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

"Here," offered the Archmage, unexpectedly coming to life enough to dig into her workbasket and produce a delicate teacup of soft-paste porcelain, pale green and decorated with roses and a rim of peeling gilt.
"That's extremely good of you. Is this from Voort of Kymil's workshop?" He was turning it over to look for the maker's mark on the bottom-with Aunt Min peering over his shoulder-when Lady Rosamund slapped the tabletop like a gunshot.
"Enough of this foolery!" The edge on her voice was sharp enough to have jointed a deer. Then, more quietly, she went on. "Seldes Katne brought Salteris' books and notes back from Angelshand with her. For two days she has been searching, and so far she's found nothing in them about the Void, or about what could be causing the Gates to be opening and closing this way; nothing about a Gate which moves. We have all been patrolling the Vaults but have found nothing which seems to point in any direction but that of chaos. Nothing we have found in the library speaks of the Void ... "
"Well, not a great deal about the Void was ever written down." Antryg shook an arm free of the shawl's folds to pour tea for himself and Aunt Min, then sat warming his crooked, swollen-knuckled fingers in the rising steam. "Salteris learned what he knew of it from a dog wizard named Wilbron, who operated out of Parchasten and made most of his money smuggling. Did you know that one can temporarily disarrange the internal energy-paths of precious stones to make them pull a magnet, so they'll act like bits of iron as well as looking like them under a spell of illusion? To the best of my knowledge whatever books Suraklin had on the subject-and he was the one who taught me-went up in that bonfire you all built when you razed his citadel in Kymil. Rather a pity."
"Whatever knowledge was contained in the Dark Mage's books," Lady Rosamund responded through gritted teeth, "was offset by the fact that the things he touched were frequently found to be contaminated by his influence and power."
"Oh, I'm not blaming you," Antryg hastened to assure her. "Certainly not you personally, since you were still sewing samplers in the schoolroom at the time. Still, it is a pity. At a guess-and it's only a guess, because a Gate which actually physically moves, as opposed to appearing and disappearing, is something I've never heard of before-at a guess, I'd say the Gate was moving along an energy-track. With four tracks crossing here under the Citadel, the Vaults are stitched with them. It would help if you could remember where you saw it, Phormion."
The Starmistress shook her head. "I fled," she said simply, though her voice shook a little, and the cool light glittered suddenly on the mist of sweat that marked her upper lip. "I think I must have lost consciousness at some point. I remember lying on the floor near the small downshaft on level five, near the Painted Halls, though I am sure that I descended past that level in my original search." Her eyes avoided his again.
Bentick's dark eyes met Antryg's challengingly. "She was exhausted and ill for hours after that. This was the day before yesterday, and it was at this point that your name arose in the discussions."
"In what context one can only guess," Antryg murmured, rising and pulling his long, sloppy shawl more closely around his bare arms. "I suppose the first thing I need to do is to take a look at the Vaults myself."
"No." The Lady Rosamund made a sign; Antryg heard outside the chamber the faint creak of sword harness, the movement of sasenna closing ranks about the door. "Given the old legends of objects of power which were said to be hidden in the Vaults, the first thing you must do, Antryg Windrose, is to surrender your powers to the geas of the Council."
Antryg's gray eyes widened with shock. He glanced toward Aunt Min, who appeared to have fallen asleep again, and then back to the slender, beautiful woman standing at the ancient Archmage's side. His voice was reasonable, if just slightly shaky. "Isn't it sufficient that you've poured enough phylax down my throat to fail every novice in the Citadel in their exams?"
"No," the Lady said coldly. "It is not sufficient. There were those on the Council who voted against your being brought here at all; those who argued that you cannot be trusted with power, as you have shown by your actions again and again. Phylax wears off in three days. All you need to do is go over the Citadel wall-and believe me, we have all heard of your escapes from the Silent Tower-and you would once again become a dog wizard meddling in affairs which do not and should not concern you, bringing the wrath of the Witchfinders yet more fiercely upon every mageborn soul in the land."
"And if I won't be a dog wizard in your pay," Antryg said mildly, "you'd rather I wasn't in anyone else's?"
Color flooded to the Lady's silky cheeks. Before she could reply, Nandiharrow interjected gently, "The Regent hates us solely for what we are, Antryg. You're right-we were lucky to have escaped with banishment. We exist, to an extent, upon his sufferance, perhaps not for our lives, but for our peace: the peace to study, the peace to train others in the use of their true arts. The Council trained you in the proper use of your powers in exchange for vows not to meddle, and you have broken your vows, not once but over and over again. Surely you must concede our point?"
"I do concede it." Antryg sank back into Daurannon's chair, glanced from the big, gray-haired man's kindly face to his mutilated hands, and rubbed at the ache that never left his own twisted fingers. "And I was minding my own business-well, pretty much so-in Los Angeles. But you're asking me to do a job, and if there is something badly amiss with the Void-and abominations prowling about the Vaults are a fairly telling clue-I may need my powers on rather short notice."
As he spoke his eyes traveled from face to face, seeking a way out: Phormion still twisting her hands under Bentick's worried sidelong glance, Nandiharrow solid and grave as an oak, and Issay Bel-Caire like a sun-bleached bundle of weeds. His eyes touched Daurannon's and met there only opaque coldness and mistrust. At the head of the table Aunt Min snored gently. "I shouldn't care to have to reconvene this Council at three o'clock some morning in the face of an unexpected onslaught of fire-breathing caterpillars."
"He's right." Seldes Katne got to her feet, her round, potatolike face set in an expression of consternation. "Surely it would be a great mistake to take from him the very powers for which he was brought here."
"He was brought here for his knowledge and his experience." The Lady's gaze rested impersonally for a moment on the stout librarian, then moved to Antryg again. "You may call upon any member of the Council for assistance at any time."
"Oh, I'm sure I can." Antryg drained his tea and studied the pattern of the leaves at the bottom of the cup. A house-ambition; fire-chaos and change; the rose that foretold a death; and everywhere the little three-legged track of danger. "The thing is, I'm not entirely convinced that it isn't some member of the Council who's responsible for all of this."
Had she still been the daughter of the Earl Maritime and not a mage theoretically equal with her brothers and sisters on the Council, Lady Rosamund would have snapped How dare you? and rung for a lackey to have him thrashed. As it was she only tightened her lips, but the unspoken words sparked in her eyes like pitch in a burning log.
"There are members of the Council who are not entirely convinced that it isn't you who is in some way responsible for all of this, Antryg Windrose," she said quietly. "And may I remind you," she added, her voice sinking still further, as if she and he were the only two in the windowless, light-flooded marble chamber, "that you do not have a choice."
"Antryg ... "
He flinched from the soft creak of that ancient voice and kept his face turned away. But he could feel Minhyrdin's pale blue stare, and around his mind, like a tightening silver rope, felt the implacable force of her will. It drew at him, willing him to turn, an ancient power, rooted deep: a tree in the rocks, but a tree whose roots have melded with the roots of the mountain, taking strength from the fire deep within. She was bidding him to meet her eyes.
He kept his face averted for as long as he could, but the Master-Spells, the domination that the Archmage held over every wizard, drew on him, compelled him like the geared wheels of the rack, far beyond the capacity of human flesh to resist. Sweat sprang out on his face as he concentrated on looking down into his teacup, on looking anywhere but into her eyes, and he felt his hands tremble.
Then, through no volition of his own, he found himself facing those twin pale skies of faded aquamarine. Within them he thought he saw, not an old woman, but a girl in tawdry riches, scarcely taller than a child, with a dancer's muscular legs, a saffron tangle of hair heaped on her head and spilling in handfuls upon her shoulders, flashing with jeweled combs. And beyond that the image again of an ancient tree, roots locked to the living bones of the earth and drinking iron from them, so that the core of the tree had grown into steel.
The phylax he had drunk had numbed his ability to use magic, even as spell-cord did, but the power within him remained. He called upon it now, summoning his own strength from the chaotic, murky well of his being, trying to look away, to put the alien presence of her will, of the Master-Spells, from his mind. He tried to think of anything-of Joanna's cats playing, of Joanna herself, a prisoner and in danger somewhere ... scenes from movies, television commercials, rock 'n' roll lyrics ...
He couldn't let them take his powers from him, he needed them to find her.
But the steel strength of that ancient tree, twisted, black, incomparably strong, still gripped his mind. It was the strength of the earth, backed by the Master-Spells, the terrible strength of domination, and against the deep wisdom he saw in Minhyrdin's eyes he could not find anger to fight.
I will not give in to you ... I will not allow you to command me.
His breath thickened, and though there was no pain-yet-he felt as if every muscle in his body strained and cracked.
Joanna, he thought, trying to summon back Ruth's voice, that panicked description of a vision glimpsed in shadow. A dark robe vanishing down a tunnel of night. One of them has her ... or all of them. They're lying to me ... I can't ...
He clutched at the thought with the desperation of a man clutching the last tree root above an abyss, fighting not only gravity but the dragging of a whirlpool, pulling him down. Like a silver wedge driven in under his fingers, the Master-Spells plucked coldly at his loosening grip.
Don't do this to me .
If he could just turn his eyes away, plunge his mind down into darkness.
But Minhyrdin the Fair would be waiting for him in that darkness. And she'd be here, when he returned.
"Antryg ... " The voice within his mind was not the scratchy, worn-out creak, but the bell-clear command of a wild-hearted dancer in her garish gown a century out of fashion ... the voice of Minhyrdin the Fair, Archmage of the High Council in her later life, oldest and strongest. She was standing over him now, as he pressed back as far as he could in his chair; he was barely conscious of his body anymore, save that he felt deathly cold and could not turn his head away. He couldn't reply, couldn't release his hold for even the instant it would take to acknowledge. There was pain now, too, or something that read as pain.
"Antryg, you know that we can force your powers from you. I am within your mind now; in a moment I will bring in the others. They will strip you, break you ... "
"No ... " His breath came in sobs, fighting for darkness, for silence, for anything other than that terrible shining strength that cleaved his brain like a laser. He didn't know whether he uttered the word or only thought it.
"Surrender, child. It will hurt you less."
His mind was beyond framing words, beyond even the whisper of denial. It was naked before her, weaponless and paralyzed, overmatched and cut to pieces. Distantly he still remembered that if he let his powers be taken away from him he stood in danger of losing Joanna, of being stripped forever of that quirky, shy, and hesitant love and left anchorless in darkness ... remembered that one-or all-of them had taken her.
But their dark presences hovered on the edges of his mind, waiting behind the small, shining angel of the Archmage's light. He felt their thoughts, like wolves closing on a blood-scent-shadows of enmity, hatred, fear, secrets ... and somewhere, a glimpse of something else, something utterly dark and as filled with desperation as he was himself ...
Even that brief awareness made his concentration slip and crack, and he felt her take another inch of ground. Whether his own eyes were open or closed he no longer knew, and it didn't matter. Those blue eyes, now sharp and filled with color like the killing sky of deep desert, burned like a watching tiger's in his soul.
"I will protect you, from the abominations and from them."
He was beyond reply, beyond breathing, dizzy and floating, chilled through in spite of the sweat that ran down his face.
"Surrender to the geas of the Council, Antryg; consent to its binding. I will see to it that your powers are later restored.
Hands touched him, slipping in over his shoulders, his throat, his scalp. The darkness of their power pressed in on him, pulling away pieces of his strength as they would have taken useless weapons from hands numbed by pain and shock, their own power glittering like white-hot knives. They would begin to tear him soon, dissecting his mind as the Master-Spells forced it open. Her awareness was burning light, but theirs would be calcining fire.
Joanna ...
He managed to whisper, "Very well."

For a long time Antryg lay on the rock they called Melliga's Throne after some ancient Archmage or, perhaps, said some accounts, after a local deity of forgotten years-no one recalled which. Whoever she had been, Antryg thought detachedly, she had picked a good place to receive her petitioners or intercept intruders into the Valley of Shadows ... or simply to lie, as he was lying, with the wind now and then stirring his hair, lifting and flattening the thin cotton of his T-shirt against his ribs, the thready sunlight slowly warming his flesh without coming near to dissolving the core of ice and pain locked into his bones.