At least the Warrior’s bluntness had taken some of the sting out of the decision. ‘Look,’ he had said, ‘this has nothing to do with your blindness, Iriana. I know that as long as you have your animals, you can manage very well on your own. But this isn’t Tyrineld. It’s a frontier town on the edge of civilisation, and it’s inhabited by all sorts of rough, unsavoury types. These aren’t the sort of Wizards we know at home. If they were, they probably wouldn’t be here. In the main, these folk are misfits and adventurers, or worse, and most of them left our society and its rules behind with good reason. Even if you had your sight, a lovely young girl like you wouldn’t be safe alone in the streets after dark. In fact,’ the Warrior had added, ‘I wouldn’t be too happy about any of us going out alone tonight. Not even me, and I know how to handle myself in a fight.’
There was a tavern of sorts at the end of Challan’s street, a rough structure that was little more than an open-fronted shed with lanterns hanging from the beams, a counter for serving ale and several tables and benches that had been hastily knocked together from scrap timber. ‘We’ll wait here until you’re done,’ Esmon said. ‘This meeting with your foster-father is just between the two of you, and you certainly won’t want Avithan and me tagging along.’
‘Thanks,’ Iriana said, feeling infinitely relieved that Esmon understood. ‘I probably won’t be too long.’
The Warrior grinned at her. ‘You take as long as you need. Don’t hurry yourself on our account. Avithan and I will amuse ourselves here with a drink or two, until you come back.’
Alone at last, Iriana made her way down the street towards Challan’s house. When she’d found the right door, she held out her left hand, which was clad in the tough leather gauntlet that she always used for working with her raptors. At her whistle, Seyka floated down through the smoky night air and settled on her fist. For a moment, Iriana struggled with the temptation to turn around and return to her companions. When that door was opened, what would she find? ‘Iriana, pull yourself together,’ she muttered. ‘You haven’t come this far just to turn around and slink away again.’ She took a deep breath and steadied herself. She wasn’t a child any more. Challan owed her some answers, and by all Creation, she meant to get them. Trying to ignore the anxious churning in her stomach, she took a deep breath and knocked on Challan’s door with her free hand, wondering what sort of reception would await her inside.
Iriana had been thinking about this meeting throughout the journey, and playing out all sorts of different scenarios in her imagination. From the moment the door opened, however, nothing was the way she had imagined it might be. Instead of Challan answering the door, Iriana came face to face with a tall, dark-eyed human woman whose abundant brown hair was streaked with grey and whose weathered face betrayed the remnants of what had once been a delicate prettiness. Standing there in the lamplight, she looked vaguely familiar, and the Wizard had an uneasy feeling that she knew her from somewhere - yet how could that be possible? She eyed Iriana with a chilly look. ‘Yes?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want?’
Iriana was quite taken aback by her attitude. There was none of the usual respect or subservience that she had always seen in human slaves. What bare-faced effrontery! Why, this woman seemed to think that she was the equal of a Wizard. ‘Is your master in?’ she asked coldly.
‘My master?’ The woman laughed harshly. ‘That’ll be the day.’ Looking back over her shoulder into the house, she shouted, ‘Challan? There’s some girl at the door wanting to know if my master’s in.’ She turned back to Iriana. ‘Come in if you want, but you’ll have to leave those filthy animals outside.’
‘How dare you speak to me like that, human!’ Never in her life had Iriana struck someone, but this was too much. Just as she raised her hand to slap this temeritous slave, however, Challan appeared in the narrow hallway. As he took in the tableau on his doorstep, he suddenly started, stared at her, and his jaw fell open. ‘Iriana? Little Iriana? Is it really you? I scarcely recognised you.’
He looked different, and it surprised her. Wizards could look any age they wanted, and somehow, she had expected him to be as she remembered him: his angular face clean-shaven and his hair long and dark. Instead, he had allowed his face to age, and his hair, now silver, was clipped short to match his neatly trimmed beard. Only his hazel eyes were the same, and even in them, his wary, guarded expression as he failed to quite meet her gaze was something she had never known before.
Challan held out his arms as if to embrace her, but she ignored them. Melik, sensing her mood, hissed at him from her shoulder. Iriana took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I would like to speak with you, if you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘In private.’ This last was directed very pointedly at the slave-woman, who was standing close to one side, listening to everything that was being said.
For a moment an expression of deep sadness crossed Challan’s face. ‘Ah. I see. Well, come in, Iriana, and be welcome.’
‘Thank you.’ Lifting her chin, Iriana swept past the human, whose scowl was thunderous. ‘I told her she couldn’t bring those dirty animals in here,’ she snapped at Challan. ‘Making a mess of my nice, clean house.’
‘They won’t make any mess, Lannala,’ Challan said mildly, and at the mention of the name, Iriana remembered where she had seen the woman before. Why, she thought, when our family was still together in Tyrineld, this Lannala used to be a servant in our house. What in the world is she doing here?
What in the world was that wretched girl doing here? Lannala could only look helplessly at the two retreating backs as Challan and Iriana turned away from her and moved down the passageway into his study. When she tried to follow them, she found the door shut firmly against her. It was just like the old days in Tyrineld, she thought bitterly. The Wizards shutting out the lowly mortal slave.
A sensation like the cold, empty void of a winter’s night passed through her, settling in her belly and her bones. She and Challan had been here for so many years: they had been one of the first pairs of settlers in this lovely, sheltered valley, and had watched the community grow from one or two lonely cabins to the busy, thriving town it was today. Stunned, resentful, she wandered back into the kitchen where the scrubbed vegetables lay on the table ready for a stew, and began to chop savagely at an onion. No matter what was at stake, she told herself, she had too much self-respect to listen at the door. Or maybe she was just afraid of what she might hear.
When her eyes began to sting and blur, she knew it wasn’t just the onions. She’d thought they were safe here. She’d thought that time had erased the guilt that Challan felt at leaving Zybina and his children. The long, distant silences that Challan often fell into after they had left Tyrineld, which used to make her so unhappy and insecure because she knew he was missing his Wizardborn family, had tailed away long ago, until at last she had relaxed, felt less inferior, less dependent. She’d found her confidence, and truly believed she’d made a life for herself here as a partner and equal, not a slave. And if he had diminished a little since leaving Tyrineld, she had blossomed. So it all balanced out, and they’d had many happy years together.
She had never thought it would change. She’d been wrong. She hadn’t counted on opening the door and finding Challan’s past on the doorstep. Nor had she expected those old feelings of fear, inferiority and insecurity to come flooding back over her. The feelings of a slave. She knew that those uncomfortable emotions, not to mention jealousy and resentment, had made her shrewish and bad-tempered (and rude and ungracious to a visitor) but she couldn’t help it. How else was she supposed to react to such a deadly threat to her happiness?
Though he’d tried to hide it, she’d seen the haunted look of guilt on Challan’s face; heard the wistful emotion in his voice as he addressed his foster-daughter. Had Iriana come to ask him to return? Even though she didn’t think he would leave his Nexian family, she knew that the girl’s visit would stir up his emotions: feelings of regret, remorse, the ache of an uneasy conscience, the won
dering what it would have been like if only he had stayed. If only she, Lannala, had not fallen pregnant . . .
No matter what came of Iriana’s sudden appearance, one thing was certain. Tonight would change everything.
Lannala’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife. Damn it, she wouldn’t give up without a fight - and not just for herself, or the love she bore Challan. She had her daughter to think about. Chiannala was loved by both of them, and indulged by her father - sometimes far too much for her own good, Lannala thought. It was as though Challan was somehow trying to compensate for abandoning Yinze and Iriana in Tyrineld. Challan had always given his new daughter anything she wanted, except for one thing. To Lannala’s mind, the most important thing of all. Though she showed every sign of having inherited her father’s powers, Challan refused to let Chiannala go to Tyrineld, and be properly trained in the arts of Wizardry.
New resentment against Iriana had her clenching her teeth. Why should Challan deprive his true - and plainly talented - daughter, when a blind nobody from who-knew-where had been accepted, taught, loved by the Wizards? Was he ashamed to face his peers in Tyrineld and recognise the girl he had fathered? Well, Lannala would see about that. No matter what it cost her, she would make sure that Challan did the right thing by Chiannala.
Just at that moment, the sound of voices raised in vicious anger, one of them belonging to her daughter, came down the passageway from Challan’s study, making her jump. Her hand slipped and the sharp knife nicked her finger. Damn! Ignoring the welling blood, she hurried to the door.
Challan ushered Iriana into the narrow passageway, unadorned but for a shelf that held the lamp. There were doors to the right and left, and another open doorway at the end of the passage, through which she could see a kitchen with signs of a meal in preparation on the table. Opening the door on the left, Challan showed her into a cosy study, with books overflowing the shelves and piled on the floor and table, and a fire glowing in the grate. He led her to one of the comfortable chairs by the hearth, and Iriana settled herself, letting the owl perch on the back of the seat and lifting Melik down from her shoulder onto her lap. Challan did not sit, but paced nervously back and forth in front of the fire.
There was a long moment of silence, broken at last by Challan. ‘My dear, you don’t know how good it is to see you again.’
‘Really. If you had wanted to see me that much, you knew where I was,’ Iriana replied flatly.
Her words brought him to a standstill, as though she had dealt him a physical blow. ‘Iriana, I cannot tell you how sorry I am about leaving; about everything. Please, try to understand—’
‘Understand what?’ Iriana’s voice was like a whetted blade. ‘You went off and left us without a word of warning. You didn’t even have the decency to tell Zybina to her face that you were going, you just left her a cowardly note. What I understand, Challan, is lying awake all those long nights, listening to the woman I regard as my mother sobbing in the room next door. What I understand is that poor Yinze was forced to grow up without a father.’ Suddenly she could bear to live in ignorance no longer. She had to know the truth, even if it destroyed her. ‘Was it me?’ she demanded. ‘Was it my fault? I have to know. Did you leave them because of me?’
He stared at her. Through Melik’s eyes, she could see the emotions crossing his face, one after the other: surprise, dismay and guilt. ‘By all Creation, Iriana, is that what you believed?’
‘Well, why else would you go?’ Iriana demanded harshly. ‘What other reason could there have been? I drove my own parents away as soon as I was born, because they didn’t want a child who wasn’t normal, and later I did the same with you. Only this time, it wasn’t just me who suffered.’ She was dimly aware, now, that tears were spilling down her cheeks. ‘Zybina and Yinze’s lives were ruined, too.’
Challan dropped to his knees beside her and gripped both of her hands. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault, I swear to you. It was mine; all mine. You see . . .’ He hesitated, as if groping for the words, then plunged on. ‘I fell in love with someone. Hopelessly, completely in love. I was besotted, spellbound. Forgive me, Iriana, but I had to choose her. She needed me far more than Zybina ever did. And things being as they were, with her expecting my child, we couldn’t possibly stay in Tyrineld, so—’
But Iriana was no longer listening. All those years of pain and guilt - and for nothing. A colossal anger boiled up within her. ‘Who?’ she growled. ‘Is she here now, this woman who was more important than your family?’
Prudently, Challan got to his feet again and stepped back from her. ‘You’ve already met her,’ he said. ‘It’s Lannala.’
The shock was like lightning jolting through her. ‘What?’ she shouted, scooping Melik into her arms and leaping to her feet in turn. ‘That housemaid? That human? You abandoned your family for a slave?’
‘Hush! She’ll hear you.’
‘I don’t give a damn if she hears me,’ Iriana shouted. ‘How could you? How could you do this to Zybina? To all of us? Rutting with a human - it’s perverted and obscene!’ She was aghast at such betrayal. All this time she had suffered. All this time she had lived in torture, blaming herself for destroying the family that had given her a home. And all this time the man she had looked up to as a father had been pleasuring himself with a mortal slave. Such things were done, of course, she was not such an innocent as to deny that, but never so openly as to actually set up home with one. And as for casting aside a loving family to be with the creature - why, such a thing was unheard of.
Challan sighed. ‘I’m sorry you feel this way, Iriana, and I’m very sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused you. But your reaction only goes to prove that I was right to come here, where folk are more inclined to live and let live. My love for Lannala would never have been accepted in Tyrineld, and I would only have brought misery and shame on Zybina and you two children, not to mention Lannala and Chiannala.’
‘Chiannala? Who in Perdition is she? Are you rutting with two of them now?’
Challan’s eyes flashed angrily. ‘Do not use that word again. For the love I bear you and the debt I owe you I’ve been patient, Iriana; but this is my family too, and I will not have you come marching in here and speaking of them in such offensive terms, as if they were mere animals—’
The door crashed open, cutting off his words. A thin-faced girl with flashing dark eyes and abundant brown hair stood there. Through Melik’s feline vision, which was specifically designed to pick up small, abrupt movements, Iriana could see that she was actually shaking with anger. ‘I can’t stand to listen to this another moment,’ she snapped. ‘Just who in Perdition do you think you are? What right have you to come here, to our home, and speak of us like this? No wonder your parents didn’t want you. No wonder my father couldn’t stand to live with you! Why don’t you go back to your stinking city, where you belong?’
Before Iriana could form a reply, Challan intervened. ‘Iriana, I want you to meet Chiannala - my daughter.’
‘His real daughter,’ Chiannala said spitefully. ‘His own flesh and blood, not some blind foundling freak with no claim on him at all.’
‘That’s enough, Chiannala,’ Challan said sharply. ‘It’s not true - any more than the things Iriana was saying about you and your mother are true.’
But matters had already gone beyond his control. Iriana felt as though she had been stabbed through the heart. Somehow this ferret-faced bitch had managed to strike at the root of her deepest childhood insecurities. The only thing she could do was lash out in return. ‘I may have been a foundling, but at least I’m not some half-blooded obscenity that should have been destroyed at birth,’ she spat. Turning back to Challan, she added: ‘The half-breed was right about one thing, though. You are no longer my father, and you never will be again.’ With that, she made for the door. Chiannala, her face livid, stood there as if to bar her way, but Seyka flew at her face, talons extended, and she leapt aside with a curse, leaving Irian
a free to go. Thrusting the door violently open, she almost ran into the accursed slave woman who had caused all the trouble. She had clearly been eavesdropping. Hardly surprising from one of her kind. Fortunately, Iriana only cared about getting out of that place, and away from the lot of them. It was just as well. She was so hurt and enraged that there was no telling what she might have done.
It was also just as well that she had the vision of the cat and the owl to depend on as she made her way back up the street, for even if she’d been able to see, her own eyes were too awash with tears to be of any use to her. When she reached the open-fronted booth that served as a tavern, Avithan and Esmon leapt up in alarm at the sight of her, and for once, when Avithan put his arms around her and held her tightly, she did not object, but leaned against his shoulder, grateful for the comfort and support of his arms around her. When they asked her what was wrong, however, she stiffened in his arms and shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said in a cold, tight voice. ‘Not now. Not ever.’