“They make their way to the trailhead,” Liam said. “Most of them probably go down to graze in the day.” He was crouched beside me. I could just make out his rifle, cradled in his lap. “Are you both awake now?”
He spoke softly, but something in his voice gave me warning. I sat up, and Udondi did the same. “What’s happened?” I asked.
“I’ve seen him.”
“Seen who?” I searched my mind for possibilities. “Mica Indevar?”
“No. It was Kaphiri.”
Liam told us then how he’d taken his rifle and walked out to the cliffs to look about. “The land below was flooded with silver, and I could see the tiny shapes of cattle, crowded onto the high ground. After a time one of the trapped herds began to churn in a sudden panic that drove some of the smaller calves into the silver. I thought a coyote might have been on their hilltop island, but no. The shape that came around from the back of the hill was no coyote. It stood tall, and it walked on two feet. A player.”
“He was alone?” Udondi asked.
“Yes. Dressed in dark clothing. No more than a silhouette, despite the glow of silver. He walked around the side of the hill, and the silver lapped at his feet. He walked into it, as if it were only fog.”
Shock was still fresh in his voice; it echoed my own. “Kaphiri,” I whispered, while fear shivered across my scalp. To think he had been here… “How long ago?” I asked.
“A few minutes. I lay on the edge of the cliff and watched to see if he would reappear. In only seconds he did. This time, right against the base of the cliff.” In the darkness I could not see Liam’s face, but I heard his harsh sigh. “Jubilee, I owe you an apology. I only half believed your story of Kaphiri. When I saw him reappear, across a gulf of silver from where he had been before, it seemed impossible, as if I saw a ghost. My mind froze, and it was many seconds before I remembered I had my rifle with me. When I did I moved swiftly, bringing it to my shoulder to aim. That’s when he looked up at me.”
Liam shifted, and a faint gray light from the east glinted in his eyes. “It all seemed unreal, like a dream. It made no sense. How could he know I was there? He couldn’t have heard me, and so far above the silver, the darkness should have kept me hidden—”
“The worm,” Udondi said. “Perhaps it watched you. Perhaps it warned him.”
“Maybe.” He stroked the barrel of his rifle. “Anyway, I hesitated. For a second or two seconds. Maybe longer, I don’t know, but it was all the time he needed. He raised his hand and a tongue of silver rushed over him. I have never seen silver move so fast. I fired then, at the place he had been, but too late.”
I remembered the confusion I’d felt the first time I saw Kaphiri. I could not blame Liam, and yet how I wished… what? That I had been the one on the cliff? Would I have done better?
“You did what you could,” Udondi said gently. “To see him for the first time, and to know such a creature is real—”
“I knew he was real!” Liam hugged his rifle, his voice so low I could barely make out his words. “It was my brother’s life he took. If I’d been faster, I could have put an end to him.”
“It’s something to remember,” Udondi said. “Next time.”
Liam rose to his feet. “He will come again. Maybe tonight. He’ll look for us whenever the silver rises… and it rises almost every night in the Iraliad. We shouldn’t sleep in the open again.”
We had made our camp beside a low bluff, and this protected us from the passing herds, though we could hear them on every side. The bulls snorted and bellowed at one another and once I heard the thunder of running hooves followed by the crash of heavy bodies.
“It’s said animals can sense the coming of the silver,” Udondi mused as we ate a quick breakfast standing beside our bikes. “These cattle must have learned to retreat to the plateau whenever they sense a flood rising.”
“It’s too bad Moki doesn’t have that talent,” I said as I knelt, to feed some bread and bits of meat to him. He caught mice in the night, so I didn’t have to feed him much.
“Are you sure he doesn’t?” Udondi asked. “He’s survived what? Almost twenty years in Kavasphir?”
“At a temple,” Liam reminded.
“But it’s true he never was caught out,” I said, stroking the smooth fur of his back. “I never thought about it before, but he always does seem to know which nights are safe to hunt, and which better to stay at home.” And after all, it was Moki who had warned of the silver that night Jolly disappeared.
Udondi knelt to feed him another snack. “He’s been a handy companion.”
Liam grunted agreement. “He keeps a good watch, but it’s too bad he hasn’t found the worm.”
We rode our bikes out to the cliff edge, but there were so many cattle about we could not approach the trailhead. So we went a little to the west, to wait and watch as the giant bulls fought for the right to take their herds first down the narrow trail. We lay on our bellies at the edge of the escarpment while the eastern sky brightened, until finally the furnace of the rising sun climbed over the flat horizon, its rays painting long lanes of light and shadow across the land below.
In daylight the northern Iraliad looked even more austere than it had at twilight. Grass grew against the canyon walls and here and there I could see the deeper green of a tree, but I suspected the cattle would have a long trek to find enough forage. Where they would get water I could not guess.
Clearly though, we were about to enter a playground of the silver—for its mad creations were everywhere to be seen. False colonnades of gold decked the walls of many of the small ravines just below us. Farther away, a giant arch framed the mouth of a canyon. On a low slope of stone a mural had been laid, depicting a fantastic landscape so real it seemed as if one could step through it into another world—except the calves that skipped across its face remained in this one.
Elsewhere the exposed rock was shot through with veins of red and yellow minerals like lightning bolts, while the dry streambed spilling from one ravine was a stepped watercourse, architecturally precise but filled with drifted sand. Strangest of all, statues of gigantic god-men crouched in the shelter of every overhanging rock, or lay behind the ridges, their bows drawn as if they were hunting one another.
A gentle wind stirred, carrying a veil of dust to us from the cliff trail. I thought to look for other plumes of telltale dust that might be a truck moving at speed, or a posse of motorcycles, but I saw nothing. “It still looks blissfully empty,” Udondi agreed as she studied the land through her field glasses. “No doubt Kaphiri has summoned his people, but they’re not here yet.”
“Maybe we’ll have some hours to ourselves,” I said. “This is a rough country, and if we can ride on hard soil, or stone, we might hide our tracks.”
Liam lowered his own field glasses. “We’ll never get free while the worm follows us.”
Udondi nodded. “And even from a distance, we’ll be easy marks the whole time we’re on the cliff trail. It’s too bad there aren’t any clouds today to hide us.”
I remembered the light I’d seen last night. Someone with a powerful telescope might want to sit far out on the plain, to get a good look at the entire wall of the plateau.
Liam boosted himself on his elbow, to look down at the progress of the cattle. “The last herds are starting now. When they’re halfway down, we follow.”
“Right,” Udondi said. “Make a race of it. The less time we spend on the cliff, the happier I’ll be.”