Authors: Vera Nazarian
For a moment, there was a stillness that came to Elasirr’s facial features. He appeared to be gazing far away, through the depths of forest before him, toward the obscured horizon. But his eyes had no focus, were those of a blind man looking inside himself. He turned in profile to her, and if only she had looked at him then, she would have seen it, the moment of
change
.
“
You yourself have killed. You must have some idea,” he replied, almost flippantly, as gray sun speckled his face with silver shadows from an overhanging tree bough, and insects sang in the slate grass.
But Ranhé looked ahead of her, and never saw his profile. “I have killed less than you think,” she replied softly. “Usually, my encounters end in wounding or disabling. But when I cause death, I—keep track of each time. There’s a counter within me that strikes a notch, somewhere deep. Even after a busy battle, you cannot help it—you know exactly how many deaths were caused by
you
. I had heard it said that the body count grows easier with time, but that’s not so. It’s only if you don’t dwell—”
“
A soldier who would rather not kill? You are strange indeed, Ranhé.”
“
And you have not answered my question.”
“
I will answer you some other time.”
She turned to him then, and his face was only inches away. And at that proximity she saw the sunken lines of weariness below his half-lidded eyes, and the unshaved dark stubble of his hollow cheeks—not pale, but as dark as his eyebrows. It occurred to her that neither he nor Vaeste had shaved for the last two days, but she had hardly noticed. Neither had she particularly noticed that Elasirr’s silken blond hair was now unkempt and matted, as though he’d forgotten vanity for the duration of the trip.
And then she thought of herself, of what she might look like.
“
What do you think of the Rainbow?” she asked him, because his proximity was bothering her more than she could bear. And because, all of a sudden, she felt a lack of air in her lungs—his presence was stifling her.
“
What the hell should I think of Rainbow?” said he, raising one brow in curiosity, and turned at last to face her directly. “Are we going to talk philosophy now, or are you simply afraid of me sitting so close to you?”
A thin shiver of cold ran down her back, that conceivably, he could read her in that moment. But she knew how to answer, as always.
“
And why exactly
are
you sitting close to me, Lord Bilhaar?” she said with unflinching eyes trained on him, with a beginning thin smile. “Do unnatural repulsive women attract you?”
“
Attract?” he said. “I’ve long since stopped thinking of you as a woman, and instead find you a worthy conversationalist. I also prefer sitting on your cloak rather than on the bare ground. But if that bothers you, why then, Ranhé, I will relieve you of my company.”
And with that, he got up, shaking grass off his trousers and boots, and walked to the entrance of the old stone building.
Ranhé watched, stonelike, as he glanced inside through the doorway, then entered the structure. She thought she heard their voices, and then after several minutes, Elasirr emerged, and in his wake came Elasand, squinting from the glare of daylight.
Vaeste looked gaunt and there was a deathly absence of expression on his face. He threw one disoriented look at Ranhé, as though for a moment he did not recognize her.
“
Leave your candles burning,” said Elasirr to him matter-of-factly. “And have something to eat. If the Tilirr are to hear you and reply, you will know it, whether or not you happen to be out here or inside.”
Wordlessly, Ranhé got up and went to get their provisions from one of the food bags, and also to check up on the horses. When she returned, Elasand was seated on her cloak, staring ahead. She offered him bread and meat and water, but he looked up at her and stared, making no effort to take the food.
“
You must eat, my lord,” she said. “Or your strength will fail you, and you will achieve nothing.”
“
I have already achieved nothing . . .” he replied coldly, then took the bread and the water flask from her hands, refusing the meat.
“
You’re right not to eat this flesh,” he said suddenly, looking up at her. “It makes you cleaner, not eating it. Unlike myself. Surely that’s why
she
doesn’t come to me. And that’s why you, Ranhé, who’d also seen the
lady
, must try in my stead now!”
He put the food down, and drew open the small pouch that he carried at his waist. As Elasirr looked on with curiosity, Vaeste removed a single wax candle, and offered it to Ranhé, his eyes full of new life, of entreaty almost. “Take this, freewoman. I ask you this one thing that is beyond your call of duty. Go inside, and light the candle, and call upon her whose name is
Laelith
. . . .”
“
But—my lord,” she responded, frowning. “What should I say? I am not religious, I have no idea what—”
“
Just try!” he interrupted. “Simply call
her
name, speak to
her
, think of
her
. That is all that can be done now. Do it!”
His eyes, clear silver and pale as the day, were more straightforward than she had ever seen them to be. Overhead, the sun burned, and all around them the wind sang. And she could not deny him, not this time, not ever.
“
Very well,” she said, taking the candle, “I will try.” And with that she turned, and took the steps toward the gray building, pausing at the dilapidated entrance at the darkness of the interior.
And then she entered the Shrine of Light.
Inside, it was cool. The darkness was indeed only twilight. As her eyes grew accustomed to the softness, Ranhé could see the interior of the single small room—the chipped stone walls, the poor wooden roof with low hanging rafters, upon which old patterns of cobwebs hung down like vaporous lace.
In the center, a little toward the back wall, stood a raised stone altar, in the form of a large simply hewn crude stone with a somewhat concave surface, rounded like a very shallow wide bowl. Its base was a wide pillar, also roughly hewn. The bowl stone rested firmly upon the pillar, and in the center of it burned a single short candle, almost gone to its quick, while the wax had coagulated in a small pool upon the stone.
The candle flame was steady, upright, for no breeze came inside this tomblike room. And yet, the air was not stifling, for the flame showed no signs of being extinguished due to lack of oxygen. She assumed there must have been an outlet somewhere in the decaying roof.
There was nothing else in this tiny room. As she glanced around her on the floor, she saw remainders of other old candles, pieces of wick string and some old dried flowers scattered on the wicker and straw of the floor, in ancient offering. On the floor before the altar there were two deep indentations that had probably been worn by the pressure of knees of other supplicants who had come here just as she had, and entreated the Tilirr.
She stood, bending her head so as not to hit the cobwebs or the low rafters, and then took her candle and drew it forth to receive the flame from Elasand’s own candle that had almost burned out. The two wicks touched, and then her candle bloomed forth with a gray radiance, continuing to burn alone. New monochrome shadows came to dance in the room as she moved the candle, thoughtlessly, and attached it firmly in the warm liquid wax that had spilled onto the altar.
Now her candle towered above the dying flame of Elasand’s own.
Ranhé felt nothing, did not know what to ask, who to invoke. There was an equal measure of silence within her mind as there had been in this simple room.
She lowered herself on her knees, in the same spot where Elasand had knelt, where hundreds of other knees had rested. Kneeling thus, the candle flame was directly horizontal to her field of vision, at the very level of her eyes.
The elongated oval of the flame stood up motionless before her, and behind it she saw the walls of the poor room, thrown in dim twilight. She stared straight ahead, focusing upon that oval of light, until it floated disembodied in her vision.
Laelith
. . . she tried within her mind.
You who are the
violet
lady of love, can you hear me?
Silence.
Ahead of her the pale oval flame floated upright. Not even the barest flickering due to wind, or even her breath (rapidly becoming audible in her temples).
She focused, trying to remember that distant sound of the faraway river, the chiming bells, the rushing stream in her mind . . . She closed her eyes, and the candle flame stood on the inside of her eyelids, an afterimage of black against pallid glow. She thought she almost saw it, on the velvet edges of her vision, the sparkling dots of inner brightness that was possibly,
violet
. . . .
Instead, in the absolute peace of the darkness, old memories came rushing back. And yet—these memories were not quite her own. She thought, for some reason, of the blond man who was now an assassin, and of how his father, a proud older Lord Vaeste, had once visited a pale haired beautiful
erotene
. She could almost visualize her, this blond woman, with the same heavy-lidded eyes that would rarely open wide, but when they did, were a pale and intense discovery, like a sudden window upon the sky.
What was it like to have such a mother, lush and vibrant, a self-confident sensual
erotene?
And then Ranhé saw contrasting images that she had tried to put down so long ago, of a meek woman with hair like ash—indeterminate, hueless actually, with kind soft eyes, and an exhausted face, that was more used to cringing, and yet was full of rightness. The kindest face she had ever seen, this gentle and self-effacing woman had—the woman who was her mother.
And she remembered this woman, first holding her small self, then—as years went by—cringing, hiding often, silently weeping more often than not, in a small room, long time ago. Because the dark man with the manic and yet absolutely lifeless eyes would come often to lock her in the room. The same dark man would come inside, and she would hear his voice, droning on and on with simmering hate, as he reviled the meek woman, for hours on end, until sometimes she would break down and start screaming, and would fall down on the floor, beating herself. The man himself never touched her. He would leave the room and lock the door, and Ranhé, a small child, would hide until his steps grew silent in the corridor. She would then creep up to the door, and call her mother—because a quite indescribable, most sick feeling would rise in her, a feeling that she later learned to recognize as fear—saying, over and over, “Mother, please don’t cry! Please, Mother! Please don’t cry!”
But the meek weeping would continue inside, hopeless and eternal, and it had become a drone within her mind, so that with years she began to hate its soul-wrenching sound, even more than she hated the dark man with the insane eyes, who had been her own father.
Eventually, she had grown into a tall girl, and then she also would get locked in the room with her mother, because she would say something against him, something that he found wrong. Unlike her mother, she did not remain silent for long, but would attack him with snarling words and maddened eyes. And yet, she kept her fingers clenched tight into fists at her sides, holding them there always, on the verge of an explosion that would never take place.
She never tried to raise her hands against him, for he had been her father. And that one true instinct had been instilled within her so strongly that she remembered, even in the moments of her wildest feral anger.
She had learned to be cold, rational, always remembering to stay in control. She had learned to be contrary with deceit, and to stand her ground. And eventually the dark man had grown older, so that she towered over him in her fierce youth, and it was his turn to cringe and give way before her. By that time, her mother had faded into obscurity, and even now Ranhé did not clearly remember the actual moment of her death, only a fading of sorts, like gray soft smoke dispersing, water vapor wafting into the twilight of the silver world around them.
She had grown up in one of the poorest sections of the Academic Quarter. Her father had been a scribe, and held an array of insignificant clerical posts. Despite being somewhat of a visionary, with a quick brilliant mind, he had been unable to hold down any job for long. Thus, the family would go starving often, so that Ranhé learned to value any food source, and would eat as much as she could when there was anything to eat. Later, they had found out that her father had been secretly visiting a number of other women in the City, and she had at least four half-sisters and brothers of her own, that she had never seen, nor would she ever plan to see, except for the fact that Father owed them all monetary support.
And at last, after she had become full-grown and strong, she also realized that her father, whom she had hated so fiercely for so long, was not an evil man as much as he was an ill man. His insanity had been subtle, coupled with a bitter character, and only with the passing of years did the irrationality surface enough so that she could recognize it for what it was. Then, she regretted only that her mother had never known this truth.
Her hate had burned out then, and she allowed herself pity. And at times that same early warmth that she had felt when she had been an infant had resurfaced to stir her occasionally. She tolerated her father’s outbursts, his perversity, and no longer let any of it touch her. He would grumble and scold her and she would ignore him and do as she pleased, sometimes just to spite him, because she could. It was wrong of her, and she knew it, and yet, she was taking revenge for all those endless times of her childhood, for her whimpering mother.