The Windrose Chronicles 1 - The Silent Tower (3 page)

“Dr. Narwahl Skipfrag.” Salteris rose from the carved ebony chair in which he had been sitting, extending a strong, slender hand. The physician took it and inclined his head, his bright blue eyes taking in every detail of that small room, with its dark ranks of books, its embryos bottled in honey or brandy, and its geometric models and crystal prisms.

“I came as quickly as I could.”

“There was no need for haste.” Salteris gestured him to the chair that Caris brought silently up. “The man was killed almost at once.”

One of Skipfrag's sparse, sandy eyebrows tilted sharply up. He was a tall man, stoutish and snuff-colored, with his hair tied back in an oldfashioned queue. In spite of the fact that he must have been wakened by Salteris' messenger, his broad linen cravat was neatly tied and his shirtruflies unrumpled.

“Dr. Narwahl Skipfrag,” Salteris introduced. “Lady Minhyrdin, Lady Rosamund-my grandson Caris, sasennan of the Council, who witnessed the shooting. Dr. Narwahl Skipfrag, Royal Physician to the Emperor and my good friend.”

As a sasennan should, Caris concealed his surprise. Few professionals believed in the power of wizards anymore, and certainly no one associated with the Court would admit to the belief these days, much less to friendship with the Archmage. But Dr. Skipfrag smiled, and nodded to Lady Rosamund. “We have met, I think, in another life.”

As if against her will a slight answering smile warmed her ladyship's mouth.

Slumped in her chair, without raising her eyes from her knitting, Aunt Min inquired, “And how does his Majesty?”

Skipfrag's face clouded a little. “His health is good.” He spoke as one who remarks the salvage of an heirloom gravy boat from the wreck of a house.

Lady Rosamund's full mouth tightened. “A pity, in a way.” Salteris gave her a questioning look, but Skipfrag merely gazed down at his own broad white hands. She shrugged. “Good health is no gift to him. Without a mind, the man is better dead. After four years, it is scarcely likely he will reawaken one morning sane.”

“He may surprise us all one day,” Skipfrag remarked. “I daresay his son thinks as you do.”

At the mention of the Prince Regent, Lady Rosamund's chilly green eyes narrowed.

“It is about his son, in a way,” Salteris cut in softly, “that I asked you here, Narwahl. The man who was killed was a mage.”

The physician was silent. Salteris leaned back in his chair, the glow of the witchlight gleaming above his head and haloing the silver flow of his long hair. For a time he, too, said nothing, his folded hands propped before his mouth, forefingers extended and resting against his lips. “My grandson says that he heard Thirle cry `No!' at the sight of a man standing in the shadows on this side of the court-the man who shot him, fleeing to the alley across the yard. Caris did not see which house the killer stood near, but I suspect it was this one.”

The bright blue eyes turned grave. “Sent by the Regent Pharos, you mean?”

“Pharos has never made any secret of his hatred for the mageborn.”

“No,” Dr. Skipfrag agreed and thoughtfully stared into the witchlight that hung above the tabletop for a moment. He reached out absentmindedly toward it and pinched it, like a man pinching out a candle-his forefinger and thumb went straight through the white seed of light in the glowing ball's heart, the black shadows of his fingers swinging in vast, dark bars across the low rafters of the ceiling and the book-lined walls. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Not even a change in temperature.” His blue eyes returned to Salteris. “And that's odd in itself, isn't it?”

Salteris nodded, understanding. Caris, standing quietly in a corner, as was the place of a sasennan, was very glad when Lady Rosamund demanded, “Why? Few believe in our powers these days.” There was bitter contempt in her voice. “They work in their factories or their shops and they would rather believe that magic did not exist, if they can't use it to tamper with the workings of the universe for their personal convenience.”

Softly, the Archmage murmured, “That is as it should be.”

The deep lines around Skipfrag's eyes darkened and moved with his smile. “No,” he said. "Most of them don't even believe in the dog wizards, you know. Or they half believe them, or go to them in secret-the dog wizards, the charlatans, the quacks, who never learned true magic because they would not take Council vows, so all they can do is brew love-philters and cast runes in some crowded shop that stinks of incense, or at most be like Magister Magus, hanging around the fringes of the Court and hoping to get funding to turn lead into gold. Why do you think the Church's Witchfinders don't arrest them for working magic outside the Council vows? They only serve to feed the people's disbelief, and that is what the Witchfinders want.

“But the Regent . . .” He shook his head.

Through the tall, narrow windows at the far end of the room, standing open in the murky summer heat, the sounds of the awakening city could now be heard. Caris identified automatically the brisk tap of butchers' and poulterers' wagons hastening to their early rounds, the dismal singsong of an itinerant noodle vendor, and the clatter of farm carts coming to the city markets with the morning's produce. Dawn was coming, high and far off over the massive granite city; the smell of the river and the salt scent of the harbor came to him, with the distant mewing of the harbor birds. At the other end of the table, Salteris was listening in ophidian silence. Aunt Min had every appearance of having fallen asleep.

Skipfrag sighed, and his oak chair creaked a little as he stirred his bulk. “I was his Majesty's friend for many years,” he said quietly. “You know, Salteris, that he was always a friend to the mages, for all he held them at an arm's length for political reasons. He believed-else he would never have raised the army that helped you defeat the Dark Mage Suraklin.”

Salteris did not move, but the witchlight flickered with the movement of his dark eyes, and something of his attitude reminded Caris of a dozing hound waked at an unfamiliar footfall.

“Pharos' hatred of you is more than disbelief,” Skipfrag went on quietly. “He blames you for his father's madness.”

Lady Rosamund waved a dismissive hand. “He was hateful from his boyhood and suspicious of everything.”

“Perhaps so,” Salteris murmured. “But it is also true that, of late, the Regent's antipathy toward us has grown to a mania. He may fear me too much to move against me openly-but it is possible that he would send an assassin.” His dark eyes went to Skipfrag. “Can you find out for me at Court?”

The physician thought for a moment, then nodded. “I think so. I still have Pharos' ear and many other friends there as well. I think I can learn something.”

“Good.” Salteris got to his feet and clapped Skipfrag lightly on the arm as the big man rose, dwarfing the Archmage's slenderness against his blue-coated bulk. Caris, hurrying before them to open the outer door, saw in the watery dawnlight outside that Thirle's blood had already been washed from the cobbles in front of Stinking Lane; the puddles of water left by it were slimy and dismal-looking. The swordmaster and the two novices still stood on the brick steps of the novices' house, talking quietly, all three wrapped in bedgowns, though, Caris noticed, the swordmaster had her scabbarded blade still in hand, ready for action.

It occurred to him suddenly to wonder, as he watched Salteris usher the physician over to his waiting gig, what Thirle had been doing abroad at that hour of the night at all? For that matter, what had Rosamund been doing up; she had been fully dressed, her hair not even crumpled from the pillow, so she must have been so for some time. He glanced back into the room behind him. Aunt Min, too, was dressed, though her thin, straggly white hair was mussed-but of course, reflected Caris, with rueful affection for the old lady, it always was.

Had they all, like himself, been restless with the damp warmth of the night?

Tepid dawn air stirred in his close-cropped, fair hair and stung the tender cuts on his cheek, where the assassin's bullet had driven brickchips into his face. The day was beginning to blush color into the houses opposite, the black half-timbering of their shabby fronts taking on their daytime variation of browns and grays. The jungly riot of Thirle's pot plants was wakening to green in daylight their owner would never see.

Down in the Yard, Skipfrag was climbing into his gig, adjusting his voluminous coat skirts and gathering the reins of the smart bay hack that stood between the shafts. Salteris stood beside the horse's quarters, talking quietly to him. The physician's voice came clearly to Caris where he stood on the steps. “It's best I was gone. My reputation as a physician might carry off experiments with electricity, but it would never recover, if word got around I believed in magic. I'll learn for you what I can—do what I can, at Court. Until then, watch yourself, my friend.”

Salteris stepped back as Skipfrag turned the gig. The iron wheels clattered sharply on the stones. Then the Emperor's physician was gone.

The Archmage stood still for some time after Skipfrag was gone. The brick steps were cool under Caris' bare feet, and the dawn air stirred his torn and muddied shirt. He looked down at his grandfather in the paling light of the Yard and noted again how the old man had aged in the eighteen months since Caris had taken his vows and come to live at the Mages' Yard. When he had last seen the Archmage before that time before he had gone into training in the Way of the Sasenna-the old man had had a kind of wiry strength for all his age. Now he seemed like antique ivory worn to the snapping-point. With a sigh, the old man turned back, stopped, and looked up when he saw Caris on the steps.

“What did Aunt Min mean?” Caris asked softly. “About other worlds? About the Void and the Gate in the Void?” He came down the steps and offered the old man his steadying hand. “Are there worlds, besides this?”

This time Salteris took the hand. The cold, thin fingers felt delicate as bird bone. Not a big man, Caris was conscious as he had never been before that he stood slightly taller than the Archmage, this gentle old grandfather who had once lifted him up in childhood. Though it was not his way to think much about the passage of time, he felt its fleeting shadow brush his thoughts. He was silent as he helped the old man to the top of the steps.

As they stood there together, the Archmage was quiet, too, considering, as he often seemed to do, what he could say to one who did not have the training in magic ever to understand fully.

Then he nodded. “Yes,” he said quietly. “And I very much fear that what you saw, my son, was a Gate such as Aunt Min described-a Gate through the Void that separates world from world.”

Caris stammered, “I-I've never heard of such a thing.”

A faint smile flicked those thin lips. “Few have,” the Archmage said softly. “And fewer still have crossed that Void, as I have-once-and walked in a world on its other side.” For a moment, the dark eyes seemed to gaze beyond him, as if they saw past the stones of the Yard, past the dawn sky, past the cosmos itself. “As far as I know, only two men in this world have ever had an understanding of what the Void itself is, how it works, and how to touch and feel it, to see across it to its other side. One of them is dead . . .” He hesitated, then sighed again. “The other one is Antryg Windrose.”

“Antryg?” Caris murmured. “Thirle said that name . . .”

Salteris glanced at him quickly, and the long white eyebrows quirked up. “Did he?” A moment's doubt crossed the dark eyes, then he smiled. “He would have, if he thought-as I do-that some danger might be coming to us from across the Void. Antryg,” he repeated, and Caris felt a stirring in his memory, like an old story overheard in childhood.

“Antryg,” Lady Rosamund's derisive voice echoed behind them.

Caris turned. Darkly beautiful, she stood in the doorway of the house behind them, her slender white hands folded around the buckle of her belt, her dark curls lying thick on her shoulders like a careless glory of raven flowers.

Memory seemed to filter back to him of things spoken across him, without his understanding, by the mages. “He was a wizard, wasn't he?”

“Is,” the Archmage said. He shifted his dark robes up on his thin shoulders, and his eyes, again, seemed to look out across time.

“A dog wizard.” Lady Rosamund's voice could have laid frost-flowers on glass. “Forsworn of his vows and no more than the dog wizards who peer into treacle and asses' dung for the secrets of gold and immortality at the bidding of any who'll pay.”

“Maybe,” Salteris said softly. “Except that he is, beyond a doubt, the most powerful mage now living. Thirteen years ago, he was the youngest member ever elected to the Council of Wizards-three years later he was expelled from the Council, stripped of his rank, and banished for meddling in the quarrel between the Lords of the Wheatlands and the Emperor. Since that time, he has been reinstated and banished again, and I and the other mages have had occasion to hunt him half across the face of the world.”

Caris frowned. Half-recalled childhood memories ghosted into his mind, framed in amber hearthlight-the Archmage sitting beside the brick chimney oven of Caris' grandmother's house, and beside him the tall, thin young man he'd brought with him, gravely constructing a pinwheel by the light of the kitchen fire, or telling horrific ghost stories in a deep, extraordinary voice that was beautiful and flamboyant as embroidered brocade.

“Is he evil?” Caris did not remember evil.

Salteris thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don't think so. But his motives have always been obscure. No one has ever, as far as I know, been able to tell what he would do, or why. He is, as I said, more powerful than any mage now living, including myself. But his mind is like a murky and bottomless well, into which all the wisdom of the ages and all the accumulated trivia of several universes have been indiscriminately dumped. He is both wise and innocent, incredibly devious and hopelessly scatterbrained, and by this time, I fear, quite mad.”

Lady Rosamund shrugged with the grace that only years with a deportment master could impart. “He has always been mad.”