The Windrose Chronicles 3 - Dog Wizard (7 page)

“We worked mostly in the hall on the North Cloister,” provided Bentick. “I have the complete notes of those sessions.”

“Thank you. Just out of curiosity, at what point did some one of the Regent's men inquire about how you'd disposed of my mortal remains? Which,” he added earnestly, forestalling Daurannon's burst of speech, “is the only logical way you'd have of finding out that it wasn't the Regent's men who'd taken me out and buried me, as you'd probably thought.”

There was a momentary, stringent silence, broken by Aunt Min. “The turn of the granny-winter it was, when the groundhogs come out ... not that I've seen groundhog put his nose from his house any winter these thirty years.”

“In other words,” Antryg said, “around the first week of February. Was probing 'round the Void your idea, Daur?”

The Handsome One, who still appeared far from satisfied at the patness of Antryg's deduction, said coolly, “The matter was voted on in Council.”

“And if our goal was to seek you out for what you had done,” her ladyship added, “do you blame us?”

He widened his deranged eyes at her from behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. “Not nearly as much as you're blaming yourself, I daresay. I mean, it wasn't my doing that the abominations started appearing.”

“Nor was it ours!” snapped the Lady, rising from her chair.

“Well, only one of us was messing about with the Gates, and there was no percentage in it for me, you see.”

“Was there not?” Daurannon asked softly.

“The openings were done the same way last as first,” Bentick added irritably, “and there were no ill effects—none whatever. We scried very carefully along the energy lines to make sure of that. It's all here in my notes.” And he shoved the thick, leather-bound notebook he'd been cradling under one arm across the table with the air of a man refuting all possible contradiction. Of course, reflected Antryg, Bentick did everything, from lecturing on sublunary physics to tying his shoes, with the air of a man refuting all possible contradiction.

“So when were there ill effects?” Antryg inquired.

“Not for six, seven weeks.” Lady Rosamund took up the tale. “Then abominations were reported, foul things, evil, unknown creatures. They were seen in Kymil, in Angelshand, in the woods near the village of Wychstanes here ... and here. Monstrous things were seen in the mazes of the Vaults down below, strange mosses, vermin of other worlds. We began searching the Vaults, to see what might be the source of these evils.”

“And there was a Gate.” Phormion's huge eyes, rusty brown and, Antryg recalled, usually steady and calm for all their overwhelming intensity, shifted as she spoke; he had the impression she was fighting to keep herself from looking back over her shoulder for the memory of some terrible threat. “A Gate into darkness.”

Phormion continued in the deep, almost masculine voice that was so startling coming from the fine-boned oval of her face, “I cannot say exactly where, now. I was searching, like the others. There were things down there, invisible as well as visible; the darkness was alive with their scurryings and shriekings, like foul ghosts. I slew one creature which came at me.” She shook her head; her brows, still auburn though her hair had lost its color years ago, pinched together, with pain or memory or the attempt to make sense of something incompletely recalled.

“I heard ... voices. I think voices ... ” She raised a small, slim-fingered hand briefly to her temple and shook her head again. “A great voice called something which I have forgotten. There was a sound like the beating of wings, like wind in the reed beds along the river. I turned and there was a Gate, a Gate such as we had opened in the Void when we went into that other world to take you prisoner for your sins, Antryg Windrose. But the Gate was moving.”

“Moving?” Antryg said, startled. “But they don't move. They open and close, and when they do, they seem to be coming toward one, or going away.”

“No,” she insisted quietly, “it was not like that.” In her sleeves her hands were never still, scratching, searching, like mice in a sack. “I have seen Gates now. Seen them in the Vaults, some of them little, holes only. This one ... it rushed toward me like a runaway cart in a city street. In the black maw of it, I saw moving lights, moving shapes ... voices. It came at me like an ocean wave which curls down over the head, like a mouth opening to swallow ... ”

Her huge eyes snapped shut, and she turned her face away. Bentick's nervous white hand reached out to touch her wrist, and she flinched, startled, as if struck.

“I have searched the Library for any information concerning the Void,” Seldes Katne said, after a time of silence. The diffuse, even light of magic that filled the windowless chamber did little to improve her round, heavy face, plain as a boiled potato; the tight braid of her hair, which lay across the black of her robe, was the color of fading iron, streaked with ashy gray. “I was in Angelshand when the manifestations started. There were riots in the dockside quarters; I think if the Regent hadn't banished all the wizards from every city in the realm we probably would have been torched out by the mob.”

“Banished you?” Antryg's eyebrows shot up with comic surprise.

“From every city in the Realm,” Nandiharrow said, with a touch of bitterness in his deep, slow voice. “Every worker of magic, even some of the dog wizards.”

“Good Heavens, Pharos must be mellowing! A few years ago he would have arrested every wizard in sight and thrown the lot to the Inquisition. I'm pleased everyone got off so easily.”

“He would not dare ... ” Lady Rosamund began indignantly.

“You don't think so? I can't imagine you know him better than I do, but ... Ah, thank you.” A tall, rawboned, red-haired girl of about Joanna's age appeared at his elbow with a lacquered tray bearing teapot and cup, which she proceeded almost to spill over him. He caught the edge of the tray neatly, glanced at the chalk stains on her uncallused fingers, the shape and quality of the narrow ruffle of white shift collar visible above the edge of her gray Junior's robe, and the dried leaves adhering to the mud of her shoes. "Kyra, isn't it? My temporary roommate at the Pepper-Grinder?

“Chamomile,” he added, pouring out the tea. “Pothatch remembered, bless his rotund little heart. Q'iin, did you ever succeed in making a cleanser for wounds from chamomile and fairy-paintbrush? I was saving fairy-paintbrush for you in Los Angeles—it grows there under another name—but ... ”

“If we
might return to the matter at hand!” Bentick's rather high voice cut in like chipped obsidian, and a muscle twitched in his long, clean-shaven jaw.

“Terribly sorry.” Antryg gave him his daft smile. “Would you care for tea? Kyra, my darling, we seem to be short of cups.”

“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.”