“I’m so pleased you’re here!” she exclaimed, speaking as directly as a man. “Here at Castle Thorn, I mean. I’d never say so in Twig’s hearing, but I long ago learned all he had to teach me about the sky, and it didn’t even include the idea that the sun stands still while we move around it. It makes everything so much simpler when you look at things that way, doesn’t it? I look forward to having you as my constant companion at the observatory this winter.”
“To me will much pleasure,” Jing affirmed. “But if to explain correct meaning I want say, must I very more Forbish learn.”
“I’m sure you’ll learn quickly, and if you have problems, turn to me. I have little enough to occupy me,” she added in a bitter tone.
Thus emboldened, Jing said, “Is of problem I come now. See you…” And he summed up his encounter with the sacerdotes.
“You’re right to beware of them!” Rainbow asserted. “How can I but hate them for claiming that my birth was the sign of a curse on my father? For him I have small love either, since he sent my mother away, but at least he had the kindness to bring me with him when he left Forb instead of abandoning or even killing me, and he provided for my education by offering Twig a refuge here. Without him I think I would have lost myself in dreamness. If only he hadn’t more or less quit studying the sky when his eye began to fail … Still, he had only himself to blame for looking directly at the sun. He told you, did he, how he saw dark markings on it?”
“I hear of it in Forb, but he not say himself.”
“Do you think it’s credible? Sometimes when there’s thin gray cloud, so the sun doesn’t hurt your eye, I’ve imagined that I too … But what do you think? Is it possible for dark to appear out of bright, as bright may out of dark?”
“In not in the knowledge of my people. Where I lived, is either clear day-sky or thick rain-cloud. Was to me new, see sort of thin cloud you mention.”
“Is that so?” She leaned forward, fascinated. “I should ask you about your homeland, shouldn’t I, rather than about stars and numbers all the time? Have you been away long? Do you miss it very much? Is it a place of marvels? I suspect it must be, particularly compared to this lonely backwater … But quickly, before my maids return: I’ll assign you one of my own prongsmen to replace Drakh. I’ll say it’s because you need someone to practice Forbish with. I’ll give you Sturdy. With him at your side you need fear nothing from the sacerdotes.”
“Am not sure all to be feared,” Jing muttered, and recounted the odd behavior of the junior sacerdote.
“Interesting! That must be Shine you’re talking about. I realized long ago he was too sensible to deprive himself of the good fare we can offer, but I’d no idea he’d become so independent-minded. Cultivate him! It could serve us well to have a split in the enemy’s ranks.”
Jing noted in passing how swiftly she had begun to say “us.”
“Tonight in hall sit with me,” Rainbow continued. “I’ll feed you from my own trencher-stump. That is, unless you’re afraid of offending my father’s wives. But they have no power; he takes and dismisses them according to his mood, and until one of them buds I remain his sole heir. Now here come my attendants. Let’s change the subject. You were telling me about your homeland. The very weather is different there, I think you said. In what way?”
With infinite gratitude Jing slipped into memory, purging the risk of dangerous dreams. He described the subtropical climate of Ntah, and then progressed to a general account of the Lake and its environs—the creeperbridges stranding out from island to island; the Lord’s palace at the center, a huge tree sixty-score years old, whose sides were draped with immense waxy blossoms that scented the air for miles around; the western cataract where a broad river plunged over a cliff and kept the Lake from growing stagnant; the delectable flesh of the nut called hoblaq, enclosed in a shell too hard for anyone to break, which people gathered on the hillside and pitched into the river so that the falls would do the work for them and send the shattered kernels drifting across the water V