Elasirr smiled—amused, sardonic, and yet like a sharp blade. “I can only be responsible for one indeed.” He mused, “For in truth, there is no Assassin Guild. It is but a cover for the Light Guild. And Bilhaar is merely the elite warrior guard for the Light Guild, that had been formed since the start to protect the integrity of the Guild, and to guard the ultimate secrets of color light and Rainbow. For that reason, Bilhaar and the Light Guild are one and the same.”
“Now, with that out of the way,” said Elasand with a smile of some relief, “would you mind opening the door, Elas, so we can go inside?”
And in reply, the Guildmaster of the Light Guild smiled at them both, torchlight shining demonic on his face, and reached forward to touch a secret lock.
The heavy door opened silently, and they entered the Inner City.
CHAPTER 16
The first thing Ranhé saw, with an unexpected pang of joy, was a soft familiar pasted-on glow of orange. A large low brightness came to fill a room from one orb in the corner. The room was large, with walls of indeterminate matte stone, a great airy open space, and it branched off in a number of open corridors.
There were many people in the room, and several immediately turned and headed their way. One of them, a bearded older man, greeted Elasirr with an upraised hand, saying, “At last, my lord! We were beginning to be concerned.”
“All is well, Marihke,” responded Elasirr, walking to the center of the chamber, and effectively drawing everyone’s attention. At his side, Elasand and Ranhé stepped forward also.
There were voices everywhere, the mention of “Guildmaster,” and then the busy room was silent.
“It has started,” said Elasirr loudly to the room in general. His face was fierce with an emotion that Ranhé had never seen him wear. “We will meet in about a half-hour’s time, to discuss the options before us as a Guild, and the options for the City as a whole. The invader is stronger than I had thought, and there will be days of fear before us. We must get to work without wasting a moment. I will see you all in the meeting room.”
And with that, he again nodded to all in general, and then motioned to Elasand and Ranhé to follow him.
They walked through a large clean passageway that led slowly upwards on an incline, and Ranhé realized they were once again approaching ground level, this time within the safe territory of the Inner City. Everywhere, she saw a network of other passageways and corridors, all well lit, and peopled by a great number of busy individuals, men and women, all energetic, performing a variety of tasks. They passed open chambers, where quantities of vitreous materials were shaped into all manner of orbs, and she realized that orbs were merely hollow simple spheres of glass. In other places, she saw Guildsmen working on various arrays of color light, brilliant, incredible—rooms full of orbs of pure blue, of all possible shades, or pure green.
Interestingly, there were almost no doors in this place. Every chamber opened freely upon another, as though once one was within this forbidden Quarter, all secrecy was dropped in favor of common interaction. Persons would enter one room to consult with others, then return to their own work-stations.
“Why are they working now, when it is almost midnight?” Ranhé inquired almost shyly of Elasirr, without looking at him, as they walked.
He glanced at her, and she could not read his look at all, she suddenly realized. “The Guild works around the clock, always,” he said simply. “Not just because we are currently under enemy occupation, and not because we are driven to it by necessity, but because the nature of light makes varied creative demands upon the light artisans. Many here work while they have the willpower simmering within them, then sleep freely when they grow tired, which could be any time, day or night. Such irregularity is inherent in the talent of those who wield color.”
“Why, my lord?” said Ranhé. “If I may ask? Or is it not something I might know?”
Elasirr considered her for a silent span of seconds, then suddenly stopped, saying, “Why don’t you come and I’ll show you.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Elasand. “Do you think it’s possible she too may have it?”
“I will test her,” said Elasirr, “for, yes, it is possible. And we need every new talent we can get. After all, she also saw something in the forest—What was it that you did see, Ranhé? You’ve never exactly told us.”
“I dreamt of one of the Tilirr,” she replied tentatively, remembering with the strongest pull, fields of dandelion gold.
“This may or may not mean something,” said Elasirr brusquely, as he turned to a different passageway, and they emerged in a small chamber.
There was a single small table in the center, next to it, a chair, and upon the table, one small orb, about the size of a human fist.
“Sit down, freewoman,” said Elasirr coldly. “What I want you to do is fill this orb with color light.”
Ranhé sat down at the chair, raising her right brow in amusement. “You must be joking. And how am I supposed to do that, my Lord Guildmaster?”
“Your question invokes the very basic principle of the Light Guild,” said Elasirr. He then drew closer, leaning forward to look at her, while Elasand continued standing some steps away.
“What is color, Ranhé?” said Elasirr, looking into her eyes.
“Hell if I know,” she said, on the defensive, staring up at him with a thin smile.
“Color is a way of perceiving light,” said Elasirr. “Any light. When you stare at the sun, or at a candle flame, Ranhé, what you should be seeing is some kind of color, naturally. What you see instead is only the contrast of bright and dim.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, seeing his intense serious look, while her own smile left her face. “Are you telling me that we should all be seeing colors every time we look at light? But how can that be?”
“Yes,” he said. “And not only that. We should be seeing colors every time we look at any visible object—any object upon which even the smallest measure of light falls.”
“But we do not, Ranhé,” said Elasand. “Somehow, we do not see that which we naturally should, which is within our ability, our nature! The fact that we can see color at all, even if it is only within orbs, attests to this potential ability of ours.”
“Color is a property of light, an extension of it,” continued the Guildmaster of the Light Guild, “and it appears that we had lost this natural ability to perceive this property when the Rainbow fell.”
“The Rainbow? I thought that was merely philosophy, or a sacred belief.”
Elasirr sighed then, and placed his hand on her shoulder gently. “No,” he whispered, “Rainbow is our history. It is the basis of the Light Guild, for at the time of the Fall, we were the only ones who were able to hold on to its memory. The memory of colors is preserved by us, from generation to generation. It is preserved within the human mind. And with time, we have developed techniques of forcing the memory to its surface. Only, the single thing we can do with it is perpetuate it. We are capable of ‘remembering’ the perception of three primary colors and three secondary, with only a small number of intermediate variations. Thus, we can fill orbs with these colors, but we can do nothing else. It is not magic that we do, but an exercise of the mind, a gathering of the consciousness that is within us, that is passed on through generations in the human species. And it is not real color that we create, but a memory of the color, for we have no way of knowing which real color is appropriate for any given object. In a way, we manipulate light energy into the illusion of the real thing. That is why color appears ‘pasted’ onto things—because it’s not really there as it should be. It is temporarily forced upon the world by our very strength of will and memory. Ah, this is quite difficult to put into words. Let me instead show you.”
He paused, then put his hand on the dull glass orb.
Ranhé watched a slow brightening begin in the area of his fingertips, and then suddenly, the orb blazed forth like a lightning flash with pale utter violet
. When the flash settled, the orb glowed a soft steady lavender, and its illumination transformed the whole room. Ranhé could feel its instant warmth emanating from the smooth glass, although her own fingers were inches away.
“You are seeing my memory, Ranhé,” said Elasirr. “My memory of a color that I have been taught is violet. If I had never seen it, I would not have been able to reproduce it. That is the knowledge I have as Guildmaster, the knowledge of every single color in the collective memory of the Guild, passed on to me by my predecessor—my father Rendvahl Vaeste.”
“So that is why Feale wanted Vaeste,” she whispered, as some things began to click into place. “But what of my Lord Elasand?”
“I too have the ability,” said Lord Vaeste softly, glancing at his half-brother. “But our father had made a mistake of judgment, and by then it was too late to rectify it. His secondborn son, not I, had the truer talent. It is a talent of memory, Ranhé.”
“It is said,” continued Elasirr, “at the time of the Fall—which by the way still remains somewhat of a mystery to us—when color was a natural property of the world, of our perception, Vaeste took it upon themselves to focus on preserving it. One of our ancestors spent countless days concentrating his will upon open flames, upon all sources of naturally occurring light energy, until he somehow focused it into the colors that we have now. To contain the energy, he had ordered glass orbs to be built. The original orbs were seven in number. They are with us still within the walls of the Light Guild. They remain lit always, the energy within maintained by Masters. Lit once long ago by a Vaeste, they are to remain thus permanently, for as long as this Guild exists, since they are the only source of color memory for us now. When Guildmembers go to create new orbs, they must first gaze upon the Original Seven, and thus re-create the true color from that which they perceive. Unfortunately, one of the seven, the one that had once contained white, is no longer lit. We can thus no longer make true white light, for its memory has been lost to us.”
“Can you yourself then re-create every color, my lord?”
“Yes. Only I can do that to the fullest extent. Other Masters have better memories of several specific colors, and that is what they do on a regular basis. But only my brother and I can create them all at will, without first gazing at the Original orbs.”
“Not true,” added Lord Vaeste. “I may not always be relied upon to do this. Only he can. That is why he is the Guildmaster.”
“You are too modest, Elas,” said Elasirr, “and as always, too noble for my tastes. For, despite all, I am Bilhaar.”
“What exactly is Bilhaar, then?” began Ranhé. “I am still quite confused. Are you and my Lord Vaeste enemies? Or is everything merely a front?”
“Bilhaar are ruthless, loyal, and most dangerous to any enemies of the Guild. That is still the same, as far as your understanding is concerned,” responded Elasirr. “But for now, enough explanations, freewoman. Sometime later you will find out more. What I want you to do now is try to fill this orb with any color you can, simply from a memory you might have. Visualize it, form the light within your mind, and then just release it. Gather the energy and make it live within this glass.”
And with that, the orb suddenly went dull, devoid of the violet.
“You are jesting, my lord,” began to protest Ranhé, but Elasirr’s look was sharp as a drawn blade, and he simply waited.
She stared at the glass orb. “What am I supposed to do exactly?”
“You are afraid,” whispered Elasirr, almost taunting her. “Don’t be afraid, don’t stall. Simply will it to be!”
“But I can’t—”
“Do it! Or are you more feeble than I thought?”
Anger surged through her, the familiar old anger at him, a resentment. Biting her lip, she stared at the orb.
She tried to remember. Red. Green. Orange. Violet. Blue. She remembered traces of visual images—the crimson of the Red Quarter, the orange of the White Roads Inn where she’d seen a cook serve vegetable soup bathed in the monochrome glow, the violet of the brilliant night with a lady and the sounds of the stream—
But the only thing that seemed to come to her was a topaz sky. . . . That, and two joyful fathomless eyes. . . . A man winking at her from the crescent harvest moon. . . .
She allowed that moon to fill her mind, and the sky, full of dots of yellow. She put her fingers forward, angry, proud, wounded to the quick by some old anger, an old memory, a longing.
The warmth grew within her, spreading through her fingers. Soon, it moved outward, spilling, slithering. And with wonder Ranhé gazed at the orb before her, which was suddenly filling with warm yellow honey—or, no, it was not honey, but pure scalding fierce yellow light!
Ranhé cried out, for her fingers burned somehow, and yet she could not stop, could not regulate the warm blazing glow pouring out of her. . . .
“Enough, Ranhé—”
She could hear the words spoken, from the corner of her eye could see the man with the sun-hair drawing closer to her, beginning to once again grasp her shoulder, this time, firmly. She could see Elasand on the other side, raising his hand to shield his eyes.
“Enough! Stop it, Ranhé! Stop!”
But she was caught up in the smooth honey flow.
And then, with a loud shattering, the glass orb broke. Mesmerized, furious somehow, sensually pulsing with her own power, Ranhé could not take her eyes away from the sphere of pure energy that floated on the surface of the table, blazing brighter than any orb she had seen. Her fingers, still burning, began to bleed where bits of glass had embedded in her flesh. She did not feel, but was floating, like the ball of dandelion fire, weightless, just above the table—
Someone was shaking her. She felt her senses snapping back into her being, and suddenly, she was her own self.
The yellow fire was extinguished. Elasirr stood on one side of her, his hand digging into her shoulder, and his other hand was drawn cool over her forehead. “Enough,” he was saying over and over strangely, gently, soothingly, “Peace . . . enough, Ranhé.”
“You have the talent indeed,” said Elasand meanwhile, smiling at her. “It does not surprise me in the least. It might explain why I had been so drawn to trust you from the start. It was my blood reaching out to you. And I had always suspected something else. You are more than my loyal bodyguard. You are one of us now, Ranhé. One of the Light Guild.”
It was well after midnight when they had gone to the great meeting chamber inside one of the structures of the monolithic Inner City. Still in her travel clothes, Ranhé was more tired than she had ever been in her life, and yet the adrenaline kept her wound up to a feverish state. After all the events of the day, and then the evening, sleep was farthest from her mind, although her body was saddle-sore, and her stomach rumbled with hunger. Not to mention, she stank to high heaven, not having bathed for over five days now, and there were shards of glass in her fingers.
Her two travel companions were in a similar state. At some point, someone had brought them food, and they ate hungrily, in the span of minutes, waiting for the Guild to gather in this room.
When the hall was filled to the point that there was only standing room, Elasirr stepped forward to a small stage-like dais that was in the center. His expression was weary beyond belief, his face smudged with travel dust, and he did not stand on ceremony at all, as he began to speak. And yet, none would doubt that he was a confident leader of them all. His manner, Ranhé discovered, was simple, earnest, and there was something utterly sympathetic in the way he glanced about the room, meeting specific people’s eyes. Those gathered here were apparently his family. For they also looked upon him not with fear or intimidation from a possible threat of a ruthless assassin, but with a strange true emotion, which she recognized as hope.
“The Qurthe have surrounded the Inner City,” Elasirr was saying. “And today, I myself had seen the face of Feale who is their lord, the Twilight One. To tell you all the truth, I don’t think he is a true man. He a
ppears human, and wears a semblance of one of us. And yet, there is something so remote in him, that reeks of the grave. Until we know what he really is, we are unable to completely fight him.
“And yet again, we do know one thing—our enemy is afraid of us, afraid of the Light Guild, and consequently afraid of color. Even now he waits and does not destroy the Regents, because he has not found out the truth of the Guildmaster of the Light Guild. He suspects this man here, Lord Vaeste, because of his direct ties to the ancient lineage.”
Elasirr paused, nodding to the sea of faces. And in that instant many hands were raised, as Guildmembers began yelling out questions to him.
“What will happen to the Regency, Lord Guildmaster?” asked Teryr, a young fair-haired guildsman with an earnest face.
“Will the Qurthe attempt to breach our walls and take away the secrets of color light?” echoed his younger brother Ukrt.
“How much time do we have?” another guildsman, Pual, asked.
“And what of the Military?”
“What of the other Guilds? Can we join forces with them to fight this enemy and free the City?”
And then, a woman called Theri brought up the saddest question of all: “Can we even fight this enemy? And if we do, what hope do we have of succeeding? What will become of us?”
In answer, Elasirr raised his hand for silence. And then, he said loudly, angrily, “Yes! We will indeed fight. Are any of you willing to live in a City called Twilight?”
At that, angry cheers went up. But again, he raised his hand, continuing, “But—we will fight carefully, starting on a small scale, starting to erode and undermine the Qurthe. We will work with all the resources this City has to offer. I myself will go to mobilize the Guilds, and we will unite for this one cause, if not any other. But for the moment, our first duty is to buy time. Tomorrow, we will begin by stalling, and my half-brother, Lord Elasand Vaeste, will go before the Enemy as planned, and attempt to delude him further, for as long as he is able. At the same time, he will attempt to learn more about the nature of our enemy. Now—I am in no state to continue anything. The hour has grown late, and I will rest for a couple of hours before beginning my work. Lord Vaeste must rest also, for we have just returned from a quest which has taught us a great deal about what we all face as a people. The rest of you—business as usual. Only—be ready any time, for action, upon my signal.”