Linda Nagata - Memory

But I also knew that if Yaphet left Vesarevi he would be taking away from me the years I had planned to spend wayfaring. I would be forced to wait for him at Temple Huacho and that I did not want to do.

So I mumbled some reassuring sentiment—“We’ll be together in time”—and went on to another subject. Yaphet had many interests, and it wasn’t hard yet to turn his mind onto other tracks.

I told him about the archaeologist from Halibury who had gone out to the ruined city. “I saw the report in the market—he came too late. There had been silver floods since I was there and they’d eaten away at the buildings. The base of the tower and the execution tree in the square were so badly eroded they’d toppled.”

I had seen pictures. The tower resembled a log drizzled with sugar frosting while the execution tree had become a long, thin, branching mound of no discernible purpose. I remembered my first impression of the city, the ephemeral feel of the pristine white buildings, and how I had wondered if they were made of salt. Now they were melting like salt structures lapped by a rising tide. It was strange—even disturbing—to think that Liam and I might have been the only players to see the city intact. Even my mother had never heard of a ruin so large, brought forth by the silver and consumed again with such speed. Everyone agreed we were lucky to have seen it, but I wondered… was it luck? The silver was said to act sometimes as if with a purpose: the dreaming goddess, waking briefly to accomplish some small task in the world. I was young enough to wonder if the goddess had somehow guided our visit to those ancient ruins.

“You were lucky it was quiet the night you were there,” Yaphet said.

I shrugged. “It’s a quiet region. There are only three or four floods a year.”

“It sounds like there were that many just in this last week.”

Was he criticizing me? I didn’t like the idea. “So Iwas lucky. I’m a lucky player. It’s what everyone says.”

He didn’t seem to notice my change of tone. “I wonder if there’s something in the ruins that draws the silver?”

“That bogy,” I suggested, only half facetiously. “Fiaccomo’s ghost probably wants it lost again.”

That drew a faint smile, but already our time was up. “Be safe,” he whispered. He raised his hand as if to touch me, and the link closed.

I lingered awhile on the wall, wondering at myself. Why didn’t I feel more grateful for my luck? To find a lover like Yaphet so easily, and so soon—it was unheard of. But my gratitude was mixed with resentment, and I began to worry that my ambivalence would extract some terrible price of its own.

I was immersed in these gloomy thoughts when Moki came suddenly awake. He raised his chin from my lap, his jackal ears pricked forward and a low growl in his throat. I turned to follow the direction of his gaze and was startled to see a dark figure walking up the switchback road from the vale. It was a man, but I knew at a glance it wasn’t Liam. The walk was wrong, the span of the shoulders, the manner of dress. This was a stranger.

But that wasn’t possible.

The silver lay only a few dozen feet behind him. All night it had encircled the hill. There was nowhere this man could have come from, unless he had been hiding in the brambles since nightfall.

Moki stood, growling again, louder and more menacing than before. I laid a hand on his back and felt his red fur standing stiff. “Quiet,” I whispered. “Let’s see who he is.”

I watched the stranger come up the path. The color of his skin was lost against the glow of the fog, but I could see he was a man of medium build, near my own height. He was dressed strangely, in wide, starched pants and a long tunic with starched sleeves. At first I thought he was wearing an odd hat, but as he drew nearer I saw it was his hair, long and thick and folded on itself in sleek black waves, pinned in place by silver clips.

I was sure he glimpsed me as he rounded the switchback but he did not call out a greeting. Neither did I. Little Moki gave up on his defense. He slunk behind me and lay down, his chin pressed against the lettered stone of the wall. The night was quiet, so that I could hear the stranger’s footsteps as he advanced up the road.

He bypassed the gate and walked across the grass until he drew even with me. Then, standing below the wall, he looked up.

The silver was behind him and I could not make out his features in any detail, but I thought his skin was pale. Certainly his eyes were dark, and his clothing too. Tiny silver sparkles danced about his eyes and in the dark spaces between his fingers. Horror touched me, for they were exactly like the silver sparkles that had hovered around Jolly in the seconds before he was taken. For a wild moment I wondered if this could be Jolly, grown into a man, for there was something hauntingly familiar about this stranger, as if I had known him before, in some other time, or some other life.

But he was not Jolly.

My heart beat faster, remembering a fear my mind had long forgotten. I started to rise.

He spoke then, in my own language, though it was not his native tongue. His voice was low, crisp, his words a distorted echo of my own thoughts: “I have come for your brother, Jolly. Command him to come forth now.”

I froze, half crouched upon the wall, the fine hairs of my neck standing on end just as Moki’s had. Jolly… ? I could not think who this man might be, to ask after my brother. I could not think how to answer. Moki stirred, and I picked him up, cradling him close to my chest. “He’s gone.” It was all I could find to say.

“Lately gone?” the stranger inquired. Though he spoke softly, there was menace in his voice and the motes that danced about his hands grew brighter, so that a silver storm seemed ready to ignite around him… but surely that was impossible? If the motes were true silver, he should have already been consumed.

Perhaps it was the hour, or the dreadful sense of familiarity he stirred in me, but I felt the world shift, a crack in the boundaries of the possible opening the way for forbidden things to slip into the world. “Do I speak to a bogy?” I whispered. “Or a ghost?”

His teeth flashed white as he grinned. “Not a bogy,” he said, stepping closer to the wall. “But a ghost all right, dressed in flesh. Now tell me, girl, where is Jolly? Why does he hide from me? He should know that I am his father now.”

I rose to my feet, Moki clutched in one arm, and my savant in the other. I didn’t know who this stranger was or how he had come to Temple Huacho, but I did not like his tone or his manner. I didn’t like his cruel, taunting questions. And most of all, I didn’t like the strange, hot fear brewing in my chest. “Your manners are very poor,” I said, in the best imitation of my mother I could muster. “But if you would know, Jolly isn’t here.”

“Not here?” He cocked his head to one side, so that some trace of reflected light illuminated his face. I could just make out his thin, dark brows and his graceful cheeks above a goatee of black beard, though there was no mustache. Perhaps the truth of what I said showed on my face for he turned half away, looking dejected. “So he is lost again.”

He made as if to leave by the same road he had come despite the sea of silver that filled all the vale. “Wait!” I stepped along the wall to follow after him. “Who are you? Why have you come asking after my brother?”

He looked back over his shoulder, his face once again a mask of darkness. “Will you come find out?” He held his hand out to me.

Some traitorous part of me was tempted. “Come where?”

He nodded downslope. I followed his gaze, to see the silver washing up the path where he had walked only a minute before, moving toward him in a swift tide. Moki whined and wriggled in my arms so that I had to stoop to put him down. He jumped off the wall and disappeared toward the temple. “You must come inside,” I said. “Quickly. Come in through the gate before the silver reaches it.”