“Our son!” Iridal cried. “Your son. He is none of mine!”
“Let us rejoice,” said Sinistrad with a pale, dry smile. “I am glad you take this view of the matter, my dear. I trust you will remember it when the boy arrives and that you will not interfere with our work.”
“What could I possibly do?”
“Bitterness does not become you, wife. Remember, I know your tricks. Tears, pouting, little hugs for the child that you think I will not see. I warn you, Iridal, I will see. My eyes are everywhere, even in the back of my head. The boy is mine. You have pronounced it. Never forget it.”
“Tears! Don’t fear my tears, husband. They dried up long ago.”
“Fear? I’m not afraid of anything, least of all you, wife,” returned Sinistrad with some amusement. “But you could be an annoyance, confuse the boy’s mind. I don’t have time to fool with you.”
“Why not just lock me up in the dungeon? I am already your prisoner in all but name.”
“I had considered it, but the boy would take an undue interest in a mother he is forbidden to see. No, it will be far better if you appear and smile prettily at him, allow him to see that you are weak and spineless.”
“You want me to teach him to despise me.”
Sinistrad shrugged. “I do not aspire to that much, my dear. It will be far better for my plans if he thinks nothing of you at all. And, by good fortune, we have something that will ensure your proper behavior. Hostages. Three humans and a Geg are his traveling companions. How important it must make you feel, Iridal, to know that you hold so many lives in your hands!” The woman’s face went livid. Her knees gave way, and she sank into a chair.
“You have sunk low, Sinistrad, but you have never committed murder! I don’t believe your threat!”
“Let us rephrase that statement, wife. You have never known me to commit murder. But then, let us both admit that you have never known me—period. Good day to you, wife. I will give you notice when you are to appear to greet our son.”
Bowing, hand over his heart in the time-honored custom of husband and wife, turning even this gesture to one of disdain and mockery, Sinistrad left Iridal’s chambers.
Shivering uncontrollably, the woman crouched in her chair and stared out the window with dry, burning eyes. . . .
“. . . My father says you are an evil man.”
The girl, Iridal, gazed out of a window in her father’s dwelling. Standing quite near her, almost touching her, but never coming that close, was a young mysteriarch. He was the handsome, wicked hero of Iridal’s nurse’s romantic tales—smooth, pallid skin; liquid brown eyes that always seemed to be the repository of fascinating secrets; a smile that promised to share these secrets, if someone could only draw close enough to him. The black, gilt-edged skullcap that marked his standing as a master of discipline of the Seventh House—the highest rank attainable by wizards—dipped to a sharp point that came to the bridge of his thin nose. Sweeping upward between the eyes, the cap gave him an appearance of wisdom and added expression to his face that might otherwise be lacking—he had no eyebrows or eyelashes. His entire body was hairless, a defect of birth.
“Your father is right, Iridal,” said Sinistrad softly. Reaching out his hand, he toyed with a strand of her hair, the nearest move to intimacy he ever made.
“I am evil. I do not deny it.” There was a touch of melancholy in his voice that melted Iridal’s heart as his touch melted her flesh.
Turning to face him, she held out her hands, clasped his, and smiled at him.
“No, beloved! The world may call you that, but it is because they don’t know you! Not as I know you.”
“But I am, Iridal.” His voice was gentle and in earnest. “I tell you the truth now because I don’t want you to reproach me with it later. Marry me, and you marry darkness.”
His finger wound the strand of hair tighter and tighter, drawing her nearer and nearer. His words and the serious tone in which he spoke them made her heart falter painfully, but the pain was sweet and exciting. The darkness that hung over him—dark rumors, dark words spoken about him among the community of mysteriarchs—was exciting too. Her life, all its sixteen years, had been dull and prosaic. Living with a father who doted on her following her mother’s death, Iridal had been raised by a grandmotherly nanny. Her father could not bear life’s rough winds to blow too harshly against his daughter’s tender cheek and he had kept her sheltered and cloistered, wrapped in a smothering cocoon of love.
The butterfly that emerged from that cocoon was bright and shining; its feeble wings carried it straight into Sinistrad’s web.
“If you are evil,” she said, twining her hands around his arm, “it is the world that has made you so, by refusing to listen to your plans and thwarting your genius at every turn. When I am walking by your side, I will bring you to the sunlight.”
“Then you will be my wife? You will go against your father’s wishes?”
“I am of age. I can make my own choice. And, beloved, I choose you.” Sinistrad said nothing, but, smiling his secret-promising smile, he kissed the strand of hair wound tightly around his finger. . . .
. . . Iridal lay in her bed, weak from the travails of birth. Her nurse had finished bathing the tiny infant and, wrapping him in a blanket, carried him to his mother. The occasion should have been one of joy, but the old nurse, who had been Iridal’s own, wept when she laid the child in his mother’s arms. The door to the bedchamber opened. Iridal made a low moaning sound and clutched the baby so tightly he squalled. The nurse, looking up, smoothed back the woman’s sweat-damp curls with gentle hands. A look of defiance hardened the wrinkled face.
“Leave us,” said Sinistrad, speaking to the nurse, his gaze fixed upon his wife.
“I will not leave my lamb!”
The eyes of the mysteriarch shifted. The nurse held her ground, though the hand touching Iridal’s fair hair trembled. Grabbing hold of the nurse’s fingers, Iridal kissed them and bade her leave in a low and tremulous voice.
“I cannot, child!” The nurse began to weep. “It’s cruel, what he means to do! Cruel and unnatural!”
“Get out,” Sinistrad snarled, “or I will burn you to ashes where you stand!” The nurse cast him a look of malice, but she withdrew from the room. She knew who would suffer if she did not.
“Now that this is over, she must go, wife,” said Sinistrad, coming to stand beside the bed. “I will not be defied in my own house.”
“Please, no, husband. She is the only company I have.” Iridal’s arms clung to her baby. She looked up at her husband pleadingly, one hand plucking at the blanket. “And I will need her help with our son! See!” She drew the blanket aside, exhibiting a red, wrinkled face, eyes squinched shut, small fists bunched lightly together. “Isn’t he beautiful, husband?” She hoped desperately, despairingly, that a glimpse of his own flesh and blood would change his mind.
“He suits my purpose,” said Sinistrad, reaching out his hands.
“No!” Iridal shrank away from him. “Not my child! Please, don’t!”
“I told you my intentions the day you announced your pregnancy. I told you then that I had married you for this purpose and this alone, that I had bedded you for the same reason, and no other. Give me the child!” Iridal huddled over her baby, her head bowed, her long hair covering the boy in a shining curtain. She refused to look at her husband, as if looking at him gave him power. By shutting her eyes to him, she might make him vanish. But it didn’t work, because with her eyes closed, she saw him as he had been that terrible day when her bright illusions of love were completely and irrevocably shattered. The day she had told him her joyous news, that she carried his child within her. That day he had told her, in cold and passionless tones, what he intended to do with the babe.