The Silent Tower

by Barbara Hambly

  “We will wait here,” Salteris’ voice said out of the shadows, “until full darkness covers the land.”

  His shape melted from the gloom; his face and the silky white mane of his hair were one large blur, his hands, two small ones at his dark sides. “And then, my son, we will return to the Silent Tower, and I will speak to Antryg Windrose myself.”

  He settled quietly at Caris’ side. From somewhere about his person, he drew his worn black gloves, stitched with shabby bullion on their backs, a present from the Emperor, before imbecility had claimed the man. He began to put them on, then changed his mind and tucked them instead into his belt.

  “Are you cold?” Caris asked, and the old man shook his head.

  “Only tired.” He undid the small satchel at his belt and took from it bread, cheese, and two small green apples, which he divided with his grandson. Though it was not the Way of the Sasenna to eat on duty—and Caris considered himself on duty—he accepted the food gratefully.

  Ruefully, the Archmage went on, “And you must be in far worse case than I, my son. I apologize, but I must speak to Antryg alone, without the Bishop present, and it must be soon. If he knows something about the abominations, I must learn it, before the Witchfinders take it for their excuse to destroy us all. You heard them today....”

  Caris paused in wolfing down his supper to stare at him in surprise. “I did,” he said, “but I had no idea you were there.”

  “I wasn’t.” The old man smiled. “But a mage can listen along the energy-trails—and I have been particularly watchful of Peelbone lately.” He sighed and stroked the velvet-soft leather of the gloves at his belt. “It is an old trouble.” He sighed. “And the reason, indeed, for the Council vows—the underpinning of the Church’s whole attitude toward magic and toward the dog wizards. No society, they say, can exist with both magic and industry—technology—the use of tools and machines. It takes so little magic to ruin the balance of a machine, my son; and magic can be worked by so few. For thousands of years, power lay in the hands of those who were powerful mages themselves, or who could afford to hire them. It was in those years that the Silent Tower was built, and for that reason. It was then that all the binding-spells were wrought, great and small—from the Sigil of Darkness and other things like it which are utterly abominable to the mageborn, down to the little ones which make this or that thing na-aar—metaphysically dead and impervious to magic—like the pistols and crossbows of the Witchfinders, so that no mage can fox their aim or cause them to misfire, and such things as spell-cord and spancels. But it was all politics. The people were no better for it.”

  He sighed again. “The Sole God of the Church is not the god of the mageborn, Caris. As sasennan of the Council, you do not make the signs of obeisance in the presence of holy things. In time, the Church raised its own corps of wizards—the hasu—and used their magic to defeat the wizards in a long war, which ended on the Field of Stellith, five hundred years ago. And they were aided by other mages, not of the Church, but who could see that, in that, the Church was right; the privileges of the few had to be curtailed for the rights of the many. That is the reason for the Council Vows.

  “And since that time...” He shrugged. “I fear they were right. Humankind now has great new looms and gins to weave its cloth, in the factory towns of Kymil and Parchasten and Angelshand. They talk about making engines that will go from the power of steam to work them one day. There are new sorts of farm machines to sow the seed better than a man scattering it broad-cast from a sack, and engines to harvest and thrash the grain—who knows, one day they may find a way to power them by steam as well. They have ships built light and strong enough to race the wind that can make the voyage to Saarieque and the East in sixty days, to make men’s fortunes in silk and tea and the emeralds of the Isles.”

  “But that isn’t all!” Caris broke in, distressed at the sadness in the old man’s voice. “There is more in the world than—than money in the pockets of the merchants and machines to make things to sell! Isn’t there?”

  And for a time, only the sweet hush of the long evening answered him—the sleepy twilight cry of whippoorwills from the boggy ground near the stream, the strange, half-hurtful stirring of me earth-magic whispering up out of the ground beneath the grass. He felt, even with his own small and, he suspected, fading resources, the magic all around him, alive and vibrant, and wondered how, even for the good of everyone in the world, it could be for a moment denied. The knowledge that one day soon he would lose it was like the knowledge that he would one day die.

  “There is,” the old man said finally. “The will—the fire—the striving. They deny it and claim that it does not exist, until all those who listen come to believe it and do not know how to name it once they feel it quicken in themselves, except by such names as ‘foolishness,’ and ‘insanity,’ and ‘badness.’”

  “And Suraklin?”

  Caris spoke the name softly, within these hills that had been Suraklin’s; within sight of the Tower where the Dark Mage had once been chained to await his death. Salteris, an almost invisible shape in the dusk, sighed again, and the last light caught one thread of silver in his hair. It was a long time before he replied.

  “Suraklin was the last of the great ones,” he said, “the last of the wizard-kings, born long after his time with the will and the strength to dominate. So much of his power came from the fact that most of those who obeyed him, through fear and, yes, through love, refused to believe that this magic truly existed. And his magic was the greatest— truly the greatest. I knew it. He would have been Archmage, were it not that the others in the Council distrusted the depthless darkness of his soul.”

  He turned and faced Caris in the intense, phthalo darkness of the summer night, his eyes nothing but shadows under the star-edged dome of his bald forehead. “That is why I fear now,” he said softly. “Antryg Windrose was Suraklin’s student.”

  For a time Caris could only stare at him, aghast and silent. For a week he had lived close to the legends that surrounded the Dark Mage; the memory of Suraklin clung to the land like a decaying ghost. It was hard enough to believe there were people alive who had known him, though Caris knew his grandfather must have. That the mad, oddly charming prisoner in the Silent Tower had been his pupil.... He stammered, “But—the Bishop said he was yours.”

  “I found him two years after the breaking of Suraklin’s Citadel,” Salteris said. “He was hiding in a monastery in the Sykerst. Nineteen years old; no older than you are now, my son, and already a little mad. I taught him, yes, though he had very little to learn. We traveled together for many years, both then and after he was elected to the Council, but always I had the sense in him of hidden pockets of darkness, buried so deep maybe he was unaware of them himself. There was a time when I loved him as a son. But I never underestimated him.”

  “Then don’t do so now,” Caris said, looking over at the old man’s dim shape in the gloom with a sudden qualm of fear. “Don’t meet him alone.”

  Salteris shook his head. “In the Tower he is not dangerous.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “Caris...” The gentle voice was at once amused and reproving, as it had been when Caris was a child. “Are you now going to protect me? Even if Antryg is the cause of the abominations—even if it was he who shot Thirle as he fled back through the Void—I doubt he would harm me. In either case, I do need to speak to him alone.”

  “The guards won’t let you in.”

  White teeth caught the gleam of the stars as Salteris grinned. “The guards won’t see me. No magic is possible within the walls of the Tower itself, but I can still weave illusions in the court.” He got to his feet and shook the bread crumbs from his robe. “Come and watch me.”

  Even two years of service to the Council of Mages had not quite prepared Caris for the Archmage’s entry into the Silent Tower. The guards who raised the portcullis greeted them respectfully as they stepped from the darkness. Salteris apologized to the c
aptain and said that he had discovered something while crossing the hills that made it imperative that he speak with Antryg Windrose once again. The captain twisted the spiked ends of his red mustache, his eyes glinting like agate in the uneasy saffron torchlight beneath the gate.

  “I’m sorry, m’lord,” he said at last. “It’s forbidden to speak to him without the Bishop present, and those are my orders.”

  “Very well,” said Salteris quietly. “Be so good as to send for her.”

  The captain opened his mouth to speak, but something about the frail old man before him made him close it again. He turned abruptly and bellowed into the watch chamber just within the portcullis, “Gorn! Get out and get a horse saddled.” He turned back to Salteris. “It’ll be a time— she’s had a good hour’s start.”

  “I understand,” replied the old man, inclining his head. “Believe me, captain, if it were a matter that could wait until morning I would certainly not put her Grace to this inconvenience.”

  The captain grunted and scratched his huge paunch through his loose, dark jacket. For all his faintly sloven air, Caris noted the polish of the captain’s well-worn sword belt and the oiled gleam of the scabbard thrust through it. The blade within, he guessed, would not be one dulled with neglect. “Well, it’s a nuisance all around. There’s wine in the guardhouse...”

  “Perhaps.” Salteris favored him with a chilly smile. “But there is also tobacco smoke, for which I wouldn’t trade the smell of the summer night. We shall do well here, until it gets too cool.” He took his seat on a stone bench just within the heavy portcullis, where the watchroom door threw a luminous bar of shifting apricot torchlight across the intense blue gloom under the gatehouse.

  “As you please,” the big man said. “If there’s anything you want—wine or food or tea or whatever—just give a shout for it. And you—” he added to the young man who appeared in the passage, leading a rat-tailed roan gelding, “—make it smart, hear? If you catch her Grace on the road, it’ll be one thing; but if she’s sat down to her dinner already, we’re all of us going to be what she eats for dessert. Now off you go.”

  The hooves thudded on the road, and a faint whiff of dust blew back from the darkness. Then, with a rattle of weight, chain, and counterwheel, the portcullis rumbled slowly down. The gate was dragged shut behind it and the small bar put into its slots; the captain’s huge back blotted the rosy watchroom light for a moment, and then was gone into the smoke and frowst within. In the resulting pocket of utter darkness under the gatehouse, Caris took a seat beside his grandfather on the bench. Through the lighted door, he could see the big man settle himself at one end of the rough wooden table and pull a quart tankard to him, grumbling as someone shoved him his cards.

  He was changing his seat, Caris realized, to watch them unobtrusively through the door.

  “Very good,” Salteris’ voice murmured, pitched for Caris’ ears alone. “We should have over an hour until the Bishop arrives.” He folded his slender hands and settled his back against the stones of the wall behind him, like a man making himself comfortable for a long siege. In the guardroom, someone threw down his cards and cursed richly—there was laughter and profanity-sprinkled banter. The captain threw back his head to join in, but Caris was aware of the tiny glint of his sidelong glance.

  He pulled a bit of chamois and an oilcloth wrapped in a rag from his belt purse and set to work getting the mud and dried slime out of the crannies of his sword hilt. Beside him, his grandfather murmured, “How are you at the courtly art of conversation, my son?”

  Caris glanced over at him, startled, and again caught the quick glint of the old man’s smile in the gloom.

  “Do you think you could carry on half of a conversation, as if I were here?”

  “You mean, just talk to the air?”

  “That’s right. It needn’t be animated—just do as you are doing and, every now and again, address a remark my way or reply to one that I might make if I were here. Don’t look into the guardroom,” he added, sensing that the young man was about to cast a glance at the captain; Caris looked quickly down again, concentrating his attention upon the brasswork of the pommel instead.

  “Will that serve?” Caris asked softly. “You’re in the light...”

  “And he shall see me in the light,” Salteris replied, his voice equally low. “It’s one of the dead giveaways of illusions, if the person next to one takes no notice of it. I shouldn’t be long.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll be all right,” he said softly. “I need you to cover my tracks while I’m gone. I should be able to handle Antryg, even if, as I suspect, he is not quite so powerless within the Tower as he would have us believe.”

  “But the Sigil? The Sign of Darkness?”

  Salteris smiled. “I shall be able to deal with the Sigil of Darkness. Just stay here, my son, and talk—don’t chatter, it looks unnatural—and I shall be back within half an hour. If I am not...” He hesitated.

  “What?”

  “If I am not,” he went on, his voice suddenly deadly serious, “don’t risk trying to deal with Antryg yourself. Get the other mages and get them at once.” He moved to rise.

  Caris had to prevent himself from calling attention to them by catching his sleeve. Instead he breathed, “Wait.” The Archmage stood poised, like a dark ghost just beyond the edge of the light. “Will you leave me the lipa?”

  Salteris thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “I fear I cannot. For if my worst fears are realized, I may need it myself.”

  Then he was gone.

  Caris sat in silence for a time, belatedly aware that, with his usual ease, Salteris had duped him into staying out of danger. Perhaps, for some reason, he really had wanted to meet Antryg with no witnesses present—perhaps it was only out of consideration for Caris’ weariness and injuries, though, Caris told himself stubbornly, they weren’t much. In any case there was no way he could follow now without giving the game away; he had to fight the impulse even to look, knowing the captain would be watching him from the door. In the soft twilight of the hills, the Archmage had made light of the peril into which he walked; it was only now that Caris understood that his grandfather, too, knew it for what it was.

  But having seen the abomination in the marsh, the old man considered the knowledge Antryg might hold worth the risk of—what?

  Caris did not know.

  He realized he had been silent too long. No conversationalist even with someone who was present, he stammered, “Uh—did I ever tell you about the time cousin Tresta and I stole the town bull?” and turned with what he hoped was naturalness to the empty place at his side. Beyond, the small square of the yard lay under a thin wash of starlight, the cracks between the flagstones like a thin pattern of spiderweb shadow. He could see the door of the Tower clearly, with its two black-clothed sasenna side-by-side. His small magical powers permitted him to see in the dark after a fashion; he glimpsed a drift of shadow that must be Salteris near the wall. One of the guards at the Tower door sneezed violently as the old man’s shadow passed before him; the other, startled, jumped. Caris was not sure, but thought he saw the heavy door open a crack. In the utter darkness of the slit, white hair gleamed like a slip of quicksilver—then nothing. He did not even see the door close, but when he blinked, he saw that it was closed.

  He recalled the Sigil of Darkness and shivered. Evidently, he thought, there was some way of dealing with it—at least of getting in. If Salteris knew, there was the possibility that Antryg Windrose might, also.

  Remembering what he was supposed to be about, he said quickly, “That’s very interesting—uh—grandfather. How did Narwahl Skipfrag get interested in electricity?”

  Yet his apprehension did not fade. It ebbed for a few moments, then grew again—not his own fear of detection, but something else, something he did not understand that prickled along his nerves, a sudden uneasy fear that brushed his neck like wind from a door which ought to be locked. It was something he ha
d felt before, somewhere—some evil.... He was aware of an odd stirring in the back of his mind, neither nervousness nor fear, but akin to both, a sense of magic and a danger that could not be met with a sword....

  Something moved in the archway of lapis darkness that led into the court. Lines of shadow from the stretched ropes of the counterweights brushed blackly across the red robes of one of the hasu as he entered the dark gatehouse at a rapid walk.

  Caris bit his tongue, forcing himself to remain still. Being mageborn, the hasu would see that he was alone on the bench; but then, the hasu did not know that there was supposed to be anyone else there. Caris knew he teetered on the edge of discovery—in his finger-ends he was ready to explain or to fight. Robes crimson in the gold glare of the watchroom torches, shaven head catching an edge of the sherry-colored light, the young hasu stood beside the captain’s chair, speaking rapidly, worriedly, to the captain, glancing about him, as if he scented danger but knew not where to look for it.

  He feels it, too, Caris thought suddenly. The foretaste of unknown fear blossomed within him. The darkness in the corners of the court seemed to ripple, like sunlight on the open plains in burning heat. He felt again the cold touch of the unreasoning terror that had come over him in the Mages’ Yard, as he had gazed into the black eternities that lay beyond the threshold of the world as he knew it, as if those abysses lay suddenly within reach of his hand.

  He realized, suddenly, what was happening within the Tower.