Read The Windrose Chronicles 3 - Dog Wizard Online
Authors: Barbara Hambly
The Windrose Chronicles 3 - Dog Wizard (30 page)
“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.
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.
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.”