, fighting against a sudden, blinding wave of tiredness. In the barn below, a mule whuffled in the thin light of dawn already filtering through the great windows of the loft. At the far end of the long, low-raftered chamber a cat picked its way over the hay bales, dainty and disdainful-not in quest of anything to eat, Antryg knew, as spells against mice and other vermin ringed the Citadel's outer walls, obliging the feline population to hunt in the fields beyond. There had to be a pattern, some answer to the riddle.