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

Church would not be given the right to kill a mage—any mage." She pushed the
sleeves of her loose black jacket upon her arms, and Caris saw, with some envy, the
scars of half a dozen fights in a white zigzag over the fine, hard muscle of her
forearms. "But as for Suraklin, I doubt it made any difference to him by that time. I
don't know what the Council and the Witchfinders and the Prince did to him, but I
remember he came to the block broken, stumbling, and silent. He never so much as
raised a hand against the headsman's sword."
Her words returned to Caris' mind the next morning as he and the Archmage left
through the Stone Road Gate and took the track that wound toward the hills. In the
marshes near the town, the road was well repaired and used; down in the lowlands, all
around them, men and women were cutting hay from the common lands of the city
corporation, carting it in wheelbarrows or on their backs to the higher ground to dry,
their voices and laughter rising from all around like the cries of unusually noisy
marsh birds. But away from the town, the road quickly dwindled to a narrow track;
though it saw some use, Caris could tell that it had been long since much traffic had
passed over it. As they passed into the green, silent folds of those treeless hills, he
saw where huge standing-stones had once lined its sides, but had been thrown down
and were now half-buried in the long summer grass.
"This was the road to Suraklin's Citadel?" he asked softly, unwilling to break
the hush of the hills.
The old man seemed to wake from some private meditation at the sound of
Caris' voice. "Yes, it led to his fortress. But the road was older than he—these stones
were cracked with a thousand winters before ever he made people curse them as his."
Caris frowned, looking at the fallen menhirs. Another such line ran near
Angelshand, mile after mile of ancient stones, standing like sentries in the deep grass,
guarding what had long been forgotten. The Devil's Road, they called it. "What were
they?" he asked, but his grandfather, relapsing into thoughts of his own, only shook
his head.
On the hill to their left, the Silent Tower rose, dark-gray against the
wind-combed emerald silk of the grass that lapped against them on all sides.
Caris saw now that it was more than the single finger of stone he had seen from
the causeway. A curtain wall surrounded it, pierced by a single gate; the portcullis
was down, unusual for daytime; through it, he saw what looked like a small monastic
barracks. People were moving about inside, some in the black uniforms of sasenna,
others, with the shaven heads of priests, in white. Near the gate, he got a glimpse of
someone robed like a monk, but in flame-red rather than gray, the staff of a wizard in
his hand. One of the Church Wizards, the Red Dogs. For the first time he felt uneasy
at the thought of entering those walls.
"It's all right," Salteris said softly. "They don't see us yet."
They stood within full view of the gate, but Caris knew better than to question
the Archmage's statement. From his robes the old man drew a small wash-leather bag
and, opening it, tipped a little ball of what looked like hard-baked dough onto his
palm.
"This is a lipa, " he said. Looking more closely, Caris saw that it was, in fact,
made out of dough. Runes had been scratched into it with a pin or a fine stylus,
covering its surface with an almost invisible net of tracery. "Keep it where you can
get to it. Should any harm befall me, or should you and I be separated for more than
three hours, burn it. The other mages will come." He pulled shut the strings of the bag
again and handed it to Caris, never taking his eyes from the gates of the Silent Tower.
He started to move off again, but Caris held him back, troubled. "If Antryg's a