Memory

Chapter 30

It was cold that night, so high up among the rocks, and Yaphet had only one sleeping bag. When unfolded it would cover two. He said that Jolly and I should have it, and he would watch until at least midnight. I was exhausted, so I accepted gratefully. When I woke again, it was to the glow of silver. I sat up abruptly, my heart pounding with the certainty that someone was drawing near. But when I looked about, all was still.

Jolly was still sleeping beside me, breathing softly beneath the folds of the sleeping bag. Yaphet was sitting with Moki on the folded structure of the flying machine, his hands clasped around his knees. He studied me curiously. “Are you truly awake?”

“I don’t know.” I glanced over my shoulder. The silver stood in a waist-high ring around the well. I could smell the goats, but they were huddled on the other side of the flying machine, and I could not see them. The Bow of Heaven glimmered overhead. “Did you hear something?”

“No. It’s been quiet. Eerily quiet.”

“Was I dreaming?”

“Probably. What did you hear?”

I shook my head. I had not heard anything… “I felt something.”

I still felt it: a sense of someone drawing near, a presence, brushing past lines of awareness that had been laid down inside my mind, leaving them swaying with the evidence of passage, as a curtain will sway when it is lifted aside briefly, then allowed to fall back. I raised my hands, to find the ha sparkling brightly between my fingers. “He is coming.”

Yaphet rose to his feet without hesitation, without doubt. “Where?”

I nodded toward the bank of silver that hid the precipice. “From the canyon.”

He jumped from his perch on the flying machine. I scrambled to my feet, to find my knee much stronger for the rest. We waited, poised, watching the waist-high fog where it lapped over the rim of the canyon. Moki growled, and a moment later the shape of a man rose up from within the silver, exactly in the place I expected him.

At first he was only a silhouette of silver. Then his glistening shell dissolved, and Kaphiri stood before us, motes of silver glittering against his hands, and in his carefully styled hair.

His gaze moved from me, to Yaphet, then back again. He was careful not to move. “I have just discovered something,” he said softly. “It seems that when the ha of your lover awakens, it becomes an unmistakable signal within the silver, one that requires no effort at all to follow.”

“I am not your lover.”

“Never again, it’s true.” He raised his hand, in the gesture I had seen before. The ha brightened between his fingers, and a tongue of silver swept over the rim of the well. It raced past his feet, rushing downhill toward Yaphet.

“No!”If there had been time to think I would have failed, but instinct moved me. I raised my hand to stop it. The lines of my awareness squeezed together—and the tongue of silver curled back as if it had hit a wall.

I looked up, to see my own astonishment mirrored in Kaphiri’s gaze. “But that is not your talent!” He said it as if I had committed some social affront, as if I should take back the gesture, and apologize.

Yaphet was the only one of us not made dull by surprise. He sprang on Kaphiri, cuffing him behind the neck, unbalancing him. “Keep the silver away!” he commanded as he followed Kaphiri to the ground.

Centuries must have passed since anyone had dared such a close assault against Kaphiri. He was completely unprepared. Dust puffed up around him to sully his fine clothes and he grunted as Yaphet pinned him with a knee in the back. Another tongue of silver darted toward him over the rim of the well. I shouted and pushed back against the intrusion that tried to bend the lines of my awareness—and this time the tendril of silver dissolved.

But another followed immediately after it. And another, and then two at once, and then an explosion of tendrils, like a nightmare of worm mechanics darting toward Yaphet with their venomous mouths, but they could not break past my will. That’s how it felt. The ha was my will, and while Kaphiri could command the silver that lay all around us, he could not force it past the defensive lines I had made.

Not that this was a measure of our relative power. I had no illusions about that. My connection to the silver had given me an insight into its behavior, and I understood, as if it had been explained to me in words, that a player’s defensive gesture would always be stronger than an assault. That was one part of the silver’s essential nature, for it had been made first as a gift, and only later corrupted into a weapon.

“You won’t murder him!” I shouted at Kaphiri’s prostrate form. “Not this night. I would let you die first—” Another flurry of silver tendrils reached for Yaphet. I blocked them. “Listen to me!I would let you die.”

He heard me. Perhaps he believed me, for the silver tendrils retreated, dissolving into the stillness of the ocean of silver that surrounded us.

Yaphet had Kaphiri pinned against the ground, but his head was turned toward me and there was such a coldness in his eyes, it frightened me more than the assault of silver. “Death is your role, my love.” There was dust on his lips, and when he spoke, I tasted it in my own mouth. “You have ended my life seven times already. Seven times that I can remember.”

“How can you remember it?”

“Let me up.”

I looked at Yaphet, and nodded, but Yaphet’s anger was still hot. He brought his knee harder against Kaphiri’s back, making him wince and grunt. “Swear that you will not bring the silver against us!”

Kaphiri’s eyes were narrowed in pain, but he smiled even so. “I will not bring the silver against you,” he said in a mocking voice. “Anyway, not this night.”

Yaphet understood he would get no better answer, so he relented. Kaphiri sat up, slapping at the dust on his clothes. “You must forgive me,” he said to Yaphet. “It’s only out of habit that I hate you.”

They looked alike. Yaphet stepped back a pace, studying Kaphiri with a wild look in his eyes that seemed part wonder, that such a thing could be, and also part fear, and fury, that such a thing could be. They looked so very much alike, but it was a surface effect… the similarity of a man and his reflection, and I was not fooled.

“Why me?” Yaphet asked.

Kaphiri shrugged. “It’s hard to know. But then, you may have fallen far since the war.” He glanced past me, and I knew he was looking for Jolly. I turned, to find the sleeping bag where I had left it, but my brother had slipped away. The goats snorted and skipped, shying away from the flying machine. They might as well have pointed to Jolly’s hiding place.

“What will we do?” Kaphiri asked. “I cannot call the silver, and you are not ready yet to spill my blood.” His mocking gaze returned to me. “Is it a stalemate?”

He was confident—and why not? I could not keep watch forever—I must sleep sometime—and then it would be easy for him to bring the silver.

“Jolly,” he called in a mocking, singsong voice, “come home with me—”

“Leave him alone!” I cried, but he ignored me.

“Come home, Jolly… and maybe I’ll let your sister live… at least until the final flood. The game finishes then for everyone.”

“It won’t finish,” I told him. “It’ll just start over again, when your death triggers the destruction of the silver!”

A sudden fey mood rose in him when I said these words. There was a sheen on his skin, and his eyes were wild. “Is that what you want? Shall I call the end of the silver now? Do you wish it yet again?”

“No,”I breathed, and I backed a step away.

“Did you think the end of the silver was tied only to my death? It’s not. I could summon it anytime. Cold murder isn’t necessary, love, and I am not as stubborn as I used to be. Ask me, and I will destroy all the silver this night.”

I could not doubt his claim, for at his words some connection closed in my mind and the world felt different. Harder, clearer. The uncertainty that had dogged me since leaving the Temple of the Sisters was gone, dissolved like the silver in my vision, leaving all the hard edges of the world exposed. “The goddess made you, didn’t she?” I asked him. “She made you for this purpose, to call down the destruction of the silver at need. She must have trusted you so deeply.”

I saw through his chilly smile. It was a false front, a painted animosity to disguise the fragile architecture that lay beneath. “She made me only when she could not find him.” He thrust his chin at Yaphet. “It seems that in that age he had been swallowed by the silver, so she devised me instead, adding in some skills he lacked.” There was such a gleam of hatred in his eyes as he said this, that I thought he would not be able to contain it. I felt the pressure of it in my own head. Then Kaphiri sucked in a sharp breath, like a swimmer returning from a deep dive, and his shoulders relaxed. “Sometimes I wonder if I remember it rightly,” he added. “Was she the one who made me? Or was it the other?”

“The dark god?” I asked.

“No matter. I serve neither of them now.” And he sat on the ground, arranging the folds of his garments around him. “Come. Sit with me.”

I would not sit, but I crouched nearby. Yaphet remained standing.

Kaphiri looked at me. “These are the last days. You sense it, don’t you? There is only a little time left before the world drowns… unless you choose to stop it again.”

“That should beyour choice! It’s what the goddess made you for.”

His smile was bitter. “And I obeyed her, that first time.” He looked down at the dusty ground. “I was naive. Do you know what follows the destruction of the silver?”

I nodded, for I had seen the city.

“You don’t know!” Kaphiri barked. “Not until you’ve seen a hundred thousand players starve to death.”

Nothing was the same. I faced a murderer, but I could see the horror of death in his eyes.

“Barely a thousand survivors left in the world,” he said, his voice so soft I had to strain to hear him.

“How can you remember it?” Yaphet asked.

“I have learned to remember.”

“Tell us how.” He could not disguise his eagerness. Yaphet loved knowledge best. He always had. I knew it, though I could not remember how I knew or why.

Kaphiri knew it too. “Would you learn how?”

Yaphet nodded.

Kaphiri’s expression turned to disdain. “Even if you remembered every word ever spoken, you would have no victory. The goddess is using you… using us. She always has.”

I knew it was true. “I am going to the Cenotaph.”

Shock overtook his features. He looked at me with haunted eyes. “Where have you learned of that place? Why would you go? My love, there is nothing in the Cenotaph. Nothing you can touch.”

“There is a god there. Or some fragment of a god.”

“He will not help you.”

“I am not sent there to seek help. He is the cause of the floods. The goddess has said that the world will not heal until he is removed.”

“The goddess? Has she visited you?”

I nodded. “She said that I am her hands, and this fragment of the god must be removed.”

“By you?”

I shrugged.

He started to laugh, but his humor turned suddenly to anger. “You cannot defeat a god! Even a fallen one. Think on it! If the goddess herself cannot eject him, what hope is there for you?”

“I don’t know. None, maybe, for me alone.”

“You won’t be alone,” Yaphet said.

Kaphiri threw him a dark look. “You are always so eager to play their game.”

“And what alternative should I take? Should I refuse to play? Should I be like you and wish for the night when we all drown? Let us all die! Why not? If it will spite the goddess.”

“You mock me, but I will answer you anyway. There is an alternative.” He nodded toward me. “She has never dared it, but it’s real all the same. The only way to bring our malice to bear against the gods who made this world is to become as gods ourselves.”

I caught my breath, for these were the same words he had whispered to me in my vision—and that I had rejected. I rejected them again. “If you knew how to do that, you would have done it already.”

“But I don’t know how… though I might still learn, with your help. Will you help me? This time?”

My heart was beating hard. What he asked repulsed me. To become a goddess, to hold the power of life and death, and to wield that power with none stronger to say if I am right, or if I am wrong. It horrified me. “We don’t need more gods and goddesses. They have done badly enough by this world already.”

Yaphet touched my arm. “Jubilee, think. Will you always make this same answer?”

“What do you want me to do? Do you want me to help him?”

“If you have never helped him before, then yes. Do it differently this time! Do anything! Because there may never be another chance.”

But this turn was already different. Yaphet had never spoken to me like this before. Never.

He turned to Kaphiri. “What is it you want from her anyway?”

“A small thing. The smallest thing. I want her to translate our past. My love—” He reached toward me. I thought he would touch me, and I shied away.

He laughed at my childishness, but his laughter could not hide his pain. “You did not always find me so repulsive! You loved me in other lives. But the bond between us has faded, for I have changed, and you have not. I have remade myself! But in doing so, I’ve left you behind. We can never be true lovers again.”

“We never were,” I whispered.

“You say that, because you don’t remember. But you haven’t forgotten everything, have you? You still remember the language spoken when the world was made. I know you do.”

“And what use is that?” Yaphet asked.

Kaphiri mocked him. “We are always so hungry, aren’t we? Insatiable!”

“And impatient!”

“I know it.” He turned again to me. “If you would dare to face our past, to understand it, then help me. For lifetimes I have gathered documents and written manuscripts, in languages left over from the ancient world. Thousands of pages, my love, and I cannot read more than a few words of any of them! But you can. These languages live now only in your ancient mind. Come back with me.Teach me.”

“No, Jubilee, don’t!” Jolly shouted.

I had let myself forget about Jolly. I saw him now, crouched beneath the folded wing of the flying machine.

“He’ll trick you, Jubilee. Don’t do what he wants. Please don’t.”

Kaphiri crossed his arms over his chest, mocking the posture of a weary parent. “I have said only the truth.”

Through every turn we had played, through every lifetime, I had always refused to help him… and the world had never healed. Always, we had been caught in the cycle of silver flood and silver drought. “Where is it you would have us go?”

“Jubilee, please.”

“South,” Kaphiri said. He turned to Yaphet. “You will come too. We need you. Or anyway we need your flying machine, for my temple is far to the south, among the peaks of the Sea Comb.”

Jolly crept out from under the wing. “Jubilee, say you won’t go. You can’t go with him.”

I wanted to refuse. I wanted to send Kaphiri away, and take Jolly home, and have my father back, and see my mother, but all those were impossible things.

Yaphet watched me, a hungry gleam in his eyes. “Think about it, Jubilee. We can’t let him go, and we can’t let him die, and you can’t watch him forever. This is the only answer.”

All was quiet. No wind blew, and no bird called. The world lay still beneath a heavy blanket of silver and still I felt as if I was hurtling forward. “We’ll go.”

Yaphet’s fist clenched in triumph, but Jolly cried out in fear.

“Jolly!” I knew how afraid he was of Kaphiri. “We will take you to our uncle first—”

“No,” Kaphiri said. “We leave tonight, and Jolly comes with us.”

Yaphet looked scornful. “We can’t fly at night.”

“With me, you can.”

I did not doubt it. Sprawled on the ground outside the Temple of the Sisters, I had looked up at an auditorium of silver arching over my head. It was no great stretch to think the architect of that magic could keep even a flying machine safe.

“We will go tonight,” I said. “But we will take Jolly to my uncle first. Hurry now, before I change my mind.”

We set about getting the flying machine ready, while the goats shied from us, frantic to avoid both our presence and the wall of silver that lay all around. Into the cargo baskets went our few possessions. Then Kaphiri drove back the silver, far enough that we could spread the wings.

Was it real? So I asked myself over and over again, for the night was weighted with the strangeness and inevitability of a dream.

Jolly came out of hiding, but he would not let Kaphiri come near him, nor answer him in any way.

At Yaphet’s direction, we carried the flying machine to the edge of the precipice, and the silver fell back before our advance. The air was calm, and the stars were bright despite the luminous glow of the flood.

I huddled with Jolly in one of the cargo baskets, and we cradled Moki between us. “Please don’t do it,” Jolly whispered. “He’ll hurt you. You know he will.”

“Not tonight.”

I watched Kaphiri as he made a nest for himself in the other basket. Then Yaphet crawled into the pilot’s sling. He yelled at Kaphiri to make a path through the silver that lay beyond the cliff, and the silver rolled back as if some god’s breath had blown upon a cloud of cold smoke. The engine started. Then the plane rocked forward, and with a sickening lurch, dropped from its perch on the cliff’s edge. I cried out, sure we were all falling to our deaths. Then the wings crackled as air filled their hollows. The nose of the flying machine nodded upward, and slowly, slowly we began to climb.

The canyon was filled with silver: a great gleaming river flowing between islets of sharp stone. We followed its current to the plain. I had wondered once what it was like to be a bird, forced to fly all night above a world drowned in luminous silver. That night I learned. It was cold! Bitterly cold in the high air above the world, and dreamlike: the dream of some ancient god bent on defying all the rules of the world.

It was a brilliant night. The Bow of Heaven glowed, without dimming the stars around it, and the world was ablaze with silver. The only real darkness was cast by the plateaus of two distant mesas, one to the east, and one north: Azure.

We could see it easily; the night was that clear. Yaphet brought the flying machine round in a smooth arc, and a wisp of silver danced along the wing’s edge. I pushed it away and Kaphiri laughed, as if at a child’s clever trick. He made no move to fend off the silver, leaving it all to me.

It took only a little while to reach Azure, but we did not go all the way to my uncle’s encampment. How could I explain to Liam what I was doing? I was fairly sure there were not words in any language to convince him that a bargain with his brother’s murderer was the right thing to do.

So we studied the mesa from afar, until we sighted the camp, and then we set Jolly down a quarter mile away from it along the mesa rim. Yaphet did not even touch down. He slowed the flying machine, bringing it almost to a stall a few feet above the ground. Jolly and I shared a long look. I did not believe I would see him again. “Take Moki,” he whispered. Then he dropped from the cargo basket and fell into the brush. An explosion of birds took flight, and then we were away from the mesa and over the plain again. I heard a shout from the plateau. It sounded like my name. Moki turned to look, but I did not.