He had created the bridge to help his mother, who spent her days across in the Library of the Academy. One stormy winter’s evening, Sharalind had arrived home at the Archwizard’s tower after a long, hard day, dripping wet, frozen to the bone and, not being one to suffer in silence, complaining bitterly. It was then that Avithan had set to work to solve a problem that must have been plaguing Archwizards for generations. After a number of false starts and failures, he had created a spell that would extend a magical bridge of light from one peninsula across to the other, stretching from the roof of the Great Library on one side to the balcony of Cyran’s tower on the other.
Unlike many of his inventions, this one had met with universal excitement and acclaim (except for the boatmen who made a living by ferrying folk across the bay). Immediately plans were made to put bridges in more accessible places between all three promontories for public use. All such schemes, unfortunately, had been doomed to failure, for the spell had simply not been strong enough to take more than three people at any given time. Furthermore, after a few hours the magic began to decay, making the bridge extremely unsafe. Fortunately, it had been Avithan who had discovered the fault. Even more fortunately, he was a very good swimmer and there had been several boats on hand in the bay at the time to pick him up - and have a damn good laugh at his misfortune. So in the end, only one of the magical bridges had been created, and the spell was renewed every time it was used.
A circular plug of thick crystal had been set into the floor of the balcony to hold and focus the magic. Avithan passed his hand over the gleaming disc and put forth his power, activating the spell that slept within the stone. Out shot a great, curving rainbow of light (he had put in the colours for his own amusement and his mother’s pleasure), arcing above the waters of the bay in a gentle curve and anchoring itself among the buildings on the far side. As soon as Avithan set foot on the radiant bridge, he was swept away within the rainbow and carried safely to the other side of the water, where he was gently put down on the flat roof of one of the Library’s corner turrets without having stirred a single step. With a wave of his hand he banished the spell, and the rainbow vanished like a dream, leaving him standing on a crystal disc that was the twin of the one on the other side.
A small, circular observation chamber had been built at the centre of the roof, and from this a door led down into the Library itself: a vast labyrinth of halls, corridors and chambers extending for three floors above the ground and three below, carved out long ago from the living rock of the cliff. Avithan wondered where he might find his mother, but for once, it proved to be easy. As he was hurrying downstairs he ran into her - quite literally. She emerged onto a landing from one of the smaller study rooms carrying an armful of scrolls just as he was passing, and he crashed into her, sending her burden flying.
‘And where do you think you’re going in such a hurry?’ Sharalind demanded.
‘On an errand for Father.’ Avithan was gathering up scrolls from the floor as fast as he could. ‘He wants to see Iriana.’
‘What? Before the meeting?’ She frowned. ‘What on earth is that man up to now?’
Avithan shrugged. ‘He didn’t tell me. But he did ask me to give you a message. The meeting has been cancelled for today. He says he’s too busy just now to explain, but he’ll tell you all about it tonight.’ Forestalling the barrage of questions that he knew would be coming, he thrust the scrolls back into his mother’s arms and beat a hasty retreat. He wondered what his father was hiding from his mother. Normally he told her everything. Just what scheme was Cyran hatching?
Once he had left the grounds of the Academy it was downhill all the way. He could have traced the fastest route in his sleep, threading his way through the narrow streets between the shuttered white houses with their high-walled gardens, and taking short cuts down alleyways that scarcely looked wide enough to accommodate a human being. At last he emerged in a peaceful little square with a fountain in the centre, which, in a highly unlikely flight of fancy on the part of the sculptor, had plumes of water spouting from the mouths of three dragons with extended wings. The houses, two on each side of the square, were spacious, old and graceful, with shutters painted green and intricate ironwork on the balconies. Creeping plants clung to the walls, laden with vivid flowers of various hues. They filled the air with perfume, and were alive with bees and iridescent hummingbirds.
This delightful place was normally Avithan’s home: he dwelt in one of the two houses on the north side of the square with his friends Ionor, Chathak and Yinze. During the past year, however, they had been away in other parts of the world studying the arcane disciplines of the other races of Magefolk, and Avithan, finding the echoing house too empty and lonely, had moved back temporarily to the Archwizard’s tower, with his parents. Much as he loved Cyran and Sharalind, however, he found himself regretting his loss of independence and missing the companionship of his friends very much. He was looking forward impatiently to their return, when everything would get back to normal.
The house adjacent to Avithan’s dwelling was the home of his three female friends: Iriana, Thara and Melisanda. All seven of them had bonded while they were students at the Academy and, despite having talents that covered varying areas of Earth magic, they had been together ever since.
He used the opening spell for the front door to let himself in and stood blinking in the shadowy hallway until the sun-dazzle had faded from his eyes, and he could make out the floor laid with slabs of marble, the carvings of flowers, birds and fabulous beasts on the panelling of golden oak, the elegant wrought-iron banister on the curving staircase and the intricate moulding on the ceiling. Avithan was accustomed to such grandeur - the house he shared with his male friends was very similar - but he often wondered at the enigma that had brought a bunch of young Wizards just starting out in the world to live in dwellings that had clearly once belonged to someone very important.
The houses now belonged to Iriana: an unexpected inheritance for a girl with a mysterious past. She was a foundling, an abandoned baby discovered on the steps of the statue in the central square of the city market. At first it was thought that she must be another of the half-breed babies that cropped up occasionally, offspring of a Wizard and a mortal slave. Unlike the Phaerie, for whom the Hemifae were an integral and important part of their society, the Wizardfolk disapproved of such relationships greatly, and any resulting children were usually terminated before birth, or abandoned.
Investigations by the Healers, however, had proved Iriana to be a full-blooded Wizard, and she was adopted by Sharalind’s friend Zybina, who brought the girl up with her own child, Yinze. No one had ever solved the mystery of her parents, though they were certainly not from Tyrineld itself. They might have come from another town or village - or, more likely, they may have been some of the Wizards who elected to dwell in isolation in far-flung places, in order to study their magic in solitude and peace. Whoever they were, they were certainly well off, or had wealthy connections. When Iriana had come of age, an anonymous package arrived for her containing the keys and the deeds to the two houses, legally correct and made out in her name, together with a generous sum of money in gold. Iriana took them to be some sort of guilt offering, and accepted them as such, but had refused to let Zybina and Sharalind investigate further. ‘My family didn’t want me as a child, and I don’t want them now,’ she had said coldly. ‘I’ll take their gift, whoever they are - it’s all I’ve ever got from them, and probably all I’m ever likely to get - but apart from that, they can go to Perdition as far as I’m concerned.’
Without telling her, Cyran had tried to trace the previous owners of the houses, which had long stood empty, but they had covered their tracks too well. It burned Avithan’s heart to think that Iriana’s parents must still be out there somewhere. Did they watch her in secret? Did they ever think of her at all? If he ever discovered their identity, he would take great pleasure in telling them exactly what he thought of them.
‘Why, it??
?s Avithan. This is a pleasant surprise. What brings you here?’ Thara had emerged so quietly from an adjacent room that he been unaware of her presence till the sound of her voice had made him jump. He was always amazed that she could move so quietly, because Thara was a big girl. She was tall even in a race of tall folk, with broad shoulders, strong, clever hands and an ample and voluptuous figure. She was skilled in working with all things that grew in the earth, so her face and arms were tanned from all the hours she spent outdoors. Her face was beautiful, and her brown eyes almost always held a sultry twinkle.
‘It’s nice to see you too, Thara,’ he replied. ‘Is Iriana here?’
‘So it wasn’t me you came to see, then.’ Thara made a wry face. ‘Story of my life.’
Avithan grinned at her teasing. ‘Well, the Archwizard wants to see Iriana at once,’ he answered, ‘so I’m afraid I have to defer the pleasure of your company until another day. Where is she? In the garden?’
Thara nodded. ‘She’s watering the plants for me. Her method saves me hours of backbreaking toil. Ask her for some lemonade. It’s made with lemons from my tree—’
‘Which you grew overnight from a pip,’ Avithan chanted. ‘Honestly, you and your tree.’
‘I’m very proud of my lemon tree,’ Thara said unrepentantly. ‘No one has ever managed to crack the secret of accelerated growth before, not without a lot of deformities creeping in. Personally, I think it was extremely clever of me.’
Avithan hugged her. ‘It certainly was - and we’re all proud of your tree.’
‘Does Cyran want to see her about that business yesterday?’
Her abrupt change of subject took him off guard. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he told me it wasn’t that. He wants to see the two of us together about something, and he’s acting very mysterious—’ He caught himself sharply. ‘Damn it, Thara, stop trying to trick information out of me.’
Her brown eyes gleamed with mischief. ‘Not while I can still get away with it. Go on.’ She made shooing gestures with her hands. ‘Go and see Iriana.’
Avithan made his way through the house to the back door, emerging out of the shadows and into the sunlit garden. He saw Iriana sitting alone beside the pond under her favourite tree, a late-flowering cherry that had only recently dropped its bounty of blossoms to lie in snowy drifts around her feet. Her long hair looked dark in the tree’s deep shade, but in sunlight it was red, although a much deeper shade than the normal bright hue that was common to the Wizards - more like wine, perhaps, than fire - and it fell around her face in gentle waves. Clad in her favourite old, darned crimson gown, which had faded with time and much washing to a soft rose, she was concentrating, hand upraised, on the pond, from which a swirling vortex of water droplets, threaded with rainbows, was spinning out across the garden, covering the plants with a silvery mist of moisture. Melik, her cat, sat on the table close at her left hand, his blue eyes, vivid in his dusky face, staring with great concentration at the spinning column of water. Avithan watched, spellbound. A combination of Air and Water magic! How fortunate she was, of all the Wizards, to be the sole possessor of such incredible abilities. Then he remembered her lack of sight. The recompense was only fair. Would he be willing to sacrifice his sight to possess such power? He knew he would not.
Iriana completed her task, dusted off her hands with the air of a job well done and bent over some papers that lay before her on the little wooden table. As he drew closer he could see that she was writing furiously, and the cat had now turned all his attention to the work in hand, his eyes fixed on the paper and the scribbling pen. A jug of lemonade was at her elbow, together with a glass, and Iriana took a sip of the cool liquid without once looking up from her work, her hand going unerringly to the glass and lifting it to her lips.
Before Avithan had time to call out to her, a colossal black dog with bright, intelligent eyes and a shaggy coat emerged from under the table and came strolling unhurriedly down the path to meet him, looking like the bear for which he had been named. At the same time, a magpie erupted out of the cherry tree with a clatter of wings and swooped down towards him in a long glide. Iriana lifted her face from her work. ‘Avithan, how nice to see you. I thought you had a meeting this morning.’
‘For some reason better known only to my father, it was cancelled.’ As always he hid the tiny stab of pain within him at her use of the word ‘see’. For Iriana had been born blind, and even the most skilled of the Healers had been unable to ameliorate the problem; it seemed certain that this was why her parents had so cruelly abandoned her. Iriana, however, let neither her lack of family nor her blindness get in her way. For she had also been born with a gift to compensate for her lack of sight: a remarkable affinity with animals that allowed her to reach into their minds and communicate with them as one of their own. And even before she could walk, her animal friends had become her eyes.
As he walked down the path towards her, with the magpie flashing ahead of him and Bear pacing gravely at his side, Avithan knew that Iriana would be picking up images of him from the eyes of the dog, the cat and the bird, and would be switching from one to the other as best suited her needs, though she neither overrode their natural behaviour nor controlled their movements in any way. She could communicate with them after a fashion, though as far as she could explain to Avithan, they used very few words, and lacked the complex sentences and concepts of human languages. Instead they used a combination of images and emotions, body language, scent and physical touch - and each of them did it differently. Iriana had mastered the art of communication on a simple level with all of the animals close to her, as well as a number of species from the Academy menagerie. The creatures with her today were only a few of her companions: she also had a huge and fearsome mountain eagle that terrified the life out of Avithan; the mate of the magpie; a hawk; a barn owl; and, stabled near the outskirts of the city, a piebald horse on which she loved to ride out, either alone (to the great disquiet of Cyran, Sharalind and Zybina) or with her friends.
Iriana’s face lit up at the sight of Avithan, and she beckoned him into a chair. ‘You look hot,’ she said. ‘Here, sit down and have some lemonade.’ Without looking at her glass, she refilled it from the jug and passed it to him - a trick that always tended to unnerve strangers, who often did not notice the cat sitting beside her on the table, his round blue eyes fixed unerringly on the jug and glass as Iriana completed her manoeuvre, then switching to Avithan as she handed over the drink. He was a large and beautiful animal, long-haired, with a dark, almost black face, legs and tail, while the rest of his body was a pale cream with duskier patches on his back and flanks. He was Iriana’s shadow, who was with her everywhere she went, more often than not perched on her shoulder.
Avithan drained the glass in one long swallow. ‘Thanks, I needed that.’
‘Good, isn’t it? Thara made it fresh this morning—’
‘With lemons from her very own tree,’ Avithan finished for her, with a grin which she was quick to return.
As always, Iriana’s smile transformed her face into a striking loveliness, though her countenance could appear stern in sorrow, reflection or repose. She had strong, rather severe Wizardly features: high brow, square jaw, well-defined cheekbones and jutting nose; but as far as Avithan was concerned, they combined in a particular and unusual harmony that made her stand out from the other young female Wizards. Though she could not see through them, her large eyes looked perfect to the casual glance. Though their unusual shade of deep, misty blue lacked the piercing intensity so characteristic of the Wizardfolk, their unfocused gaze held a sense of intriguing mystery, as though she were looking through some invisible boundary into other worlds.
‘So tell me, what brought you over here in such a hurry?’ Her question snapped him back to the matter in hand. Reluctantly, he tore his attention from her face, remembering the errand on which he had been sent.
‘I’ve just come from the Archwizard,’ he told her. ‘My father sent me to fetch you. He said he wants
to see you at once.’
‘Me? Why?’
Hearing the faint note of alarm in her voice, Avithan hastened to reassure her. ‘It’s all right. He said it was nothing to do with that fight you had yesterday, though he wouldn’t tell me the real reason.’
‘Do you think he’s had second thoughts, then? Oh, Avithan - has he decided to let me go after all?’
He stared at her in surprise. Such a thing had never even occurred to him. ‘Iriana, you’re the most single-minded female in the world. It’s probably about something else entirely, so don’t go getting your hopes up. It didn’t sound to me as if he had changed his mind.’
Her jaw tightened. ‘I don’t see why not.’
Avithan gave it up. ‘Well, let’s go and find out, shall we? He wanted to see you as soon as possible, so we’d better not keep him waiting.’