Memory

Chapter 9

Dread had stirred in me when Liam first mentioned the name of Temple Nathé. The feeling did not leave me all that afternoon, and still I was taken by surprise when the highway crested a ridge and suddenly we were looking down on a wide valley filled with golden knee-high grasses. There beside the highway were the grim remains of my father’s truck.

Neither of us spoke as we approached the hulk. It was an eerie testament. The wheels and undercarriage, and the lower third of the truck’s body, were gone, dissolved by the fickle touch of silver. The remaining shell was engraved in a language long dead in this world, though it was one I knew. I walked around the ruin, reading as I went: community news from some forgotten era—a storm, a marriage, a new temple site, a silver flood. Each word a faint echo of lives lost to the past and now my father had joined them.

Morning glories were already sending their vines over the hood of the truck and in through the windows. I checked the back. If there had been any cargo it was gone now—though whether it was taken by the silver or by some trucker who had passed through since the flood, I could not say.

The truck lay in a low swale, twelve feet from the raised roadbed. Silver had transformed the highway surface, reworking it into a folly of glass tiles that had since been crushed by passing trucks.

Thirty miles back Liam and I had overtaken an army of road-building kobolds—black, thumb-sized machines patiently transforming stone and soil to rebuild the ruined highway. In another day or two (if the silver did not come again) the kobold army would reach this valley and recycle the shattered glass, blending it into a new road of more practical material. As they passed, they would likely cannibalize the remains of my father’s truck, so I was grateful we had arrived ahead of them.

Liam sat on the high shoulder of the road, gazing past the truck, toward the flowing white walls of Temple Nathé less than two-tenths of a mile away. Set on the valley’s tawny slope, the temple gleamed in the mellow rays of late afternoon. “Look at it,” Liam said in disgust. “How could he have been so close, and not made it?”

I shook my head. Some part of me was afraid to learn the answer.

Liam had not said much since my confession. I wasn’t sure how much he believed, but his face was grim behind his dark sunglasses. He stood up, his shoes crunching on bits of colored glass. “It’s time we found out.”

So I called to Moki, who was bounding about in the grass, stirring up moths. Then we mounted our bikes, to ride the last few hundred yards to the temple gate.

Temple Nathé produced few kobolds, but it was famous for its healing baths. Elek Madhu was the temple keeper, presiding over a staff of a dozen cessants. She had kept Temple Nathé for nearly a hundred years, and had established two more small temples in the surrounding hills—the first step toward creating an enclave—but she still came forward to welcome each one of her guests.

The great doors of the temple gate stood open in the security of the afternoon. Elek waited for us there, dressed in a gown as white as Nathé’s walls. Age had softened her flesh and brought a fullness to her curves, but she was a beauty still, endowed with a feminine grace that has always eluded me. I had met her once before, the time I’d gone with my father to Xahiclan, and I remembered her as a kindly and courteous woman. But that had been three years before and though she looked much the same, I had changed considerably. She didn’t recognize me until I offered my name, and then her eyes grew wide and a little fearful. She couldn’t help a quick glance at the ruined truck, sitting in front of her sanctuary like an accusation. “Come inside,” she said softly. “I think we’ll find much to say.”

We walked our bikes up the driveway, to the temple’s expansive courtyard. Two trucks were already parked there, and a battered bike, dusty from the road. “You have guests?” Liam asked.

Elek smiled, though I sensed it was only the role-playing of a practiced hostess. “Nine now, with the two of you. It’s a rare night when we’re without guests, but I can offer you a private bath…” She looked anxiously from me to Liam. “And then perhaps, we can talk?”

I nodded. “You do know how it happened? How he was caught so close to sanctuary?”

Her hands clenched in a knot against her belly. “I will tell you what I saw. Perhaps you can tell me what happened. But not here—” She glanced toward a flight of white stairs rising to a columned veranda. Then, in a soft undertone, “Some of my guests are strangers to me.”

She gave us no chance to reply to this, for in the next breath she was speaking again in a normal voice: “I’ll go now to prepare your bath. Please come up when you’ve gathered your things.”

My things? As Elek mounted the steps I realized I had nothing. When I’d raced out of Temple Huacho that morning, I hadn’t exactly prepared for an overnight expedition. Liam offered a grudging smile. “There might be a clean shirt in the saddle boxes,” he offered. “Oh, and I brought your savant.”

I turned to open the saddle boxes, but as I did I heard Elek’s voice from the top of the stairs, sounding querulous and mistrustful: “No, they don’t want to talk, I’m sure. Please. I thought you had come to stay the night and rest?”

I looked up, to find her on the veranda, speaking to someone inside who I could not see, though there was something familiar about the voice that answered: “I’ve come for many reasons, Elek, but rest is low on that list.”

“Not for them. They’re tired. They’ve requested a private bath. Perhaps tomorrow—”

“Has something happened to frighten you?”

Silence followed this question… though I felt more sure than ever that I knew this voice. But from where? The memory would not come.

I glanced at Liam, to find him listening too. I had told him all about Kaphiri, and the cessants who followed him. “Should we go?” he asked when he noticed my look. We could never get home before dark, but we had camped before, on hilltops in Kavasphir.

Elek answered her unseen guest before I could decide. “The truth, stranger, is that you frighten me.”

“Ah. A flaw in my nature, I suspect.”

At that, my memory finally gave up its obstinate game. “Udondi Halal,” I whispered. The cessant who had told me Kaphiri’s name.

She appeared on the veranda, a small, lean woman dressed in weathered clothing, with fingerless black gloves on her hands, and dark hair pulled in a loose knot behind her neck. She smiled when she saw me. “Jubilee Huacho,” she said as a flustered Elek hovered at her elbow. “So it is you.”

I did not respond in kind. I was wary as she descended the steps. She saw this, and stopped, saying, “It’s not me you need to fear.”

I wanted to believe that. “Why are you here?”

“To see you of course, though I hadn’t expected the pleasure until tomorrow. I was on my way to Temple Huacho.”

“He hasn’t come again.”

“You shouldn’t speak of that here.”

“I don’t think he will come.”

“I hope that’s so.” She stepped forward, tentatively extending her black-gloved hand. “Well met?”

I hesitated. Should I trust her just because she had told me Kaphiri’s name? She held her hand out still, though she was disappointed, I think, at my doubt. Under her breath she said, “Know this at least: I am not his friend.”

That I could believe. So I clasped her hand, and after that I introduced her to Liam, and then I reintroduced her to the perplexed Elek who, I discovered, knew her under a different name and perhaps a different purpose.

Liam and I returned then to our bikes and gathered our things, but within a few minutes we were stripped and immersed in one of the fine healing baths of Temple Nathé. At my invitation Udondi Halal shared our round pool, while the temple keeper sat beside us, hunched on a stool, her white dress held carefully above the damp floor.

Sunset light poured into our private room through a ceiling of polished glass and for a time no one seemed willing to speak. I sank into the hot water, letting it rise to my chin, and I watched Udondi past wisps of steam as the light faded and her face sank into shadow. I felt calm for the first time since that terrible night. Patient. It was the way I felt when I waited for the words of a new language to boil up to the surface of my mind.

In that prolonged silence I almost forgot about Elek. As darkness crept into the room the temple keeper became a shape without features, a frozen phantasm of the silver perched on her little stool. I was startled when she finally spoke aloud: “It was at just this time that I saw the headlights of your father’s truck.”

All the tension that had leeched out of me in the nurturing water returned now. I strained to see Elek through the gathering darkness, and I listened.

“I’d been expecting Kedato that afternoon, and when he didn’t arrive by sunset I grew concerned. I had no other guests that night, so I went to stand on the temple wall where I could watch for his lights.

“There was no sign of silver. There had been none for many days and I told myself that even if there had been a problem with the truck, he would likely be safe camped along the road.

“Then I saw his headlights at the valley’s northern end and my worries left me. The evening was so beautiful. Bats were hunting, their dark shapes flitting through the dusk, and I stayed on the wall to watch them.”

She bowed her head. “The world can change so quickly. Kedato was only a half mile out when the valley floor blushed silver. Never have I seen anything like it. There was still a pale light in the sky, so at first I thought the sheen was just some strange reflection, but it was silver, seeping up from the ground, seeping up everywhere at once. Kedato drove faster, but it was no use. His tires failed in seconds and the truck skidded off the road, sliding into the low ground where it lies now.

“He climbed out of the window and stood on the roof, looking toward me. By then the silver had filled the valley floor. It lay all around him, many inches deep. He called out to me—you see, the truck’s phone had already failed—he asked me to call his lover, but the silver was rising fast. I feared that if I went up to the temple, he would be gone when I returned.

“So we spoke. He talked about you, Jubilee, and your brothers and sisters, and his travels in the world. The silver lit the night and I could see him clearly. I could see everything. I have not imagined what I am about to tell you.

“I have said that Kedato stood upon the roof of the truck. The silver had risen to within a few inches of his feet when the wizard appeared. I don’t know where he came from. He was just there, walking through the silver, following the path of the highway, which is built higher than the valley floor. The silver lapped at his waist.

“Kedato had been calm until then, but now he trembled. He called out to the wizard, but received no answer. Only when the wizard stood beside the truck did he speak. Or seem to speak. I couldn’t hear him, but I heard Kedato clearly. He said, ‘He is dead.’ Then he asked the wizard how it was he could survive the silver, but again, if there was an answer, I didn’t hear it. They spoke for a few minutes and I think Kedato asked him for help, but his voice had grown soft, and I could no longer make out his words.

“All this time the silver continued to rise. Kedato must have known he had only seconds left. He knelt on the truck’s roof, and reached a hand to the wizard. The wizard met it with his own hand, and the silver rushed up, rolling over both of them and they were gone.”

She sat with bowed head and hunched shoulders, a silhouette of despair in the near dark. “I have never before seen anyone taken by silver, and I hope never to see it again.”

Stars had emerged in the deep blue vault beyond the glass ceiling. The Bow of Heaven lay across them. It was faint that night, a bridge of gossamer that could be seen only from the corner of the eye.

I climbed out of the hot bath and sought a towel. Footlights winked on, and water splashed as Liam and Udondi emerged behind me. I patted myself dry, half suspecting I was caught inside a dream spun from weeks of worry.

Liam was first to break the silence. “This is the second strange story I’ve heard today,” he said as he toweled himself. “Jubilee, is this ‘wizard’ Kaphiri too?”

I shrugged. “Udondi will know.”

“It was him,” she said firmly.

“But how is that possible?” Liam asked. “How could this ghost be at Temple Nathé and then Temple Huacho on the same silver-shrouded night?”

“That is his latest art,” Udondi said as she dressed in a black sweater and black pants. “For the last half year he has been sighted all over this turn of the world, vanishing at one site only to reappear moments later at another, thousands of miles away. I have records of hundreds of incidents… but I’ve never heard of anything like Kedato’s death.”

I pulled on a long-sleeved shirt and leggings that smelled musty from their sojourn in my saddle boxes. I could feel Udondi’s gaze, though she spoke to everyone, not just me. “Kaphiri was here asking questions of Kedato. But what questions?”

Liam said, “Likely, the same questions he asked Jubilee.”

“Oh?” I hadn’t told Udondi of my conversation. “He spoke to you, Jubilee? What did he say?”

I shrugged, pretending it was unimportant. “He asked about my brother Jolly. He’d come to see Jolly, to get him… but it made no sense because Jolly was taken by the silver years ago and it’s not possible he’s still alive.” My voice faltered as my real feelings broke through. “It’s not possible… is it?”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Udondi said gently, “but there’s much I don’t know. Is he the young man you asked about before?”

I nodded. I could not speak.

Elek finally stirred on her stool. “I have never heard of this ‘Kaphiri,’ who seems so well known to all of you and I have to wonder at that, but I remember when this Huacho boy was taken. Players are lost to the silver all the time, but not like that. Not inside a temple. It should have been impossible, but the aftermath of evidence showed it was real.”

“The reason you have not heard of Kaphiri is simple,” Udondi said. “He is cautious. His followers work to ensure that word of him does not spread outside their ranks, for if he became well known, expeditions would surely be mounted against his strongholds, and he’s not ready for that. I used to try to make him known in the markets, but every time I spoke I was attacked as a doom-cryer, a hysteric. My posted bulletins were buried under tedious objections that sounded intelligent, but meant nothing. Several times, I was attacked on the road. So I don’t speak publicly anymore.” She turned to me, her expression growing thoughtful. “But this incident with your brother, Jubilee… I remember hearing of it. Though wasn’t it long ago?”

“Seven years,” I said.

Udondi nodded. “Very strange, for it’s only in this past year that Kaphiri’s been seen beyond the district of Lish.”

“Because he has not strayed before?” Liam asked. “Or because he has not been seen?”

I shook my head. “Kaphiri was not there the night Jolly was taken!” The force of my denial surprised even myself.

Udondi spoke softly, “But you were? Jubilee?”

I remembered the way the silver had loomed over us, its smell, and the high-pitched sound of Moki’s bark. “I saw it. It came for him. It reached out for him, not me. Just like it reached out to Kaphiri that night. It was the same.”

Elek touched my cheek, summoning me back to the present. “All the puzzles of the world cannot be deciphered in one night. Come with me now. My staff has prepared a fine meal, and we are overdue.”