Linda Nagata - Memory

I do not know what expression my face showed. Horror maybe. Or hope. Whatever it was, it intrigued Mica Indevar. “I see you have heard such a story too.”

“You’re mistaken. I have not.”

“It’s a story I would have discounted, if I did not know the player who saw it happen, and if he did not make an image of this lost boy.” As he spoke, he drew this printed image from his pocket and he displayed it to me in a cupped hand. It was a picture of Jolly as he had been when I was ten.

I drew back. “You would show me that?”

“I was told you would know him.”

“I don’t know him!” But as soon as the lie left my mouth I countered it with a question. “Who told you?”

He held my gaze, and while no words passed his lips, it was answer enough.

I turned away, trembling.

Indevar spoke to my retreating back. “Most players believe the goddess is nothing more than the unconscious hand of chaos, but it isn’t so. Though she has been wounded in her long battle against the darkness, she is a goddess still, and her will is harsh. Still, she is not unkind. This lost boy has been sent to us to remind us of her mercy—”

I turned in sudden fury. “Do you know him?”

He drew back, a new wariness in his eyes. “No, lady. That has not been my privilege.”

“Have you seen him then?” I pressed.

His gaze faltered, as if I’d caught him in a lie. “He is lost, lady.” It had the sound of an apology.

“Then you have not seen him.”

“I seek him—”

“Then you should know that you chase a ghost! That picture in your hand—it’s of a boy seven years dead. If he had lived he would be a man now. Not a lost boy . You have been deceived.”

Apparently this was not the response Mica Indevar had expected. His face grew red. His mouth opened, but words proved hard to find. “You—” he sputtered. “You don’t know what—”

“Jubilee!”

We both jumped at Liam’s harsh voice. I turned, to see him at the end of the hall, Udondi a step behind.

“Jubilee, has this stranger offended you?” Liam’s voice was soft, but there was a chill in it that startled me. In the ruined city the bogy had mistaken him for one of the ancient queen’s own warlords. It had seemed an absurd error to me, but I realized then it might not seem so absurd to a stranger. Liam was a man of size and strong bearing, with a face that fell all too easily into a grim and brooding aspect.

It was this other Liam that Mica Indevar saw. Fury flashed in his eyes, but he stepped away from me. “I have offered polite conversation only. If that gives offense, then this is a barbaric land.”

“It is a barbaric land,” Liam agreed. Then he looked at me. “Jubilee?”

I nodded, and the three of us left together, ceding Mica Indevar the hall.

There was no silver that night, so we left Elek to the company of her other guests and we went outside to sit on the wall. I told of my encounter, while Moki patrolled the grounds around us, keeping watch against any curious scholars who might wander close in the dark. “Kaphiri sent him,” I concluded. “But why? Why do they care about Jolly? Why do they believe he is still alive?”

I wanted someone to say it was possible, that maybe Jolly was alive somewhere, and that was how Kaphiri knew him. But Liam was a harder man than that. “It’s clear now, isn’t it?” he asked. “Somehow a rumor was started about Jolly, probably because he was taken inside a temple.”

Udondi nodded. “That seems likely. And Kaphiri would want to know if there was another like him. He would investigate that kind of rumor.”

But the night I met Kaphiri, he had spoken as if he knew my brother: Why does he hide from me? He should know that I am his father now.

The white wall of Temple Nathé gleamed faintly under starlight. I stood upon it and looked for the remains of my father’s truck at the bottom of the slope, but it was too dark. I could not see it. Behind me, Liam spoke to Udondi. “Will you come back with us to Temple Huacho?”

“I think not,” she said. “I am known to his followers. I would not want to bring his attention back to your family.”

Guilt touched me. “That’s why you gave a different name to Elek, isn’t it? I gave you away.”

She shrugged. “This Mica Indevar likely knew of me anyway.”

“I feel like I’ve seen him before,” I mused, sitting down beside her. But I could not remember where. So I asked a new question. “What is known of Kaphiri? Udondi, do you know where he comes from? You told me before that his history goes back four hundred years. How can that be? And what is there in his past to make him hate the world?”

“There is shame,” she said softly. “That is the spur, though I think the heart of it is something different. A flaw in his nature. It is my guess he was not made like the rest of us.”

She hesitated. She had kept her own counsel for years, and I think it was hard for her to speak aloud the knowledge she had gathered in her long pursuit of Kaphiri. But after a few seconds, her soft voice took up the tale:

“Each of us, we have existed since the beginning of the world. We cannot remember our past lives, but we always remember the lover we were made for. For us, there is only one. But for Kaphiri it was different. His lover found another.”

I felt dread stir in me then, for no reason I could define, but I said nothing.

Udondi continued to speak. “This is his story as I have pieced it together. Over two lifetimes ago, three hundred and eighty years, he was known by a different name, Owinca Najar. His parents kept the main kobold well in a large enclave that existed then in Lish, near the Reflection Mountains. He was raised in rank and privilege, and he was called lucky, for he had been wayfaring less than a year when he found his mate. He brought her home to Lish and they lived there six years, though without children. There were never any children. In the sixth year, she left him. A wayfarer had come to the enclave, and she recognized him at once as her true lover. That same day she put aside her marriage and she went away with her true mate.

“Never had anyone in that enclave heard of such a thing. Owinca Najar had taken a false lover. That was the conclusion, and the lack of children was held up as proof. I do not have to speak of the bitter shame that family must have felt. The young man fled, and it was the belief of all in that enclave that he had given up his life to the silver.

“I think he tried to. Who would not? Given the despair he must have felt… how tempting to leave behind the shame, even the memory of shame, and embark on a new life. So yes, I think he tried to end his life in the silver, but the silver would not have him.”

A little laugh escaped her. “Did he feel like a monster then? Even more than before? Or did he feel like a god?” She shook her head. “In either case he did not return to Lish for nearly three hundred years. Where he went is not certain, though there is evidence he found a new home in the south. It was only some sixty years ago when he came again to Lish, though of course all who had known him before were long gone.”

“Then how do you know it is the same man?” Liam asked.

“It is him. He is a man outside his time, with the mannerisms and habit of dress common in that ancient enclave. His face is the face of Owinca Najar that I found recorded in a library in Lish, and his anger is the same. Too, he preaches celibacy, so that he has become an icon of the cessant cults. And I have his fingerprints. They are the same as that sad young man of Lish. He has nursed his hurt for over three centuries and a half while the silver floods have grown steadily worse. It is his oath that he will see the world drown in silver.”