The Silent Tower

by Barbara Hambly

  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 pseudo-oriental 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 toad-stones, 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 frangipani incense, another woman emerged from them, also middle-aged and dressed in what Joanna guessed to be several thousand dollars worth of brocade and rose-point 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! T
his 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 mages, 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... 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 the Magus an instant to realize his friend had changed the subject again.

  “Rosamund? Aunt Min? Old Whitewell 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 mages, 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?”

  Confused and slightly embarrassed, Joanna admitted, “Computer systems designer.”

  “And upon that,” Antryg took up, with a smile at Magus’ baffled look as he took the wineglass from Magus’ hand and gave it to Joanna, “hangs a tale indeed.”

  “Joanna.”

  Startled, she sat up in bed, her blond hair hanging in her eyes; the faint scratching noise she had attributed to rats came again from the door. She realized it was the more quiet alternative to knocking and scrambled through the gauzy white curtains which acted as an effective mosquito netting in a world whose wire-drawing technique did not yet extend to window screens. “Who is it?” Somewhere in the humid darkness beyond the tall windows, a clock chimed three; down in the street, a distant, dreary peddler’s voice was singing a song about matches.

  “Caris.”

  The moon had set long ago. In Angelshand there was no such thing as the reflected glow of streetlights from outside—there wasn’t a streetlight in the whole city—and the only light in the room came from a tiny seed of fire in an amber glass night lamp on the washstand. By its minute glow, she located the nightrobe the Prince had included in her luggage, an amazing confection of gauze and lace, and went to unbrace the chair from the door.

  He was standing in the hall outside. The tall, narrow house was silent, save for the soft, sonorous breathing of her host, which could be heard through the open door of his bedchamber next to hers. Caris was dressed, as usual, in the plain livery of a servant, but all of the costume he wore at the moment were the breeches, shirt, and stockings, all creased as if he had slept in them. His blond hair was ruffled from a pillow—she remembered how he had sat silently watching her and the two mages, as Antryg and Magus had exchanged stories and reminiscences until the small hours, and had then followed Antryg silently up to the attic to sleep.

  “May I come in?”

  She stepped aside. She knew that a month ago she would never have done so, even if he had rescued her from an evil wizard’s clutches—but a month ago, she hadn’t killed two men.

  And oddly enough, in the last several days, a little to her own surprise, she had come to like the sasennan. She had formerly been slightly afraid of that silent, beautiful young man, distrustful of the scorn she was sure he felt for her plainness and inexperience. But like Antryg, Caris took people exactly as he found them; if he had not expected her to be able to climb walls and evade armed troops, neither had he assumed she would fail. It was she, she realized, who had held prejudiced expectations of him; but unlike Antryg, he wasn’t the sort of man you could apologize to for it.

  “Joanna,” he said softly, “I need your help.”

  She said nothing. She knew—or hoped, anyway—that she wouldn’t act like one of those whining and putty-willed movie heroines who took pot shots at the hero because of a desperate attachment they had formed for the villain, but she had hoped also that she wouldn’t be asked to choose.

  That, too, she thought, had been a stupid hope. Whether she wanted to or not, she was in a game for keeps; the riddles locked up behind Antryg’s mad gray eyes and lunatic smile affected the fates of both worlds, hers, perhaps, more than Caris’. After a long moment, she found herself asking, “What do you want me to do?”

  From his pocket, Caris brought out a creased scrap of paper. In the floating ochre light she saw it was a map. Though one house was marked, there was no number—that was another modern innovation that Angelshand lacked.

  “I suspect Antryg is going out soon as it’s light,” the warrior said softly. “He came to Angelshand for purposes of his own. I can’t afford to lose him now. But I must get in contact with Dr. Narwahl Skipfrag. He’s the only friend the Council has at Court, the only one to whom the Regent might listen. He’s a friend of my grandfather’s—a scientist, but one who believes there is something more to magic than hocus-pocus and dog wizardry.”

  He held out the paper to her. She took it, stiff and heavy-feeling in her cold fingers.

  “Tell him what happened and where we are. Tell him that I need an introduction to the Court and that I have Antryg
Windrose, if not my prisoner, at least in my sight. Telling him what happened to my grandfather.”

  She set the paper on the washstand. “I’ll tell him your grandfather disappeared,” she said slowly, “but to be literally truthful, I don’t know what happened to your grandfather—and neither do you.”

  Caris’ mouth tightened a little, and the brown eyes in their wells of shadow seemed to harden to agate.

  Slowly, a little gropingly, Joanna went on, “I don’t know anything, really—only what I’ve been told, either by you or by Antryg. All I want to do is get the hell out of this mess and go home....” She broke off again, something strange stirring in her heart, because it wasn’t, entirely, all she wanted....

  “And I tell you this,” Caris said quietly. “That Antryg stalked you, and Antryg went to that house where he left his mark upon the wall to find you, and Antryg brought you here, for purposes of his own; and from that I collect that, unless we find my grandfather, unless we free the Council from persecution, you will never return to your home. Do you understand that?”

  After a long moment Joanna sighed, and said softly, “Yes.”

  Caris stood for a time, looking down at his hands where they rested over the hilt of his scabbarded sword, thrust through the sash tied incongruously over his servant livery. Then, not so harshly, as if he, too, were fumbling for the right words, he said, “I am not asking you to do him harm. Whether harm comes to him... it could from any number of sources. But I must know what he plans in Angelshand and I must not let him out of my sight. You are only one I can count on. May I do so?”