Lords of Rainbow

  “What are you waiting for, my dear?” mocked Deileala. “Maybe he’s the answer we’re looking for. Go ahead and break the glass, and just maybe our beloved antique will wake? Or, do you think I should go and kiss him on his cold lips?” She snorted, then continued, “I am freezing cold, and I would like for you to finish rescuing me now, my pretty Bilhaar. Come!”

  Only Ranhé, sensitive to the nature of his look, the moment of choice before him, saw it coming when it did—the blow.

  Elasirr straightened suddenly, strung tense as an arrow, still balancing on the edge of the dais. His right hand slipped to his long knife and drew it from its holder.

  “Elasirr!” Ranhé cried out, just as he raised the knife, putting both hands on the hilt, his head upraised, weak moonlight sliding over his stark face, his eyelids closed. . . .

  And then he struck down. It was a precise, violent, perfect move of hand combat, the point of the blade hitting the glass of the casket just in the center balance point.

  His downstroke was swift and clever and forceful enough to break the glass, yet was cut short so as not to harm the body below.

  The glass shattered.

  Deileala gave a weak scream, putting her hands to her face, unbelieving, while Ranhé found herself in a clenched position, ready to spring forward, and yet could not move.

  The crescent glowed down upon them. It glowed upon the broken shards—they reflected a million miniature crescents. It glowed upon the stilled silhouette of the man standing with his head hung low, a long dagger lowered at his side.

  Air had rushed in to sweep the ancient skin, pale and long-dead, and untouched for such an impossible span of time. Evening wind moved upon the cold cheeks, the tendrils of the dead man’s brilliant pale hair, the antique metal armor.

  A silent pause of interminable measure.

  And then Elasirr went insane. Breathing hard, leaning forward, he pulled at the broken glass with his gloved fingers, started to clear the fragments, throwing them all around into the abyss on all the sides of the dais, using his dagger to pry at the glass that was still standing, chipping away carefully at the exposed area around the face, for here the glass must not land and harm the dead man’s skin.

  “Oh Blessed Rainbow! What have you done!” whispered Deileala. Her normally confident look was replaced with genuine fear. “It’s a sacrilege! I can’t believe you did this! Nothing warranted such a thing! What have you done, madman!”

  Ranhé meanwhile, still silent, her mind stilled by the cold reality of what had just happened, moved forward slowly, and then, also climbed the railing of the fence. And then, she jumped the abyss, and landed on the dais next to Elasirr. Stilling her breath, gripping herself from the inside, she allowed her gloved fingers to reach forward. And then she touched him also, the sacred metal armor of he who had lain undisturbed for over two centuries.

  “All right,” Elasirr was muttering, his voice strained, angry, alien, as he continued to break off the glass. “Awake, Monteyn! Awake, our King! Come back to us, breathe, damn you!”

  Ranhé reached forward, and started to clear the glass on the other side.

  “Here . . . Help me . . .” Elasirr pointed to her, and she saw that his face was terrible.

  She continued to touch the shards, to pick off carefully, while her gaze was afraid to slide higher, to actually look at him who lay before her, only inches away.

  Soon, they were done, and, with Deileala beginning to sob nearby, Elasirr turned his feverish attention to the body before them.

  Removing his gloves, he paused, breathing hard, and then reached out with his bare fingers to feel the dead one’s cheek.

  It was cold.

  “Take off your gloves!” whispered Elasirr furiously, turning to Ranhé. “Quickly, touch him, yes, right here! Do you—feel anything?”

  She obeyed, and put her trembling fingers forward to touch the skin of history.

  There was a moment of inner shock, of understanding. Not so much of any living sense, just a feeling of horror combined with awe, with a stilling, forever-preserved moment of intensity.

  She had touched him, the dead King of Tronaelend-Lis, the legend.

  And he was cold, and dead.

  No hope could exist now. There was nothing left of her illusion, harbored in a most precious inner place, since childhood. It was killed by the harshness of truth, of the utter reality before her.

  “Do you feel anything?!”

  And despite all she wanted to say, despite her will and need and being, she had to admit to the truth, even now. Even now, as her old world lay forever shattered before her, in shards of perfect strong ancient glass that faithfully reflected the plural faces of the thin moon. . . .

  “No . . .” she whispered in a voice lighter than a breath of air. “No . . . He is cold, Elasirr.”

  And then, with a growl, the man with the obscured sun-hair threw himself forward and down, burying his face upon the ancient armored breast of his long-dead last King.

  “I am sorry . . .” she added, even more softly, maybe not even out loud, but only to herself, in her own mind. . . .

  But Elasirr’s body shook in silent sobs, for there was nothing he or anyone could do now, and this was the end.

  The wind came soft to touch the pale hair that had escaped from under the assassin’s hood and now lay against the dull black armor of Monteyn. Still weeping, he moved his hands to grasp the great armored gloves of the King, squeezed them, wrung himself over the body, still without making a sound.

  He looked up at last, and his face was contorted. And yet, Ranhé, her own expression frozen with utmost cold, watched him impassively. For, only this very dawn, their positions had been reversed. He had watched her, as she sprawled on a floor, crying out her soul.

  Hard to believe that all of this had happened this same day.

  “He really is dead, isn’t he?” came the stumbling voice of Deileala. They had almost forgotten she was there. Slowly she had come up and stood holding the railing, sniffling, tears streaming down her face. “I’d always thought when I was a little girl, that someday, maybe not even in my lifetime, he’d magically come to life again. He’d been there for as long as I could remember, in his beautiful open coffin.”

  Elasirr looked up. Fury and anguish was written in him, the self-hatred intensified a hundredfold.

  “What have I done?” he hissed, like an ancient serpent, staring into vacant space. “What have I done? He is dead!”

  And then, again he fell upon the body, started shaking the dull armor, put both of his hands on the hollow cheeks, smoothed the dead man’s high beautiful forehead, felt for a barest trace of pulse at his throat.

  “Wake, our King! In the name of all the Tilirr and the Rainbow! Damn you, but you must! It had been promised us that you will come and you will be there for us at the end of the age! This is the end, damn you to hell! Damn me! You must come back!”

  But the body was motionless, and Elasirr had only managed to dislodge his smoothly laid out hair upon the antique silk pillow.

  With trembling fingers, Ranhé felt the dead man’s lips.

  He had been beautiful and young, when he had died, this Alliran Monteyn. Indeed, as she looked closely at the waxen pallor, there was something of Elasirr in his features, but also a kind of tranquility that the assassin lord had never possessed.

  Elasirr stood back then. All life had gone out of his eyes, and his face glistened with tears, for that reason appearing even more demonic. “Enough then,” he said, his voice cracking. “I have done enough. All for nothing, of course. I should’ve let him be. But I had to try this thing, this one last idiotic horrible thing, with these dark times upon us. After all, we really have nothing to lose. . . . Nothing. Not less than before, you know.”

  “That’s right, Elas,” said Deileala, softly, soothingly almost. “Nothing has changed. Come! Let us go from here quickly, before the guards come, hearing this commotion. The Qurthe—they would’ve defiled his grave sooner o
r later anyway.”

  Ranhé was surprised at the soft wisdom of her words. Surprised that the Regentrix was capable of such. But then, Deileala was probably being selfish, true to herself, the instinct for self-preservation taking over all shock.

  And then Elasirr leaned forward for the last time, and placed a kiss on the dead King’s forehead. With that, he drew away quickly, balancing for the jump, and cleared the space from the dais to the railing. He never looked back again.

  Ranhé still stood near the body. The air had turned cold. Or, was it but the stillness in her mind, the utter grief?

  The face of the dead one was inches away. She could see the shadow of stubble, the skin of his lips. How well preserved he had been by those ancient healers of ages ago. . . .

  Not in Stasis, he. It was merely death, the soft caretaker, that had settled over him. And they never knew.

  They, the City itself never knew. They were, all of them, practicing beautiful self-delusion.

  And that had given them hope once, and built up a legend. And now, the glass was shattered, and with it, probably some perfect chemical balance that had kept him thus. And thus, the corpse would proceed to rot at a more normal rate.

  Only—it would now rot in a City called Twilight. . . .

  Silent tears came welling in the corners of her eyes, and a knot formed in her throat. She pitied him, this dead doomed King, no longer a perfect magic icon of hope. And she pitied the man Elasirr, who had dared to take a chance, and as a result, took their final beauty away from them. And she pitied this City, that would now fall before the Enemy as surely as the twilight slowly settled thicker all around them. Even the moon waned, and soon, in a matter of days, would dwindle into nothing.

  But the moon would surely outlast them all.

  And Ranhé lowered her face over the face of the King, and she placed her lips upon his cold ones, feeling a great shock of ice, of terror, for she was kissing the ancient face of death itself. . . .

  They were cold as stone, the lips. She lingered only for a moment, sickened and compelled at the same time by the nature of the moment itself.

  And then, from somewhere else, came Elasirr’s voice of despair, and he was calling her, it seemed. And so, she raised herself, feeling a second shock, that of separation from the cold death, a parting from the last shred of hope.

  She gripped the platform upon which he lay eternally sleeping in his great black armor. And using it for leverage, she jumped off, grabbing the railing of the outer fence, then climbed over, was on the other side.

  They stood, Deileala and Elasirr, stone silent, facing her. She too, was silent. And they walked like shadows, never looking behind them, down the steps of cool defiled marble, and upon the gravel of the Garden path. Soon, they would reach the place where there was a trapdoor to lead them to safety of the Inner City.

  But safety no longer mattered, for it was relative. Nothing any longer mattered.

  The night all around thickened into a single knot.

  Many hours later, dawn came slowly, seeping in over the Outer Gardens. Mists still rolled about, blanketing the foliage, the marble statuary, the distant streak of the Arata.

  There had been moving shadows occasionally, shadows that were revealed in the thin weak glimmer as patrolling black Qurthe, seething over Dirvan.

  No one else was about. The vagrants and the street folk had learned their lesson, and kept well away from the Enemy. Indeed, no one walked the streets of this City.

  In the grove of cypress, beneath a domed marble overhang, a body in black armor lay on an upraised dais. Pieces of glass were spilled all around, and a couple of shards still lay against the dull ancient metal.

  For the first time in centuries, a mist licked against the wax-pale dead skin, vapor curling softly, beading with a sheen of dew upon black dull armor, the ornate carvings.

  Dew had formed in tiny droplets, and glistened on the cheeks and forehead of an ancient corpse. It had soaked up his metallic-pale fine hair. It had kissed the dry cold lips.

  Mildew, a precursor to rot.

  Dawn.

  And then, the first ray of the sun struck the sky. It transformed, still thrown into darkness on the western horizon against the black filigree of trees, while the east was flooding with a decidedly pale but significant glimmer.

  The rim of the dull sun-disk cast its weakling metallic illumination upon the world placed in permanent twilight.

  It cast its virgin light upon the pale face of the dead King.

  There was an instant of strange brightness.

  And the corpse shuddered suddenly, bathed in the dawn’s light.

  Deep inside, a slow deep beat began, a pump. It was his reactivated heart. It began a movement of something liquid and sluggish in long-dormant veins.

  Lungs convulsed, pulled in a great draught of vaporous air. The corpse was breathing now. It breathed thus, for the duration of some minutes, while blood moved through subdermal artery tunnels, sluggish at first, then quicker, warming him. . . .

  And then, the eyelids quivered, and opened over two pale still vacant eyes.

  The steel dawn sky was the first thing he saw.

  It swirled around him, turgid and thick with unnatural twilight, and yet, not a cloud in sight. He watched it, letting the images come before him, at first uncomprehending. For, the images were alien somehow.

  And then, as his memories were triggered, he began to remember and to become aware. . . . He remembered, and his hands encased in gloves, moved at his chest, fingers twitched.

  He was almost fully aware now, still disoriented, but no longer a corpse.

  Alliran Monteyn slowly drew his clumsy stiff hands up to touch the dew on his skin, to wipe his eyelids.

  And then, as the sun came up, he sat up slowly, and looked around him at the strange silver world, and knew at last.

  PART IV

  Rainbow

  CHAPTER 18

  Could it be? The veils are thinning.

  Suddenly, as you fly ahead, you can almost see through the murk, and there it is, the mystery, just before you, close enough to touch.

  The veils have grown into gray monochrome smoke.

  You are so very near.

  And yet. . . .

  * * *

  “Wake up, Elas!” The insistent voice came through his dreams, and Elasirr felt someone’s hand on his shoulder. He did not understand what it was, who it was that wanted him to be awake. He did not remember why he needed to be awake, when all he wanted was to remain thus, motionless, languid—

  In the weak half-light of dawn, he blinked and saw the serious face of Elasand leaning over him. And he was sprawled in a chair in his own quarters, his back and arm muscles cramped from sleeping in an uncustomary position.

  Then, in that same weak light, he noticed (with an inner pang, a focusing awareness of her) the motionless form of Ranhé huddled on the couch, wrapped in her cloak. Meanwhile, on the small bed in the corner lay another woman, fast asleep, with petite well-manicured hands and shadowed marvelous hair, dressed in nothing but a gauze shift and half-covered by a light blanket.

  Elasirr sat up, flooded by memories of the previous night. All peace fled, as he remembered what he’d done, what horribly pointless sacrilege. Indeed, all had turned out pointless. The other prisoners were still in Feale’s hold, so their venture had truly been for nothing. Deileala was hardly the prize he’d cared to save.

  “Elas,” said Elasand, “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you rest any more at this point. We can’t wait any longer. The Enemy is supposedly on the move. Your men report that Qurthe were seen massing in the subterranean corridors, and their movements have changed in nature. Something is about to happen.”

  Elasirr blinked, wiped his eyes. He stared, trying to understand what was so different about Vaeste, his expression. His eyes were intense, focused, alert. His gaze was strong, no longer moving off into an abstracted other place. Only yesterday he had collapsed, in a show of weakness, of hopelessn
ess. But this was a new unexpected Elasand.

  “Why do you stare?” Vaeste said then, noticing the other’s searching look.

  “I am not sure,” replied Elasirr in a voice still touched with sleep, and he then stood up.

  “Do you see something in me, brother?” said Elasand suddenly, “Something that was not there before?”

  “The question is, do you see something newly dark and hopeless in me?” replied the Guildmaster.

  They faced one another in the twilight.

  “I’d never asked this before. Even now there are—things between us. Unresolved things. But—I ask you to forgive my inaction, my weakness,” whispered Elasand. “You’ve seen me despair and pine with desire for the impossible. I spent the whole night fighting it within me, struggling with waves of something interminable and cold. And then, out of nothing else to do, just before dawn, I filled an orb with orange light, and called upon Melixevven herself, to give me a moment of joy. For, I was losing myself completely, falling away from reality.”

  Elasand paused. His eyes then filled with an inspired intensity of focus, as he continued, “Well, as soon as the color bloomed forth and filled the room, my despair was gone! And I realized suddenly that it had been the Enemy at work, all along. He had sent this weakness upon me, under cover of soft soothing dark, a gentle insidious weakness and welling of despair and confusion, playing upon my own predisposition. So subtle the attack, so well chosen, that I wouldn’t have known it if something hadn’t prompted me to try invoking color.”

  “So. It wasn’t your own will yesterday, but a psychic attack upon you?” said Elasirr. “Hard to believe.”

  “I know. But I ask you to believe . . . Yesterday I told you that it was all pointless, accused you of lying to the Masters, but now, I understand perfectly. I agree that our greatest weapon is hope. And—I now know of a way to fight the Enemy, know how he truly strikes.”