The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,108
felt her breath thicken and heard the dizzying roar of blood sounding in her ears. It seemed to take her forever to collect her thoughts. “Do you know... who was among those arrested?”
“The Archmage,” Marc said quietly. “The Harospix Harsprodin, who had been one of the Queen’s advisors. The Queen was deeply shocked at his betrayal, and by his confession that it was he who’d been causing her little boy’s seizures, and even more shocked when it became obvious that your father’s illness was almost certainly the result of the Archmage’s spells.”
“Shavus wouldn’t—”
Marc shook his head. “According to his own confession, he cast the illness upon your father when your father began to suspect him of trying to steal his soul, of trying to rule the country through him. Tally,” he insisted, as she shook her head, refusing to believe, “it was written in his confession! It was what he told Mijac—the doctors sent to your father’s bedside by the priests of Agon can’t make head nor tail of his illness! He betrayed your father. The wizards he has sheltered for so long, befriended for so long, were only using him! Don’t you understand?”
With a feverish shiver Tally remembered the letters she’d had all summer from her father, written in Damson’s neat, secretarial hand—the wording had been frequently reminiscent of Damson, as well. She wondered if the signature on the orders for arrest had been the same as on her letters: unsteady, mechanical, like a man gravely ill—or a man deeply drugged.
“Do you know,” she faltered, “what time that night the wizards were arrested? Whether it was before or after midnight?”
And Marc shook his head.
They will have destroyed the Dark Well, Tally thought, crossing the paddock quietly and turning toward the villa, almost shocked at her own ability to appear calm. Her heart pounded sickeningly in her breast, and her belly turned cold every time she thought about how confession was extracted—about what Rhion had told her of his own brush with the priests of Agon.
Was he one of the ones they took? She thought about it for a moment and found it unlikely. Even if he had... Her mind shied from the thought of what Esrex would have done to force a confession from Rhion as to the paternity of her sons. Even if he had withstood it and died, Esrex wouldn’t have passed up the chance to let me know.
But if he didn’t make the crossing before the arrest—if he didn’t come stumbling out of the Dark Well right into the arms of Esrex and the masked servants of the Hidden God—that means he’s still stranded wherever he is, with Jaldis dead, without magic, in trouble, he said.
And there was no one of sufficient power to bring him home.
She paused at the rear door of the house, hating the thought of returning to her rooms. The purple handprints would be fading by this time, as they did after a few hours, though the Hand-Pricker in the village had assured her that at a word from him they would return. For all the good that would do, she thought bitterly. Marc would never consent to bringing him here—and as things are, if he has any sense of self-preservation he won’t come.
And in any case, disposing of one spy would only mean there’d soon be another one that she didn’t know about. His devotees are everywhere, Damson had said.
With sudden resolution, Tally turned her steps left, crossing behind the rustic sandstone of the stable’s east wall and thence around to the long, sloppy succession of sheds and huts that housed the kennels and the mews. At this time of the day the dog boy was in the rough brick kitchen, preparing the mulch of chopped mutton and grain the dogs were fed on those days when they weren’t hunting; the pack bounded happily to the low fence to greet her, swarming around her skirts, tails lashing furiously as she climbed over the stile and hopped down among them. Despite her fears, despite her dread, she had to laugh at the earnest joy in those furry unhuman faces, and clucked to them, calling them the love names that always made Marc roll up his eyes: “My rosy peaches, my angelmuffins, my little wuzzlepoufkins...” The big staghounds and mastiffs, the rangy wolf killers whose shoulders came up to her waist rolled ecstatically on the ground, long legs waving in the air, for her to scratch their bellies.