"Barbara Hambly - Windrose 1 - The Silent Tower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

household had gone to bed to ask Salteris to read their fortunes in the cards. Two
nights they had slept under the stars. Caris worried that, in spite of the warmth of the
fading summer, a chill might have settled into the old man's bones. Still, Salteris was
tough. Like most sasenna, Caris slept only lightly, and when he had wakened in the
night, it had always been to see Salteris sitting in silent meditation, gazing at the stars.
At the highest point of the causeway, Caris paused to shift his knapsack across
his shoulders. Around the feet of the raised roadway and along the walls, just out of
reach of the marshpools, were the hovels of the poor, built each spring when the
waters went down and abandoned with their winter rising. Now children in rags were
playing in between the sorry little huts, shouting and throwing pebbles at one another;
a religious procession appeared, en route from one of the numerous shrines which
dotted the marshes, and a whiff of incense and the sweetness of chanting rose to
where he and his grandfather stood. People in the shantytown below paused to bend a
knee to the gray-robed priests, as did halfnaked boatmen from the river and a scarf
vendor decorated like a Yule tree with his wares; a merchant crossing the causeway
behind them, in his sober blue broadcloth coat and breeches, did likewise, and Caris
felt the man's eyes on his back when neither he nor Salteris made this sign of
subservience to the Church's will.
"We can stay at the House of the Mages in the city tonight," Salteris remarked,
looking out past the marshes to the silence of the pale hills beyond. The hills marked
the edge of the Sykerst, the empty lands that stretched eastward two thousand miles,
an eternal, rolling plain of grass. "Nandiharrow runs it—the Old Faith has always
been strong in this city, and many of those who came here twenty-five years ago for
the trial of Suraklin found welcome enough among them to make it their home."
A touch of wind moved across the hills, murmuring among the willows at the
level of their feet and bringing the wild scents of distance and hay. "Suraklin was
tried here?"
"Indeed, my son." The old man sighed. "Tried and executed." The breeze
flicked at his white hair, he gazed into those undefinable distances, with no elation for
the memory of his ancient triumph.
"I didn't know," Caris said softly. "I thought, since the Emperor presided over
it—the Prince, then—it must have taken place in Angelshand."
A wry expression pulled at the corner of the old man's mouth. "It is difficult to
try someone for the misuse of his wizardry in a city where few believe in it," he said.
"Suraklin was known in Kymil. Even those who did not think that his powers
stemmed from magic dared not cross him." He nodded out towards the silent hills.
"His Citadel stood out there. They have thrown down the standing-stones that marked
the road that led there, at least those that were visible from the city; the Citadel itself
was razed, and its very stones we calcined with fire. The Tower .
In the blue-gray softness of the dusk, Caris saw the old man's white brows draw
down, bringing with them a whole laddering of wrinkles along his high forehead.
"The Silent Tower had stood there of old, but we strengthened its walls —I and
the other members of the Council. We put our spells into its stones, spells of
nullification, of void. We fashioned the Sigil of Darkness from the signs of the stars
and the Seal of the Dead God, which binds and cripples a mage's power, and that we
placed upon the doors, so that no mage could pass. In the Silent Tower Suraklin
awaited his trial. From it he was taken to his death."
He turned away. "Come," he said quietly. "It is not good to talk of such things."
And he led the way along the dusty causeway toward the square, gray gates of the
city.