The Rainbow Abyss by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Hambly, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1671-2
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2011-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

TEN

IN HIS SUBSEQUENT account of the ambush Rhion mentioning to the Duke just what he and his master had been doing in Halberd Alley at that time of night. He said only that they had been returning from an errand in the Upper Town, and the Duke, a man of great courtesy, did not ask further. Rhion wasn’t sure how much either Tally or her sister had confided in their father; but, remembering his dealings with his own father, he guessed it hadn’t been much.

While the Duke listened gravely, his face crossed by the swift, purposeful shadows in the guest room’s mellow lamplight, his physician—a perfectly orthodox, black-robed little representative of Alucca, God of Healing—removed the arrowhead from Jaldis’ shoulder, and an assistant bound up Rhion’s slashed arm.

“And you have no idea who might have wanted to slay you?” If he did not, Rhion reflected, use the word “murder”—since technically it was not murder to kill a wizard—at least the word he did use was one that applied equally to man as well as beast.

Rhion shook his head. On the guest room’s narrow bed Jaldis was slowly returning to consciousness, white hair spread out over the pillow and voice-box lying under one frail hand. Though too weak to use it, he had refused to be parted from it. For years he had lived in fear of losing either it or his spectacles, mostly, Rhion suspected, because he doubted he had enough strength to create replacements. Under the bandages, his naked flesh looked almost transparent, sunk against knobby bones like damp silk draped across a pile of sticks. Though the tall windows were open upon a small garden court, the room, airy and small, smelled of herbed steams and of the medicines the physician had given to counteract the effects of the foxglove he had smelled on the arrowhead, odors which did not quite mask the smell of blood.

“Marc,” the Duke said, half-turning in his chair of silvered poplar wood. The young Captain stepped over from the door where he’d stood. “Send some of your men out to the houses of Lorbiek the Blood-Mage, and Malnuthe the Black—that Ebiatic who lives in the Shambles—and May the Bone-Thrower down in the Kairnside shanties, and let them know what happened. It’s frequently the case,” he added to Rhion, as the young soldier departed on his errand in a dramatic swirl of crimson cloak, “that when people take it into their heads to murder wizards, they attack several at roughly the same time, wanting to make a sweep of it, you know. It’s happened before, I’m sorry to say.”

Rhion nodded. In their first month in Felsplex they’d gotten a warning from another Morkensik wizard in the town that a mob was out to fruge wizards, but nothing had come of it. As far as he knew the woman who’d given them the warning hadn’t contacted either the local Hand-Pricker or the Earth-witch who operated in the same quarter.

“Believe me,” the Duke went on, “I’m truly sorry such a thing came to pass in my realm.

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