Linda Nagata - Memory

“What game is this?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

I opened the door a crack. The silver stood off some sixty feet from the door, though its glow seemed strangely bright. Amplified by my fear? I did not see Kaphiri. Was he really here? Or was this only a game designed to break me?

“I am coming out.” I could hardly hear my own voice. So I straightened my shoulders and shouted it, “I am coming out!”

I stepped onto the stoop. Immediately a pale hand, all aglitter with specks of silver, reached from behind the onyx door to seize my forearm. He yanked hard and twisted, and suddenly I was sprawled on the sand-strewn rock before the door. “Udondi!” I screamed, rolling to get back on my feet. How had he gotten behind the door? It wasn’t possible. Udondi would have seen him from above. Why didn’t she shoot now?

He loomed over me as I tried to rise, a phantom dressed in black. He chopped at my head. I ducked, but the blow proved a feint. Spinning quickly around he seized both my arms and twisted them behind my back so that I thought they would tear from their sockets. I collapsed to my knees, my head bowed. He followed me down. He was crouched behind me so I could feel the heat of his body. I had expected him to be as cold as silver, but it wasn’t so. Why didn’t Udondi shoot?

“Now, girl,” he said softly, “your time is almost over. Tell me where my Jolly can be found.”

He wanted an answer. So he eased his grip on my arms, allowing me to raise my head. I saw then the power that was his. Silver surrounded us, not just on the sides, but over our heads too so that we were crouched in a cave of silver that hid us from anyone watching from above. No wonder the silver had shone so brightly when I had looked out the door! That door was still ajar. I heard Udondi’s voice from somewhere deep inside, shouting at me to stay inside; the silver had risen. She did not even know I had been taken.

All this passed through my mind in the space of a heartbeat. “Why are you doing this?” I pleaded.

I could feel his breath in my ear. Warm, and familiar. “It’s what I was born for. The silver will not take me. Not until my task is complete.”

“What task?”

“To bring about the end of this age.” His grip tightened again, making me gasp. His voice softened. “I could almost think you were her, come again.”

Her.

Udondi had told me of his past. “The woman who was your lover?” My words were only a pained whisper, but he heard me clearly. “If I were her, I would leave you again!”

He chuckled softly. “You are so very much like her. But now you must tell me, where is Jolly? So that we might finish this.”

“I don’t know where he is! I told him to run away! I don’t know where he’s gone!”

Now there was movement at the door. Kaphiri saw it and doubt touched him. His grip slackened. I reared back, and we sprawled together on the hard stone. He had my arms still in his grip. I twisted, trying to escape him. One hand came free but the other he held by the wrist.

Then he was not fighting me anymore. We knelt on the stone, face-to-face, while he stared at the scar that crossed the back of my hand, the one I had gained in the kobold well. With his thumb he traced its ragged line, while tiny sparks of silver followed that movement, jumping from his hand to mine. “What does it mean?” he murmured. “Who—?” He looked at me, his expression deeply troubled, and again I was struck by how much he looked like Yaphet.

It was a similarity I wanted no one else to ever see.

I reached for Udondi’s knife with my free hand. Kaphiri saw the blade slide from my boot. He tried to block my strike—too late. The knife hissed through the starched fabric of his sleeve and struck flesh. Blood poured from the wound, as red as the blood of any player, but he did not release his grip on me. Instead he struck my hand. The blade tumbled, and he caught it in the air.

“Let the silver decide then, if you have a destiny.”

He brought the knife’s bloody edge against my forearm. I screamed, twisting away, more afraid of blood poisoning than of the silver itself but his will was sterner than mine. The knife cut deep, ferrying his blood into my body.

Then he released me. The knife clattered to the ground. He raised his hand to the silver, just as he had that night outside Temple Huacho, and the sparkles that seemed to always follow the motion of his hands were bright and vibrant. The silver rushed toward him, it spilled over him, while I scrambled out of its path, fleeing back to the temple doors.

They burst open and Udondi was there, her rifle aimed over my head. “He’s gone!” I shouted, my bloody arm pressed hard against my belly.

I pushed past her, over the threshold. A wave of faintness took me and I went down on my knees. I heard Maya Anyapah say, “Their blood has crossed. She will surely die.”

Then I felt Udondi’s cool hands against my forehead;I heard her whispered plea, “Forgive me, Jubilee, forgive me, forgive me,” and I wondered why I had not let the silver take me after all.

I should have died within twelve hours. Instead my blood fever stretched on through three days of delirium, or so the old man told me when I finally awoke. I opened my eyes to find him sitting at my bedside, his beautiful pale hands resting atop the afghan in his lap. The sun was just rising, its rays striking past a translucent window shade to illuminate his kindly smile.

“At first we were all frightened by the imminence of your death,” he mused, his voice raspy as desert sand. “Then we were frightened you might live, it was so unnatural. I think now most of us have grown used to the idea.”

“Will I live?” I whispered. I did not feel at all confident in that conclusion.

He smiled. “You’ll live through this, at least. The fever has broken. All the savants agree that is a sign of imminent recovery.”

“I thought there was no recovery… from a blood poisoning.”

“Ah.” He seemed embarrassed. “There is an exception. A rare exception. Very rare. That it should be you here, now, well, it would not be unreasonable to conclude this game you’re playing is not entirely random.”

“Game?” I croaked, struggling to follow his conversation.

“A figure of speech. I meant this contest you are engaged in with the traveler.”

“The traveler? That is the name Nuanez Li used.”

“That is the name he is known by in the Iraliad. I am told you call him Kaphiri, though where he came by that name I cannot say. He is old, older even than I am—far older!—though he does not look it. How I would love to know what he knows of the silver!” The old man’s eyes twinkled. “Though I don’t think I would survive that interview.

“But I am forgetting my duty. Maya put me to watch over you. Watching is what I do best these days. I don’t sleep much.”

His beautiful hands had lain so still in his lap I’d begun to wonder if he was somehow damaged and could not move them, but now he stirred, opening a compartment in the arm of his chair and removing a small device that proved to be a voice phone. “Hello, Maya,” he said, with droll amusement in his voice. “Yes, she has wakened. Soup would be in order, I think, and the company of anxious friends. Nay, of course I am not talking too much. What a preposterous suggestion!”

His name was Emil, and in the short time I spent in his company I grew to love him. He was the oldest in a household of scholars who had come to live in the remote Temple of the Sisters so that they might study the silver without risking harm to anyone else. His companions had been gone to Tibbett, just as Maya had said, but they’d returned the previous evening, bringing life to the silent household. Emil reported that they were very interested in all of us, and Liam and Udondi had been made to tell their stories many times, and had been closely questioned. “You can be sure the eager young vultures want to question you too! But for today at least, I guard the door.”