Authors: Vera Nazarian
And at that point his gentle cousin, whose eyes were cool like the moon, would step in to say, “Mother, I don’t quite follow you there,” or, “Mother, don’t you think Elas knows all that? I don’t think you should blame him. It was but fate.”
But Elasand knew equally well that soft words and gentle looks from Lixa meant only that she held her own displeasure well in check, only to pour it out later, in some insinuating dark manner. Lixa was gently serpentine, her moon-eyes hypnotic in their intensity, her smile a sweet shadow. And her reproach was, like that fate she liked to invoke so often, absolute. Such intensity was inherent in her bloodline.
Beis was an old name. Almost as old as Vaeste. The two lines ran, often side by side, for hundreds of years. At the Court of Tronaelend-Lis, they belonged to the elite group of highest-ranking aristocrat dynasties, on par with that of the Regents.
The Regents’ line, Grelias, it is said, came originally from such a line of nobility, one of the many offshoots of the greater vines, so that in truth its only distinction was honorific. It was the Kings’ line, sublime Monteyn, that had held in it a higher distinction than nobility, a seed of deity.
But the line of Monteyn was extinct.
Monteyn had died out almost four hundred years ago, with the last King bearing its name and being of its blood, lying—it is claimed—in the semi-death and non-life of Stasis, the body mysteriously preserved in a glass casket. To this day, visitors to Tronaelend-Lis approach the Mausoleum to view a wax-like face from a great distance, in the silver monochrome splendor of marble, mother-of-pearl, and grayness of gold. The face could as likely belong to a porcelain doll.
Thus lies Alliran Monteyn, dead at the age of twenty-seven, upon coming into his full power. And his body, hermetically sealed, has not decayed for three hundred and eighty years.
But that was ancient history. Beis and Vaeste, and others like them, ruled by the Regent Grelias, now headed a radiant decadent Court in Tronaelend-Lis, city of thousands, the capital of the West Lands.
And the West Lands themselves, great wooded expanses, lay for a thousand leagues in all four directions, with mountain ranges piercing heaven in the north, with the faraway southern sea down to which poured all the rivers, and on both sides, east and west, other lands, and forests all throughout. The world was one great forest in those days, it seemed. And the deserts of sun-drenched silver, fabled and unbelievable, were said to be far, far west, or maybe east, beyond human thought.
* * *
Postulate Four: Rainbow is Unexpected Wonder.
* * *
T
he Family Olvan had claimed as its
color
silver
, or the “standard of the world.” Imogenn Olvan thought this choice was highly appropriate. Bland, stoic, ordinary, her Family was the standard indeed. For it had produced such insipid offspring as herself.
Imogenn was the first daughter of Reanne Olvan and Barand of the Artisans Guild, a man not of noble blood. Reanne, in her youth, had been one of those capricious social coquettes who—because of their beauty—reigned
Dirvan
for seasons on end. She flirted, played the game of glances, and in one such encounter conceived a child from a man half her rank. Such an outrage it was to her proper kinfolk that to atone for it, as all good manners dictated, Reanne must honorably bring up the child herself.
And that she did. From a wild thing, Reanne very suddenly converted into a proper matron. If possible, she was even better at it than at her previous role. From her motherly endeavors, the pale, small, quietly unattractive girl-child received fine schooling, and random expressions of half-love.
Since the first, Imogenn had been nearly voiceless. She had been immediately accepted into the solemn ranks of the Great Family, by all the stern aunts, uncles, cousins, and various other adults, who would gaze upon her small wispy figure with serious eyes. And she felt overwhelmed, drowning in that non-judgmental yet harsh sea of “family.” For, she knew, even back when she was four summers old, that somehow, despite their acceptance, she would never completely be one of them.
Her father, on the other hand, was radiant joy in her imagination. Those few occasions that she was allowed to see him, her life gained bright flashes of experience, like the gray sun breaking through cloud-mass. And always, she kept that experience in the most private center of herself, for she used it to measure the flow of personal time that otherwise would be as dreary and pointless as everything else in her existence.
Barand was a master sculptor. When he came by, for yearly visits allowed by law, he would sweep her away into a shimmering sea of things, for he would take her with him to the Artisans Quarter.
Holding tightly the strong callused hand of the tall black-bearded man with warm eyes, the little girl, dressed in finery as a girl of her rank should be—and drowning in it—ran beside him as they walked by foot. That was the only time she was ever allowed to walk thus, unescorted, like a simple freeman’s child. For on that one visitation day she was her father’s, and no law could deny them this.
Light as joy and free was her mind, and she felt like skipping as they passed the lovely Outer Gardens of
Dirvan
along one of the gravel walks, then headed for the nearest bridge of sparkling paved stone, over the Arata. Underneath shone like fire the broken mirror shards of the running water’s surface, black as ebony in its opaque depths, yet at each moment reflecting the silver of sun and sky.
Ahead of them were the Markets. What joy, what noise, what haggling and babble! Imogenn glanced about her, wildly speechless, and her father read that fierce joy as plain as his own two hands, in that silence of hers.
“
Imogenn, my young woman,” he said then, in all seriousness to the child. “Would you like a Candied Fool, maybe?” And he winked at her.
“
Yes, Father . . .” she murmured, and in three breaths they paused before one of the countless stalls, and Barand traded some shining coins for a wonderful sculpted creation of sugar and dough, a figurine of a silly grinning man in a hat.
He handed it to her, saying, “What will you bite off first, love? His hat, I say—it’s much too ridiculous, and is probably the sweetest part of this mannikin!”
“
Yes . . .” she managed to say faintly, but he knew that in her few words she meant to say so many more things.
Thus they walked farther, hand in hand, she nibbling on the candy, as they passed the Markets and approached the walls and the toll-gate of the Artisans Quarter. Here, her father’s demeanor changed, his bearing grew solid with pride, and he paused before the guards, giving only his name and trade. Immediate recognition came to their eyes, as they parted before him, and without paying any toll, father and daughter entered the Quarter.
They passed twisting alleyways, wider streets, and everywhere there were people, peculiar-eyed people with faraway looks of concentration, either working at their trade in the small open workshops, or else hurrying to and fro, loaded with materials and supplies. Smells and noises here equaled those of the Markets, and sometimes surpassed. Leather and dyes, pungent chemicals, perfume of fresh flowers, newly cut wood, all intermingled, until Imogenn perceived it as one great manifold Smell of the place—just as the ringing hammers, the hiss of plied incandescent metal, crackling wood, human voices, all came to stand for one Sound. Long afterwards, for weeks, would she carry it in her imagination, the Smell and Sound of the Artisans Quarter, and hence, the Smell and Sound of her father.
Barand took her through winding ways to his own spacious workshop, where he was Master, in charge of a half a dozen apprentices. A large, well-lit room, drowning in the soothing
green
glow of the monochrome, and piled with odd shapes, filled her with awe. Scattered everywhere, giant hunks of granite rock, walls and hoards of it. Everywhere, fluid
green
shadows, swaying in the light.
Some of those chunks had to them a distinct shape, a smoothness, an appearance of real objects, where the human hand had worked on them with hammer and chisel. These half-formed shapes loomed like islands throughout the room. And on the floor next to them, together with chipped stone, everywhere lay tools—chisels, picks, hammers, needles, and saws. Little Imogenn tripped often as she wandered staring at the incredible things that grew out of the rock. She glanced at straining human torsos, beasts at play, beautiful female goddesses.
Barand was famous as a master of human form, and without needing to know that, the girl sensed his perfection as an artist, in the flesh-and-blood limbs she saw everywhere, the haunting living faces that frightened her with their presence. She looked and she even blushed at the revealing anatomy of some masculine forms—something that a young female of her station was expressly forbidden to be aware of, under normal circumstances.
They are so beautiful
, she thought,
all of them. While I am like dust before them. Like those chips of rock, lying at the base of the statues
.
And filled with momentary sad wistfulness—the only thing that came to intrude upon this day of happiness—she sometimes said to her father, “Sir . . . do you love those beautiful things you make? Do you?”
“
Yes,” he said. “More than life itself.”
“
More than me, sir, Father? I am not at all like them, they are so beautiful and perfect.”
And the Master Sculptor’s eyes grew dark suddenly, intense with a pain that was only half-tangible. “No!” he whispered. “Never more than you. You are my only love, Imogenn.”
And sometimes he gave her a quick hard embrace, until her head reeled with joy again. Indeed, she asked that question of him often, just to see that pain, and then just to receive the embrace like a sea of warmth. No one had ever embraced her like that, so intensely, so truthfully. She would remember it always.
When the visit ended, he took her back, walking quickly, and his eyes seemed darker than at the beginning of the day. Quickly, half-running, she came along, as they left the Quarter, passed the Markets, and strode along a bridge over the Arata. Sometimes, late in the day, a light rain came, sprinkling them like dew, as they passed through Outer
Dirvan
, to where the Olvan Villa stood in old eminence. There, at the gates, she was received by her mother’s servants, impersonally, and hurried within.
Her father was always left standing outside, rain on his hair, as though at a loss for words, yet proud in his silence. Only the look of his eyes said true good-bye to her, for he knew she would recognize that better than words.
And she would not see him until the next time, months and months later. Truly, Imogenn was aware of her age, kept track of it, only through those solitary yearly visits. Everything else was a dream of monotony and stolid pale silver. And she herself was as bland and monotonous as her existence.
Her father’s visits were always unannounced, unexpected, and somehow it made them more miraculous than if they were to have a regular yearly date set. Imogenn lived each day subconsciously expecting him to appear and wonderfully disrupt her life.
Counting by his visits, Imogenn thus grew to be sixteen summers and sixteen winters. Bland, small, shadowlike, she grew up half-noticed, into an insipid shade of a budding young woman. No one had ever predicted to her that she would be anything but what she was, ordinary and unbeautiful.
And only her father, the intimate stranger, had told her that one day, he saw it in her—as he saw future images of grace and perfection in hunks of granite—he saw her as the most beautiful, most unexpected jewel in
Dirvan
’s any given season.
Finally, the Family Olvan would bear a fine delicate blossom on its proper and ordinary tree.
A blossom fit for a king.
* * *
T
he carriage rolled like a ship in the darkness, so they could feel each bump on the forest path, each little stone.
Inside, Lixa Beis held on to the cushioned door handle with a bloodless grip of desperation.
She was in hell. Hell, and ripping darkness, and screams of assassins reverberating in her mind. Eventually hell must end. Rather, one kind of hell would supplant another.
Soon.
It was said that Lixa Beis had the shadow of
red
, the Beis
color
, in her hair. Supposedly, such “
coloration
” was observed under the most powerful near-
white
monochrome in the City, with all her relations attesting to the fact.
Indeed, professing an ability to perceive
color
where there was none was a quaint tradition at
Dirvan
, akin to divination. Often noble children of a certain age were taken into a brightly illuminated room filled with witnesses, and were “examined” in a rather barbaric ritual of occult superstition. The practice was officially condemned, and yet the clandestine nature of this ritualistic nonsense appealed to the bored aristocracy.
Thus, Lixa carried, if not in her debatable
colors
, then in the solid forms of her face, the print of the Beis line. And yet she was the opposite of her mother, Molhveth Beis, widow of the late Lord Nadeh Beis—the old woman with the withered lips who now sat across from her in the swaying carriage.