The Windrose Chronicles 1 - The Silent Tower (30 page)

They passed over the arches of a crowded bridge to cross the nose of an island that lay like an overcrowded houseboat in the middle of the Glidden River-like the he de la Cite in Paris, Joanna guessed, the medieval heart of the town. All the buildings of Angelshand were built of the iron-gray local granite, giving an impression of darkness and weight absent in the largely wooden city of Kymil; on Angel's Island, the soot of ages added to the somber hue. The thick, stumpy towers of a fortress glowered above an assortment of crumbling gambrel roofs and gargoyle gutters, like an ogre's frowning brow; elsewhere, beyond, she thought she saw the spires of a church.

“St. Cyr fortress.” Caris nodded towards those ancient walls. “The residence of the Bishop of Angelshand-and the prison of the Inquisition.” He glanced up ahead of him at Antryg in the driving seat, unconcernedly steering the team around a mender of tin cups who'd set up shop in the middle of the lane and the elegant carriage whose owner had pulled up in the stream of traffic to watch him. In Caris' eye Joanna saw the speculation and wariness with which he'd regarded the mad wizard in the Ponmarish around Kymil and she felt a qualm of unease.

The truce was over. They had reached their goal. From here they would pursue their own purposes once again. At the thought of Caris turning Antryg over to the mad Regent, she shivered, though she knew that, for all his care of them both, Antryg had never proven his innocence of kidnapping both the Archmage and her. He had, beyond denying categorically that he'd had anything to do with any of it, offered no alternative account of his activities, and Joanna was uncomfortably aware that his protestations of complete ignorance were lies.

She glanced up at him now, as he guided the horses through the tightpacked traffic and indescribable clamor of the bridge from the island to the more stylish districts on the far bank. The din on the bridge was hellish, the clatter of iron-shod wheels on granite cobbles striving with the shrieks of ragged beggars, scarf sellers, match hawkers, flower girls and noodle vendors. The sidewalks were crowded with liveried servants and monks in gray, with Old Believers in their black robes and macram braids, townsmen in coarse browns and blues, fierce-looking sasenna, and whores in bright chintz, painted to within an inch of their lives. The air was rank with the stink of horse droppings and the fetid odor of the murky river below. Beside her Antryg was rubbernecking like a delighted tourist.

He had, she remembered, been a prisoner for seven years.

It took them an hour and more, but eventually he managed to steer them away from the clotted slums and markets of the riverside and toward the more fashionable districts nearer the Imperial Palaces to the north. Knowing she wasn't likely to get an answer that meant anything to her, Joanna refrained from asking their destination. Caris kept silent as well, as much, she suspected, from a desire to remain quiet and have Antryg forget he was there until he was ready to take action as from the fact that, for the moment, there was absolutely no action he could take.

In any case, Antryg seemed to know where he was going; but then, Antryg generally did.

She was still a little surprised when he drew rein in an elegant square; she had been half expecting him to go to some shady acquaintance in the city's underworld for shelter. But this was clearly one of the best neighborhoods of the city. Tall townhouses of graceful, if narrow, proportion looked onto a central square of park, where little girls in miniature gowns and corsets walked under the eye of their governesses. Two other carriages were already drawn up, unmarked and with closed curtains, their coachmen wearing plain livery. Antryg grinned and shook his head as he helped Joanna down from the high step.

“Hasn't changed a bit, I see,” he commented, as he led the way up the imposing flight of marble steps. To the footman in flamingo livery who opened the door he said, “Send someone down to hold our horses and tell Magister Magus that the greatest dog wizard in the world is here to see him.”

Without batting an eye, the footman murmured, “Yes, sir,” and stepped aside to let them in.

“Magister Magus?” Caris sounded scandalized as a second footman escorted them up a curving staircase with graceful iron balustrades and into a drawing room opulently furnished in rose, gold, and black. “That charlatan! That-that toadstone-peddler!”

“What, haven't you been here before?” There was a twinkle of deep mischief in Antryg's eyes. The only other occupant of the drawing room, a handsome if zaftig woman, brutally corsetted into yards of lilac faille, regarded them for a moment and then turned away with a sniff at the sight of Caris' plain livery and Antryg's shabby coat, crystal beads, and bruised face.

Looking around her, Joanna noticed that, for all its rather pseudooriental finery, its pink-and-black tufted carpets, and statues in rose agate and alabaster of the Old Gods, everything in the drawing room was of the highest quality and obviously expensive. Peddling toadstones, she surmised, was clearly something that paid extremely well.

“Certainly not!” Caris sounded as if Antryg had asked him that question about a leather bar. “This is . . .”

The word `disgusting' was obviously on his lips, but Antryg finished the sentence with “. . . Far handsomer than your grandfather's, isn't it?”

The young man's eyes narrowed. His voice was very quiet as he said, “You should be the last one, wizard, to talk to me about my grandfather.” But for just a moment, Joanna had the feeling that a good deal of Caris' annoyance stemmed from just that comparison.

After a few moments, the inner doors of the room opened to the sound of a softly tapped bronze gong. In a vast waft of fragipani incense, another woman emerged from them, also middle-aged and dressed in what Joanna guessed to be several thousand dollars worth of brocade and rosepoint lace. She leaned on the arm of a slender, graceful man, whose black velvet robe bore as its sole adornment an emblem, rather like an ankh, of silver literally crusted with diamonds, which hung at his breast. This might have had a religious significance, but Joanna, studying the room, was rather more inclined to believe he'd chosen the combination to match his hair, which was black streaked through with silver, like frosted ebony. His voice, as he spoke to the lady, was low, trained, and extremely beautiful.

“So you see, there is nothing for you to trouble yourself about, Countess,” he was saying. “I have seen in your future a young man to whom you were spiritually connected in a former life. Whether it is the young man who now troubles you, or one more fit than he, only time and the gods will reveal. As for your husband, do not worry. Only have faith, and these things will even themselves out, as ripples do upon the lake of time.”

Raising one slender, white hand, adorned with a solitaire ruby the size of a man's thumbnail, he made a sign of benediction over the Countess' head. She sank gracefully to one knee, and kissed his hand; then, rising, she drew her veils over her face and at least a foot and a half of high-piled hair and was gone.

Turning to the other lady, Magister Magus said, “My dear Marquise.” His eyes, Joanna saw, were the clear green of alexandrite or peridot, deep-set and penetrating under silver-shot black brows. “I can see that your heart is troubled, that you are faced by a situation in which you are caught between two alternatives. But a part of that trouble lies in the fact that today is the Day of Ill-Fortune for you, under the star of Antirbos. It is not a day upon which any advice would bring you good. Go home, then, and to your chamber. Eat only a light supper, drink a single glass of wine, and read and meditate, thinking pure thoughts to combat the leaden influence of the Black Star which weights your heart. If your grief is still with you on the morrow, return to me then.”

Joanna privately considered this dismissal rather brusque-after all, there was no telling how long the poor Marquise had been waiting-but, like the Countess, she curtsied reverently and kissed the Magus' hand. “From you,” she murmured-somewhat fatuously, Joanna thought “even silence is good advice. It is all exactly as you say."

Soberly, he conducted her to the door. In a rustle of patchouli and petticoats, she descended the steps, while Magister Magus stood with his arms outspread to touch the sides of the doorway, still as a dark image of ebony and diamond, until the building vibrated softly with the closing of the outer doors.

Then, with a billowing sigh, he pushed the doors to and turned. White teeth flashed beneath his dark mustache. “Antryg, you old faker, where'd you spring from?” He caught the tall wizard in his arms, and the two hugged one another, laughing, like long-parted brothers. “Greatest dog wizard in the world indeed! A fine thing to say in the house of Magister Magus!”

“Well, you're the one who said I had it in me,” Antryg retorted with a grin. Then, soberly, he laid one hand on Magister Magus' shoulder, gestured with his quizzing glass, and intoned, “As for your husband, fear not. I see in your future a man, handsome and well-favored, who will treat you with the kindness that a lady of your goodness and exalted destiny deserves. The River of Eternity flows past many shores, and fish of all descriptions glide in its waters. Sometimes its currents are rough, sometimes they are smooth . . . .”

The dog wizard laughed at the imitation with genuine delight. “It pays the bills, my friend-it pays the bills.” He frowned suddenly. “But what are you doing here? Don't tell me it's you they've been looking for?”

“Well,” Antryg admitted, “they are looking for me—the Council for getting out of the Tower, and the Regent for insulting him on the road, and the Church . . . Why?”

Magister Magus shook his head. “God only knows-and maybe the Prince Regent. But a week ago Sunday, every Council wizard in the town was dropped on by the Witchfinders, backed up with the Prince's men. They went through the Yard like reapers through corn. I was ready to run; but if I'd been caught running, they'd have asked why.” He shuddered, then chuckled ruefully. “Too frightened to run. I'm told even Cerdic cleared out of town.” He glanced at Caris, still in his rust-colored groom's livery, and back to Antryg with one brow raised. “A bodyguard? A sasennan?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Antryg grinned. “I see trade hasn't been hurt.”

“You call only two clients not hurt? Antryg, this place is generally full! They arrive as soon as they wake up-which is about three in the afternoon-and sit here until dark, just waiting to give me money for telling them what they want to hear. I'm almost as popular as a first-class hairdresser! This is the first day anyone's come in a week. The Court's like a bunch of children when someone's told nursie about the games behind the barn.”

He sighed, and all the verve seemed to go out of him, leaving him just a thin little man in his elaborate robe and diamond chain, stressed, weary, and very frightened.

Quietly, Antryg asked, “And has your magic faded?”

Magister Magus' head came up with a snap.

“Oh, yes,” Antryg said softly. “As I could have been a very good dog wizard, you could have been one of the finer Council wages, if you had had the teaching.”

The dog wizard sniffed. “Much good my powers would have done me then,” he muttered. “And my teaching was good enough. But for God's sake, Antryg, don't let that about! As I see it, my only defense against the Witchfinders is that they think I'm a complete fake. That's enough to make a cat laugh, isn't it?” he added bitterly. “I advertise powers they don't think I've got to make my living, and you . . .” He frowned again. “But you were always different, weren't you? How do you know . . .” His words caught a little, then he went on, “. . . about what's been happening to my powers?”

“What?” Antryg's voice was low in the incense-laden hush of the overdecorated room. “Three, four times in the last week and a half and twice or three times before that?”

Magister Magus was staring at him, as his own clients must stare when he revealed some private secret, deduced, as Joanna had seen Antryg deduce them when he was telling fortunes on the road, from the stain on a glove or the nervous shift of the eyes.

“It's happened to all the wizards, Magus-and to all people, hasn't it?”

The dapper little man shook his head disbelievingly, “Last week the Countess said . . . And the quarrels they've been having . . . Senseless, stupid! One woman said she seemed to wake out of a trance, with a knife in her hand, stealing toward her husband's room. Oh, she hates him, yes, but . . . she feared she was going out of her mind . . . .”

“Perhaps she was,” Antryg murmured. “Perhaps it was only despair. It is sapping all life, all energy, drawing away both strength and hope for . . . what? I don't know what it is or how it's being done or why. But I know that it is being done. Do you know who's escaped the Church's net?”

“What?” Caught in the frightening vision of the fading of both life and magic, it took Magus an instant to realize his friend had changed the subject again.

“Rosamund? Aunt Min? Old Whitwell Simm? It's an interesting thing,” Antryg added, half to himself, “that they're making the distinction not of who has powers, but who can use them effectively-the Council wages, in fact. I wonder whose decision that was?”

The dog wizard shook his head. “God only knows,” he repeated. “It must be all of them, mustn't it? Because if any one of the great ones escaped, it would stand to reason he'd rescue the others, wouldn't he?” He led the way through an impressively carved ebony door into a perfectly ordinary dining room and stripped off his velvet robe and pectoral as he went, to reveal beneath them the neat, dark-blue breeches, sober waistcoat, and white shirtsleeves and stockings of a city professional.

“Yes,” Antryg agreed mildly, taking the soft velvet weight of the robe to hold for him, “so it would.”

On his way to the sideboard for a glass of the wine that stood in the cooler there, the dog wizard paused and regarded Joanna curiously, then came back to her, his dark brows drawn down slightly over his aquiline nose.

“Please excuse me, my dear,” he said after a moment's scrutiny. “I'm usually good at guessing someone's trade, if they have one. That so-called groom of yours is obviously a sasennan, for instance.” Caris, in the doorway, stiffened a little, indignant. “Your demeanor clearly marks you as possessing a trade, my child, and an income of your own, but I cannot for the life of me determine what it is. Do you mind my asking?”