The Windrose Chronicles 1 - The Silent Tower (21 page)

Caris drained his mug in silent disapproval. Joanna, sitting between the two men on the hard, backless bench, mopped her bread in the stew. Worried as she was about remaining in Kymil after daybreak, she could not help being glad Antryg had vetoed immediate flight on the grounds that they wouldn't get any breakfast.

From their escape from the House of the Mages, Antryg had led them, illogically enough, to an all-night public bathhouse. “Who'd think of looking for fugitives from the Witchfinders in the public baths?”-an argument Joanna found cogent and Caris dismissed as utterly frivolous. Emerging clean, shampooed, and gasping from the cedar-lined sweatbox with its bubbling tub, Joanna found a bundle of secondhand petticoats, blue skirt, pink bodice, and shift that Antryg had acquired from an old clothes dealer next door. “There must be more old clothes dealers in the quarter of the Old Believers than in the rest of the city put together,” Caris had told her, when they'd met Antryg in the tavern, the sasennan looking uncomfortable and not very convincing in a peasant's knee breeches, woolen stockings, and coarse smock. “They all go into the trade and stay open till all hours.”

Antryg had been waiting for them, his graying hair close-curled with dampness, resplendent in a much-mended shirt of ruffled lawn that was far too big for him and a rusty black court coat whose silver bullion embroidery had long since been picked out. He'd retained the jeans and harness boots he'd picked up at the party and had added to his crystal earrings an assortment of gimcrack bead necklaces and a cracked quizzing glass. “You might be prepared to take the road like a wolf in winter,” he added, gesturing with his tankard at Caris, “but I'm not, and Joanna certainly isn't. By daybreak, the men who have been out combing the roads will be tired, and there will be enough people about so that we won't draw too much attention to ourselves.”

Caris glanced at Antryg's attire, sniffed, and said nothing. Joanna had the distinct impression that Caris knew very well he was no longer the leader of the expedition, but wasn't entirely sure either how this had come to pass or what to do about it. Antryg was, nominally at least, still his prisoner-only with the Council of Wizards gone or in hiding, there was nowhere Caris could take his prisoner for the moment. There was a good deal of dour frustration in his mien as he watched the wizard spooning honey onto bread.

“Very useful stuff, honey,” Antryg was saying. “Did you know the Mellidane scholars make a decoction of it to preserve embryos for study, as well as use it as a base for poultices?” He cocked his head a little, considering the thick, liquid-amber stream dripping from the spoon. “The ancient Saariens said it was the tears of the goddess Helibitare and mixed it with myrrh and gold and offerings-and it has other uses as well. You're aware, of course, that the guards at the city gates will be looking for the Archmage's sasennan who slew the abomination in the swamp? And they'll certainly be looking for that.”

Caris shied back from the touch of Antryg's finger as the mage flicked the purpling bruise on his cheek. “My cloak has a hood.”

“And terribly convincing in midsummer it is, too.” The mage sighed, sliding a few spare rolls into the capacious pockets of his coat.

“Did you really?” Joanna looked a little shyly up at Caris, remembering the mottled, hideous bruises she had seen on his chest and arms through the torn cloth of his jacket. “Slay it?” It felt strange to say. Nobody she had ever known had ever killed anything larger than a cockroach-or admitted to doing so, anyway.

“Not really,” the sasennan said, pausing in his rapid and efficient consumption of a hunk of beef. “My grandfather slew it. He caused lightning to strike the water of the swamp-lightning that is in truth electricity . . . . Do you have electricity, in your world?” he added.

“Sure.” Joanna dished herself out a second platter of stew and picked the trailing ends of her bodice lacings out of the gravy. The food made her feel much better, as had the bath. She had been twenty-four hours without sleep, much of it on her feet, either running or walking. It occurred to her suddenly to wonder whether Antryg had taken that into account in his erratic choice of a hiding place. “Our whole world runs on electricity-everything's powered by it, just about. Lights, radio, television, computers, you name it.”

“That music?” Caris asked, a little sourly.

“Particularly music-although, mind you, I think it's an insult to Johann Sebastian Bach to call that stuff music. But we won't go into that. The instruments are electric; they're electronically synthesized and electronically recorded and played back. The only human things involved are the group who plays and the guy who wrote it, and even those are being computerized these days.”

Across the room the two sluts rose and departed, leaving their incapacitated Romeo amid the beer mugs. The moving gust of air from the opening door made the brownish shadows jump over Caris' elegant cheekbones and nose as he glanced automatically up to make sure no one else entered. It was gray dawn outside, lightening towards day. Though reeking of garbage and horses, the air smelled fresher than the dark and beery frowsy inside.

“Record . . .” He looked back at her dubiously. “So that it can be reproduced at any time, you mean?”

Joanna nodded. “But you have the same thing. The-Crier, did you call it?” She glanced across at Antryg in time to see him cache the squat black bottle of gin he'd ordered in one of his copious coat pockets.

“Not really,” the wizard said. “The Crier doesn't record a sound, but an emotional reaction which you associate with sound, in much the same way the spell of tongues allows you to understand what I'm saying now. There are other spells which reproduce sound-Screamer and terror spells-fairly simple, really. Have you a screw-cap jar with a wide mouth in that bag of yours, my dear?”

Joanna wordlessly produced one. Antryg cast a quick glance to make sure the proprietress wasn't looking, then began spooning honey into it. He went on, “Caris heard his grandfather's voice calling for help, didn't you, Caris? Whereas you, Joanna, heard-your lover's?”

The word took her by surprise; her reaction to it, even more so. She had always subconsciously thought of Gary as “boyfriend”-a somewhat childish word never adequately replaced in adult parlance. She wondered, a moment later, why her first impulse had been to shy away from the use of the word lover-in the physical sense, that was what he had been. But she understood for the first time that she did make the distinction, and the distinction was a critical one.

Gary, she thought, a little sadly, would never be anything but a “boyfriend.”

He probably wouldn't even realize yet that she was gone, she reflected later, as they left the inn with the first brightness of the day dispersing the gloom in the lanes. Her car would still be at his place. Possibly he'd deduced-although privately she didn't consider Gary capable of deductive reasoning-that she'd gone home with someone else.

As she remembered his words about his being the only man who'd want her, the thought pleased some small, vindictive corner of her heart. Thus he might not find it odd she didn't answer her telephone all day yesterday, which was Sunday. It was only when he went to work today, smugly counting on meeting her at the office and offering her a ride to his place to pick up her car-with the obligatory Let's have dinner and Why
don't you spend the night thrown in-would he realize she was, in fact, missing. He might spend another day or two trying to reach Ruth before that jet-propelled, stainless steel butterfly remembered to listen to her answering machine, called him back, and they figured out that nobody had seen Joanna since Saturday night.

It was a slightly unnerving thought.

The air outside was fresher, reviving her and chasing the insistent cobwebs of sleepiness from her brain. The night had never really cooled off; the morning, already sticky-warm, though the sun was not yet in the sky, promised hot. It was in her mind that now would be the ideal time to make her escape from Antryg-except that, in this world, there was nowhere for her to go. It was rather like trying to escape from a rowboat in the middle of an ocean-her options were limited. The best she could do, she thought, was stay with the wizard and his captor and hope they could locate the Council-or, at worst, talk Antryg into sending her back himself.

Once outside the inn, Antryg turned, not toward the lane upon which it stood, but into the smelly little alleyway which ran between it and the bathhouse. Caris followed, clearly uneasy, because, in his peasant clothes, he couldn't openly have a weapon in hand. The pistol was concealed under his smock, available, but awkward to get at. Joanna, holding up her skirts from the mud, brought up the rear, reflecting that all the swashbuckler films she'd seen had apparently forgotten to mention certain facts of life, like pig dung in the lanes and the general awkardness of petticoats.

In the alley, Antryg unscrewed the cap from his jar of pilfered honey, tore pellets from the bread he'd pocketed, and, with the assistance of a little of the mud and offal liberally available underfoot, created half a dozen disgustingly convincing pustules to cover the bruise on Caris' face. “I don't suppose you could manage to drool and stagger a bit?” he asked judiciously, producing the gin bottle from another pocket. Its reeking contents, dumped over the sasennan's clothes, totally drowned the smell of the honey. Caris only looked indignant. “I didn't think so. Pity the rag shop didn't have sasennan's gear to fit Joanna-then she could have carried your sword openly instead of bundling it up as it is.”

Joanna glanced at the big, sloppy bundle which contained her own clothes, sneakers, and bulging purse, Caris' torn and shabby black uniform and boots, and a couple of hooded cloaks which could double as light blankets, should the weather turn cool. It was tied loosely onto a pole, which concealed the long, hard-edged shape of Caris' sword, but it still didn't look particularly convincing. “We could always say they belonged to my brother,” she pointed out. “The Witchfinders only think they're looking for one person, or at most two, or . . . Could you pass yourself off as a free sasennan?”

“A free sasennan is a contradiction,” Caris said, turning away from trying to catch a glimpse of his reflection in a nearby rain barrel. “There are no free sasenna. The Way of the Sasenna is to serve. We are the weapons, no more, of those who hold our vows.”

Joanna shouldered the long bundle and followed the two of them from the alley and into the lane once more. Flies were already beginning to buzz around the greenish scum in the gutters; Caris waved furiously at them as they hummed around the fake sores on his face.

“But what about you?” she asked.

His back stiffened. Momentarily he forgot that he was supposed to be a pox-ridden drunk. “My masters are and always will be the Council of Wizards,” he said. Under the dirty slime, his face was cold and proud as Athenian marble. “My grandfather is not dead . . . .”

“Isn't he?” Antryg asked softly.

Caris halted and turned to face the wizard in the lead-colored shadows of the lane. “If he were,” he said with equal quiet, “there is only one way that you could know it, Antryg Windrose.”

“Is there?” The mage tipped his head on one side, his gray eyes suddenly very weary behind their heavy specs. “He was my master, Caris; we traveled together for many years. Don't you think I would know?”

The sasennan's voice had an edge to it like chipped flint. “He was not your master,” he said softly. “Suraklin was your master.”

“So he was.” Antryg sighed, turning back to the lane. “So he was.”

They moved out into the main street. Though it was fully light now, the sun had not yet risen above the roofs of the houses; the gold brilliance of it flashed from the slates of the roofs, but the lanes themselves were like canals of still, blue shade. Rather to Joanna's surprise, since it couldn't have been more than five in the morning, the lanes were crowded, men, women, and small children jostling along the herringbone brick cobbles between the wooden houses. Some, in the dark livery of servants, carried market-baskets; tiny children and old men in rags held out skinny hands to them and whined for alms. A few of the women were better dressed, strolling with their maids and looking about them, as Joanna was doing, savoring the glory of sun flashing from the wings of the pigeons that circled overhead and the sweet, wild scent of the hay marsh that blew in over the stinks of the waking town. But most of those abroad on the street, roughly dressed and still-faced, hurried drearily along with the stride of those whose sleep has been insufficient and who care nothing for the beauty of a day which will not be theirs.

They turned a corner into the main thoroughfare of Kymil. The clattering of wheels and hooves which Joanna had heard far-off grew louder, and the slanting sunlight sparkled on the broad street before her, the tepid air redolent with the smell of horses. Carts in incredible numbers clattered by, laden with produce or rickety coops of chickens; butchers' wagons darted between them, as if trying to outpace pursuing swarms of flies; drays of sand or beer barrels rumbled heavily on the cobbles. Just ahead of them, Joanna saw a little boy with a broom dart out into the street to sweep a path through the accumulated muck for a couple of well-dressed ladies. One of them flung the boy a coin, which he caught like a Cubs outfielder jumping for a pop fly.

Joanna stood still upon the flagway, the bundle forgotten on her shoulder, staring around her in a kind of amazement. Yesterday's walk through the countryside and last night's brush with Church authorities and magic had not prepared her for the thoroughly prosaic scene before her. Antryg paused beside her, causing Caris to turn back toward them suspiciously, but the wizard only asked, slightly amused, “What is it?”

She shook her head. The truth sounded silly, but she said, “I sort of expected it to be . . . more medieval.”

Antryg grinned, comprehending her surprise and appreciating her rueful self-amusement at her assumptions. “Not the sort of place you expected to find wizards in, is it?”

Joanna looked around her again. Down the lane to their left, massive, dreary brick factories crouched against the shining gold of the sun-shot river; a group of little girls in patched dresses moved past like a school of fish and, with unwilling haste, joined the throng of men and women milling toward the factory gates. Beside her, Caris said, “It is why wizards are forbidden to touch human affairs-so that we can have such a world.” He shrugged, clearly ill at ease in his peasant clothes without a weapon in his hand. “Come.”