I hurried forward, for this was the last landmark Maya had described. The well was supposed to be a mile beyond the standing stones—“No farther,” she had warned. “You must be very careful. It would be easy to pass it in the dark.”
It would be easy to pass it in the daytime too, I thought ruefully as I looked out on that plain. Maya had carefully described the well, but she had not mentioned the dense sedges. I was supposed to search a little north of east for the mound of the kobold well, but if her description was accurate, the mound did not stand as high as the sedges. I could see no hint of where it might be.
I headed out anyway. There was still no sign of silver, but I knew it could not be far away. The hour was late, and Moki—who had been excited at the scent of coyotes earlier in the evening—now huddled fearfully in his bin. I spoke soft reassurances to him as I watched my odometer measure the distance.
A mile passed, but I discovered no sign of the well.
I stopped and looked about. The sedges were so dense that even in daylight I might pass within ten feet of the mound and not see it. How could I expect to find it in the dark?
I had to find it.
Moki whined his fear. Faintly now, I could smell the crisp, clean scent of silver, and as I breathed that scent I felt something waken within me, just as it had last night when I stood by my window, looking out on the silver-covered plain. I could feel the silver, unseen and lying close against the ground, but rising into life… and into my awareness. Stay back, I thought. Stay away. Suddenly, sparkling motes were dancing around my hands.
Moki whined again—and then the silver emerged all around us, rising in a silent flood among the sedges, everywhere, except at our feet, and around the tires of the bike.
Stay back.
Moki panicked. He scrambled out of his bin.
“Moki!”I caught him with my sparkling hands just before he touched the ground. He shook in my arms. “Moki, stay with me.” I held him against my chest, and slipped the bike into gear.
Back.
I leaned with my mind against the silver. I raised my hand in a warding gesture. The motes brightened, and I felt as if I had raised some larger hand that I could not see, one thatpushed the silver back, pushed it away from my path. I felt it fall back. Not so much as a physical sensation, but as a kind of cool awareness sliding away from the pressure of my will.
Oh, it was a neat trick! But it was also a gift from Kaphiri, and I did not trust it. I had to find the well.
But how?
A well is made safe by the kobolds that grow within it. The first that emerge are always of the kind we call “temple kobolds” whether a temple is ever made around that well or not. They are similar to the kobolds my mother had used to call the silver during my father’s memorial ceremony, but their duty is the opposite: the petals on their backs exude a sweet scent that somehow works to keep the silver away. I sniffed at the air.
Moki watched me and whined again, the fur on his neck standing straight and stiff beneath my hand. I set him on the ground, keeping my hand on him until I was sure he would not panic and run. He edged forward, sniffing at the air. He edged right up against the silver, and whined.
“Do you smell the well?” I whispered, rolling my bike up behind him. I held my hand out and pushed, and the silver retreated before us. “Find it, Moki,” I urged. “Find the way.”
He turned a little toward the south.
Push.
The silver rolled away from our path. Moki hurried forward and I followed. But when I glanced back the silver was rolling in behind us. I panicked. As if by instinct I raised my other arm and pushed, and the motes that clung to my hand brightened, and the silver fell away.
Why?
I didn’t want to think too hard on it. I didn’t believe this new power of mine would bear up under examination. What I had done was impossible, and if I thought too hard on it, surely it would cease to be, just as childhood fantasies fade when we enter the age of reason?
“Hurry, Moki,” I whispered, and I pushed and a channel opened before us and closed behind, while the silver climbed as high as my waist, as high as my head. Then suddenly the sedges ended. We came to a mounded ring of barren soil a full nine feet across. Moki scurried over the mound and I pushed my bike after him. “Moki, you did it!”
In the darkness I could just make out the black circle of the well, hardly a foot across, at the very center of the mounded ring. I rode my bike to its edge. I could hear kobolds moving in the loose soil. I knew I must be crushing more beneath my tires, but what could I do?
I dropped the kickstand and slipped off, staggering to keep my balance, I had gone so weak with fear. All around the well, silver drifted as high as my head so I could not see the standing stones. But even with my eyes closed I could feel the silver, as if it were part of my mind, leaning on my awareness, waiting for me to invite it in.
I remembered the night Jolly had invited it in.
“Not me,” I growled. “That’s not me. Stay back! Please. Just stay away.”
That night I did not sleep. The silver rose so high around me, it was as if I huddled at the bottom of a well of light. Far above, hundreds of feet as it seemed to me, there was a disk of blackness I took for the sky, but the glow around me was so bright, I could see no stars.
I waited for Kaphiri to step out of the silver. Did he know I was alive?
How could he not know? He had poisoned me with some splinter of his nature, but the silver remained his element. He existed somehow within it. He emerged from it whenever he desired, and surely he desired to find me? I held my rifle with bloodless hands, on guard all that night, but Kaphiri did not come.
What ruled his comings and goings? I didn’t know, and not knowing, I worried he might be occupied elsewhere… at Temple Huacho, or the Sisters, or that he might have found Liam and Udondi, just as he had found my father.
That night seemed endless, but at last the dark circle of sky above my head began to lighten. I returned my rifle to its sheath, eager to be on my way. Minutes passed, gathering together until most of an hour had gone by, but to my consternation the silver did not break up. The sky had lightened just enough to show me why: heavy clouds lay over the desert and only a wan light reached past them—not nearly enough to drive the silver away.
I looked around at the pale, misty walls of my cage, and fury built inside me. Had I been betrayed? Why had no one warned me? If the scholars at the Temple of the Sisters could predict when the silver would rise, surely they also knew when it would subside? But they had said nothing.
And what of Jolly? Was he trapped too? Did the world conspire to keep us apart?
But I wasnot trapped. I could push the silver away, as I had done last night. I could hold open a bubble within the silver and go where I liked… if I dared. I wanted to go, but I was afraid. I didnot dare. I could not bring myself to do it.
Frustration fed my anger. I cursed the silver. I dared it to take me. I shouted for Kaphiri to come, and threw handfuls of dirt into the mist. But while I succeeded in terrorizing Moki, my rage was a tiny thing, unmeasurable against the reach of the world and soon spent. Afterward, I gave into sleep like a tired child.
I slept for many hours. When I awoke it was to the howl of a cold wind against my cheek. The silver still surrounded me, but it was breaking up under the pressure of the wind. Tufts of it whipped across my sanctuary so that I did not dare to sit up above the shelter of the mound. Moki was of a similar mind. He huddled at my side, his tail thumping nervously in the dirt. I thought about taking him down into the well. The blowing silver could not touch us there, but my first experience in a kobold well still haunted me, or maybe it was the stunned look on Kaphiri’s face when he saw my scar…