Lords of Rainbow (55 page)

It is the same reason that you would leave the beloved house of your birth. You have grown and matured, while the house has stayed the same, and did not change with you. What was once sweet pleasure, now oppresses. What had once been clean and new, is now worn and old and filled with decay. What had once held memories of peace, now only reeks of death. What had once filled a vital need, is now a burden. Would you not leave?

Her
gentle whisper ended. And yet, the leaves continued to grow preternaturally. Vines crawled forth, and offshoots were breaking into new full branches all around them, obscuring all sight with their rich abundance, while overhead the
green
sky shimmered like endless spilled velvet.

Ranhé had to close her eyes. And then she felt herself jumping into an elsewhere. . . .

W
hen she opened her eyes, she saw a horizon.

It was a line bisecting the world in two. A
blue
world of sea and sky.

She floated like a swan upon the surface of the still deep water, and next to her were two others. There was a brilliant
azure
light upon the waters, shining down from an unseen source.

Ranhé looked up, and saw it was the sky itself, a great mass of electric day-fire, that reflected back upon itself from the
cyan
waters, in an endless source of rebounding illumination.

Just ahead of her, something burst forth from the water, in a foaming pale spray of a fountain, and she saw a
man
,
ultramarine
like the foam, surface, and take powerful strokes to flow toward them.

He
tread water lightly, and yet
his
extremities appeared at some point to dwindle into the wetness itself, become translucent with liquidity.

“
Koerdis!
” said Elasirr, himself now a merman, swimming alongside her, while the great pale mane of his hair spread around him like seaweed. On her other side, Elasand’s dark hair flowed like rich
cerulean
currents against the waves.

Why are you here?
said a voice like the deep itself.

“
We ask you to give us the truth,” responded Elasirr. “What can be done to restore the Rainbow? How can
Andelas
, who left us, be persuaded to return?”

Around them the ocean swelled.
Koerdis
glided near them, his sleek perfect body moving in rhythm with the water.
His
eyes, when Ranhé caught a glimpse of them, were bottomless intense darkness, like the ocean depths. And yet, it was a clean warm velvet richness that was inside them, and
he
looked within her as
he
spoke, so that she found it both pleasurable to meet that gaze, and impossible to fathom it.

Truth is what I give
, said the flowing
blue
one.
You ask about
Andelas,
and yet, the answer is before you, even now.

“
What do you mean?” whispered Ranhé.

Look above you
, said the
azure
god.
And then, look below and around you. Where is the source of light? Take away the sky, and the ocean will be in darkness. Take away the ocean, and the sky will not shine.

“
But what is the original catalyst, the source of this light?” asked Elasirr.

I am, of course. For, this is my world
.

“
And if you were to leave it, O Tilirreh, then what?”

Then this world would not exist, for it is only an extension of myself. Only this does not apply to the world you call your own. Your world is an extension of all of us, and thus no single one of us can fully destroy it, nor fully restore it. Not even Andelas. For, your world has long since taken on a life of its own. It exists outside our sphere now, and will, unto eternity
.

And speaking thus,
Koerdis
thrust forward suddenly, and with a lunge drew forth, exploding out of the waters. And then
he
stood upright. And nude, perfect, terrifying,
he
walked upon the
aquamarine
waves.

Treading water, they watched in shocked silence, saw the soles of
his
feet skim along the mirror surface, as
he
moved away from them, leaving footprints of brilliant pale foam.

“
Wait,
Koerdis!
” cried Elasirr, angry, his voice resounding with despair. “You have not answered us! You are the second to last! You of all I had hoped will give us the truth, you who are the lord of Truth!”

And the receding
blue
figure paused for an instant, and
Koerdis
turned
his
face to watch them, for one last time.

Truth is once again before you
 . . . sounded his voice from afar, like an ocean swell.
The sky, the waters, they shine it forth. What is the source of light? Recognize it as a paradox!

And once again,
he
turned
his
intensity away from them, and continued walking. And in his wake, they thought the waters sang, rippled, and whispered. And it resounded, like the light upon the sky and waves—
Rainbow is a paradox
.

And suddenly then, the ocean rose on all sides, and they felt its funneling force, and they were being pulled within.

The waters closed over their heads, and the last they remembered, gasping for desperate air, was
blue
silence, as they jumped. . . .

I
nto
violet
.

They stood within a bower of a garden of sweet flowering shrubs, abounding with
amethyst
blossoms of a million petals, with delicate fern of the palest fine
lavender
, with
heliotrope
roses and swirling
hyacinth
.

From above shone a full otherworldly moon.

In the center, upon a bed of tiny
purple
bell-flowers, sat a
woman
, with tresses long and ripping like a running stream.

Her
form was gentle glowing fire. And her hair sang.

At Ranhé’s side, Elasand gasped suddenly, and moved forward, and then fell on his knees before the one who was indeed
Laelith
, the gentle lady of the Way Things Are.

With a strange painful tug upon her innards, Ranhé watched her Lord Vaeste fall before the
violet
one, watched his face transform, his cool beauty melt into absolute rapture as he gazed upon
her
, the Tilirreh of Love. And she did not see how, at the same time as she watched the radiant face of Elasand, another was watching her own face, her own expression.

Elasirr looked upon the moment of pain that was visible upon the face of Ranhé. And his own face was transformed. Indeed, all of their faces were now filled with it, with acuteness of naked emotion, with nothing now to hide it, no worldly reserve, no pride, no concern. All were bathed in the equating smoothness of the
lavender
glow.

“
My lady,” whispered Elasand Vaeste, kneeling before the incarnation of his dream. “My lady.” And he could say nothing else, only stared, never taking his eyes away from the sight of
her
.

And then, the
violet
one smiled. With that smile, the light in the garden intensified, and the blossoms turned their heads, opening further, while buds broke open into new flowers.

The air, like a perfect
lilac
dawn, was clamoring with the sound of a running stream, a great river, and from afar, a light tinkle of bells. Those bells, realized Ranhé, were but lilies-of-the-valley, their tiny heads moving in time to the gossamer wind.

You are with me, all of you, at last
, sounded the intimate voice of the goddess.
And this is where it all begins and ends. For,
Koerdis
is just behind me, and ahead,
Werail.
And so, what have you learned?

Elasirr, his eyes open wide, an odd smirk taking hold of his lips, pronounced loudly and mockingly, “I don’t know about my brother here—who even now is enraptured and wallows mindlessly at your feet, O Tilirreh—but I have learned only that the mystery of the Rainbow lies within a paradox. Am I right?”

But
Laelith
looked directly into Elasirr’s eyes, and suddenly the mocking smile faded from his face. In its place, Ranhé saw, was only raw pain. And something else, something that resonated within her own being, and which she recognized with the bitter ease of long familiarity.

Self-hatred.

He hated himself, this man with the sun-hair, with the proud angry eyes, and his charming killing smile, the man who wore so many masks—that of the Guildmaster of the Light Guild, and the master assassin, lord of Bilhaar, that of one who had the power and the responsibility for the City of Dreams, Tronaelend-Lis, the City that had now been thrust into Twilight.

And this man, Elasirr, bastard son of Vaeste, stood revealed in his personal entirety, before the one who was
violet
.

Ranhé found that suddenly she could not bear the sight of his face, could not bear the agony etched in its lines.

Her own inner past paled in comparison. She remembered again, mercurial glimpses of her mother, her father, her child self. She remembered the daily hollow cold that grew and settled within her with the years, the alienation. But in the face of this man, Elasirr, she saw a naked wound. Even now it bled, and there was nothing to alleviate it, in the soft merciless
lavender
glow.

He was the assassin, and he was the lifegiver, she knew at last. He took away, and he created. And now he was all alone, before the one who revealed the way things are.

“
Laelith!
” exclaimed Ranhé, with sudden inexplicable agitation. “Stop! He cannot bear it, he cannot look within your eyes anymore. Leave him be!”

And then, the eyes of the
lady
were at last upon her, and she felt, with a moment of piercing, her own heart break.

“
Laelith
 . . .” she whispered then, “Please, pity them both. Pity him who loves you. And him who hates himself. I ask nothing for myself, because there’s nothing for me here. I know that very well,
lady
, I bear no illusions, not even in your beautiful perfect intimate garden.”

No illusions, my poor child? Not even one?
whispered the warm voice.
Not even your secret dream of fulfillment? For yes, I know it, I know it all. All that is within you is also within me
.

“
Not even that one,” replied Ranhé sadly. “Illusions create hope. And it is hope that hurts so much.”

And yet you must have hope, or you may not exist. Even now, all of you are here in supplication on behalf of your outer lives, your City, your responsibilities. And yet the one supplication that I truly hear from each one of you, is the personal supplication on behalf of oneself.

“
It is true,” said Elasand suddenly, the one who had been silent all along. “True, O
lady
, that I selfishly stand before you, and all I can think of is yourself and myself—not my City, not my fellow men. I love you,
Laelith!
And without you, I can go on no longer.”

And with those words, he hung his head, kneeling in a bower of soft
lilac
grass. In back of him stood the man with the sun-hair, his eyes also averted, looking neither right nor left, but straight ahead, somewhere upon the moonlit
violet
sky. And on the other side stood Ranhé, simple, quiet, resigned.

The
woman
with the glowing tresses got up slowly from
her
soft place in the grass.
She
rose, taller than any of them, dressed in a sheer gossamer gown that trailed to the floor, and ended in nothing, in vaporous night.

Her face was peace. Her eyes, more remote than any of the other Tilirr, windows upon an
elsewhere
.

She
neared Elasand, still kneeling before
her
. And
she
reached out
her
pale hand and placed it upon his raven head.

He started at
her
touch, and a visible tremor came to run through his whole body. He threw his head back, looking up at
her
with mad joy.

And
Laelith
bent forward then,
her
glowing hair falling about them like a curtain, obscuring them into intimacy, and
she
took his face between
her
two palms, and then brought
her
lips down upon his upturned own.

She
kissed him, and in that instant he died. He sank away, blanked out into the oblivion of impossibility—for, such is the price of fulfillment.

And when the next instant he came to life again,
she
was already remote, having stepped away from him, and stood now before his half-brother.

Come
, said the goddess to Elasirr, looking impossibly into his eyes.
Let me kiss you and heal you also
.