Iridal should have known he was plotting something. She did know, but wouldn’t admit it. On her bridal night, her life had changed from rainbow dreams to gray emptiness. His love-making was without love, without passion. He was brisk, businesslike, keeping his eyes open, staring at her intently, willing her to something that she could not understand. Night after night he came to her. During the day, he rarely saw her, rarely spoke to her. She grew to dread the night visits and had once ventured to refuse him, begging that he treat her with love. He had taken her that night with violence and pain and she had never dared refuse him again. Perhaps that very night their child had been conceived. A month later she knew she was pregnant.
From the day she told him, Sinistrad never came to her bedroom again. The child in her arms wailed. Strong hands grabbed Iridal by the hair and jerked her head back. Strong hands wrenched her child from her grasp. Pleading, the mother crawled from her bed and stumbled after her husband as he walked away, their crying infant in his arms. But she was too weak. Tangled in the bloodstained bedclothes, Iridal fell to the floor. One hand caught hold of his robes, dragging him back.
“My baby! Don’t take my baby!”
He regarded her coldly, with disgust. “I told you the day I asked you to be my wife what I was. I have never lied to you. You chose not to believe me, and that is your own fault. You have brought this upon yourself.” Reaching down, he grasped the fabric of his robe and jerked it from her feeble, clutching fingers. Turning, he left the room.
When he came back later that night, he brought another baby—the true child born to the wretched king and queen of Volkaran and Uylandia. Sinistrad handed it to Iridal as one might hand over a puppy found abandoned on the road.
“I want my son!” she cried. “Not the child of some other poor woman!”
“Do what you like with it, then,” said Sinistrad. His plan had worked well. He was almost in a good humor. “Suckle it. Drown it. I don’t care.” Iridal took pity on the tiny baby and, hoping that the love she lavished on it would be reciprocated on her child so far away, she nursed him tenderly. But the infant could not adapt to the rarefied atmosphere. He died within days, and something within Iridal died too.
Going to Sinistrad a month later in his laboratory, she told him calmly and quietly that she was leaving, returning to the house of her father. In reality, her plan was to go to the Mid Realm and take back her child.
“No, my dear, I think not,” replied Sinistrad without looking up from the text he was perusing. “My marriage to you lifted the dark cloud from me. The others trust me now. If our plans to escape this realm are to succeed, I’ll need the help of all in our community. They must do my will without question. I cannot afford the scandal of a separation from you.”
He looked up at her then, and she saw that he knew her plans, he knew the secrets of her heart.
“You can’t stop me!” Iridal cried. “The mysteries I weave are powerful, for I am skilled in magic, as skilled as you, husband, who have devoted your life to your overweening ambition. I will proclaim your evil to the world! They will not follow you, but rise up and destroy you!”
“You’re right, my dear. I cannot stop you. But perhaps you’d like to discuss this with your father.”
Keeping a finger on his place in the book, Sinistrad raised his head and made a gesture with his hand. A box of ebony drifted up from the table on which it stood, floated through the air, and came to rest near the wizard’s book. Opening it with one hand, he lifted out a silver locket hanging from a rope of black velvet. He held out the locket to Iridal.
“What is it?” She stared at it suspiciously.
“A gift, my dear. From loving husband to loving wife.” His smile was a knife, twisting in her heart. “Open it.”
Iridal took the locket with fingers so numb and cold she nearly dropped it. Inside was a portrait of her father.
“Take care that you do not drop it or break it,” said Sinistrad casually, returning to his reading.
Iridal saw, in horror, that the portrait was staring back at her, its trapped, living eyes pitying, helpless. . . .
Sounds outside the window roused Iridal from her melancholy reverie. Rising weakly and unsteadily from the chair, she stared out the casement. Sinistrad’s dragon was floating through the clouds, its tail cutting the mist to wispy shreds that trailed away and vanished—like dreams, thought Iridal. The quicksilver dragon had come at Sinistrad’s command and now circled round and round the castle, awaiting its master. The beast was huge, with shining silver skin, a sinuous thin body, and flaring red eyes. It had no wings, but could fly faster without them than could its winged cousins of the Mid Realm. Nervous and unpredictable, the most intelligent of their kind, these quicksilver dragons, as they were known, could be controlled only by the most powerful wizards. Even then, the dragon knew it was enthralled and constantly fought a mental battle with the spell-caster, forcing the magus who enchanted it to be continually on his guard. Iridal watched it out the window. The dragon was always moving—one moment twisting itself into a gigantic coil, rearing its head higher than the tallest castle tower; the next, unwinding itself with lightning speed to wrap its long body around the castle’s mist-shrouded base. Once Iridal had feared the quicksilver. If it slipped its magical leash, it would kill them all. Now she no longer cared. Sinistrad appeared, and Iridal involuntarily drew back away from the window so that he would not see her if he happened to glance up. He did not look up at her chamber, however, being far more concerned with more important matters. The elven ship had been sighted; the ship carrying his son. He and the others in the Council must meet to make final plans and preparations. This was why he was taking the dragon.
As a mysteriarch of the Seventh House, Sinistrad could have transported himself mentally to the guildhall, dissolving his body and reforming it when the mind arrived at its destination. That had been his means of entry into the Mid Realm. Such a feat was taxing, however, and really impressive only if someone was there to see the wizard materialize, supposedly, out of thin air. Elves were much more likely to be terrified by the sight of a gigantic dragon than by the refined and delicate techniques of mental spell-casting. Sinistrad mounted the quicksilver, which he had named Gorgon, and it soared into the air and out of Metal’s sight. Her husband had not once looked back. Why should he? He had no fear that she would escape him. Not anymore. There were no guards posted round the castle. There were no servants posted to watch her and report her doings to their master. He had no need of any, could any have been found. Iridal was her own guard, locked up by her shame, held captive by her terror.
Her hand clasped round the locket. The portrait inside was alive no longer. Her father had died some years ago. His soul trapped by Sinistrad, the body had withered away. But whenever Iridal looked at the image of her father’s face, she could still see the pity in his eyes.
The castle was silent, empty, nearly as silent and empty as her heart. She must dress, she told herself drearily, taking off the nightclothes that she wore almost all the time now; the only escape she had was in sleep. Turning from the window, she saw herself in a mirror opposite. Twenty-six cycles—she looked as if she had lived a hundred. Her hair, that had once been the color of strawberries dipped in golden honey, was now white as the clouds drifting past her window. Lifting a brush, she began to listlessly make some attempt to untangle the matted tresses.
Her son was coming. She must make a good impression. Otherwise, Sinistrad would be displeased.
45
Swift as its name, the quicksilver dragon bore Sinistrad to new hope, the capital city of the High Realm. The mysteriarch was fond of using the dragon to impress his own people. No other wizard had been able to exert a hold over the highly intelligent and dangerous quicksilver. It would not hurt, in this critical time, to remind the others, once again, why they had chosen him to be their leader.