Linda Nagata - Memory

Never before had Kaphiri imagined it possible to ride the silver. It was a talent he wanted for himself.

“I asked him to help me find my home,” Jolly said, “but he had never heard of Kavasphir. So we went to a temple in high mountains where he kept his home.

“He told me that silver once was rare, and in those days people were less afraid of the mountains. Many temples had been built in the high places then, and people would come deliberately to see the silver. All those temples are gone now, except the one where Kaphiri lives, and almost no one comes there because they’re afraid of the silver. But there was another player who lived there, a woman who kept the temple for him.”

“And was she his wife?” I wanted to hear that she was, for then I would not have to suspect myself.

“He has no wife,” Jolly said. “He told me he was a cessant, and Mari—she who keeps the house for him—she is a cessant too.”

“Mari?” I asked, startled.

“Yes. Why? Have you heard of her?”

“I think I have.” The wife of Nuanez Li had been named Mari, and she had gone off with the traveler, seeking to restore her youth. How long ago? I could not guess.

“Tell me more,” I said, “and I’ll tell you my story later.”

Jolly nodded. “Mari was an old woman. Very old. She wouldn’t tell me how she’d come to be so high in the mountains, but she was afraid of the silver. She would never step outside the temple walls, even when the sun was bright. So she was trapped there, a prisoner.

“She was always good to me though, and she never became angry. Still she must have been lonely when Kaphiri was away. I felt sorry for her. I wanted to find some way for her to escape. It wasn’t Kaphiri that held her prisoner, you understand? It was the silver. So I hunted around the temple, wandering for miles, and made a map of all the wild kobold wells I could find.”

He frowned, and his voice grew even softer. “I was afraid of the silver too. Kaphiri could find his way through it, but I could not. Not when he wasn’t there. I needed him. I needed something solid to follow. I knew if I went back into the silver alone I would get lost again… and we were so high in the mountains there was no way I could walk out in the few hours the silver was away. Maybe, if I could move from wild well to wild well…”

He shook his head. “Mari didn’t want to go. Kaphiri had been away for many days, but as soon as he returned she told him what I was planning. It made him angry. Whenever he was angry I would stay in my room, or if the sun was bright I’d go walking in the forest. But when Mari told him I’d been looking for a way out of the mountains he went crazy.”

Jolly’s voice dropped again until it was no more than a whisper. “He hit me.” His hand rose, to touch the side of his head. “It made me dizzy and sick. It was night, and he took me outside, up onto the temple wall.

“That temple was on a cliff above a steep canyon. On afternoons when the sun was bright you could see to the canyon bottom where a thread of white water ran through forest, but most of the time there was only silver below us. That night the silver filled the canyon, flowing downhill like a wide, slow river just beneath our feet. Kaphiri said he would throw me into it.”

My brother’s eyes were haunted. He gazed at his hands, but he saw other things. “I didn’t want to be lost again!”

“Jolly, it’s all right.”

“I was afraid.”

“It’s all right,” I said again, but neither of us believed it.

“After that he brought other players to the temple.” His voice took on a note of bitter triumph. “He guided them between wild wells! I learned that after—that he stole the idea from me. He had threatened to throw me into the silver, but after that night he was afraid I would jump, so he brought some of his cessants to watch over me.”

Kaphiri had found a treasure in Jolly and he was not about to give it up. “All of us, we are like the kobolds,” Jolly said. “We all have configuration codes. That’s what I learned from Kaphiri.” He looked me hard in the eye as he said this, as if daring me to argue. I did.

“Jolly, players don’t have configuration codes. He was lying to you. We’re not mechanics.”

Jolly laughed—a cold laugh that frightened me because it reminded me of another. “You think you know.” He jumped up then, and paced the room. Ficer watched him, propped up on one elbow. Jolly said, “Kaphiri knows more about how we are made than anyone else alive. Our configuration codes are hidden deep in our blood, in our cells, but they exist. Kaphiri studied the codes in my blood, the codes that made me . Then he copied the pattern as best he could, adjusting the codes in his own blood.”

In his blood? I was aware suddenly of my heart beating. Kaphiri’s blood had crossed with mine and now I was changed, as if some part of me had been rewritten…

Jolly said, “He learned to move through the silver as I do. He went to many far places, while I stayed in the temple with the cessants he’d brought to watch me. They were afraid of him, but they loved him. They wanted to be like him. Sometimes… I wanted to be like him too.”

I nodded. There is an attraction in power. It’s why a son wants to be like his father, or a daughter like her mother who she sees as being in control of life. How much more powerful Kaphiri must have seemed than any father!

“At first, he would never tell me where he went, or what he did,” Jolly said. “But he would talk to the cessants, and when he was gone they would talk among themselves. I asked him if it was true, if he had brought the silver into enclaves where players still lived. He said it was true. It was his purpose.”

“He told me the same. It’s what he was born for.”

“He said I was born for it too.”

“No! You can’t believe him. That’s not true.”

But the look in Jolly’s eyes belied me. “You weren’t there,” he said. “You don’t know what happened.”

Dread stirred in my belly. I didn’t know, but I could guess. “You called the silver into the temple, didn’t you? Just like that night at Temple Huacho.”

His face grew taut, as if he were seeing again some terrible vision. “The cessants saw it coming. They tried to carry me to safety, but the silver caught them anyway.” There was grief in his voice, though his eyes were dry. “So I got away, but I still couldn’t find my way home.”

“Youhave found your way.” I said it with conviction. “I’ll take you home, Jolly. I will.”

There was a distance in his eyes as he considered this. It was as if I’d become the child and he the adult with concerns I could not even conceive. “And what if he follows me there?”

I looked away. I didn’t want him to see my own fear.

“He’s looking for me!” Jolly insisted. “You know he is. You said it yourself!”

Moki shrank from his side, troubled by his anger. I gathered the hound into my own lap, burying my fingers in his soft fur. “Why does he want you, Jolly? He’s already stolen your secrets. He’s learned to move through the silver—”

Jolly cut off my protests with a quick slice of his hand. “You can’t turn a metal-eating kobold into a temple guardian, can you?” he asked. His voice was soft and bitter. “Kaphiri made himself more like me, but he is not me. He can go where he wants in the silver, but he can’t see anything until he’s there. For him it’s like stepping through a door between rooms. The rooms might be thousands of miles apart, but it’s only one step for him. Only one step between the mountain temple and the enclave he would destroy. He can’t see anything in between. He’s blind to most of the world. Posses have gathered to attack his cessants, and he has never seen them. But I can see them. I can see it all. That’s why I get lost. Everything is there at once, and it all gets confused…”