The Windrose Chronicles 1 - The Silent Tower (35 page)

“I never knew he was associated with mages,” he began again in a strained voice. “The Witchfinders said they found evil things and evidente of some horrible, angry spirit in his workroom. They asked me to order the house put under seal. I think they wanted to see who would come for them.”

Joanna sniffed. “They would. All he was doing was experimenting with electricity. Peelbone would burn the inventor of the clock for daring to interfere with the Sole God's prerogative of determining time.”

“Perhaps,” Antryg said quietly. He took his spectacles from their ledge and seated himself carefully at the base of one of the pillars, wincing a little as he folded his long arms around his drawn-up knees. “But the fact remains that someone broke into his workroom. And I suspect, from what you two say, that it was someone who could summon and control elementals, give them body and form.” He cocked his head up at the Regent. “Is that why you fear the Council?”

The Prince stood looking down at him for a moment, holding back that last surrender, that last admission. He drew a short, sharp breath that hissed through his nostrils and looked away. Joanna could see his mouth work for a moment. Then, as if he were aware of it, he pressed his hand to his lips, forcing it still. When he took his hand away, his fingers were shaking. “I don't know,” he whispered wretchedly. “They are the ones who-who are supposed to have power. When the Bishop of Kymil said there was a plot and asked for my sanction to investigate it, I thought . . .” He took a deep breath, like a man fighting to steady himself against some terrible strain. “I do not know who it is I have to fear,” he said at last. “I only know that, if you have been a prisoner these seven years, Antryg Windrose, it cannot be you.”

Antryg said nothing, waiting in silence while the Prince considered what he could say. After a moment, Pharos went on, still in that hoarse, frightened whisper, “And you are a mage. It is why I ordered my men to bring you here when they caught you, instead of turning you back to the Witchfinders. Since Herthe told me you had been a prisoner in the Tower, unable to work magic, I knew that I had to find you. You are the only one I can speak to, the only one it is safe to speak to-if it is safe-of certain things.”

The wizard's deep, beautiful voice was gentle and unalarming in the buried stillness of the firelit stone room. “What things?”

The Prince drew another deep breath and was quiet a moment, sorting his thoughts; even his restlessly twisting little hands grew still, clasped before him. “It was-balderdash,” he said at last. “I was always told that. Magic. My father . . .” He swallowed. “He-he favored the wizards, but he kept them all at arm's distance. My tutor never approved. I thought his favor was excessive; certainly I never thought their powers were any more real than those cheapjack toadstone-peddlers or the granny-wives who claim they can put a bad word on someone's cow. They spoke of powers, but they never did anything at all. Even now, I don't know if I'm mad or sane, whether this is part of the old madness or some new twist.”

Gently leading him, Antryg looked up at him and asked, “What?”

The Prince paced a few steps, then turned back again, some of the tension easing out of his body with a kind of hopeless inner surrender. When he spoke again, his voice was deliberately matter-of-fact. “About three months ago, I fell in love with a boy in the household of the Duke of Albrete-an enchanting youth, amber and alabaster, with skin so clear you could trace the path of a swallow of wine down his throat. Elfwith was his name-not that it matters, and I certainly didn't expect to remember it three months afterwards. I probably wouldn't, except for what happened to him.” He stilled in his pacing and swallowed again, looking down at Antryg, who sat unmoving at the base of the pillar, the tawny light playing restlessly across his absurd, bespectacled face.

“He-died. I'd asked him to go up to my rooms and given orders for the guards in the secret staircase to let him pass-even the secret stair into the room is guarded. I was delayed by a matter of state-those wretched ambassadors from Senterwing about that brainless bitch I'm to marry. All very secret.”

Antryg nodded. Joanna remembered, sometime on the carriage journey, Caris saying the wizard had read that marriage in a spread of cards. She felt very little surprise, even in the face of what she knew about the Prince's preferences, in hearing that it was true.

"Well, Elfwith came hurrying down to the guard on the secret stair, saying he thought there was someone in my rooms. They turned out and searched, they said-I heard all this later-but there was no sign of anyone having been there. So Elfwith went in to wait. And I found him, an hour and a half later, dying-dying horribly in my bed, his limbs covered with sores, eaten with them. If it was a sickness, it was nothing Narwahl had ever seen, but he claimed there was no poison that could do it, either. I swore him on his life to secrecy, because there was the boy's family to consider as well. Of course the bedding was all burned, but there was no other case of such a sickness ever reported anywhere, before or since. I know that, for Narwahl looked in every book and journal he possessed.

“Then-it might have been two weeks later-I was sleeping . . .”

“Alone?” Antryg inquired, and Pharos managed an ironic smirk.

“You don't think I ever let myself fall asleep in the presence of those stupid little creatures, do you? I send them away. Lately I've kept Kanner in my room when I sleep, though I didn't do so then. He's very loyal to me. He was sasennan until he lost his hearing through a fever. I know that, when sasenna become flawed, they're supposed to kill themselves, I suppose he's added the flaw of cowardice to that of deafness, but I've made it worth his while. I find having a deaf servant supremely useful. In any case, I woke up-I don't know why-it might have been a dream. I dream . . .”

He paused again, then visibly shied from the subject, like a nervous horse, and resumed his pacing. His gestures, repeated in vast, amorphous shadows on the wall at his back, moved as if they would shape the scene from air. “The bed curtains were open a little, and I could see part of the paneling of the wall by the light of the night lamp. There was a shadow on it, clearly thrown, but huge, distorted-the long robe of a mage. I saw him move his hand, doing something at the lamp table I thought. I cried out for the guards; but when they came in-nothing. There was no one there, nor was there a way he could have left; the corner he was in is near the outside wall, and there was no possibility of a secret passage, even if I had not had the room sounded a dozen times. I had the water in the pitcher that stood on that table given to one of the palace dogs. It seemed all right at the time, but the dog died four, five days later. Too long for poison, much too long. And yet . . .”

He pressed his hand to his mouth again, a nervous gesture, to still or to hide the unsteadiness of those too-full, painted lips. “I couldn't tell anyone after that, you see,” he went on, a little thinly. “There was no proof. They would have mocked me if I'd said I thought it was magic, as they mocked me when . . .”

He caught himself up again, over some old memory, and went hastily on, “They would have said I was mad, as they did before. And I am mad. But not-not mad in that way. Not until now. Twice I've waked in the night and heard knocking somewhere in the room-it's vanished when I called the guards; and after the second time, I had Kanner in the room with me and at least one other guard. I don't even know whether I really heard it the second time or not-I was dreaming-I don't know.”

He ran his hands through his barley-gold hair, twisting the careful curls awry; in the firelight, the muscles of his long, narrow jaw quivered with the violence of their compression.

“I fought against it for a long time,” he said at length. “I did not believe in magic, but-I think someone is trying to kill me through its use. Is this possible?”

He turned back to look at Antryg, hungry desperation in his eyes.

After a long moment, the mage nodded. With a movement oddly graceful for one so gawky, he got to his feet, still steadying himself against the pillar, and put a gentling hand on the Prince's shoulder. “How long since the last attempt?”

“If it was an attempt,” Pharos whispered. “It was only knocking . . . .”

“It was an attempt,” Antryg said, and there was no doubt in his voice. “How long?”

“Two-three weeks. Shortly before-shortly before the Bishop of Kymil sent word that she had uncovered a plot of the Council of Mages against the Church and against the Realm. I issued jurisdiction for their arrest. Then, two days later, Narwahl . . .”

As if quieting the hysterics of a child, Antryg closed his hands around the Prince's trembling fingers. It occurred to Joanna to wonder whether Pharos had seen that attic room, sprayed with fresh blood and glass.

“And you went to Kymil?” Antryg asked, and the Prince nodded. “To find out what Herthe knew?”

“Yes.” The Prince nodded again, his voice a little stronger, a little steadier. “Herthe and her guards came and met me at the posthouse. She told me who you were. I knew then I had to find you, get to you before the Witchfinders did. I knew you were the only one who couldn't have done it, who couldn't possibly be in on it. She spoke of abominations in the land and said that it seemed likely you were coming to Angelshand. I made some excuse, turned back, and ordered my men to search for you, find you before the Church could have you killed. I thought you might have gone to Devilsgate, to take refuge with that stupid, saintly hypocrite Cerdic . . . .” A flash of vicious bitterness surfaced in his voice, like the glint of paranoia that suddenly gleamed in his narrowed eyes at the mention of his cousin's name. Antryg said nothing, and Joanna, who had been thoroughly charmed with the Regent's cousin, likewise refrained from adding her two cents to the conversation at this point.

After a moment, the madness faded from Pharos' eyes, and with it, his hard-held calm. He swallowed; his voice came out small and cracked with strain. “I came back here today. But it was as if-as if from the time I spoke to Herthe, the morning after I met you in the posthouse, I knew it was hopeless. It seemed to me then that I could see my whole future, and it was empty-that I was mad, like my father.” He faltered, then went on, “And in time I would become an imbecile like him. Even though these things I feared had no existence, they would destroy me, and there was nothing to do, nowhere to come, except back here to my death. I tried having the Council mages imprisoned, but the Church has its mages, too. And there's still tonight to sleep through-”

His voice broke suddenly, as if weight had been put on a flawed beam; his breath hissed, and he stood for a moment, shivering in silence and, Joanna realized, shame at his fears.

Very gently, his hands still in the Prince's convulsive grip, Antryg said, “Here?”

When Pharos glanced sharply at him, Antryg went on, “I take it this is the dungeon under the original part of the old Summer Palace.”

The Prince's lips moved in a quirk that might have been a smile; he glanced down at the big hands he still held and released them. As if aware of the wreck he'd made of his coiffure, he put up one gloved hand to straighten a snail-shell curl. “Yes. I've taken it over for my own. It's sufficiently isolated in the grounds to keep gossip mongers away when I want a little private sport.”

“Is there anywhere else you could sleep?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“It might,” Antryg said mildly. “If you were more superstitious, you'd probably have thought yourself of the possibility that there's a wizard's mark in your rooms.”

There were seven of them.

Wearing a ruffled shirt and breeches fetched by Joris from the wardrobes of the Prince's pages (“I'm tired of walking around looking like I've just escaped from the cover of a historical romance!”) Joanna followed Antryg and the Prince up several flights of stairs, passing from the ancient stonework of the dungeons to the renovated rococo grace of the Prince's palace above. It was now quite dark outside, but the Prince's private apartments blazed with the light of a thousand candles and lamps; as they moved from room to brilliantly lit room, followed by Joris, Kanner, and two other guards, it occurred to Joanna that the Regent was probably terrified of the dark.

The warm brilliance of the candles, so different from the hard and prosaic electricity Joanna had grown up with, lent a curiously dreamlike air to those rooms, with their shell-shaped curlicues of gold and scarlet, their delicate furniture, and their sinuous marbles. In his shabby black coat, spectacles, and quizzing glass, Antryg moved through them like some daft Victorian ghost hunter, tapping at the chinoiserie of the panels and calling the marks, one by one, to faint and glowing life.

One mark, on the ancient stonework behind the paneling itself, was extremely old, readable only when Antryg pressed his hands to the painted wood. Another made him smile. “I wonder what the mage Nyellin was doing here? It's six hundred years old-nothing to do with you, Pharos-but she did have rather a reputation as a meddler herself.”

His hand brushed the scarlet-lacquered wood between the bedroom windows. Under his fingers, another mark appeared, only to be seen from the corner of the eye-a chance glimmer of candlelight, floating, it seemed, above or below the actual surface of the panel, as if someone had scribbled with a finger on the air in light.

Joanna remembered, with an uneasy chill, the sign on the wall of the main computer room at San Serano, seen past the dark shadow of the strangler's shoulder; she remembered also the darkness of Gary's upstairs room and the red reflection of computer lights off Antryg's spectacles as he'd brushed his hand, just so, along the wall by the door.

I can't tell you the truth and I don't wish to lie to you . . . .

You are in this world under my protection . . . .

“A wizard's mark will call him to it,” Antryg explained over his shoulder to the Prince, who followed, cautious as if the marks themselves could kill. “He can find it, wherever he is, and go to it. If the mark is strong enough, he can use it to influence things near it, even when he is not present, sometimes even work certain spells through it without being there.”