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?”
Chapter 18
I turned and brought the rifle to bear on a hooded, sticklike figure in dull-colored clothes, angling down the boulder-strewn slope above us. My first thought was that one of the bikers had survived, but my quick offense collapsed when I sighted Moki trotting proudly in front of this desert apparition, as if intent on doing the introductions himself.