On the surface that might seem a pleasant outcome because silver is so dangerous, but silver is also essential to our world. Darkness and light rolled into one. Destruction and creation. Its loss would be a disaster.
“Did you believe him?” I asked.
Jolly’s shoulders moved in a little shrug against the star-filled sky. “At first I thought he was just crazy. In the end, I believed everything he said.”
I nodded. “In another life I saw it happen. I made it happen.”
How many times had I made it happen?
You are his guardian. The goddess herself made it so.
I felt a weight upon me, as if I had come to this moment of understanding many times before without ever growing wiser. Was there no way out? How old was the world?
My hands began to shake.
We had already come so close to disaster. That night on the Kalang escarpment, when Liam had seen Kaphiri on the plain below. If he had brought his rifle into play a little sooner, it would all be over now. Or if I had been better prepared that night at the Pinnacles…
If we had succeeded in our murder we would have murdered the world. Maya had been right all along.
I thought of running away, taking my brother and disappearing so deep into the Iraliad that Kaphiri would never find us. But to do so I would have to forget about Liam, and Udondi, my mother, my brothers and sisters, and Kaphiri himself, who had been my lover in another life, I could not doubt it now.
Someday someone would kill him.
I had seen the ancient city, and the horrible bogy haunting it—relics of an age without silver. Should the world be returned to such a time?
(Or should it be left to drown in silver flood?)
Why is it me?
Because we had been joined somehow, long ago.
Many minutes passed before I trusted myself to speak, but finally I glanced again at Jolly. Where his thoughts had ventured I cannot say, but I was remembering the words of my ancient lover. “Did Kaphiri ever speak to you of the goddess and the god?”
The wan light cast up by the silver exposed a look of sudden wariness on Jolly’s face.
“Jolly…?”
“I never said it!”
“Said what?”
“He said it. That we were gods.”
“The two of you?”
He nodded.
So I told him of my dream: of Ki-Faun, and the kobold in my hand that should have removed the memory of Kaphiri from the world. I told him of my failure, and the final choice I had made.
“How closely did you look at the kobold?” Jolly asked. “Did you see its configuration code?”
“No. I didn’t think about it. Not then. It was a horrible thing.”
“But before? Is it possible you looked at it before? Is it possible you knew it? You lived through that night, didn’t you? Is it possible you wrote it down?”
Was it? Might a record of my experience exist in a library somewhere? I shook my head. “I don’t think I would have wanted such knowledge to survive.”
“You have Ki-Faun’s book.”
“It does not speak of erasing memories.”
“You might have another vision.”
“Jolly, don’t frighten me more!”
He crouched beside me, and it no longer seemed to me that I was older. “He is full of hate, Jubilee, and this can have no good end. If he lives, he will drown every enclave in the world in silver. If he dies, the silver will die with him, and that would be almost as bad. It was the same in your vision. He could not be allowed to live, and he could not be allowed to die.”
“And still I killed him.”
“To stop the flood! This time we must act while there’s still a choice.”
“And do what? I don’t know what kind of kobold it was, Jolly, and even if I did, I would not use it. Don’t you see? Ki-Faun was wrong. No matter how terrible Kaphiri is, only he can turn the silver back. Without him, we will all drown.”
“Ki-Faun believed we could learn to control the silver.”
A weak little laugh escaped me. “We can. Anyway,I can, though I don’t think it will help us much. I can push the silver away, Jolly. It’s something I’ve learned since Kaphiri poisoned me.”
My brother accepted this without surprise. “It has to do with your configuration codes. They must have been reset by the contact with Kaphiri’s blood. He had reset his own codes already, so he wasn’t the same. Not an exact match for you anymore. I guess that’s why his blood sickened you, but not so much that you would die.”
So. Kaphiri had poisoned me, and I was not human anymore.
Moki returned from the dark, nuzzling in between us. I buried my fingers in his fur, realizing for the first time how cold the night was.
Jolly said, “I want to know what Ki-Faun knew.”
“I don’t.”
“We need to read your book, Jubilee. I don’t think we have a choice.”
Chapter 27
We stayed on the plateau until the eastern sky grew light enough to show the weather. It was not an encouraging sight. Heavy clouds were moving up again from the south, and though the silver faded as the dawn grew brighter, it seemed reluctant to be gone altogether. I wondered if we should risk leaving Azure Mesa, or if we should wait… for a better day, or to give Liam a chance to catch up with us. I wanted to try again to call him but I did not have my savant, so we returned to the cavern to fetch it.
Ficer was awake, busily packing his gear onto his bike. He greeted me with a weary nod. “It was no pleasant night, was it?” he asked.
“I dreamed,” I admitted.
“Everyone does, and it’s never pleasant dreams either. It’s the kobolds—that’s what I think. They smell differently from your common temple kobolds, don’t they? A perfume to trouble the mind. It’s why no one lives here;why so few come to stay even one night—which made it the safest place for us to meet.”
I hesitated, for it was rude to ask, but I could not help myself. “What did you dream?”
My question confused him. “Nothing I can remember. The memory is gone when you awake—at least that’s how it is for most who visit here. Was it different for you?”
I looked away, knowing I had said too much. “I seem to… remember a little.”
“And not a comforting little by the look of you.”
I was groping for some polite way to deny the truth when he raised a hand. “Don’t speak of it. I have heard that some few come here on purpose to dream. They claim it’s the past that visits them.” He shook his head. “If that’s so, we all have wicked things to account for, I say, for I have never met one who slept peacefully here… that is, until now.” His gaze settled pointedly on Jolly—a look my brother answered with a sheepish smile.
“What’s this?” I asked curiously. “What do you speak of? Not just that Jolly slept well?”
“That underestimates it,” Ficer said. “I awoke several times in the night, and while you were troubled, Jolly’s sleep was always quiet. Like the sleep of an innocent? One who has never lived before would have no past lives to haunt him.”
“You think this is Jolly’s first life?” But how could that be? No one new had been born into the world since its making—or so I’d been taught.
“It’s what I think,” Jolly said. “It makes sense. I don’t have talents like you, like everyone else. I don’t know anything but what I’ve learned—”
“It hasn’t wakened in you yet,” I said. “That’s all—”
“And I don’t think I could be reborn into another life. How could I, if the silver always returns me as myself?”
“Jolly!”He was so young. How could he believe that he would live only this one life? That such thoughts could even enter his mind… it horrified me. That he could believe such things and still hold on to the sweetness that had always been in his character… it astonished me, so that tears started in my eyes.