Memory

Chapter 4

We were not quite at the top of the tower. There was one more floor above us, but the door to it was closed and sealed, and we did not have the proper tools or kobolds to take it down. So we returned to our room, where a cool breeze soughed through arched windows.

We shared a chilled water cell. Liam splashed some of the water on his face, leaving dark streaks of dust. “Do you want to go out again?” he asked.

We had at least two hours before sunset, but I was afraid to face the heat of the streets, so I shook my head. “It’s too hot. I’m going to rest.”

“Good. I feel the same.”

I looked out the window, at the sheets of rainbow light shimmering over the rooftops. “Anyway, it’s not like we’ve found anything.”

“Finding the square was something.” He pulled a sleeping bag from his saddle bin. “I wonder how old this city is? Ten thousand years? More?”

Who could say? History is deeper than anyone can measure, and as chaotic as the silver. The past is carried forward into the present, while the present is washed away, to be used again in some other age, or so it seemed to me.

“Let’s look around some more tomorrow,” I said. “We can stay until it gets hot. Then head for home.”

We inflated our sleeping bags and Liam fell asleep immediately, but my mind was restless. I lay staring at the blue sky, thinking about the square, and the tiny bodies suspended on ropes. My mind could not cease a lurid speculation on the details of life in an age without silver, or kobolds, or any temple to shelter them. I tried to imagine Fiaccomo as something more than a myth, but I could not. Players cannot pass through the silver unscathed, any more than they can breathe the salty water of the ocean. Living things never emerge from the luminous fogs.

After a while I sat up and gazed out the window again, but southeast this time, to the highway, where I thought I saw the gleam of a passing truck. It was late though, and no truck should have been on that part of the highway at such an hour, so perhaps it was only imagination.

It seemed a long time since we’d said good-bye to my father. I wondered where he was. And I wondered too about the boy, Yaphet Harorele, who I had never seen and never met and who was to be my lover. What was he doing now in faraway Vesarevi? What was he thinking? Would he approve of our expedition to this city? Or would he judge it a dangerous waste of time? I wondered, and before long I decided that the answer to such a question would reveal a lot about a person. Maybe, it would reveal everything that mattered.

Our savants had already been unpacked, their narrow wings unfolded and set adrift near the doorway. I beckoned to mine, signaling it to follow me around to the other side of the room, where the central pillar would lie between me and Liam.

I sat down on the floor next to the window, my elbow resting on the sill while the savant floated before me, awaiting instructions. “Are there messages?” I asked in a hushed voice, not wanting Liam to waken.

I was expecting only one message from my mother with Yaphet’s market address, but there was another, and that was from Yaphet himself. I immediately sent it to the savant’s mimic screen, intensely curious to know what he had written.

The message displayed in a formal script:

I smiled. It was a terse note, but it was one I might have written myself and I liked him—or the idea of him—better after reading it. I tapped the market address that was attached to the note, signaling my savant to find a link. That took some time, and I began to worry that the last channel had indeed gone down. Yaphet lived beyond the Plain of the Iraliad and the Reflection Mountains, all of it dangerous land where only a few relay antennas were maintained. If one crucial tower fell to the silver there might not be another link to Vesarevi for weeks to come.

I had nearly given up hope of getting through when the mimic screen flashed with a yellow warning placard. At least it wasn’t red! I leaned forward to read it:

I drew a deep breath. Five minutes. Maybe I wouldn’t want to talk to him longer than that anyway. I listened for Liam’s breathing, to be sure he was still asleep, then I tapped the placard. It minimized to a tiny clock in the mimic screen’s lower corner, counting down the time as a view opened onto a dimly lit room furnished in wood and dark colors. A young man was standing beside a night-black window, his figure half-hidden in shadow. Yaphet? I assumed it must be him. Stars blazed beyond him, bisected by the white shimmer of the Bow of Heaven rising up from the horizon. Yaphet turned. He approached me, and as he did a warm light from somewhere behind my point of view fell across him.

My mother had reported Yaphet to be pretty and I could not disagree. His build was lean, and that was attractive to me though he did not seem tall. I guessed he was no taller than me. He had thick black hair in a heavy braid down his back; unruly bangs; skin like toast. He wore a green shirt that was almost black, and a necklace of white beads that were probably pearls. All this I took in at a glance, before his eyes seized my attention. Deep blue they were, like the sky at sunset but hard, like a gem a kobold has made. Memory whispered through me, reechoing from the past lives we must have shared together, and I shivered, for I sensed an obsession in him, a dreadful vision that would own him.

I can safely say that Yaphet did not see anything so interesting in me. He studied me for several seconds, his so-serious eyes veneered darkly with distaste, until I remembered myself, my flushed and dirty face, my hair wound into dreads by wind and sweat. I had not washed, or even bothered to smooth my hair, and yet here I was, facing for the first time the boy who would likely be my life mate. It was an absurd introduction. Too absurd for me to do anything but tip my head back and laugh, gulping and gasping as softly as I could so as not to waken Liam.

“This is a wrong address, isn’t it?” Yaphet asked in a flat voice that did not hide his anger.

“No.” I ran my fingers over my tangled hair, suddenly afraid he would leave. I wiped at my sticky face with the back of my hand. “I’m Jubilee Huacho.” Maybe I should not have admitted it? “I’m not always this bad,” I added softly, listening for any sound of Liam stirring. Yaphet frowned and looked past me at the arched window and the sky beyond. “It’s still afternoon there.”

I nodded, remembering the night sky outside his window. The world is a ring that spins in the plane of the sun and Yaphet was far to the east, so night came sooner for him.

“You’re high up, aren’t you?” he asked. “Are you at home?”

“No.” In a furtive voice, I told him about Liam and the city, the strange square and the painting, and our plans to spend the night here above the reach of any common silver flood. As I spoke I turned the savant to the window so Yaphet could see the city—it was a nice view, and the less time he spent looking at me, the better. That was my opinion.

He spoke too, telling me that in the market at Vesarevi there were respected historians who thought Fiaccomo might have been a real player. When our eyes met again he looked at me with more respect.

“Are you thinking of coming here?” he asked suddenly.

His bluntness caught me by surprise, and I blurted out an honest answer: “I don’t know. I—I’ve thought about it… but it’s happened so fast…”

Yaphet nodded. “I understand. I didn’t plan on finding a lover this soon. I’m sure you didn’t either.”

True enough. “At least you’re not an idiot,” I said with real gratitude—and that was the first time I saw him smile. It was only a little smile, one that might have gone unnoticed on anyone else, but I had already gathered that for Yaphet, smiles were rare.

“Only twenty seconds left,” he said. “Will you call me later?”

A glance at the clock showed he was right. “I’ll call tomorrow night, after I get home, if the channel’s still—” His image vanished, replaced by a yellow placard announcing our time was over.

At twilight Liam and I went out again. We wandered the empty streets for over an hour, marveling at the heat still radiating from the walls. It felt strange to be wandering about so close to nightfall, but this was our last chance to escape the tower before dawn. We stayed out longer than we should have, but we returned safely, with the stars blazing in a sky of deepest blue. I sat by an eastern window, watching the Bow of Heaven brighten and remembering how it had looked outside Yaphet’s window. It was brilliant tonight: a narrow, gossamer bridge of white light rising from the horizon to the zenith, passing out of sight beyond the tower’s roof.

“I haven’t seen the Bow so bright in at least a year,” Liam said as he sat down beside me, with a couple of ration packs in hand for our dinner. He asked his savant to give us some light, and we talked together, about anything but Yaphet. Then I called my mother to let her know we were well and sometime after that I fell asleep.

I awoke in the night with the feeling of being watched.

We had left our savants on alert, one by the door, and one set to slowly circle around the room. Neither had called an alarm, and yet somehow I knew we were no longer alone in our tower room. I lay in my sleeping bag, staring wide-eyed at arched shadows cast by starlight against the chamber’s smooth inner wall. Why was every surface in this ancient city so clean, so perfect? Was it possible that some unseen curator had accompanied the ruins down through time?

Liam breathed beside me and from far overhead a passing night bird called an eerie song but nothing else stirred. Nothing I could directly sense, yet my feeling of unease did not go away. After a few minutes I sat up, and leaning on the windowsill, I looked out at the city. It gleamed faintly under the press of starlight like a diaphanous, half-imagined thing. A city of mist that might disintegrate on the least breeze. I searched the streets for silver, but I could see none.

A puff of warm air brushed my ear, like a breath. I whirled around to face the room, sure I had heard a whisper, a question that was a single word, though the language was not one I knew.

But the room was as it had been. The only sound was Liam’s soft breathing.

I slipped out of my sleeping bag and I searched the chamber. I examined the walls and the ceiling on the chance that there might be a lens or a hidden doorway. In this way I circled the entire chamber before I finally saw it: a shape on the inside wall, a white shadow, barely brighter than the wall itself. It was almost human in outline, though the legs were too long and slim, the waist too narrow. It looked like a lithe woman in caricature, though she was only four feet tall. The gleam of her disappeared if I looked at her directly. I could see her only when I turned my head and looked from the corner of my eye, but when I did that I could clearly see she was gazing down at Liam.

I shivered, and nudged him gently with my toe. “Liam.” Then I called his name louder, “Liam!”

He woke suddenly, raising himself on an elbow. “Jubilee? What…?”

“Look at that wall before you. Do you see anything there?”

For a moment I feared the shape was only in my imagination, or at most a stain that marked the place where a picture had once hung. But then Liam’s gaze fixed on it. He shoved off his sleeping bag and got to his feet, padding past me to the wall. He touched the shape, his fingers following the line of its petite shoulder. It shifted away from his hand, and vanished.

“Liam!”

“It’s all right, Jubilee.”

Of course it was. I let go a slow breath. “Deep silver, that scared me.” I tried to laugh. “These must be mimic walls, partly recharging in the day’s heat, and playing some old program—”

“No, that’s not it.” He gestured to his savant, and it drew near. “Give us some light,” he ordered. It lit slowly, casting a warm glow through the room. Liam ran his fingers through his chestnut hair. “What woke you?” he asked.

“I thought I heard a… whisper. A question.” I had felt a warm breath.

“It was a bogy.” He brushed the wall where the shape had been, stroking it with his fingertips as if seeking out some secret message encoded in its texture. “Come out, little one,” he crooned. “You have something to say. So show yourself.”

“Liam, what’s a bogy?”

“A mechanic.”

An artificial creature. “Like a savant?” I asked.

“No. Nothing like that. More like a watcher. A place spirit. Some are horrible. Many are very beautiful. But they’re not alive, so sometimes they get returned by the silver… and it’s said some players made them for just that purpose—to hold the memory of a favorite place, when it seemed sure the silver would take it.

“But from all I’ve heard most have a darker nature, guardians created to keep intruders away or to complete some unwholesome task their owners left unfinished.”

I caught a flash of motion to the left and turned. Liam followed my gaze.

There she was—and no faint shadow this time. She had gained definition in the light, and as her tiny hand moved, her fingers—so strangely long and slender—emerged from the wall like fingers breaking the surface of water. Liam stepped in front of me. “Stand away,” he warned. “It’s coming out.”

The hand reached from the suddenly fluid wall as if it were pushing a curtain aside. Then the creature leaned forward, and a delicate woman’s face peered into the room. Her gaze settled on us as she stepped forth onto the floor.

She was as white as the walls, with eyes that were saved by a small film of iridescence from being as white and blind as a statue’s. Her hair was sculpted and fixed in an upswept coiffure. Her body was sculpted too, appearing white and unshadowed and terribly slender as she slipped free of the wall. But she was no starveling: no bones showed through her skin, though nothing else was hidden. She was nude, with long, long legs in no human proportion and small breasts and a sculpted patch of white pubic hair. She smiled coquettishly at Liam. Then she whispered a syllable, the same syllable I had heard before, and again I felt the warmth of her breath.

“Do you know that word?” Liam asked.

I shook my head. The wall behind her looked intact, as if it had given up nothing of its structure. I wanted to knock against it to see if it was still solid, but Liam raised his arm protectively in front of me as if this little mechanic might be a threat. So I went instead to fetch my savant.

There are people who claim to remember the details of their past lives: who they were, what they did, where they lived, and who they loved and hated. Perhaps their claims are true, but I had no such specific memories. The best evidence of my past was a knack for ancient languages. There were nine I could speak and understand in full, and several more in pieces. All of them had come to me easily the first time I heard them spoken, so I can only think they were languages I had used in other lives. I was sure many others still lay undiscovered in my mind, and I hoped to find one that night.

I retrieved my savant from its post at the door. Then I turned to the bogy, and in our own language I asked her, “Can you understand any of the words we say?”

She fixed me with her iridescent eyes, answering in a strange, harsh tongue. I didn’t recognize any of her words, and neither did my savant. So I switched to another language, and repeated my question, and when that didn’t work I switched to another. That was the charm. The bogy drew back in startled surprise. Then she spoke: not in the language I had just used, but in one somewhat similar.

It was as if a channel had come into focus. Her words suddenly made sense within my mind. She had asked: “Do you know this one?”

I did. It was an archaic language, one I had learned from my savant, so old that its origin had been forgotten even in the time of that ancient sage. “Yes,” I said. “I know this tongue.”

The bogy drew herself up. Though she was scarcely four feet tall, she somehow contrived to look down on me with a haughty gaze. “It is a slave’s language.”

I turned a puzzled frown on my savant. “What is this word?”

In its cultured voice the savant explained the meaning of “slave.”

Liam’s expression became grim. “Translate for me,” he said.

I nodded at my savant to convey the order. Then I turned back to the bogy, and speaking her “slave language” in a tone that was none-too-friendly, I said, “You are from a time very long ago. Much has changed in the world.”

She paid no attention to my words. Instead she listened as my savant whispered its translation to Liam. I had no doubt she understood the implication, for she turned to Liam with a crafty smile. “Your slave has been plotting against you.” With a nod of her head she indicated me, while the savant dutifully provided Liam with a translation. “She has been in contact with another slave. Punish her now, and perhaps she can be made to serve properly. If you do not take a strong hand, you will surely have to kill her in the end.”

I knew at once that she was referring to my conversation with Yaphet, and I felt a surge of guilt for it was true that I hadn’t mentioned it to Liam.

He glared at the bogy. His face had taken on a dark, rosy flush. His hands were clenched in tight fists and I couldn’t tell if he was about to erupt in fury or in laughter.

“I was talking to Yaphet,” I said quickly, feeling an irrational need to make this confession. “While you were asleep.”

His gaze shifted to me. “Were you?” His voice sounded strained. A smile flitted around his mouth, then disappeared. “Best you behave, Jubilee. Your daddy might not like it if I had to do you harm.” He winked at me. Then he turned to the bogy and spoke to it, while my savant translated his words into the “slave’s tongue.” “You came here to tell me something, didn’t you, little one?”

“Your words are not polluted by this slave’s dialect.”

Quickly I asked, “How would you say that in your own tongue?”

I didn’t expect the bogy to respond. She obviously thought me beneath her notice, so I was surprised when she spoke her language again, though she addressed her words to Liam, not to me. I repeated her strange words, speaking them softly to myself and immediately I felt a resonance deep in my mind. Liam watched me expectantly. “I think I have it in memory,” I told him, “but I need more words.”

Liam got them for me. He questioned the bogy, commanding her to respond first in the slave’s language, and then to repeat the same thing in the master’s dialect, and to my surprise she obeyed, though when I remarked on this, Liam only shrugged. “Calling bogies is a talent of mine. This is the fifth one I’ve seen.”

“You never mentioned it before.”

“It’s not a talent I would have chosen. They’re mostly wicked things, left behind to guard a place or perform a task too distasteful for true players.”

That was certainly true of this one. We learned she was a persona based on the ancient queen of this city, though I think she was only a shallow reflection of that evil, without much wisdom or cunning. Despite what I had told her, she believed that only a few days had passed since the silver had drifted over her city. She thought she knew Liam as one of her warlords. This angered him. None of us can be held responsible for our past lives, but it’s never pleasant to think of the evil we might have done. She told us that the aristocracy of this city had been supplemented with children who fell within a certain genetic range. They were taken from their slave mothers and made into warriors. Liam was of this class.

But what did it mean that I was quickly learning to speak the language of such a people?

The bogy believed it was Fiaccomo himself who had brought the silver into this city.

All that last week before the silver came there had been public executions of his followers. On the final evening, as the executions progressed, a report arrived from a scout in the hills north of the city. Fiaccomo had been seen. Warriors were sent after him in flying machines—

(Flying machines! I could hardly contain my surprise. Flying machines were like tinder made to ignite a silver storm. Any mechanical device rising into the atmosphere could not go long without attracting an outburst of silver, even in the bright light of noon. But the bogy spoke of flying machines as if they were common devices, and safe.)

The warriors searched until full dark, when all communication with them abruptly failed. Minutes later the silver was sighted, flowing out of the northern hills and down onto the plain. The queen’s anger reverberated in the bogy’s fierce voice: “It was Fiaccomo who stirred up this legendary weapon against us, dredging it up from the dead past. We had no defense. Those who mattered escaped in flying machines, but the slaves—Fiaccomo’s own people—they all succumbed. I heard them screaming in the streets below and then a silence.

“But it was not over. Trespassers had gotten into the tower. They crept up the stairs, to this very room, but their insolence did not save them. The silver rose, flooding my windows, floor by floor, until it rolled into this chamber. How they screamed! And well deserved it was, for trespassing in my private rooms.

“The fog lingered for an hour or so past dawn. No one remained when it finally went away. That was nine days ago. Fiaccomo thought he could destroy us with this ancient curse, but now you have come back. Have you found Fiaccomo? Is it time for our counterattack?”

Liam’s face was more grim than I had ever seen it. “There will be no counterattack, little one. Not ever. This city is dead and you are a powerless ghost, and I hope you vanish into the silver again, and for all time. Now begone.”

Her face contorted in fury at his words, but somehow she could not disobey him. She stumbled sideways, toward the central wall, thrusting a hand out to keep from falling. “You will hang too,” she growled. “Traitor.”

“Go!” Liam shouted. “Vanish!”

And she did. Her substance flowed back into the wall until not even a shadow of her remained… except the shadow she had left on our minds. I could hear her voice speaking in its master’s tongue the death sentences of hundreds and it made me dizzy. My head buzzed and I sat down before I could fall.

“Jubilee, are you all right?”

Next thing I knew Liam was crouched beside me with his arm around my shoulders. My skin felt clammy and I didn’t know how to answer. “Is it dawn?” I whispered.

“It’s close enough.”

“Then let’s go home.”

We packed our things as quickly as we could and we left that city when the sun’s light was only a glimmer in the east.