But the subject.
What in Orholam’s lowest hell?
“What . . . is . . . this?” I can’t help but ask.
“Some say that Solarch was a Mirror, and this is meant to be art for a Card, though I’ve seen no corroborating evidence of that.”
I don’t think that can be true. This is merely genius. As tragically misplaced and misapplied as it is undeniably, bafflingly superior.
This is a painting that would cause contemporary critics to scoff, his patron to grumble, and his competitors to throw down their brushes in agony and vexation.
Breathed by the greatest wordsmith ever to turn a phrase, this is a poem . . . about a bowel movement. This is the greatest composer of all time making fart jokes instead of penning concertos.
“It’s . . . cute?” I say.
I can’t take my eyes off it. The more I look, the more baffled I am.
“Cute, yes,” Lord Dariush says. “Fat and rather adorable, isn’t it?”
The abuse of talent is so outrageous, I can’t help wondering if it’s purposeful—perhaps Gollaïr, so certain that his own talents were being outstripped, had commissioned this piece simply to waste a few of Solarch’s days on earth.
Some great painters can dash off a masterpiece in a day. Other styles require a year or more. This has the hallmarks of the latter. The paint so thick it gives a depth to the image, the colors balanced not only against each other, but also within the image so as to guide the eye from one pleasing line to the next.
It is a lovely travesty.
It is as if the fastest racer entered the great hippodrome of Aslal for the final laps of the mountains-to-sea race that caps the novennial Philocteian Games, and as every tribe in Paria cheered, he started skipping, backward, even as the other runners caught him up and passed him by to take the laurel crown.
One might skip quickly, even backward. Such speed might astound, in its own witless way, but . . . why?
What a shame.
“What, uh, what is it?” I ask finally.
After a long moment, Lord Dariush says, “It’s a young dragon.”
“This . . . doesn’t look anything like . . .”
“In the highlands, our memories of dragons are rather different.”
Memories? “You’re . . . talking about a real animal?” I ask. “Something that gets translated ‘dragon’?”
I suddenly have no read on this man at all: one moment sly, clever, even brilliant, the next superstitious, foolish, and queer. If he’s actively delusional, I’ll have to leave, regardless. We’ve enough madness already in the Guile family line without me breeding more into it by marrying his daughter.
Lord Dariush is engrossed in his viewing. “Dragons are vulnerable in their youth, but then they spring up seemingly all at once, terrifying in their might. Cuddly, though, huh? Little round belly and all!”
He chuckles, then tears his eyes away from what is clearly his favorite possession of everything he’s shown me in the last week.
“What?” he asks suddenly, “Oh, a real animal? Oh, no. I mean, not to my knowledge. Maybe in the mists of time? But no, it’s uh, it’s uh, merely an important bit of our highland mythology. You see . . . hmmph. Do you know anything about scale-bearers? You know, serpents, lizards, geckos, the color-changers—some call them ‘reptiles’ now?”
“General knowledge,” I say. “I’ve certainly seen snakes and salamanders, of course, but nothing specialized.”
“Well, the sub-reds of Atash have studied them for centuries. Find them quite fascinating. They classify them as exotherms, whereas you and I and most animals are endotherms. We make heat internally; reptiles absorb it from their surroundings. If you believe heat to be a species of light, then animals who absorb it rather than give it off are rather suspect indeed. They are like little pits of darkness, light-devourers. Some say this is why men have always hated snakes.” He waves it away. “But that’s neither here nor there. My highland ancestors knew about exotherms and endotherms, and it’s a factor in the tale.”
“Go on,” I say. Now I’m actually interested. A little.
“We humans, we’re social. Sometimes we’re scolding squirrels, or monkeys shrieking and flinging excrement. At better times, loyal dogs or wolves hunting together to take down prey that none of us could face alone. Like other endotherms, we care about our pack, in our cases the family, the tribe, the satrapy, even the empire. We care deeply about our position within those groups. We are zoon politikon, social animals. There’s great strength in this, of course. A man alone in the wilderness will have trouble even surviving. We care for our sick, our elderly, and our children. But there’s waste and danger to living in society, too. We obsess over trivialities.
“Consider Sulak and Ben-sulak, towns that, if not separated by a river, would have long grown together into one single city. Today, in one, a man is mocked for darkening his eyebrows with kohl. Across the river, his twin is considered brutish for not doing so. The former is considered barbaric for growing his beard, the latter childish because he lacks one. We go along with things that make no sense. This year our cloaks are worn so short they no longer keep us warm. Next year they’ll be so long they’ll make it impossible to run.
“Reptiles stand at the antipodes from this. They care nothing for what their sisters love or their fathers hate. They seek out company only when it’s time to mate. There are some few men and women like this, of course, the broken ones, those born soulless, who possess neither empathy nor plans, nor can even be taught to feel much beyond their immediate fear, hunger, or lust. But most of us aren’t like that at all.”
Lord Dariush gestures to the painting. “See the fur? In our stories, the dragon is the wisest of all created beasts, for he has a dual nature: neither the blindnesses of the cold-blooded nor the weaknesses of the warm. Thus, we highlanders seek to emulate our ‘dragon.’ We discern when it is time to be a monkey of the tribe, and when it is time to be the cold lone serpent. Or whichsoever animals you will, given a particular circumstance.”
“How do you know when to be which?” I ask. “Does the monkey in you get to decide, or the snake?”
Lord Dariush gives me a long appraisal. “You see the crux of the question. Quickly, too.”
Was there, then, no answer? Or was it a stupid ‘We muddle through as best we can, with our shitty metaphors and backward culture’?
Lord Dariush waits a moment longer, then he says, “Intriguing. You see the crux of the matter, but not the heart of it. You are so very, very fast to see the weakness in a system, but slow to go further to seek a charitable interpretation for it.”
That stings. “Was this a test I’ve just failed?” Bugger your art, old man.
“Yes to the failure. No to the test. Tests are designed. This was inadvertent. Another slippage of your mask, I think.”
“Putting one’s best foot forward is hardly the same—”
Another slippage?
Dariush interrupts. “Hold that thought. I know you won’t forget it. Back to the dragon, if you would, and my silly, backward tales.”
“I never—!” I protest.
“No. You didn’t. I withdraw that last.” Dariush clears his throat. “The part that decides which nature to indulge or to express, the weak faculty that stands at the fulcrum between the dog and the serpent? That faculty is exactly what makes us human. Here in the highlands, we believe we are not zoon politikon. We are zoon kritikon, the animal that judges.”