But I was saved from a decision by the sudden appearance of the sun. It broke past the fleeing clouds and the silver was immediately transformed. Its menacing tendrils became a thin mist, sparkling in a watery atmosphere, and then it was gone, leaving only the wind and the blowing dust.
I stood cautiously and looked about. The coarse sedges in that place had not been harmed by the flood, though the white flowers were closed now in daylight. Here and there in the near distance clusters of irregular standing stones glistened, looking as if they were made of fine leaded glass. But what caught my attention was a mesa standing far away on the flat horizon. It was a pedestal, narrower at its base than at its flat summit, for the silver had eaten away at its foundation for untold centuries. Its color was a light, bright blue, like turquoise, only a little darker than the afternoon sky. Azure Rock. Where I would meet Jolly, if only I could get there.
I whooped and whistled to Moki. It was late in the afternoon. No more than two hours of daylight remained to me, but that was enough.
Chapter 22
By the time I reached Azure Mesa the sun was directly behind me. Its rays shot through rips in the clouds to fall in mottled patterns against the mesa’s blue stone cliffs—a lovely, bright blue like polished turquoise. Changed stone. Perhaps all of Azure Mesa was a folly. I wondered how long it had been there, and how long it would last. Its walls were badly undercut by the silver, and in places the overhanging rock had collapsed into hills of turquoise stone. Still, it looked solid enough to offer me shelter through the night… if I could find a way to scale its smooth walls.
A skirt of brush surrounded the mesa. Perhaps it had rained recently, for the brush was covered in a haze of tiny yellow flowers. I breathed in their dry, honey-sweet fragrance: a pleasant scent, but not nearly strong enough to hide the lingering scent of silver. Darkness would not fall for the better part of an hour, but that smell had me nervous. Almost panicky. I did not want to be caught out in the open again. I wanted to get up among the rocks, while the sun’s light held the silver at bay.
But I also wanted to find Jolly.
I had seen no tracks as I approached the mesa, and the dust plumes that wandered the desert had all been tossed up by the fierce wind. Perhaps the morning’s silver storm had kept Jolly from traveling. If so I would have another night on my own. I did not look forward to it.
Grimly I set about exploring the mesa, circling east around the brush, and after a few minutes I found a path. It was a sandy track that cut straight toward the base of the mesa. Eagerly I looked for the marks of tires, but if there had been any, they were gone now, smoothed away by the wind. “Jolly!” I shouted his name, but the wind took my voice away, and there was not even an echo in answer.
I followed the path. It took me all the way to the mesa’s wall, ending beneath a vertical notch cut into the overhanging stone. There were handholds in the blue stone, making a sort of ladder that climbed to what looked like a narrow shelf some thirty feet overhead. Was this the way onto the mesa?
I could not believe it, for I could see no way to get my bike up that rock face. Giving up on the notch, I searched the brush on either side, and after a few minutes I found a second path, fainter than the first and nearly overgrown in places, but it circled around the base of the rock so I followed it—all the way around the mesa without finding any sign of another way up the smooth blue rock.
By the time I returned to the notch the sun was nearly on the horizon. The scent of silver was growing stronger, and Moki was starting to worry. I considered again the handholds that had been cut into the stone. I could certainly climb them and get myself above a silver flood, but if I could not also get my bike to safety, what would I do tomorrow? If I lost my bike, I would be afoot… and it might take me days to walk to the next refuge mesa. Could I do it? Fending off the silver every night? It seemed impossible. Even if I could manage that trick again, eventually I would have to sleep, and surely I could not fend off the silver in my sleep?
No. There had to be some true sanctuary here, or Maya would not have sent me. And Ficer Elmi—the stranger who had Jolly in his care—he would not have told me to come. So, leaving Moki to sniff out partridge trails, I started climbing.
Each handhold was deeply cupped and together they made an easy path. Soon I became all too conscious of my height above the ground. I hesitated at the last handhold, thinking that a snake might have come for the sun on this western-facing shelf, but when I peeked over the edge, I saw only one small lizard that fled at the sight of me.
Even if there had been a snake, I would have found the courage to fight it for possession of that shelf, for just to the right of the notch ladder, set back from the edge a few feet so it was invisible from the ground, was a steel post supporting a boom with pulleys and cable that looked in good condition. So there was a way for me to get my bike above the reach of the silver flood.
I heaved myself over the edge and spent a minute exploring. The ledge was nine or ten feet wide on its outer edge, but it narrowed toward the back. It reached fifteen feet into the rock, giving the impression of an alcove… an effect enhanced by the presence of a steel door set into the back wall. I leaned on the latch handle, and the door opened easily, swinging inward onto a cool darkness that bore the sweet scent of temple kobolds. My heartbeat quickened painfully. That perfume will always speak to me of home, and as I stood on that threshold I found myself torn between joy and loneliness.
Then optical tubes flickered to life along the walls, revealing the foot of a wide stairway littered with the beetlelike carapaces of thousands of dead kobolds. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling, swaying on air currents too slight for me to feel. A veil of brown dust overlay it all. I took a step inside and dust rose around my foot. Peering up the stairway, I called Jolly’s name, but without much hope. The only tracks in the dust were the tiny tracks of kobolds. Clearly, it had been a very long time since any player had entered Azure Mesa by this stair. I called again, but only an echo answered me, so I went back outside.
The ledge looked south and west across a desert plain studded with follies and standing stones, and here and there on the horizon, hazed by blowing dust and distance, the blocky silhouettes of other mesas. In all that land I saw no sign of movement, or of any purposeful plumes of dust of the kind that would mark the passage of a bike and I was glad, for the air had about it an opalesque quality, a shimmering density that I had never seen before, though some part of me knew it was an effect of silver, edging into existence. Night was not far off. Any player still on the road was in dire danger. My own position would not be secure until I brought my bike up from the desert floor.
So, working quickly, I swung the boom out over the edge of the shelf. Then I scrambled down the notch ladder to secure my bike to the dangling cable. Tucking Moki into my field jacket, I climbed up again while the sun blushed red, its disk melting as it neared the world. I set Moki down, then turned my attention to the cable. A hard pull and the bike rose from the ground. Gears locked behind the pulley so that the rope could not slide back. I hauled again, and in less than a minute I was able to swing the boom in and bring the bike to rest on the ledge. I unshackled it, and hurried with it into the refuge, but I did not close the door.
The sun was a thin arc of fire on the horizon. Its last rays penetrated the refuge, overwhelming the pale optical tubes. In that glare I unpacked my savant, determined to contact someone before I sealed myself away for the night.