“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.”
Chapter 10
Elek had six other guests that night, five of them truckers from distant Ano who spoke in the formal style of that region, with many “ma’am’s” and “Should-it-please-you-my-lady’s” and courtly nods and smiles. We sat with them, and with Elek’s staff of twelve, at a large table in Temple Nathé’s dining hall. Throughout the meal—a feast centered on sage partridge, as fine as Elek had promised—the truckers entertained us with stories of the silver and of their lives on the road.
These truckers had with them a player called Mica Indevar, who they introduced as a scholar from a land even beyond Ano. This Mica Indevar was a stoop-shouldered cessant whose round face and smooth, hairless head gave little hint of his age, though his husky voice led me to suspect he was pushing ninety years. He seemed familiar to me, though I could not place him. I wondered if he had visited Temple Huacho, but Elek dashed that theory when she explained that Mica Indevar had sworn himself to a quest, to fare all the way around the ring of the world. It was his first time in that region, and he paid many compliments to the landscape.
This scholar had accompanied the Ano truckers all the way from the sea and I suppose in that long journey he had heard all their tales many times over, for he showed no interest in their talk. His curiosity was fixed instead on me and Liam.