Free The Windrose Chronicles 3 - Dog Wizard by Barbara Hambly Page A

flinched from the soft creak of that ancient voice and kept his face turned away. But he could feel Minhyrdin's pale blue stare, and around his mind, like a tightening silver rope, felt the implacable force of her will. It drew at him, willing him to turn, an ancient power, rooted deep: a tree in the rocks, but a tree whose roots have melded with the roots of the mountain, taking strength from the fire deep within. She was bidding him to meet her eyes.
    He kept his face averted for as long as he could, but the Master-Spells, the domination that the Archmage held over every wizard, drew on him, compelled him like the geared wheels of the rack, far beyond the capacity of human flesh to resist. Sweat sprang out on his face as he concentrated on looking down into his teacup, on looking anywhere but into her eyes, and he felt his hands tremble.
    Then, through no volition of his own, he found himself facing those twin pale skies of faded aquamarine. Within them he thought he saw, not an old woman, but a girl in tawdry riches, scarcely taller than a child, with a dancer's muscular legs, a saffron tangle of hair heaped on her head and spilling in handfuls upon her shoulders, flashing with jeweled combs. And beyond that the image again of an ancient tree, roots locked to the living bones of the earth and drinking iron from them, so that the core of the tree had grown into steel.
    The phylax he had drunk had numbed his ability to use magic, even as spell-cord did, but the power within him remained. He called upon it now, summoning his own strength from the chaotic, murky well of his being, trying to look away, to put the alien presence of her will, of the Master-Spells, from his mind. He tried to think of anything—of Joanna's cats playing, of Joanna herself, a prisoner and in danger somewhere ... scenes from movies, television commercials, rock 'n' roll lyrics ...
    He couldn't let them take his powers from him, he needed them to find her.
    But the steel strength of that ancient tree, twisted, black, incomparably strong, still gripped his mind. It was the strength of the earth, backed by the Master-Spells, the terrible strength of domination, and against the deep wisdom he saw in Minhyrdin's eyes he could not find anger to fight.
    I will not give in to you ... I will not allow you to command me.
    His breath thickened, and though there was no pain—yet—he felt as if every muscle in his body strained and cracked.
    Joanna,
    
     he thought, trying to summon back Ruth's voice, that panicked description of a vision glimpsed in shadow. A dark robe vanishing down a tunnel of night. One of them has her ... or all of them. They're lying to me ... I can't ...
    He clutched at the thought with the desperation of a man clutching the last tree root above an abyss, fighting not only gravity but the dragging of a whirlpool, pulling him down. Like a silver wedge driven in under his fingers, the Master-Spells plucked coldly at his loosening grip.
    Don't do this to me .
    If he could just turn his eyes away, plunge his mind down into darkness.
    But Minhyrdin the Fair would be waiting for him in that darkness. And she'd be here, when he returned.
    “Antryg ... ” The voice within his mind was not the scratchy, worn-out creak, but the bell-clear command of a wild-hearted dancer in her garish gown a century out of fashion ... the voice of Minhyrdin the Fair, Archmage of the High Council in her later life, oldest and strongest. She was standing over him now, as he pressed back as far as he could in his chair; he was barely conscious of his body anymore, save that he felt deathly cold and could not turn his head away. He couldn't reply, couldn't release his hold for even the instant it would take to acknowledge. There was pain now, too, or something that read as pain.
    “Antryg, you know that we can force your powers from you. I am within your mind now; in a moment I will bring in the others. They will strip you, break you ... ”
    “No ... ” His