“That would make it even older than the well at the Temple of the Sisters.”
“Both are close to the Cenotaph. I wonder if it feeds their longevity?”
“I think it does. I think it’s the engine beneath the Kalang as well.”
There were interesting kobolds alive in the mound, but the four we needed all came from the drawers of a vast kobold cabinet. We wakened them and reset their codes. Then we put them together and immediately they formed a smooth, interlocked sphere.
Yaphet studied it, turning it over and over in his hands. “This is awkward.” He frowned at the kobold circle “Doesn’t this seem like a cumbersome procedure to you?”
“So long as it works.”
“But what are kobolds, really?”
“Yaphet, please,” I said, in no mood for his musings.
“But they’re mechanics, seeded by the silver. Tools.”
“Yes, of course they are. They are a knowledge stolen by Fiaccomo from the mind of the goddess.”
Yaphet smiled. “They are tools we use to create the things we need—but why do we need tools? Why can’t we create these things directly from the silver? It should be possible, if only we knew how.”
I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck, for wasn’t that the definition I had given to Kaphiri for a god? “Do you know how?”
“No, of course not. Not yet. But it’s something I wanted to talk to you about. You use the ha to manipulate the silver, or anyway to push it away.”
“Even if I could call it, that is not the same as creation. Even Kaphiri cannot do that, and he’s had centuries to experiment.”
“But before the ha was awake in you, you could not push the silver. It wouldn’t matter how many experiments you ran, or how much you tried, it couldn’t be done. It would be like trying to speak when you had no voice. So what if there is another level of the ha? What if this level you’ve found is only the level of an apprentice or an adolescent? What if there is another level that can be awakened too?”
It frightened me to think of it. I did not want to know more. I knew too much already. “Would you want it?” I asked him. “If such a door opened, would you step through it? Even if it took you to another world?”
He looked away. He looked guilty. “I would still want to be with you.”
“You would go.” The comforting scent of kobolds was heavy in the air, and I was remembering how sweet life had been when I was a child, in the years before Jolly was taken. “I’m afraid all the time… but you’re not. You’re like Fiaccomo, in that. If the silver swept over you, you’d embrace it. You’d make love with the goddess, and bring some great gift back to the world. I never used to believe the old stories, but I do now. I wonder if you were Fiaccomo, in another life?”
Yaphet blushed. Even past his dark skin, I saw his color rise. “No. I know that’s not true. It wasn’t me.”
“It could be true,” I insisted.
“I don’t want to guess at things like that.”
“Kaphiri doesn’t guess. He remembers his past. Yaphet, if we could do that… We are older than he is. Our memories would go back farther. Maybe, back to the beginning of the world, to the days when we knew how to use the silver.”
Yaphet looked suddenly guilty. “He told me how to do it. He was happy to share all the details of it… how to make the kobold circle, and what it felt like to have the past fall open.”
I was stunned. “And you have not tried it? Why not?”
“It nearly killed him, to remember that much. His mind was overwhelmed. Months passed, and he couldn’t think straight, and finally he stumbled into the silver and that helped him sort it out. He keeps his memories there now. Only some of it stays with him when he’s outside.”
“And we cannot go into the silver.”
Yaphet nodded agreement. “And still I might take the chance… except you’re right. We are older than Kaphiri. Far older. You talked to that ancient savant. Her one life was so very long. If you remembered what she remembers, would you have room for anything else? And among all that knowledge, would you be able to find the one fact you’re looking for?”
I smiled a fuzzy smile. “You make it sound like it would be easier to just ask her how to reach the next level of the ha.”
“Ask her?” A fierce scowl darkened his brow. “Actually, I hadn’t thought of that.”
So we ran to the room of savants, taking the kobold circle with us, for we had no way of knowing how much time might pass before the new kobold emerged. But the ancient savant would not waken. Yaphet examined it, but all he could say was that its power system must have failed. “The shock of powering-up after so many millennia. It’s amazing it worked at all.”
I held the lifeless glass shell, furious at the thought of the knowledge it contained, locked away forever.
“Okay,” Yaphet said. “So we’ll have to remember it some other way.”
But a sense of urgency had come over me. “What time is it? Has the dawn come yet?”
“Long since.”
“Then where is Kaphiri?”
We went to the kitchen. Mari was there, but she said he had not come back.
“I thought he would return at dawn.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes he is gone for days.”
“It is always night somewhere in the world,” Yaphet said, and his face was grim.
It made me shudder, to think of Kaphiri following the night around the ring of the world. I had thought his rampage would end at dawn… but what was there to stop him now except exhaustion?
I looked at Yaphet. “We need his talents. We must make him come back.”
“How can we?”
“I’ll call him. When the silver rises tonight… I’ll seek him. I’ve felt him through the silver before.”
So we waited out the day. I slept for part of it. Yaphet did not sleep; he said he could not. There was an energy burning in him, and he spent all that day at study in the library, but he did not learn how to awaken his ha. Near dusk we ate a quiet meal in the kitchen, with the kobold circle on the table before us. “Do you still plan to call him?” Mari asked, standing in what I had come to think of as her place, beside the stove.
“Yes, as soon as the silver has risen. We’re going to leave after that. So I want to thank you for your kindness…”
She shrugged. “If you come back, I’ll be here.”
“We won’t be coming back.”
“So sure, are you?”
“Yes.”
I felt the weight of the book, Known Kobold Circles, in my pocket. Almost as heavy as the weight of my conscience. I reached for the book. Yaphet caught my hand, and we traded a look. “She should know,” I said softly. He could not meet my gaze. So I pulled out the book and showed it to her. “Nuanez gave this to me because I could read it.”
Her face went slack. With a trembling hand, she pulled out a chair. Then she collapsed into it, steadying herself with a palm against the table. “Nuanez?” she whispered. “How is it you know that name?”
“I stayed in his house. I spoke with him. He’s still waiting for you, Mari, in the forest of the Kalang. He’s still there, waiting for you to come back.”
I went on to tell her all I could remember. She listened, asking no questions, her face locked in frozen grief. When I was done, she sat in silence for several minutes. Then she excused herself, saying she had chores to do.
“I wonder if that was a mistake?” Yaphet asked when she was gone.
I wondered too, but Nuanez had been waiting so very long. “Maybe she’ll return now?”
I hoped she would.