Read Online The Windrose Chronicles 1 - The Silent Tower by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online

“Well, never mind.”
    The Archmage had already taken one of the two chairs at the cluttered table; Antryg offered the other one first to the Bishop, who refused it indignantly, then to Caris, as if he had been a visitor in his own right and not merely the sasennan of the Archmage. Refused on both counts, he took it himself, setting his teacup precariously on top of a pile of papers. “What did you want to see me about?”
    “The Void,” Salteris said softly.
    The candlelight flashed sharply across Antryg's spectacles with his sudden start, his hand arrested mid-motion. “What about the Void?”
    “Can you sense it? Feel it?”
    “No.” Antryg set his cup down.
    “You used to be able to.”
    “Outside, yes. In here, I can no more sense the Void than I can feel the weather. Why do you ask?”
    Salteris folded his hands and rested his extended forefingers against his lips. “I have reason to believe that someone from another universe passed through it and killed Thirle in the Mages' Yard. Shot him,” he went on, as Antryg's look of grieved shock reminded Caris that he, too, must have known and liked the little herbalist, “Though, when the ball was drawn, it was unlike any pistol ball any of us have seen.”
    Caris frowned suddenly in the reddish, springing shadows. “And there was no smell of powder,” he said. “No smoke, though it was a still night.”
    “Curious,” Antryg remarked softly.
    “Caris here saw something that sounds like the Gates that Suraklin used to open in the Void,” the Archmage went on. “Aunt Min thought so, too. Are there wages in other worlds beyond the Void, Antryg, who could open the Void and come here to work mischief?”
    “Oh, I should think so.” Antryg looked down into his tea. Salteris was watching that strange, expressive face as the steam laid a film over the thick rounds of the spectacle lenses; but Caris, watching the long fingers where they rested on the teacup's chipped pottery side, saw them shake. “It doesn't necessarily mean he—”
    He broke off suddenly, and Salteris frowned, his white eyebrows plunging down sharply over his nose. “He what?”
    “He what?” Antryg looked up at him inquiringly.
    “The fact that the intruder came through the Void doesn't necessarily mean what?”
    Antryg frowned back, gazing for a long moment into Salteris' eyes. Then he said, “I haven't the slightest idea. Did you know that all the wisdom in the cosmos can be found written in magical signs on the shells of tortoises? One has to collect and read an enormous number of tortoises in order to figure it out, of course, and they have to be read in the correct order, but somewhere here I have a collection of tortoise-rubbings . . .”
    “Antryg,” Salteris said reprovingly, as his erratic host made a move to search the jumble of shelves behind him. The madman turned back to regard him with unnerving intentness.
    “They don't like to have rubbings taken, you know.”
    “Quite understandable,” Salteris agreed soothingly. “You were saying about the Void?”
    “I wasn't saying anything about the Void,” Antryg protested. “Only that, yes, some of the worlds one can reach by passing through it are worlds wherein magic can exist. In others it does not. And there is continual drift, toward the centers of power or away from them. So, yes, a mage from another world could have opened a Gate in the Void last week and come through for purposes of his own.”
    “I thought you claimed you could not feel the Void.” Caris stepped forward, into the circle of the candelabra's light. “How do you know it was last week?”
    Antryg regarded him with the mild, startled aspect of a melancholy stork. “Obviously you came here as soon as you knew the problem involved the Void. It's a week's walk from Angelshand to Kymil—unless you took the stage?” He glanced inquiringly at Salteris, who sighed patiently and shook his head.
    “Purposes of his own,” the Bishop said suddenly. Like