Read The Windrose Chronicles 3 - Dog Wizard for Free Online

around him—the world of the living—seemed momentarily new-drawn and magical, and every crack in the concrete, every poky line of all those pastel houses concealing each its own secrets, took on a brightness and clarity that was beauty itself.
    He knew what wizards did to other wizards who had violated their laws as comprehensively as he had; for the last portion of his life that wouldn't involve spells of crippling pain he could, he thought, have wished for a better place than a cement riverbed in the heart of the San Fernando Valley.
    But at least he could get Joanna off the firing line.
    The air of the world split. Darkness swelled and spread like a cloud.
    Far away, infinitely deep in the heart of the darkness, he saw the winds of chaos lift and swirl in black robes, dark cloaks ... saw the glint of edged steel. All around him he was aware of smaller spots, rents, and ghosts of that same darkness, flickering in and out of being in the air—the fabric of the universe weakening, straining, all around the opened Gate.
    We'd better make this fast,
    
     he thought uneasily. God knows what might drop through.
    And then they were before him.
    Framed in the gate of the darkness, their faces pale and tense with the shock of the crossing, he recognized the wizards who stood before him, his erstwhile teachers and colleagues. Some of them had been his friends.
    The Lady Rosamund never had, of course. The tugging chaos of the Void swirled her raven cloud of hair; she was as beautiful as ever, the cold perfection of her features like marble and her green eyes nearly transparent in the dawn light. The purple stole of Council membership circled her shoulders, the staff of wizardry, of power, was grasped in one well-kept hand.
    Beside and behind her he recognized Nandiharrow the Clockmaker—Nandiharrow the Nine-Fingered, he was called these days, after a particularly brutal brush with the Inquisition last year—big and solid and gray-haired, and beside him the wispy, androgynous physician Issay Bel-Caire. Both also wore the stoles of Council membership. They must have elected Issay to the Council after Salteris' death, Antryg thought. Nandiharrow, at least, avoided his eyes.
    Behind them ranged the sasenna, the sworn warriors, the small band of trained and dedicated fighters who had given their vows, their lives, to the Council's will. There were nearly a dozen of them, some of them mageborn, youthful novice wizards in training, some of them not. They filed forth quickly from the darkness, surrounding Antryg in a ring of crossbows, pistol barrels, and swords.
    “All right, here I am,” Antryg said quietly. “You've proved your point. I can't protect my friends from you—I can only ask that you leave them alone. Joanna had nothing to do with ... ”
    “So you wrote in your confession.” Lady Rosamund's voice was like polished silver, as beautiful as her eyes, and as cold. “But we both know that she was an accomplice, not a victim.”
    “What I don't want her to be is a hostage.” Looking at that aloof perfection, he felt anger again, the anger that this woman would have used her power against someone like Joanna, who had no defense. “She is ... dear to me. And she never wanted any of this.” The captain of the sasenna, a big, hard, red-faced man named Implek, stood close beside the Lady, holding in his hands a length of manacles and chain, marked with the runes of na-aar—thaumaturgical deadness—and twisted with bright ribbons of spell-cord that would also rob a wizard of his magic. Antryg held out his wrists to him, trying not to think about what would happen to him when they got back to the Citadel. “Just let her go.”
    Behind the Lady Rosamund, Nandiharrow and Issay traded a swift, startled glance, but her ladyship raised a quick hand for silence. Implek stepped forward and fastened the bracelets around Antryg's wrists, the touch of them hateful and cold, like the drag of a sudden nausea within him. He fought