Lords of Rainbow

by Vera Nazarian

  They might want, as consolation, to see the great gleaming Fountain on the eastern side, called the Vein, because of the deeply pulsing manner with which the water sprang forth from its dark sculpted-blossom source. Or else, northward there was the magically eerie alley of weeping willows. Trees grew there with branches so fine, leaves so tiny and delicate, like tufts of down, or cascading lace, that people called it the Walk of Northern Falls. There, willows moved in the wind, like down-streaming water, and their whispering was the breath of gods.

  If the visitors, by any chance, had little children with them, then the little ones would, after running around the grass and fountains and statuary, clamor to see one more thing, one more wonder that Dirvan contained. “The Tomb, the Tomb!” they’d cry. “Let’s see the Tomb of the King!”

  And the older ones would relent, and allow themselves to be led by their awed children, to a place northeast of the Palace Walls. There, right near the Arata’s bank, cedar and cypress—one spanning great width, the other, like a painted obelisk, narrow and straining to the sky—the rich black trees sprouted in a grove to conceal a peculiar solemn structure.

  Carved of intensely pale stone, polished to a mirror gleam, it was of no more than fifty square feet. Its base was formed like an odd four-point star or a square with cut-away parabolic curves instead of sides, upraised the height of a man from ground level by stairs that curved along with the base exactly. From each of the four “star-point” corners, a circular column rose for more than fifty feet upward, smooth, stoic and unadorned, but for its mirror-polish.

  The structure thus had no walls. It was topped, however, by a dome with a large circular skylight in the very middle, covered with transparent glass to let in the silver sun.

  One stepped within, after climbing the ten or so stairs (and the children by then having cowered back in unconscious awe, letting the adults move ahead), treading with care upon the fine smooth marble floor, looking up to see the inside of the cupola dome carved into fine relief, forming patterns of flowers and geometry, as intricate, as delicate, as flakes of snow, or the patches of capillaries near the center of the eye. . . .

  Yet that held one’s attention for a second only. Several paces forward began a waist-high similarly carved fence of marble inlaid with mother-of-pearl (a thing born of the sea, which contains in it the movement of light upon the waves, and is prized for its fluidity) and hueless gold, sparkling like gray fire. One could not go beyond it, for, like a precipice, beyond lay a deep pit of carved luxurious stone. So deep it was, that the shading dome, with its single window-skylight, had not enough light to illuminate it down to the very bottom, so that its base was in misty eternal shadow.

  It was out of that diamond-shaped pit that a great rectangular pillar sprung upwards, like a lily stem out of water, forever isolated by the depth of the pit, from all sides unapproachable. The pillar, a heavy block of stone, rose out of the pit and beyond it, higher than eye-level of a grown man. Empty space remained for several feet between the pillar and the outside carved fence, just far enough to allow viewers to inspect the rich stone workings and the formal inscription, yet not close enough to see very fine detail, unless one’s vision was perfect.

  Upon the pillar-dais, also decorated with insets of gold and mother-of-pearl, under a transparent covering of glass hermetically sealed to the stone, lay in state a motionless figure of a man wearing the ceremonial armor of Kings.

  Not a glimpse of flesh anywhere. The body was completely encased in the richly engraved steel which did not appear at all to darken with age, but rather was of a naturally black dull hue. Not a sign of a once-living body—except for the head. He wore no helmet, this last King, maybe so that none would doubt that the body was genuine, and not simply empty arranged armor. (Although even then, some dared to argue that maybe there was but the head, and the body, damaged in some way, had been long since discarded. But then, others said, who would want to go to the trouble of preserving only the head? Might as well put a closed helmet in its place—and so they debated.)

  On a silken pillow, his head rested, and it was the absolute center of everyone’s attention. Just a little out of reach of visibility so that small details would be blurred, it appeared wax-like, unreal. The face was itself like marble, exquisite and strong, and simultaneously, pitifully young. The brows were dark, graceful and well defined. While his hair, long in the fashion of the time, and wavy, was paler than polished silver in sunlight.

  Again, some argued, this was but a wax doll. The real body couldn’t have been preserved so well, without a hint of decay, of drying up. The strongest arguments for this theory had been that there was not the lightest sheen of facial hair on his cheeks and jaw. Despite the so-called scientist physicians arguing to the contrary, all expected that a dead man’s hair, and nails, for that matter, would continue to grow for about two weeks after death.

  But what of the special secret preservation techniques that were most probably used, others retorted? And for that matter, yet others put in, how can one distinguish all that anyway, from the distance?

  The mysterious preservation process was called Stasis. It left the body to appear so real, so lifelike, that, it was claimed, one could not tell at a proximity, that it was death. The official reasons for it had been that the young King, Alliran Monteyn, was taken fatally ill suddenly, and died, soon upon coming to the Full Power, at the age of twenty-seven. And since he was so well loved, none could bear to have him decay and be gone, in his prime, the last of his Line, and having left no heirs. So they Preserved him thus, with the skillful aid of sorcerer-physicians, using an arcane embalming process the skills of which were now forgotten, for the benefit of the generations to come. A likely story, that, of a time more than three hundred and eighty years ago.

  Somehow, there had always been that sense of some other mysterious reason for this solemn glorious setup. The simplest folk could sense it, in the stoic grandeur of the Mausoleum, the haunting beauty of the dead man’s face, the way his armored limbs seemed so strong and well formed. And even more, it was in the touching hopeful manner that the large metal-gloved hands lay folded on his breast, against the hilt of the ornately sheathed long-sword. The sword bore, carved, the Winged Bird symbol of the Line of Monteyn.

  There was that sense of promise about him, a symbol of hope, of protection against the bleakness of the future. Plain folk are always first to feel such symbols, they who need it most.

  And the visitors would watch this in silent awe, loving from the first glance their last long-dead King, loving his glamour and mystery and some other unclear deeper thing. And fearlessly clamoring again, their children would at last be allowed, after being raised onto someone’s tall shoulders, to get a better, closer, more intimate look at the King. They, the children, would gape silently, and see more perfectly—as perfectly as anyone could—the forever-petrified face, and they would probably never forget that moment, recalling it when much older.

  The visitors would turn around then, made to pause suddenly, to think more deeply for an instant. There would be a secretly shed tear or two (yes, some cried at the sight of him), and even the children would hush, as they left the Mausoleum. All regrets at not being able to see the Regents’ Palace would be long gone from their minds, and they would leave completely satisfied that they had seen all that is of worth in Dirvan. And quite possibly, they would be right.

  Yet what lies inward from the Palace Walls is a thing of beauty and nobility in a different sense, and is worthy of attention also, to one who would know Tronaelend-Lis to its innermost heart.

  Beyond the Palace Walls, where only those of the Noble Ten Families could enter unless specially invited by the Regents, lay the even more elegant Inner Gardens. Trees and flowers of unmatched perfection could be found there, alongside exquisite gravel walkways, tiny grottoes and bowers, marble amid quietly trickling delicious streams. And all paths led, meandering, to the absolute heart of the City, the Palace. Once it had been called the Palac
e of Kings, and officially that was its name still. But more and more often was it referred to as the Palace of Regents. Others bitingly named it the Hole of Gold, out of certain strong feelings about the Regents’ rule.

  Long before the Fall had the Palace been built, like a great octagon, a wheel—a parallel to the whole City. And for that very reason, because it had been originally meant for a different world which somehow incorporated in it natural color, many of the non-relief frescoes and paintings decorating its marvelous interior had to be changed, restored. The Light Guild and Artisans Guild together were put to work on a collaborative secret process to make color dyes. (The Light Guild was new then, appearing soon after the Fall, because of its unique secret knowledge regarding the workings of light and color and Rainbow.) The wondrous dyes were applied to the Palace rooms, the walls meticulously painted from old Palace Records which specified exactly where each color was seen to lie. The brightest white monochromes were turned on. And suddenly, odd glorious visions of colorful brightness, almost unbeautiful in their bizarre nature, struck the eye!

  Flowers—yes, forms that all knew as flowers—were practically popping off the walls, more scarlet than the Red Quarter at night! Or, they glared like blue, or yellow, or orange monochromes, the ones people were used to seeing illuminating only the better public places. The leaves of plants, when painted over by the proper dye, suddenly glowed green! No wonder now, regarding the peculiar usage of the archaic word “greenery” as it had once referred to growing things in the Old Tongue—plants had indeed been green back then!

  The Restoration was thus completed under the second Regent, transforming the Palace into a house of wonder. It was but a privileged few who could gaze at it, however. And of those few, who could forget the beauty of the Hall of the Throne, where the living color frescoes caught one’s eye more than the gray shine of the pure gold Thrones? Or, the Gallery of the Sea, turned aqua and green? Or even the two tiny rooms on the farthest eastern and western sides, the East Room of Dawn and West Room of Sunset, where on the walls were depictions of the sun rising and setting—not bleak gray as the sun is in real life, but impossible orange and yellow and almost white? In these rooms, the ancient Kings came to meditate and attain an inspired peace. And they looked, it is said, upon a different garish world. . . .

  The Royal Palace stood thus, in the center of Dirvan and Tronaelend-Lis, and the world—as people claimed. And it was accessible only to the Royal Monteyn, the Regent Grelias, and eight other Great Families. The Families, most aristocratic of all, had been like all others, oddly touched by the event later called the Fall of Rainbow. It was then that they took upon themselves an additional honorary distinction.

  Each allied one’s name with a particular color, and stressed its “use,” in the form of monochrome illumination, or excessive employing of that color dye on clothing and other daily belongings. Finally, when it became clear that overusing color dyes was not too practical (one could perceive color only under a white monochrome) and exceedingly expensive, the color “association” was retained but formally. (The Palace had been the last such experiment on a grand scale in which the use of color dye was considered worthwhile.)

  And so it was that the extinct Line of Monteyn Kings was allied with violet, the highest in the spectrum, long after the last Monteyn was entombed in his Mausoleum. Grelias, so eager to be second, took blue. The artistic Khirmoel claimed green. Caexis, always passionate opponents of the Grelias, embraced yellow. The elegant beautiful Daqua took orange, making a paragon of colors from it. Traditional Beis embraced red.

  And then, there were no more “pure” colors of the Rainbow left. Well, in those days, they said that gold and silver had once had their own distinctive colors. And of all things, silver was actually most like the “color” of the present world. Thus, the four Families that were left had to improvise. Lirr, always outrageous and unpredictable, claimed that since they owned gold to excess, why not take upon themselves this very “respectable” color gold, whatever it was? While Olvan, who were stoically proud of their plainness, thought it only appropriate to take silver—if it was the “standard of the world”—as their own. Prada, the fantastically rich but too vulgar then to aspire to greater honor, claimed as theirs the color of the earth, brown, deciding in perverse humility that their blood was close to being as plain.

  Who was left? One guesses only too well—Vaeste. But then, from knowing Elasand, it’s not too difficult to surmise that they were even then an odd haughty lot. Vaeste, more ancient, more proud than all the others, including Grelias, and probably approaching the extinct Monteyn itself, vacillated and carelessly allowed the rest to choose, without making a claim.

  Yet when their turn came, and the Regent of the time asked about their formal color, Vaeste, more unpredictable than Lirr, and more peculiar than all, came forward and claimed white.

  But again, this is but unverified ancient history gleaned from snippets recorded in musty archival tomes of the Lyceum and Library—history intimately related to Dirvan, and to the great things of the time. And thus, Dirvan bears along its timeline a direct connection to the often ludicrous, yet all-prevailing concept of Rainbow, and color. Without that event, scholars argue, the world, Tronaelend-Lis, and Dirvan, would be different in the very nature of the wonder they project. . . .

  But now, such is the world, and such is Dirvan.

  Ranhéas Ylir, serving the Lord Vaeste, was ever aware of these things, peripherally, subtly, as she returned for yet another time to this exorbitant core of Tronaelend-Lis, so well familiar to her who was of no splendid family, but simply of great ingenuity and means.

  * * *

  Postulate Eleven: Rainbow is Ambiguous.

  * * *

  This was the poorer, outer section of the Foreign Quarter, the one that began on the other side of the Fringes Thoroughfare, and spanned in an outer ring the entire City. The Foreign Fringes were almost as dilapidated as the infamous Southern Fringes of the Free Quarter, bordering them from the southeast. Buildings here were worn, several stories tall, dreary with brick and limestone, falling apart in places, and partially abandoned—although never as severely in disrepair as the ones in the Southern Fringes. Scraggly trees dared to show themselves from beyond cracked washed-out walls and tall elderly fences.

  Many of the residents here fell under the category of “scum,” as the richer folk and nobles would say. And yet, just as many were but honestly poor. They looked out with tired eyes from the windows of their elderly houses. They walked the streets with bent heads and bent backs. Eyes rarely met, except in briefest human contact.

  Streets here were wide and paved, however, because not only the Fringe natives walked them.

  This was the home of the Merchants Quarter. Richly dressed figures would flash from the windows of frequent speeding carriages. And it could be observed that some carriages even bore on them the Crests of the Noble Ten, for even they of noble blood occasionally held in check their fastidiousness to pay a business visit to some member of the Merchant Guild. Thus, a conveyance would stop before some storefront, a noble would alight, and then quickly disappear into one of the tall buildings, worn and old on the outside.

  And yet—who knows, who really knows—some of these outwardly dilapidated houses contained in them stores of rich materials brought here from far places.

  And the tall houses all around had eyes, very attentive eyes indeed, as the poor residents would watch the figures dressed in finery.

  In their little dirty room, three such poor beings—two urchins and their mother (a woman of twenty years who looked like an old hag from having drudged all her life)—observed the gray street below. The little girl leaned with her grimy elbows against the soot of the window-pane.

  “Ooh!” she mouthed. “Look at tha’ one. Ma, look!”

  The young hag-mother stood by the window, knitting out of habit, even on her feet. “Yes, that’s a fine one there,” she said complacently, as her index finger guided the coars
e yarn, and the wooden needles flashed with speed.

  Three stories down, on the street below, a fine carriage indeed had paused before the house across the street from them. This time, the little boy sucked in his breath in wonder. Three overlapped Crescents of Lirr graced the sides of the equipage in fine etched relief upon dull gleaming metal. The horses were fine-limbed, elegant, dark like the night.

  “Who might tha’ be?” said the girl. “Who, Ma?”

  “Don’t you know anything?” said the boy. “That’s Lirr, of Gold. That Symbol there, remember? How many times did I explain all the Symbols to you that you still have to ask, brickhead?”

  “Brickhead yourself, stupid!”

  “Double brickhead on you, mole-face, rat-hair! You’re just too damn stupid, aren’t you?”

  “Ma-a-a-ah!” The girl began to whine.

  “Sh-h-h,” said the mother, completely ignoring it all. “Look! Look at that one, the one that’s coming out.”

  And for a moment, her glassy exhausted eyes were invigorated by a memory, and gained focus. She paused her knitting. “Yes . . .” she said. “Look carefully at this one, both of you. You’ll never see one like that again.”

  “Who is he, Ma?” said the boy, watching a tall elegant figure emerge from the equipage. “He looks rich and fine, is he a great lord?”

  “Not he,” the woman said very softly, and a smile grew on her lips. “No, that one is not a he.”

  “Not a he?” The girl turned to stare back at her mother in surprise. “You mean tha’ fancy man with a sword showing at his side is not a man but a woman? Ooh!”

  “No,” said the mother, after an odd pause. “Not a woman either.”

  “Hah!” the boy snorted, scrunched up his face in a suddenly cynical streetwise grin, like someone considerably older. “I know what you mean then, Ma. He’s a boy’s man, ain’t he? He likes boys, right? Got his berries clipped? Or, maybe that’s a fine lady-wench that likes girls, and likes to dress up as a grown man, eh, Ma? See, I know all about that.”