Kaphiri. My heart thundered and my skin grew flush as I imagined him climbing up that tunnel from the sea of silver that surrounded our keep. But there was no sound of footsteps and I could not imagine how anyone could walk among the dead kobold shells without sound. So I edged forward and Jolly went with me, and in a few steps we came upon a chamber so broad our flashlight beam could not find the other side.
Cautiously, we entered that great space. The ceiling was high, maybe thirty feet, while the walls that stood within reach of our light curved as if part of a great circle. “Is it an audience chamber?” I wondered, remembering the audience chamber of Ki-Faun that I had seen within my dream.
Jolly said, “It’s big enough to be a marketplace.”
There was no evidence of either function. All we found within reach of the light was a broken bike, shrouded in dust and missing its wheels, lying forlornly beside a knee-high midden of bird bones. Moki growled over these things while we examined them. Then Jolly took the flashlight, and casting its light about, he searched the shadows. He did not have to say what he was looking for. I followed him, expecting to see the bones of the bike’s owner materialize in the gloom. Instead the light picked out a purple pigment on the walls.
“Look at that,” Jolly said. “Is it writing?” He edged forward, until the light revealed a scrawl of purple lettering covering the wall from the height of my head to the floor. “It is writing. Jubilee, can you read it? No, wait. I can read it.”
Indeed, the script and the language were the same as ours. It had been done in a chalk of purple tint that had since acquired some moisture from the air so that it shone like enameled paint. “Look how the letters have begun to drip,” I said. “This cannot be too old.”
Jolly was eagerly deciphering the rough lines. “It’s a journal. Look here. ‘Today the silver subsided beneath the gate. I try not to hope for tomorrow.’ That is dated ‘day twelve.’” Jolly scowled. “Does that mean a player was trapped here for twelve days?”
“For far longer than that, I would guess,” I said, gazing down the length of the wall. The writing continued at least as far as the light reached.
It came to both of us then, that we might be trapped at Azure for many days, and it was as if the room grew colder, the walls harder, the reverberations of our voices a little more loud. “The longer we are here,” Jolly said, “the better chance Kaphiri will have of finding us.”
I nodded, but what could we do?
Jolly shone his light again upon the words. “There is day fifteen.” He walked several steps along the wall. “And there is day twenty-five. ‘A good day! The mesa top was clear of silver. The net worked! I have songbird for dinner! I am a mad man, to be so excited at such a thing. But who would not be mad, enduring night after night of these dreams?’”
But by day thirty songbird had grown dull, and by day forty-five the flocks had thinned. Day fifty-one was the last entry. “This night is full of stars. It feels like a lifetime since I have seen stars, but they have returned this night, and the Bow of Heaven with them, brighter than I have ever seen it. The sun will be bright tomorrow. I know it. May I never dream again.”
I touched the blank stone beside the writing. “He must have gotten away.” Perhaps by saying it, I could make it so?
Jolly nodded.
Neither of us mentioned the mystery of the broken bike.
We returned up the tunnel to our encampment and made a small dinner. The food tasted odd, as if it were permeated with the heavy, sweet scent of the temple kobolds. “You can’t eat temple kobolds,” Jolly said thoughtfully, picking up a stray to examine the white petals on its back. “At least I’ve never heard of it.” He tapped the hard shell. “It would be like eating stones.”
“I think the petals might be poisonous.”
Temple kobolds produced no food, no machinery, no hard goods, no medicines. All they did was to create a chemical shield against the silver. Until I came to Azure Mesa, that had always been enough.
My eyelids grew heavy, so I forced myself to my feet, determined to fend off sleep, for all night if I could. Fifty-one nights of Azure dreams. I could not imagine it.
“Jubilee, where is your book?” Jolly asked. “May I see it?”
It was still in the pocket of my coat, where it had been almost since Nuanez Li had given it to me. I’d had it out at the Temple of the Sisters, only so that Emil and the scholars could make a copy of it, though they could not read it. “It’s here,” I said, and I drew it out. But I hesitated in giving it to him, held back by a reluctance I could not explain.
“Jubilee?”
“I’m nervous tonight.” I made myself hand him the book.
He sat cross-legged on his sleeping bag, studying the green plastic cover. Then he examined the pages of fine lettered stone. “I guess you’ll have to read it to me,” he conceded.
I sat beside him, accepting the book back though I did not open it. “I have a dread of this book I did not have yesterday. I suppose it’s an effect of the dream.”
I started to slide it back into my pocket, but Jolly stopped me. “Jubilee.” He took the book again, but this time he laid it open in my lap. “If he dies, the silver dies with him. If he does not die the world will drown in silver flood. In your vision Ki-Faun believed he had found a third choice—to control the silver. I would learn that.”
I swear Jolly opened the book at random, but there on the page that faced me was a formula for a kobold circle made up entirely of temple kobolds.
The wells at Azure Mesa produced only temple kobolds.
“Jubilee?” he pressed, when I’d been silent too long.
I looked at his anxious face, wondering what powers a god might have. Then I tapped the book’s open page. “Here is a recipe. It’s supposed to create a kind of… mirror, I think.‘Reflect the other self’…? I’m not sure, but we can try it, just to see if a circle might work.”
It was late, but neither of us wanted sleep, so we went down to the well room and hunted for the required kobolds. All of them were common, and it didn’t take long to gather the necessary kinds, returning with them to our little stone room.
It was a harder task to reset the kobold’s configuration codes. We did not have the tools of a temple keeper—no magnification lens, no pick, and no decent light. But these were large kobolds, each the size of my thumbnail, so we were able to use a fine wire to tweak the digits.
There were six kobolds in all, and when their configuration codes were set as the book instructed, we put them together.
Kobolds generally seem aware of very little except an instinctive need to crawl, but this group was different. They did not clamber away in six different directions. Instead they crawled deliberately toward one another. It was eerie to watch them gather together. At first they made a tangle of twitching legs and glossy shells, but in less than a minute they had fitted together into a perfect sphere. Their petals were on the inside, locked away from sight, while their legs were folded flat against their exposed bellies Several minutes passed and nothing else happened, so I picked up the sphere and turned it over in my hands. It looked like one of those balls that is a puzzle of blocks, each piece a different color, but linking perfectly to the next.
The book did not say how long this kobold circle might take to mature, though from Maya’s description of the road show, I hoped it would not be much more than an hour.
It was already past midnight, and the very air of the cavern was working against me, its cloying scent like a potion drawing me down, down into sleep. I rubbed at my eyes and paced to keep awake while Jolly sat beside the sphere, watching it constantly, as if it were an explosive that might go off at any minute.