Lords of Rainbow (15 page)

A strange smile deepened the corners of her mouth. “Know me? On such brief acquaintance? That’s not so easy, my lord. You’ll know me only with time, which we won’t have. Meanwhile, let’s just say I work for you now, and that’s all we need to know.”

She looked away, and for a moment Elas thought there was something in the pale too-bland face that actually escaped him, a thing she hid. And then Elasand was conscious of the fact that for the first time he had gone out of his way to secure someone in his employ.

He had gone out of his way.

There must be a worth to her that only my inner mind knows. And I must find out what it is
.

Servants began carrying in breakfast, and Jirve Lan, the innkeeper, made himself comfortable with a cup of hot brew, next to Nilmet.

“
What will be our venerable topic today, eh, Master Nilmet?” he chuckled, eyeing the Tilirr game board from the night before, while Nilmet pretended to consider his reply with all seriousness.

“
You
pick a topic, Master Jirve, and we’ll pursue it to the deepest truth. But oh, we haven’t finished yesterday’s talk—the nature of Rainbow.”

“
Ah, yes. . . .” And sporting excitement came to Jirve’s eyes.

“
From now on,” said Elas meanwhile, “I pay for you. Until our agreement ends. That’s in addition to the seventy gold
dahr
I’ve already promised.”

“
You are more generous than necessary, m’lord,” spoke Ranhé, stuffing hot porridge into her mouth, while he watched her in amusement.

I amuse him, yes
, she thought,
then let it be. Let him learn, slowly
.

Pheyl Milhas, the man hired the night before, joined them, and Elas told them both the details of the hire. They were to carry out their duty until the City, at which point the full payment was to be given—since the sum was too large to risk having anyone abscond with an initial portion.

He also gave them his full name, Elasand-re Vaeste. “Do not speak it often, however. Only be aware of it,” he added. Neither did he mention again the Bilhaar assassins.

Milhas, a sullen heavy-set fellow, nodded in understanding. “So, m’lord, when do we ride? Shall I go and ready the horses?”

“
As soon as my kinswomen are ready.”

“
And shall I go sharpen my sword?” Ranhé’s eyes laughed.
We both know I won’t have much to do on this job.

“
At least make sure my aunt and cousin see that you have it,” retorted Elasand, thinking,
What does it really mean when she jokes?

“
By all means,” she said, “I’ll draw at every opportunity, and wave it about to their full satisfaction.”

Elas watched her.

“
Before you think you hired a fool, I’ll stop,” she said. “Not another word.” And then added, so that even dull Pheyl Milhas barely hid a twitching mouth, “Just one more thing. Welcome, O adventure!”

It was then most likely that the ones called gods heard her.

* * *

Postulate Eight: Rainbow is Contrast.

* * *

T
egra Daqua hated only one man—he was called Baelinte, and his Family, Khirmoel, represented
green
, the
color
of the artist-creator. Baelinte, on the other hand, hated no other woman the way he hated Tegra Daqua, a woman whose Family was the elegant patron of
orange
. They hated one another not because Daqua and Khirmoel stood at odds—for they did not. And neither did they hate because of personal causes. Indeed, they barely knew each other in a social context, rarely attended the same gatherings or had overlapping circles of friends. This hate of theirs came about because he was emotion, she—reason. He, advancing towards middle years, the handicapped artist-poet. She, still in her extreme youth, the exquisitely brilliant scholar. But mainly they hated each other because in all things they stood in competition. And because, since the first contact between two pairs of intense eyes from afar, there was a bond insidiously established between them, a bond of thoughts and silence.

Baelinte Khirmoel, unlike any other, knew how to capture the likeness of a subject or landscape upon canvas, and at the same time, capture the essence of any image in words. Tegra Daqua, unlike any other, had captured and held within her mind the workings of the physical world, the fine detail and structural analysis of living organisms and non-living matter. So unlike their work had been, and yet, so much alike in its finesse and attention to subtleties.

At times, Tegra would sit in a cool sterile cubicle of the City Library, poring over an anatomical sketch of an animal, its inner truth revealed to her. And elsewhere, in his reclusive twilit chamber, before a tall oval window letting in filtered gray sunlight through its antique glass, Baelinte leaned his lion-maned head over a manuscript, lost to the present reality, his hands flying with his handwriting, the pen dancing over the clean vista of parchment.

No juice flows thicker in the twilight

Than honeyed lies.

They waft with musk through city gardens

And perch on ears like butterflies.

Baelinte had been born lame in his right foot, it being considerably shorter than the left, and twisted so as not to allow the sole to properly touch the ground. He walked leaning against a tall ornate cane that he had carved himself out of an expensive hardwood. If not for the lameness, he would have stood taller and haughtier than any man in his circle of friends, for he possessed an otherwise fine strong frame. Indeed, there was a manner of grace in his lame poised walk—slow, relaxed and measured, radiating hidden feral strength.

When Tegra walked, it seemed she clenched her whole being to her, frozen into a pillar of inhumanity and untempered steel. Tall and thin and aloof, she restrained all parts of herself but those that were extensions of reason and its cool clinical curiosity. Her hair, pale and wispy, and finer than autumn dandelion, she wore tightly bound in the back, so that it would not interfere with her movements. Her voice was never raised, but firm as iron, or firmer—for she had watched iron ores smelted, watched the physical process, and knew that iron could be soft and incandescent with passion, and run liquidly, in a way her voice could never flow.

How relative things were, how misleading the appearances. Baelinte’s outer passion had its roots in ice of the soul. Tegra’s external rime was the ice covering over a rapidly churning river of deep warm currents.

No need for contact, ever, between these two.

And yet, opposite things are lured to each other, inevitably and half-consciously, through initial conflict.

Having passed him by one morning in the Archives Library of the Lyceum, Tegra Daqua gave Baelinte Khirmoel what he thought was a superior look. (For again, their equally intense eyes, always searching for others like themselves, were unconsciously meant to be drawn together at that precise moment in time.)

There had been no actual intent on her part. No conscious will to pique. But the Khirmoel’s unhealthy sensitivity conjured illusions in his eyes, so that he saw what he wanted to see, and interpreted accordingly.

Her large pale-silver eyes. Washed out, introspective. Cobweb-fine tender lashes. Eyes looking at him and
through
him, as though he was not there.

And that night, Baelinte, wild-eyed and lion-maned, could get no sleep, boiling with outrage born of curiosity. And he wrote a eulogy that night, a song of high praise and hence, high destruction, to the Ice Maiden of Daqua, that was to render her the universal mockery-piece.

No ice cracks louder than the Maiden,

When sun’s warmth melts her frosty mouth.

Her lips would first dissolve to water

Before they curve or lower south.

No duck quacks louder than a Daqua,

When faced with passion’s paring knife.

With gamy wisdom of the ages

This waterfowl makes soup of life.

Only this time, Baelinte had underestimated his victim.

Tegra Daqua was read the latest product of the Khirmoel’s fancy in a company of like-minded scholars. No change came to her expression, but she allowed herself a sardonic smile.

“
How is one to take this, gentle sirs?” came her faultless words. “This man’s mind is an example of psychological oddity. I must now research the subject and come up with a worthy analytical study of his imbalance. It will be widely publicized. I will call it ‘The Dissection of a Khirmoel.’”

The contest was thus on.

PART II

The City

CHAPTER 6

Y
ou are now hurtling inward, and it is time to lift another veil.

Are you ready? Good.

Then don’t be afraid, and sweep the second veil aside.

Underneath, you see a vista, a bird’s-eye panoramic view of wonder. And then, Tronaelend-Lis.

A City that is a dream, vague, inexplicable.

“
You contain everything, and therefore, there’s no other place I need to be,” said one cheap lyric of a minor poet. And soon the poet himself, out of obscurity, had been elevated by the masses of this boiling City, until his words were read with amusement in the presence of the Regents, in high
Dirvan
itself, and his name was made synonymous with the City of Dreams.

This is an example of the power of circularity that was a property of Tronaelend-Lis. Here, things in themselves insignificant were pulled inward, in a bizarre centripetal spin, elevated momentarily and then shuffled aside, acquiring in the process a sense of
belonging
here even after they were discards. Seething, Tronaelend-Lis took hold of everything in its reach and made it part of itself.

Its seething was manifold, on all conceivable levels, from the gutter filth of the outmost Fringes on the South side, to the gilded sublimity of its core, in which lay
Dirvan
. As with all other things of paradox, there was a duality to Tronaelend-Lis, place of order and chaos.

They say that long ago, before there even had been the mysterious phenomenon described as Rainbow’s Fall, the first humans of the West Lands came as barbarians from the farthest east—where the sun rose, and where supposedly was the end of the world—and from the distant southern sea where they had been spawned as fish out of the blending of sun and
color
and sea. They came, strong-blooded and spirited as all newly-made things, and claimed the lands of the great worldwide forest. There were great men and women among them, true leaders, the same whose blood ran in the Kings and nobility of the present, and they were the ones who built the City.

But it was not a barbarian’s imagination that had conceived Tronaelend-Lis.

The City was, in its essence, order. Conceived as a great perfect wheel with eight spokes dividing it into eight wedges, with a round center, this basic plan remained up to the present.

But the details changed; in any given age, boundaries contained different things, and were under different laws of access. Indeed, they were the only constant—tall stone walls, thrown like radii from the center, with a number of special gates which joined the “wedges,” and were differently accessible, as the Kings or the Guilds pleased.

The central circular region which contained amid splendid gardens the Palace and Seat of the royal dynasties, and was the residence of the aristocratic elite, was called
Dirvan
. This term also applied to the royal Court itself, and to the way of life of the aristocracy.
Dirvan
was separated from the rest of the City and surrounded by a wide, perfectly circular canal, the Arata, which had also been present in the planning of the City, and remains to this day.

Like all things in Tronaelend-Lis, the Arata Canal had undergone constant change—overflowing, then nearly running dry, negligently polluted, and then dredged clean and refilled anew, periodically at the whim of the Kings. Bridges had spanned it, were torn down, were rebuilt, all depending on the Court’s relationship with the rest of the City. At present, a hundred or so bridges hung over the Arata’s murky silver waters.

Besides the Regents, representing the long-gone Kings’ power, Guilds ruled Tronaelend-Lis. There were as many Guilds as there were possible occupations for the citizens, and new ones were created every day, just as every day some weaker old ones were dissolved because of their dwindling means. All it took was a sufficient sum of money to be deposited in the Treasury, and the new Guild’s name, function, and rights were recorded in the Great Book of Guilds which lay in the Academic Quarter together with all the other Records, in the Archives of the Lyceum.

The Guilds had subdivided the City according to their needs, and no freeman had any say where their jurisdiction was concerned. This, of course, was a source of endless nightmares to the non-Guild-affiliated. But they were so few in number that their nightmares did not matter.