Memory

Chapter 17

It was late morning by the time Liam found a way down, and the news he brought was not good. “I saw a plume of dust to the west. Ten, fifteen miles, maybe, back along the base of the Kalang. It disappeared after a few minutes but I don’t doubt it was kicked up by a truck—one that was forced to slow when it hit rough terrain.”

No one was surprised.

Udondi frowned at the sky, where clouds had begun to gather, just as they had yesterday. “We ride fast,” she said at last. “There are refuge mesas in the northern Iraliad, way stations for travelers. If we can reach one, we might be able to defend it, and then the silver can take care of our pursuers.”

“If Kaphiri doesn’t interfere,” I added gloomily, remembering the apparition Liam had seen last night.

“He’s still a player, and he can die as easily as any other player from a bullet wound.” She looked at Liam. “This time we’ll be ready for him.”

It was not a question, and Liam did not answer.

We rode swiftly, following the line of the Kalang to the east until that great plateau reached its sheer end. There we paused to look back at the cliff where we had stood late yesterday afternoon. How high it seemed, and far away! We had felt safe from the silver up there, but here on the plain I could see faint puffs of silver smoking from the cliff face even in the daylight, and I wondered how safe we had really been.

We had come to a boundary. On one hand the land descended to the terrible wastes of the southern basin. On the other it rose in a long, gradual slope to the high desert of the northern Iraliad. I was glad that was our direction, and I wondered if I would have had the courage to turn south, if Jolly had been waiting for me there.

We set off once again, riding fast, trying to keep out of the washes and on hard ground where we would leave few tracks. At noon we lay on a ridge top and studied the land to the north.

It was the darkest noon I had ever seen. The clouds made an unbroken ceiling, their gray bellies looming only a few hundred yards overhead. Beneath them the air was still and very clear, so despite the dimness of the day we could see for miles. After a few minutes Udondi spotted a thin billow of dust rising from behind a distant ridge. It might have been kicked up by cattle, or even a rockslide, but none of us believed that.

“Five miles,” Liam said. “No more.”

We returned to our bikes and resumed our flight. The sky continued to darken, until it seemed like evening, though it was only early afternoon. It was cold, and I could taste the moisture of the clouds in every breath, though they gave up no rain. Instead they had another effect: they sheltered the land from the corrupting rays of the sun so that silver began to appear despite the unnatural hour. Never had I seen the like before.

It started with a few frail wisps, curling to life within the shadows of the deepest overhangs. Wisps strengthened into luminous banks of silver tucked beneath the rocks. Before long, silver could be seen lying in the floors of the many narrow gullies that faced away from the hidden sun. Nowhere was it more than a few inches deep, but it made a blanket so dense and substantial that it looked as if it could be walked on. Even on the ridge tops the air was crisp with the scent of silver, and I began to fear a full-blown storm might burst into existence, though it was only afternoon. I wasn’t encouraged to see Moki huddled anxiously in his bin.

Liam and Udondi were riding ahead of me, so I called to them. “We need to get to higher ground.” After a brief conference they agreed, and we decided to make for a line of pinnacles, four to five miles ahead.

Speed mattered more than secrecy now. We gave up our resolve not to leave tracks and took to riding in the broadest washes, where the silver had not gathered yet, and our path was smooth. When the washes narrowed we rode high on the ridges while the silver thickened in every gully and overhang sheltered from the direct gaze of the sky. But our pursuers guessed our plan, or else in their own panic to escape the silver they elected to make for the pinnacles too.

It happened that we came down from the rough country into a broad, open basin that I took for a folly of the silver because it was as flat and smooth as a road, though it was immense: a mile wide where we would cross at its southern end, and many more miles in extent to the north. The pinnacles stood on the other side of that plain, higher than the tower in the bogy’s city, rounded, wind-sculpted into flowing shapes like contorted gourds or hanging birds’ nests. Their summits touched the clouds and while I had no doubt we could climb them, it wasn’t clear if a way could be found to get our bikes up above the flood zone—but that was a chance we were forced to take.

I pushed my bike to full speed, gaining a little on Liam, who was ahead of me. Udondi was in front of him, maybe a quarter mile ahead. I saw her arm come up. She pointed to the north, then her thin cry arrived on the wind, “There!”

I looked around, past the billowing white dust kicked up by our tires, to see a speeding truck just emerged from the hills. It was hardly a mile away. A posse of bikers—eight? ten of them?—raced ahead of it along a line aimed to intercept us.

Against that number we were helpless on the open plain. Our only chance lay in reaching the pinnacles first, in time to find some shelter where we could lie in wait for our pursuers.

My bike was already running all-out. All I could do was lean close against the handlebars to cut the wind’s resistance. Moki huddled beneath me in his bin. The pinnacles were half a mile away. A quarter mile. I saw Udondi reach the shelter of the rocks. She disappeared among them.

By then I had almost caught Liam, but I was going too fast for the rough ground ahead, so I started to slow. That was when something slammed into my back.

My bike slid out from under me. White ground exploded under my hands in a billow of powder. No pain. Not yet. Dust swirled as I lay staring up at heavy black clouds, trying to recall what I was doing there and why I had been in such a hurry. Then Moki was dancing at my side, the hair on his back standing on end, and I remembered.

I rolled over and got up on my knees, wincing at a bruising pain in my back. What had they hit me with? Not a real bullet. My body was not torn. They did not want me dead. They wanted me because I could tell them where Jolly was; that was my value, but they were not going to collect.

I looked for my bike. It had skidded twenty feet. I started toward it, one stumbling step and another, until a rifle shot hissed into the ground at my feet. A real shot this time. I flinched back from the fountain of dust and stinging debris. I retreated again when another shot hit even closer.

That’s when I finally looked around, to find two of the strange bikers were almost on me. Before I could think what to do the air exploded in a swarm of buzzing shots and to my surprise both bikers went down. “Jubilee!” I whirled around at Liam’s shout. He had come back for me. A wall of white powder sprayed in the air as he spun his bike around. “Hurry up! Get on!”

I ran to meet him, vaulting onto the back of his bike. More shots buzzed past, from the pinnacles, I realized, from Udondi. We raced for the rocks. I pulled Liam’s rifle from its sheath. Billowing white dust obscured everything behind us. Moki was a liquid red blur, running all-out, but he could not keep up with us. The pursuing bikes had fallen back too, but the truck—less vulnerable to Udondi’s covering fire—had come up in their place. Its tires spit jets of dust as it closed on Moki.

I lobbed a wild shot at its windshield. Moki dodged to the side. Then we reached the shelter of the rocks and started to climb and I had to turn around fast and hold tight to Liam to keep from being bounced off.

But we had come upon the rocks with too much speed. The tires were still round; they couldn’t grip the loose stone. The bike bounced, skipped; held its balance, then shot forward, climbing higher along the rim of a broad, west-facing gully. There was no silver in the bottom, though I could smell it on the air.

I glimpsed Udondi ahead of us, hunkered down in an outcropping of white rock that seemed to be undergoing a series of tiny, violent explosions as dust and rock splinters burst out at a dozen different points. Another volley of rifle shot exploded around our bike. I felt Liam flinch, then the front wheel of the bike jumped sharply. This time I was ready.

I kicked free as the bike went down and managed to land on my feet. But the embankment where I hit was dry and badly eroded. It gave way beneath my weight and I was sliding down into the gully, the bike following behind me so that I had to scramble to get out of its way. I didn’t see Liam, and to my horror I found I’d dropped the rifle.

The gully was wide and shallow, its mouth opening onto the white plain so that when I looked up I saw the truck bearing down on me. I started to rabbit up the loose wall, but shots drove me back down. I went to ground behind the fallen bike.

What to do? I had no weapon, and no way to escape. Udondi was pinned down among the rocks and could not help me. Liam might be with her, or he might be hurt—and I had his bike, for all the good it would do me. And Jolly—Jolly was still days away, somewhere in the northern Iraliad, counting on me to find him. Would I ever find him?

What to do?

I could taste silver on the air. If these bikers didn’t finish me, I thought, the silver would, but what to do? I lay there, unable to come up with a single solution, while the ground vibrated with the approach of the truck. Finally I could bear it no longer. I turned on my side and started popping open bins on the bike just to see what was there, to see if any of it could be useful. In the third bin I found Liam’s savant.

Like a flash image in the market, I remembered the savant we’d pursued, the one we had thought was Kaphiri’s. I saw it again, rising higher and higher into the blue afternoon sky above the highway until a tiny silver storm burst into existence around it.

Just a little silver storm.

But here on the edge of the Iraliad, beneath the gloom of heavy clouds, silver was already lurking in every sheltered niche… like a fire that smolders, waiting for any faint breath of air to stir it into a firestorm. Could I give it that breath?

I yanked the savant from its bin and slapped the wings open. Then I whispered to it. “Go. Over the truck. As fast as you can, and as high.Go! ”

It shot off into the air. I expected to see it tumble as a bullet took it, but someone was firing again from the rocks above me and my pursuers had no time to devote to a harmless savant. I lay on my back and watched it sweep away toward the plain. It was only a hundred feet up when silver enveloped it in a small cloud of cool light that expanded rapidly, outward yes, but mostly downward, driving toward the ground with the force of a waterfall.

I heard a great scream of brakes, a roar of tires on dirt, the popping of stones. I raised my head to look and saw a flood of silver gushing around the truck’s melted tires. Several of the bikers were down: frozen ghost-shapes wrapped in luminous death, melting into the shallow flood. Beyond them the plain was aglow with a blanket of silver only a few inches deep.

No one was watching me anymore.

I scrambled to my feet, heaving the bike back onto its tires. It started up at a word. I rode it back up the side of the gully, letting it find its own way. It slipped once, and I looked back to see the gully floor flooded with silver. But the tires caught again and then I was over the rim.

Liam must have heard me coming. He staggered from behind a rock. He had found his rifle, for he had it in hand, but half his face was covered in fresh blood. I fought a rush of revulsion. A player’s blood is poison if it gets inside another’s veins. But this was Liam. I spun the bike to a stop and he lurched onto the seat behind me. “Uphill!”

“Where’s Udondi?”

“I’m here.” She emerged on her bike from the rocks where she’d sheltered. Her rifle was slung over her shoulder and she looked unharmed. “Let’s go, before this silver consumes us too.” With that she took off into the tumbled rocks that surrounded the foot of the pinnacles, and I followed, not daring to look behind until we’d climbed up some two hundred yards above the plain. There, just where the pinnacles properly began, we found a small, west-facing ledge. We stopped then, and looked back.

Silver was puddled in a shallow lake against the rocks. It did not reach as far out into the plain as I had thought, but it reached far enough. The truck was dissolved in it, sunk almost to its roof. The fallen bikes were gone, and of the players who had pursued us, I saw no sign.

“So, Jubilee,” Udondi said in a wary voice, “have you become like Kaphiri now?”

I turned, to face her troubled gaze. I couldn’t meet it long, for it was true: I had summoned the silver, and made it serve my own ends. How many players had I just killed? Eight? Ten? Did this balance my father’s death?

“You had no choice in it,” Liam said gruffly. “We’d all be prisoners now, or dead, if you hadn’t sent the savant up. And Kaphiri would have Jolly back this very night. It’s your luck we’re still here at all.”

My wicked luck, that made others fall in my place. Even my bike was safe. I could see it lying on its side out on the plain, covered in a drape of white dust.

But Udondi bowed to Liam’s words. “You’re right, I know. And it was my own wish that the silver would swallow our enemies… though I never thought to call it to that purpose. It’s not a thing to be commanded. I fear there will be a cost.”

I looked up sharply. “Where’s Moki?” I had seen him last, fleeing before the truck. I dropped the kickstand and slid off the bike. “Moki!” My voice echoed off the rocks. “Udondi, did you see him?” She shook her head. “Moki!”

Tears were welling in my eyes when I turned to Liam. Hadn’t he warned me to leave Moki home? Then I caught my breath as my gaze fell on his bloody face.

Liam said, “I haven’t seen Moki since your bike went down, Jubilee. I’m sorry.”

“But you’re hurt. I forgot. Oh, Liam.” His cheek was caked in blood and dirt, with fresh blood still seeping from behind his sunglasses.

“A rock fragment hit my eye. That’s when I dropped the bike.” Gingerly, he lifted away his sunglasses. I flinched. “That ugly?” he asked.

I nodded. The wound was a nasty gouge across his eye, the lower lid torn, the upper swollen so it could not close. The eye itself was oozing tears of blood. The sight of it frightened me, more so because I had open abrasions on my hands from when my bike had fallen. If our blood crossed we might both die.

Udondi saw my predicament. “Stay back, Jubilee,” she said. “No need to take a chance.”

So I held Liam’s rifle while she examined the wound. “Can you see?” she asked Liam.

He shrugged. “It’s a blur on that side.”

“And no doubt very painful. Let’s cover it, and tonight we can put together an elixir that will help it heal.”

“Hold on,” Liam said softly. “Look around. On the ridge behind you. Is that someone coming?”