Randia's View
Prologue to Chaos, Chapter 3, Scene 1
The Sixth of Floren, in the Year 1643 of the Taming (Six Months Later)
Randia Killraven looked down with a mischievous smile on the City of Rainbows.
She stood, naked, at the edge of the mountain bluff. The cliffs around her ran like a pair of great arms thrust down from the feet of the Eldar Mountains to the west. The city seemed to nestle between them in the valley below, as though held in their protective embrace.
A stiff wind blew across the ledge. Usually, her hair was a cascade of loose locks — gold, with just a hint of red — that reached past her shoulders. Now those locks seemed to float, like shining wisps, hovering around her head in the moving airs. She brushed them back impatiently with a slender hand as her blue eyes gazed eagerly at the vista before her. This is a magnificent morning to see the city, she thought, with the sun shining brightly in a nearly cloudless azure sky. She didn’t want to miss any of it.
She looked across the valley. Hills ascended from the docks and ports around the tip of the long Firth of Fajang. The hills were terraced, cut into the arms of the bluff like steps for an enormous giant. They rose in levels, connected by ramped streets and staired walkways, until they met the sheer face of the cliff-wall that shielded the city to the north. The southern side below her looked much the same, nearly a mirror image of its northern partner.
She looked to her right. There, the ring of cliffs was finally broken by the narrow waters of the firth. The bluffs descended gradually from the mountains to surround the great inlet, eventually disappearing into the plains of northern Carlissa. The shining water continued into the distance toward the Nyan Sea many leagues away.
She glanced along the line of cliffs beside her. There she saw the terraces of the southern arm of the Upper City come to a sudden end. Where they did, the halls and tower of the Silver Star Adventurer’s Academy shone brightly in the mid-morning sun.
The sun. That reminded her of why she had wanted to come here today. Okay, one of the reasons, she amended quickly, thinking with a smile of Stefan as he set out blankets by the pool for their swim in the little glade behind her. She turned to where the sun’s rays fell onto the western end of the valley, and her breath caught at the sight.
This is why they call it the City of Rainbows, she thought in wonder. The shoulder of Mount Cascade loomed above the bluffs, its heights descending in a face of jagged cliffs. And there, their courses as if severed by the stroke of a giant axe, the high waters that flowed through the last peak of the Eldar Mountains rushed over the brink and into the valley below.
Waterfalls too numerous to count fell from the mountain cliffs above Lannamon, City of Rainbows, capital of the Kingdom of Carlissa. A rainbow could always be seen in the mist from those falls on days when the sun shone, an enormous arc of color appearing above the valley with the morning’s first rays.
The sun cleared the top of the cliffs behind her, and she saw the scene as she had for the first time many years ago. From here, and for only a few minutes, the rainbow hovered above the ground as a full ring encircling the westward cliffs. It framed the High City, the palace, and the waterfalls, like a picture set in an enormous locket of prismatic light.
She gazed for a long minute at the sight, savoring the view.
Her eyes moved to the palace, and she smiled fondly. She had grown up there, and knew it well. It was built into the shoulder of the mountain, surrounded by falling water on all sides. A broad road wound up toward it like a snake from below, ending at its main gate. At its center, a great tower soared into the sky.
Her eyes followed the road from the palace toward the firth and the docks. Her gaze swept past the great amphitheater and descended into the center of the valley. There, far beneath the waterfalls and between the surrounding cliffs and terraces, lay the heart of Lannamon. At least, she thought of it as its heart, and had for a long time.
The firth was ringed with great docks and shipyards. The land around it was a mazework of streets with homes, shops, and apartments. This was the Lower City, home to most of Lannamon’s people. More importantly, to her, it was home to its best inns, taverns, and playhouses.
She grinned at the thought. The theaters of the Upper City were magnificent, and the Great Hall of the Bard’s College beyond compare in all the Eastern Continent. She still loved them and relished attending when she had the chance. But for all their grandeur, they had become stale and formulaic. More and more she was seeing the creative energies of her art expressed, not by the court musicians of the Upper and High Cities, but in the makeshift venues of the Lower. The bards were freer there, not bound by the stuffy classical traditions that still dominated the halls of the nobles. She relished slipping away from the palace to perform with them, to the raucous cheering and earthy humor of the crowds — and not infrequently, the chagrin of the guards who would be sent out to find her.
A pair of strong arms encircled her waist, and she felt Stefan’s body press against her from behind. She leaned back contentedly into his embrace. His lips nuzzled her neck as he looked over her shoulder.
“You weren’t exaggerating,” he murmured appreciatively. “Thank you for bringing me here. What a sight! A circular rainbow, suspended like a ring of color over the city. I will simply have to paint it.”
“Don’t you dare!” she cried.
She spun in his arms to face him. He held her firmly against his lean body, their faces inches apart and lips nearly touching.
Stefan Arokkan was a gifted artist and musician. The City of Rainbows was famous as a center of culture and learning, and its Bard’s College renowned as the finest in all the lands of the Eastern Continent. A prince of Thressa — though only a nephew of its king, and several times removed from its throne — he had insisted on pursuing his studies in the capital of Carlissa.
Their relationship had begun with an intense rivalry. Stefan was a charismatic performer, and they had quickly developed a reputation as the college’s two most gifted students. They’d competed relentlessly for awards and honors, and Randia had quickly developed a stubborn obsession with besting him at everything they did. He’d taken up their rivalry with an easy confidence and a knowing, mocking smile that maddened her, and that only drove her on to compete with him more fiercely.
That rivalry had eventually given way to an equally intense bond of love and admiration. They were to be married in the fall.
Their engagement had finally blunted the nobility’s disapproval over her attending the Bard’s College. They had frowned on her failure to attend to the many suitors that had sought the hand of the only daughter of King Danor Killraven and Queen Elena Starlight. Her lack of interest in receiving the noblest of Carlissa’s blue bloods had led to talk, and to raised eyebrows in the High City. That gossip had finally shifted with news of their engagement to discussion of alliances and trade with the western kingdom, and plans for their wedding.
Randia gave the gossip little thought. What mattered to her was that she was going to build a life with a charming and talented man she admired, who shared her life-consuming passion for music and the arts.
“You mustn’t paint it!” she continued, pleading. “You’ll give away my secret glade! Any idiot will be able to work out the location. They’ll come looking for it!”
Stefan smiled. “Perhaps I could be persuaded to imagine a different viewpoint,” he mused. One of his arms slid around her back as she looked mischievously into his eyes. “That is, if milady were to offer a suitable incentive …”
“Why, you scoundrel!” she exclaimed indignantly. There was just a hint of mockery in her voice; she recognized the line from a comedy they had seen at a theater in the Lower City. She fell at once to playacting with him, as they would often do, and with the ease of slipping on a glove.
“Would you hold my secret ransom to satisfy your beastly desires, sirrah?” she asked.
“Not mine, milady — yours,” he quoted back with a grin. Then they kissed as they stood together on the bluff overlooking the city — their game, the rainbow, and everything else forgotten.
He swept her into his arms, and they laughed as he carried her into the glade behind them. The entrance was little more than a crack among the rocks, almost completely hidden from view. In it lay a small lagoon, shrouded by stone and trees, but open to the sky above.
“Come, my love,” he said, setting her down on a blanket by the edge of the pool. His voice had a smoky tone as he looked deeply into her eyes. “We have water for our swim, and a comfortable spot for us to dally after.”
"Dally first, I think," she replied. Then she kissed him again and drew him with her to the ground.
Next: Chapter 3, Scene 2 - The Ambassador’s Daughter
