The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,57
go down?”
The ceremony of investiture, in which Esrex was given temporary governorship of the dower territories Mirane had brought to her middle-age husband, took place between the great course and the sweets, and Tally took her leave as soon as Esrex, Mirane, and the Duke had resumed their seats and the musicians had begun the light, flirty tunes that traditionally heralded the entry of dessert. She did not like the way Esrex’ pale, heavy-lidded eyes sought out her own two sons—Kir rosy and vigorous and just turned seven, four-year-old Brenat already asleep with a chicken bone clutched in one plump hand—or the way he glanced sidelong at the Duke’s fair-haired bride of ten weeks, as if trying to guess the reasons for the blooming sparkle that seemed to radiate from the core of her body.
In the deserted vestibule, the glow of the oil lamps showed Tally a piece of paper lying on one of the spindly-legged couches; she picked it up and saw it was a rough drawing of her father and a wizard. The wizard, a grotesque figure in a long robe with no effort made to distinguish which order of wizardry or who the wizard was, had removed her father’s head and was replacing it with that of a sheep.
Cold went through her, cold followed at once by a hot flood of furious anger. She ripped the paper in half, turned to thrust the pieces into the bowl of the nearest lamp, when a deep voice from the shadows said softly, “Don’t burn it.”
Looking up swiftly, she saw Gyzan the Archer standing with arms folded in the darkness between the vestibule’s many columns.
“Give it to your father. He may be able to identify who printed it, and where.”
“Would it do any good?” Her hands shook, her whole body swept with shivers of anger and a curious, helpless dread. From the great hall behind her the clashing of cymbals filtered, a bright glitter of sound—dancers in red with the long noses of goons were bounding and whirling among the tables, to the ripple of laughter and applause. “They just keep appearing, just like the rumors keep spreading. You can’t stop them any more than you can stop rumors.”
“Perhaps not.” The tall Blood-Mage came over to her and took the paper, held the pieces together to study the drawing. “But one can do what one can to find the reason behind it. Hmm. One of the milder ones, I see...” His hands on the cheap yellow handbill were brown and deft, and in the lamplight Tally noted how both his little fingers had been cut off just above the first knuckle in the strange rites his Order practiced and how the rest of the fingers were scarred with ritual cuts.
“The reason is because people hate the mageborn, isn’t it?” Tally followed him quietly across the vestibule, past the silent guards outside the bronze doors, and over the wavery harlequin of torchlight and darkness that fell like a silken quilt across the flagstones of the great court outside. “Because they fear them? Only now the fears aren’t just of a single wizard using spells to cheat honest men or seduce chaste women—they’re fears that wizards will organize and take over the Forty Realms. Which is funny,” she added with a sudden, shaky laugh, “when you think of it. I mean, the idea that any group of wizards could get together long enough to conspire in anything is something that could only be believed by someone who doesn’t know wizards.”
The sounds of argument in Jaldis’ rooms at the top of the octagonal library tower were clearly audible as Tally and Gyzan climbed the final flight of stairs from the uppermost of the book-rooms below. “Why not?” she heard the Gray Lady’s soft tones, now clipped and very angry. “Because you don’t want other wizards to learn how to communicate with other worlds than our own?”
“My dear lady,” Shavus’ gravelly bass rumbled. “It’s a matter of principle. Were the case different you’d be arguing for me, not against. The magic of the Dark Wells—the knowledge of how the Cosmos is put together and what things can affect its very fabric—is a powerful and terrible lore. It cost Jaldis years of seeking and study... it almost cost him his life seven years ago...”
Gyzan opened the door and let Tally pass before him into the room, the peacock feathers of her collar and headpiece flashing strangely in the soft, blue-white witchlight that flooded the neat