Lords of Rainbow (54 page)

“
You will accompany us as we do this thing, Ranhé,” Elasand had told her then. “We need your ability to reinforce us as we attempt this, for inexplicably you seem to be able to draw upon
color
light as easily as my family Vaeste.”

“
What must I do, my lord?” she whispered, echoes of her voice fading softly in the silent chamber.

“
You must be able to join into a link that we are about to form, help maintain that circumference of light, and then, you will
follow us within
 . . .” said Elasirr, looking at her with shadowed empty eyes.

“
Within? Where?” she echoed, looking back also, vacantly and past him, like a well of inner night.

“
You have already been there with me once,” said Lord Vaeste. “It is an
otherplace
that I myself had gone to often, not of this world but another. A place you saw through a filter of
violet
. This time though, we go farther than before, and we go by means of our own will and control.”

And then Elasand turned away, and nodded toward his half-brother.

Noting his silence, Elasirr motioned to the Circle behind them, and suddenly, there was light.

Each man and woman stood with hands lightly spread away from the body, palms upward, and from the fingers of each came an undifferentiated radiance. It flowed outward to fill all space between them with a fog of brightness.

They had linked in a specific order, noted Ranhé. Marihke stood with his back directly south, and onto both sides of him poured forth
red
. On his right stood Gilimas, and he was a source of
orange
. The
colors
, where their outer perimeters of presence touched, strangely, did not blend, but continuously blurred through each other, in an attempt to supersede, to overlap, like water and oil.

To the right of Gilimas stood Nilmet, and he poured forth a strong brilliant
yellow
. Next, counterclockwise, Baelinte blazed in a deep aura of
green
, then came Carliserall the Phoenix in simmering
blue
, and Cyanolis, choosing, of all the
colors
, to form
violet
.

Elasand looked at his cousin for a moment, then stepped forward within the perimeter of the circle. He stood with his back to the north chamber wall, and suddenly he too was
violet
, intensifying the radiance that came from Cyanolis.

On the right of Elasand was the priest, Preinad Olvan, drawn in a corona of
blue
, then Erin, weaving a soft homogeny of
green
.

Elasirr looked at Ranhé. “Go on. Fill this place with the
color
you—like so well.”

She did not need to be told twice. Stepping to Erin’s side, and before Tegra who formed
orange
, she trained her gaze across the circle, on the opposite side where Nilmet stood in
topaz
glow. And then, from within her, it resounded, and she was a sympathetic torch of
yellow
.

It felt odd, standing within the Circle. A permanent warmth gathered, building within her, and she hardly noticed how the Guildmaster himself, being the last one remaining outside their circumference, moved in on the other side of Tegra Daqua, next to Marihke Sar, to complete the Circle at last. And suddenly he too blazed forth, in intense
crimson
.

He and Marihke were the
red
poles, while Elasand and Cyanolis completed the
violet
poles of gathered brightness. It grew, rose about them, and suddenly, it seemed to Ranhé, they all stood under the roof of a brilliant waterfall of light.

And this light, it was strange, furious, unable to coexist with itself, and it danced—formed of distinct photons of separate
colors
—none merging, all swirling like a blizzard of antagonistic heterogeneous particles that refused to
blend
.

For, the truth lay therein, Ranhé suddenly realized. It was the blending that would change the nature of light, the inherent flow of one into another, a universal bond.

Indeed, she herself was like those light particles—poor sorrowful lonely dust motes that would never come together with each other in a fusion that was the final goal.

Yet, it was, possibly, her very own choice.

Elasirr’s voice broke into her dizzying
color
-filled thoughts.

“
Werail!
” he cried, himself a
red
burning demon with sun-hair. “We call upon you and all the others, O Tilirreh! Allow us to enter your place of silence!”

And there was suddenly a great pull upon her personal warmth, the energy that wielded the light, a scalding jerk, as though the ground itself was being pulled from under her feet.

Elasirr’s touch. She could almost feel its intimacy, though he stood at least ten paces away.

For he had taken over her light, and was now transforming the
colors
of the whole Circle.

The Circle, blazed into a single blinding band of
red
.

And then Ranhé felt herself losing consciousness, for it was being sucked into a vortex of brilliance, and she was drowning, falling, falling. . . .

W
erail
stood on a barren
red
plain. The world was
red
. From above, blazed a brilliant terrible
red
sun.

They stood on the plain before him, and cast dark shadows, like burning coal.

There were three of them. Of all the Circle, only they could wield all of the
colors
. Thus, they had the freedom to move between worlds.

“
Lord!” spoke the shadowmaker that was Elasirr. “You once showed me the Enemy, and thus I was prepared. Come back with us to the world,
Werail!
Your presence will dispel the darkness that gathers all around us now.”

I have told you this once already. I may not
 . . . replied the
red
one, in a voice that resounded more hollow than his whole barren world.

It is beyond me. The Rainbow is incomplete.

And then, in a maelstrom of
red
fury, the world began to dissolve before them, and again, Ranhé felt a swooning, as she jumped. . . .

I
nto a place with an
orange
sky.

Melixevven
of
orange
joy was a woman with laughing lips and untamed hair, like a head of dandelion.

The pixie soared before them in the brightness of that sky, and they too floated, disembodied—or rather, unanchored to land.

For, there was no land, no earth in this world.

Only sky.

Come!
cried
Melixevven
in a voice like carbonated water, acute, stinging, and clear as glass. And they flew with her, hurtling through the boundless void of
mandarin
sky, like flying fish. Or maybe, it was but the air that rushed against them, and they were stationary, in this world without a physical frame of reference.

“
Where do you take us, Tilirreh?” cried Elasand, and disembodied Ranhé thought she heard from him a note of despair.

Come, fly with me!
cried the goddess, as
she
sped ahead of them,
her
extremities flaming with a comet tail of sparks in the supernatural wind.
Her
bubbling voice again echoed,
her
laughter bounced in the crystalline void, and she flew onward, unto eternity. . . .

“
Stop!” cried Elasirr. “Come back with us to the true world, O Tilirreh!”

At which the
orange
one laughed, throwing
her
head back, saying,
Oh, but don’t you know this is the one true world? It is but yours that is a pale specter, that is the dying place of dwindling truth?

“
Then come back with us,
lady
,” whispered Ranhé, “and restore the truth as it once was.”

And the bright one heard her whisper.

If I were to come alone, it would kill me, you know
, responded the laughing voice, and Ranhé was not sure why she still laughed.

I may come only after
Werail,
but before
Dersenne,
Melixevven
whispered back directly into Ranhé’s heart.
But they would not have me. Without the Rainbow, we cannot touch. Only you can touch us
.

And again
she
laughed, spinning through a universe of
pumpkin gold
, radiant, sunless, and yet brightness itself.

And with her spinning, they were flung also, outward, into a funnel of indescribable centrifugal energy. . . .

Y
ellow
exuberance.

Ranhé’s heart surged within her suddenly
gold
body, and she stood in that same intimate field of brilliant ripe grass, beneath a sky formed out of
his
hair.

The
man
-in-the-sky filled the universe, and
his
intimate gaze pierced Ranhé, while
his
face smiled.

Next to her, Elasirr threw a
golden
hand up to shield himself from the sudden brilliance, as he stared up into the giant in the sky, saying in a strangely deadened voice, “
Dersenne!
Why did you leave the world we come from? What made you leave us, O Tilirreh?”

The
yellow
one looked down upon the one who had asked the question.

I did not leave
, said
Dersenne
gently.
Rather, you have all receded. The distance between us became a singular void, and now I may not even reach behind me and feel
Melixevven,
nor can I venture forward and meet
Fiadolmle.
Our ties have become severed, and our worlds may not come into contact, only overlap
.

There was sorrow in his words, but the living voice soared like a morning lark into the expanse of heaven, and could not help but inspire. For
he
was the lord of Sacrament.

“
My sweet lord,” whispered Ranhé, “I understand now, why you cannot come back. But I would know why this took place, those hundreds of years ago. What made the Rainbow recede from our world, and take with it most of the truth?”

I am not the one to answer such, my joy
, the
gold
one replied, maybe to her alone, intimate as mist within her inner ear.
But you must first ask a different question.

Ask: what
is
the Rainbow?

And after that, there was only silence upon fields ripe as
dandelion
gauze.

Ranhé blinked, and then she, and the two others were taken up, and pulled upon the wind, and then they jumped. . . .

A
nd landed in the world’s
green
Forest.

They lay, thrust into the earth itself, feeling roots extend into richness of soil, tendrils of grass growing from their own flesh, entwining with the vines of others, joining.

Ranhé sensed—lying in the deep thicket, via the entwined limbs of her transformed being—the breathing of Elasand’s lungs, and the beating of Elasirr’s heart.

And beyond, she also sensed the rich overwhelming presence of the
woman
who extended to embrace and encompass them, who was the very forest itself,
Fiadolmle
, the lady of Birth.

Overhead, the sky was an unrolled bolt of deep
jade
velvet, spreading like thick honey to pool in the cracks of the horizon. At its apex was set a
verdigris
sun, pouring exhilaration upon the forest.

“
Fiadolmle!
” whispered Elasand. “What is the Rainbow?”

The leaves moved in with succulence, and a shimmering voice came to flow through them, like sap running through the stems of the plants.

Rainbow is union
 . . . said the
green
one.
And the final joining results in
white.
But that cannot be again, ever. For
Andelas
is no more, and without him, we may not join, only coexist
.

“
Andelas
, the Tilirreh of
white
!” exclaimed Vaeste. “I know of
his
mystery, but little of the truth surrounding it. It is said in our world that
he
left, and took the rest of the Tilirr with
him
. . . .”

He left, and we had to follow. And now, he is gone so far that even we cannot extend ourselves to feel his presence
. . . .

“
But why?” continued Elasand. “Why did
he
leave us? What was it, those centuries ago, that made
him
abandon our world and make it incomplete?”

And
Fiadolmle
’s sweet growing vines wrapped softly around Elasand’s cheek in a whispering caress of succulent leaves.