Linda Nagata - Memory

“Yaphet is dead.”

“I know.”

“Where are the mechanics?”

She would not meet my gaze. “I thought he would come back this night,” she whispered.

Her words stirred a terrible suspicion. “What are you saying?”

“I thought he would come back this night,” she repeated, her voice faint, and hollow.

“Didyou remove the mechanics?”

A violent shaking seized her hands. She turned away, withdrawing into the shadows of the great room.

“You arranged it so he would die,” I whispered.

“He told me Nuanez was dead! Long dead.”

“But it’s Yaphet who’s been murdered!”

“I thought he would come back this night!”

“He will,” I said softly as a scheme took shape in my mind, a structure for my vengeance. “I will force him back.”

In the pocket of my field jacket I still carried the book Known Kobold Circles . I took it with me to the well room. Consulting its pages, I collected the same kinds of kobolds Jolly and I had gathered at Azure Mesa, and within an hour I had a kobold sphere. I put it into the pocket of my field jacket. Then I went to the kitchen, and took a knife from a drawer. In a closet I found a spool of thin rope, and I cut a section of that and took it with me to the courtyard. I set the sphere down on the tiles, at a point equally spaced between the temple and the wall. Then I sat back to wait, with Moki nestled at my side.

The night was quiet. No wind blew, nor did I hear any night birds. Overhead the Bow of Heaven gleamed faintly, while the silver cast up its luminous glow from beyond the walls. I remembered the statues we had seen in the sandy desert washes at the eastern foot of the Kalang, stony warriors waiting in silent ambush, and I felt a kinship with them, for a great patience had come over me.

Near midnight the sphere began to steam with a mist of silver, faint at first, but swiftly growing. I picked up Moki and stepped back a pace, but I did not try to flee.

I had translated the name of this kobold circle as ‘The mirror of the other self,’ but it was more a portal than a mirror, and it had almost brought Kaphiri to me once before.

I watched the silver rise in trembling threads that fused into a panel. Its texture teased my eyes, suggesting an endless depth, as if I looked across time as well as space; but if there was structure there, I could not see it. To my eyes it was only a vastness of possibility.

I should have been afraid, but my anger would not let any such benign emotion surface.

“My love,” I whispered, searching the silver panel for some shadow, some trembling of his presence. Even if he had withdrawn himself from the silver, the silver still existed inside him, just as it existed inside all of us. He could not escape my whispering voice. “My love, come home.”

In only a few minutes I found him. He appeared first as a distant smudge that grew quickly larger, until I could distinguish his dark garb, and his confused gaze as he turned to look over his shoulder.

He was not alone.

He had his hand in a raptor-grip on the shoulder of a smaller figure beside him, a wriggling figure that slipped free even as I watched, eluding Kaphiri’s clutching hand, to vanish into mist. “Jolly!”

I screamed his name, but he did not hear me. He was already gone. Safe into the silver, I hoped, but at the same time I reeled under another dark blow of despair, for Jolly had been with Liam and Udondi—and what hope could remain for them, if Kaphiri had come upon them in the desert?

Kaphiri heard me cry out. If he had been unsure of my identity, he knew it now. He turned toward me, and taking one long stride, he stepped through the panel and into the courtyard, almost before I was ready to meet him.

Almost.

I had made a loop at the end of my rope. As he stepped through, I charged him, and thrust the rope over his head and pulled it tight. He smelled of sweat and smoke.

Without air he panicked. His hands went to his throat; then he tried to pummel me, but I had slipped behind him. I pulled the rope tighter still, and he went to his knees. I was shifting my grip to finish the job when a small hand touched mine. “Jubilee! Please don’t kill him! Please don’t!”

I looked up, stunned to find Jolly beside me. “You found your way here.” My grip eased, and Kaphiri drew in a whistling breath.

Jolly nodded. The ha glittered brightly around his hands, his face, and in his hair. “I learned how to do it. Now please, let him live.”

My anger flooded back. “Why should I? Hasn’t he killed Liam too? And Udondi?”

“No! They’re alive. Kaphiri didn’t find us. It was me. Liam wanted me to stay at the Temple of the Sisters, but I couldn’t. I went into the silver, looking for him. Liam is alive. He’s coming south to find you. Jubilee, please. Let him live.”

I could not deny my brother. My grip eased, and Kaphiri coughed and fell forward onto the tiles. “Yaphet is dead,” I said.

Jolly blinked hard, and coughed himself.

I nudged Kaphiri with the toe of my boot. “And this one swears that Temple Huacho is gone from Kavasphir.”

“I’m sorry,” Jolly whispered.

“I am sorry too. But I am going to end it, Jolly. I am going to make sure I never face this choice again.”

He looked at me in confusion, and dread. “What do you mean? You were going to kill him… Jubilee, you aren’t going to let the flood come, are you?”

I felt incredulous at his question. “You ask me that? I am not him. And anyway, Kaphiri is only partly to blame for this.”

I crouched beside him. Guilt touched me as I listened to his wheezing as he struggled to draw air through his damaged throat, but I pretended I did not feel it. “You said you would call down the destruction of the silver if I asked. So, I am asking.”

“No!” Jolly cried. “She doesn’t mean it.”

Kaphiri raised his head, enough that I could see his eyes. “She means it,” he said in a rasping whisper.

“So do it. Destroy the silver.” I tightened my grip on his leash. “Or I will do it myself.”

“Why?” Jolly said. “Why do you want this?”

“Because he will not accompany me into the Cenotaph, and I cannot fend off the silver that boils from that pit. Not by myself. So let him tear away the veils and I will make my own way into the pit, and I will destroy whatever I find there.”

“How?” Kaphiri whispered.

I stared at him, offering no answer.

“But you… have… a means?”

I nodded.

“Then I’ll help you.”

“You will go into the pit? Tonight? And you will fend off the silver?”

He nodded. “If it will mean the end of a god, I will do anything.”

I tried to convince Jolly to stay behind at the temple, but he would not. “If you leave me, I will only follow you through the silver. You are so easy to see, now that yourha is awake.”

Kaphiri soon recovered enough that he could walk. I kept the leash on him. We crossed the courtyard, and climbed the stairs to the top of the wall.

Jolly had hurried ahead to the flying machine, but he came back. “Look down, Jubilee. There is a fire in the temple.”

I looked, to see red flames flickering behind the window nearest the well room. The fire spread with astounding speed, invading the kitchen, and then the great room. The doors flew open, and Mari stumbled out, embers smoking on her skirt. She turned back to look at the building. Then she looked up at us. “Your library will soon be gone!” she shouted. “I won’t keep your refuge anymore.”

But with the well destroyed, there would be no refuge for her either. “Come with us!” I called after her as she strode off across the courtyard. “We will fend off the silver as long as we can! Mari!”