Lords of Rainbow

by Vera Nazarian

  Truth appeared to them in that instant seductive and potent. And they worshiped him.

  But the young priest would permit no one to approach him after the Ceremony. He accepted no personal gifts of flowers or jewels or handkerchiefs soaked with sweet oil of roses and love sweat, that were showered upon him under the pretence of gifts to the Order. He allowed no hastily passed perfumed notes to touch his hands.

  And it became apparent to all that not only was the stern name of Olvan to remain impeccable, but the young priest himself was above all temptation.

  Yes, there had even been suicides afterwards. Indeed, of all things, Dirvan best loved melodramatic passion, especially such that involved pain or death.

  Cyanolis Vaeste may have been like the others, secretly drawn to his aura of unattainable intensity. And she too may have been hypnotized by his charisma.

  But unlike the others, Cyanolis did not show it.

  Preinad noticed the novelty of indifference where he could easily ignore attention—pronounced indifference stood out. There it was, upon every chance encounter, and it began to be a guessing game of sorts for him. The priest knew that some used this one oldest guile to seduce, and it had failed to affect him, in all cases. Was this her subtle motive? Very likely it was, and yet he remained unsure. Thus, curiosity would not dissipate.

  She was, of all ironies, not even beautiful. Diminutive fine-boned fleshiness. Somewhat like this female drawn in ink on parchment, with lewdly exaggerated portions of her female form.

  But Cyanolis was real.

  Real as warm flesh and soft skin. There was a sheen of softness about her that could never be conveyed in a figure traced on parchment. And her face was almost that of a child.

  Cyanolis was young, with an unusually beautiful singing voice, as Preinad had a chance to discover for himself, for she had been invited to sing before the Regents, and made quite an impression.

  When she sang, it seemed there was no emotion that her voice did not convey, if only for an instant. And quite possibly, it was the voice that had first affected Preinad. That, and the knowledge that this virgin sound of purity—purity he could never resist—issued out of a body of an already renowned Dirvan whore.

  For, Cyanolis Vaeste had, as they called it, the “madness of the womb.” An insatiable sexual urge.

  But with Cyanolis this passion did not at all correlate with the presence of natural sympathies. It was rumored that she could fulfill herself only with those toward whom she was indifferent. Those she held dear she could never envision in sexual terms.

  And maybe that is what drew Preinad, this perverse paradox.

  The priest had observed her, knew her reputation, knew of her insatiable need. The combination of facts puzzled him. Why must this child-woman gaze at them all with innocence and then go off into a Dirvan boudoir to couple with someone? And why must she be with everyone yet never offer him even a brief gaze? Surely not because of modesty or innocent infatuation. For she never looked into his eyes.

  Unanswered questions plagued him and he contemplated her from the distance of his locked mind. He became unconsciously embroiled in her—in the scent of her, in the way her rotund lips pouted, the cherubic firmness of her cheeks. It enraged him to think that this innocent with the voice of a skylark regularly allowed old and young lechers to fondle her, and to stain her sweet intimate parts with their spilled seed.

  It had become vivid in his imagination. He imagined her moving with other men—for yes, he, the stoic, had seen all there is to see of carnality, a thousand times more than what was locked away in the filthy pages of this erotene book. He had witnessed seasons of it in Dirvan, indifferent, clinical, an untouched outsider. And yet, after a while, he would come to see himself in their place, straining, fondling her silver softness. . . .

  But no!

  Preinad Olvan shut the heavy volume with a snap, his fingers trembling in anger. Unless the New Rainbow dawned, he would remain thus, like a rock, immovable. He was a virgin with the innards of ice. That would persist.

  And yet, she, Cyanolis Vaeste, was always there, permeating his thoughts, chipping away at him.

  Who would prevail?

  * * *

  “Rainbow, therefore,” said Nilmet Vallen, “is a state of mind. It is too intangible to be anything else.”

  “Uhm—well. I may not be able to express my arguments as finely as you, but I don’t agree. Besides, why do you always sound so sure, as if you know something? I mean, I can’t tell you why I think the way I do,” retorted Jirve Lan, the innkeeper, his voice warming with irritation. “Your move, by the way.”

  Nilmet only shrugged, calmly, patiently, kind-eyed, and placed a small stone game piece upon the second of the eight cells on the board, next to the first, Andelas. It was Dersenne, the Radiant Tilirreh of yellow, oddly relevant to their discussion, for his were all things sacred; his, the realm of religion and spiritual philosophy. The figurine of a man with long flowing hair was finely carved, and yet the face was as smooth and blank as an egg. All of the game pieces were thus, faceless.

  The board was circular, old polished oak. The cells, lined up in a ring dance along the perimeter, were round indentations in the wood, as if someone had taken a large dahr coin and pressed it hard into the board until it sank and left its outline in relief. The object of the game was to move all the pieces forward until all the Tilirr were on the board in order and the place of Andelas was occupied. It was a game for two, because each opponent moved pieces in the opposite direction, and eliminated the opponent’s pieces by blocking, surrounding, and then appropriating them.

  Apparently this was a new game round, for there were only two pieces in the running, while the rest of the tiny stone Tilirr were still in their throne cells in the middle of the board.

  The two men were sitting at an empty dinner table in the large common room of the White Roads Inn, bathed in orange glow.

  “. . . you must understand, there is a tact, a certain kind of tact, to cooking—” came from the back room, the large kitchen. “A true honest-to-goodness cook is in tune with the food, always! In tune with the smell and wetness of it, with the texture, and the amount of fire. Everything must be in perfect sensory balance, in absolute accordance to everything else—”

  “Now, that,” said Jirve Lan, lightening, “is our own house philosopher. You don’t need to know any fine theory, simply listen to her.”

  And he moved Andelas to the next empty cell, away from Dersenne. The lord of white, Andelas, was beyond deity, beyond human conception. White completed and went beyond Rainbow. It stood outside the spectrum, and above it. White was even less a thing than a concept. This game piece could be moved as many cells as needed in either direction and was the only one allowed to jump over more than one other Tilirr.

  The voice from the kitchen fluctuated in waves of deep-throated anguish, as Jirve Lan would say, a poet flung to the heights of inspired fool fervor. Maertella was equally well suited to lecturing from behind a Lyceum podium, as to supervising the basting of a hen. But then, she was the best cook the inn had ever had.

  “Let us pause then, for a while, and listen to her,” said Nilmet. His voice was surprisingly firm, compared to the softness of his smile.

  “Indeed. Maybe our thoughts will be enriched sufficiently to discover fresh new tracks for our respective arguments, eh, friend?” said the innkeeper, studying the game board, and picking at his teeth with his tongue. One of his front teeth was missing, in a strategic enough place to suggest bizarre infantility.

  “. . . omelet be hung and flayed! How many times must I tell you to watch the skillet, instead of counting the flies up there on the ceiling—I know you do that, don’t try to deny, I see you look up there—goodness, why must you sit like a moronic stuffed bird? Where is your mind, girl?” continued Maertella, while loud pot-clashing was heard. Her voice oscillated from pleading to strength, yet was never unkind. “Don’t you think it’s so much easier to do what you’re told? Why ca
n’t you be responsible—”

  “She does talk too much, actually,” said Jirve Lan. “I wish you did. Then you’d tell me what you really know. All the secrets. And you’d tell me what’s really happening in the City. For example, just today they tell me, there are rumors about these strange dangerous visitors threatening the Regents’ Palace, and even the Guilds are afraid—”

  Nilmet reached forward and placed on the board Koerdis, the lord of blue, of Harsh Truth, experience, and knowledge—in the next cell right after Dersenne. There were now three on the board. Koerdis was also the lord of pure effort, a symbol of eternal work, and the Opener of New Ways, and his tiny figurine held a jar of water in one hand, pouring it endlessly into a cup that was in the other hand.

  “I know less than you do,” said Nilmet. “You should ask tomorrow’s inn guests. Every day they pass through here and tell you the latest rumors and gossip. I just sit here with you.”

  Jirve Lan snorted.

  In the kitchen, Maertella continued her harangue.“. . . Don’t you think I was your age once? I know what it’s like to want to be somewhere else like the big City, somewhere where they have all these fancy monochromes and beautiful rich people, and the wondrous light comes from all directions in all these different impossible colors. . . . But never mind. See, I learned to care whether the omelet burns. Even if it’s not my own. All the wasted food of our good Master Jirve, oh, sweet gods!”

  Jirve Lan selected Fiadolmle from her throne cell, and moved the green lady of Birth, Change, and Freedom to block Koerdis’s path. Fiadolmle was like the harvest—she symbolized a lifelong path of development, and was thus connected to all things of youth and old age. Her figurine was a woman holding a flowering branch.

  “But it’s not even the wasted food that matters—think of the hen who laid the egg, how she fussed over it, how much gentleness she took in warming her hatchling-to-be! How the little dark yolk and the pale outside, so delicious to us, could’ve been a little living creature! Don’t ever forget that! We’re taking a dear thing from these beasts. Sometimes I think we have no right—”

  “Indeed, that is one truth there,” said Nilmet softly, somewhat to himself. And then he selected Werail, who ruled red, the most violent color, and placed him on the board before Fiadolmle, so that she would have to jump or surrender in the next move, for she was blocked from both sides. Werail, he of the Will, was passion and desire, and in red lay the mystery of Intensity. Thus the figurine held a sword.

  Master Jirve rolled his eyes heavenward. Dullness and boredom, like a slow beast, was within him, and allowed no deep meaning to be extrapolated from anything that he now heard. Especially not now—the rich pungent aroma of fried eggs drifted into the common room, spiced with fresh dill and chopped onions. Maybe that’s why he didn’t think and allowed Fiadolmle to end up without a free cell to jump. Back to the middle cell throne she went, out of the game, while Nilmet got to move Koerdis forward.

  “I just hope,” continued Maertella’s voice from the back, “that for your own sake, some of my words finally sink in.”

  The girl, all this time guiltily silent, was now heard replying tentatively, “Yes ma’am, mistress. I’m truly really sorry . . . Awfully horrid sorry . . . I’ll never do it again, ma’am . . . It’s just that—”

  “Just that what? Oh, never mind. And I know you’ll do it again, several times, before you learn anything. Just clean up this mess now, or we’ll never get dinner finished. Make another omelet when you’re done—no, make three more. We might have extra company tonight.”

  Soon they heard the hiss of creamy butter dashed against a hot skillet, and the sizzle of a new batch of omelet. The sweet aroma deepened.

  “You know,” said Jirve Lan, “I’ve never heard her scream at a serving wench. Even now—see how calm she is. Surprising, isn’t it? A marvelous woman, yes she is. Marvelous.”

  “Why don’t you marry her?” said Nilmet simply. “Hasn’t it been enough time now that you’ve known her and seen her worth—omelet and such aside?”

  The innkeeper laughed nervously, as though he was somewhat naively puzzled at the idea. He then took Love herself, Laelith, the gentle Tilirreh of violet whose domain it was, both human and sacred, and placed her on the board to block Dersenne. Laelith also symbolized persistence, strength, and paradox, and was the lady of the Way Things Are. Her figurine stood artless, empty-handed and simple.

  Nilmet gave another kind smile and shrug, and surrendered Dersenne back to his cell throne in the middle and out of the game.

  Maertella seemed to have forgotten the unpleasant incident with the burned omelet, because now her voice soared in a completely different mood. The two men listened, locked in easy idleness, and inhaled the scent of freshly grated cucumber and yogurt soup that was being prepared as a side dish. It was the nature of the time, just preceding dinner, when thoughts stood in a haze, with nothing else left to do but wait.

  And so they waited. Orange faces regarded each other across the counter, orange bodies leaned against the countertop which itself was orange, bordering on pale rust. The light streamed evenly from the large orb in the inner corner of the common room, touching all things. The orb-light itself, the source, was so very pale, so intensely desaturated, that it came close to white.

  Or at least, so it was claimed. After all, who knew what white looked like? Not even the sorcerous light-technicians could aspire to that dream, although what they manufactured in the Light Guild was supposed to approximate it.

  What the White Roads Inn possessed in terms of illumination was but a fine-quality desaturated orange monochrome. Jirve Lan had had it installed a couple of years ago, brought all the way from the City, the work of one of the best of Light Guild craftsmen.

  Why had he chosen that particular monochrome, orange, rather than any other, he was often asked.

  “Well,” Jirve would reply. “Orange. To me it has always appealed in several ways. There is, first of all, something warming about it, don’t you think? Nice and cheerful and warm. Unlike the other colors. Seems to be quite appropriate for my sort of establishment. Warmth. Roadside cheer—It’s all up here, you see.”

  And he would point at his temple and smile in that funny baby-toothed way of his. “I suppose you might say that I now have Melixevven, lady of Joy, watching over me and mine. In any case, here’s comfortable superstition for you.”

  And then he’d turn practical, and his teeth would disappear behind the calm line of mouth. “Besides, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but orange is associated nowadays, by the learned, not so much with traditional joy and all the Tilirr paraphernalia, but—with hunger. Yes, don’t look so surprised, I said, hunger! It’s supposed to awaken a ravenous appetite. Definitely, I’d like to make use of that. My customers would clamor for food, after an hour or so of being in an orange-lit room. And so far, it works. So, there. There’s your explanation. Everything else is nonsense, because I’m not religious, and besides, all monochromes of this level of craftsmanship cost alike.”

  Ultimately, Jirve Lan always came down to the point.

  Jirve was of an average build, middle-aged, with regular features, his skin tone barely silvered from the days spent indoors and away from the sun. He was also kind at times, but in a lukewarm way, and absentminded. However, he made no absentminded mistakes in keeping his inn accounts, nor did he ever overlook anything of the business side. He was quick to anger, quick to sentimental reminiscences; philosophy was his hobby.

  But Jirve Lan, innkeeper of White Roads, did not have the least bit of tact when it came to proper argument.

  The man sitting across from him was oh so different from the innkeeper. Nilmet Vallen was always utterly aware of everything. The finest nuance of his companion’s mood never escaped this one, whom they learned to call “the Philosopher.” He was of scholarly background, true, but his ideas had to have come from somewhere else. Nowhere were they taught, these odd things that he professed, and he had acquired a sa
ge reputation.

  People had that tendency, here in the West Lands, to respect ideas—no matter what kind—and individuals who were brimming with them. Hence, here was Nilmet, the Philosopher, who knew things, and who could listen and give advice. His time and purpose were ripe.

  Dark and tall, awkwardly built, Nilmet had come from farther up west, originally, farther even than the City, and brought with him customs and concepts.

  The innkeeper took him to heart immediately. Or rather, took to heart the opportunity for more philosophical banter. Nilmet was a godsend. He had stayed on here at the inn, at the gracious invitation of the owner, being in no hurry to continue anywhere in particular. He remained, to talk.

  Nilmet had things to impart, new speculations.

  But Nilmet also spoke of the Rainbow.

  In many ways, that made him a disappointment. Only children talked of the Rainbow, and most outgrew that tendency by the age of five. The very expression “the day of the new Rainbow” was used when speaking of things that will never come to pass, and of things that had never been.

  Occasionally, students of some lunatic scholars in the City were assigned to discuss the nature of Rainbow by way of a logic exercise. There was that board game. And occasionally, poets wrote silly verses, since most could never completely abandon its nostalgic charm. In short, it supplied fools with inspiration.

  At this moment it also kept Jirve Lan intellectually entertained.

  “We were talking about—something, weren’t we?” said the innkeeper, yawning in apathy. Hunger made his thoughts desultory, and him even more careless. And the room was drowning in that unbearable mouthwatering smell of roasted onions.

  “Yes, I suppose,” replied Nilmet. And thinking how interesting it was that yawns were so catchy, he yawned also, and watched Master Jirve make his next move.

  Jirve Lan had chosen orange as the color for his establishment. Orange was described as Joy, and she who was called Melixevven, Tilirreh of orange, stood as a symbol of happiness, and hence, purported good luck. And now Jirve Lan moved Melixevven the lady of Joy into the game, placing her in the empty cell just after Andelas.