by Linda Nagata
“Neither would I,” Liam said darkly. “There’s no shelter from the silver there.”
Kedato nodded. His smile returned. “Well. You’re young, Jubilee. Too young, your mother says, and she’s right. We won’t allow you to go. Not now. And the boy’s father …” Kedato hesitated, a flush warming his dark cheeks. “Well, apparently the boy’s father is unwilling to let him travel at all. He has only this child—”
“Only one child?” I interrupted. I had never heard of any family with only one child.
“It’s what we were told. The mother is deceased. Some kind of accident, not long after the boy was born.”
“You mean after Yaphet was born,” Liam said, startling me with the sullen anger in his voice. “His name is Yaphet.”
Kedato looked at him, his expression carefully neutral. “You are happy for us, Liam?”
I felt my cheeks heat, and I did not want to be sitting between them just then. But Liam answered as he should. “Yes. Of course.”
“You’ll find your lover,” Kedato told him. “It’s only a matter of time.”
Liam turned to stare out the side window. I looked at the road ahead, conscious of his stiff back and my own fear.
My father was puzzled by our gloomy moods. “This is something to celebrate!” he insisted. “You should both come into Xahiclan with me. Jubilee? You’re a woman now. Come. Have fun.”
But Liam was already shaking his head, and I … Though I didn’t want to make my father unhappy, I could not bear the thought of facing the crowds in Xahiclan, and my father telling everyone I had a lover and the endless grins and the congratulations because I had won a boy I didn’t want and had never seen before. “I think … I think I need time to settle my mind, Daddy. Besides, I really did want to see these ruins before anyone else.”
Kedato chuckled. “You look as worried as your mother.” Then he squeezed my hand. “You’re a lucky girl, Jubilee. So lucky. I hope you know that.”
“I do.” Then I kissed his smooth cheek, and everything was right between us.
As we topped out on the plateau, the ruins came into view for the first time, and we all got out to look. The site was still many miles away across a rolling grassland, but there was no mistaking it. “Look at that!” my father exclaimed. “It’s an actual city.”
There was no other word for it. Standing on the bumper of the truck, I could see hundreds of low white buildings surrounding two white towers that thrust their spires up above the shimmering heat waves of midafternoon. Even Xahiclan was not two-thirds this size.
“Now I wish I was going with you.” Kedato said. “I’ve never heard of the silver returning a ruin so large.”
“So stay,” I urged him, suddenly aware we would not have many more years together.
“I can’t. There are shipments to make, and appointments to keep. Reputation is everything.”
Liam was rolling his bike down the ramp at the back of the truck. “So if there’s anything worth looking at, we’ll all three return here, as soon as you get back.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what we’ll do. You’ll come, won’t you, Dad?”
“Of course.” He put his arm around my shoulder. Liam had returned to the truck to get my bike. “I’ll miss you when you finally go, Jubilee.”
“Dad! I’m not going yet.”
“You’d better not.” We hugged. Then he spoke softly, so that Liam couldn’t overhear. “Your mother will send you Yaphet’s market address. He has yours. It’s only fair.”
I nodded. Then he was back in the truck, waving good-bye and ordering us to be careful. “I’ll be home in a week,” he promised, and I believed him, though I’ve learned since that promises are not always possible to keep.
Chapter 3
“Liam, are you angry?”
He was astride his bike, his sunglasses on so I couldn’t see his eyes.
He shrugged. “So. Maybe a little.” We had talked of wayfaring together when he was ready to return to the road. Now he would have to go on alone.
The afternoon was hot and still. There were no clouds, and the sky had been baked to a pale, pale blue. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” I said. “I don’t think I’m ready.”
“Don’t you dare complain, Jubilee. You’ve won the prize.”
So I had.
I looked out across the rolling plain of grass to the distant city shimmering in the heat. “I’ve never been anywhere, Liam. I’ve never done anything.”
“So go visit him. Go to live with him! That journey should give you all the adventure you’ll ever want.”
“I wish the matchmaker had found a lover for you instead.”
He sighed. “So maybe I’ll go with you when the time comes. Maybe there’ll even be someone there for me, and you and I, we’ll live close together. Kedato’s right, Jubilee. You have a lot of luck about you. Do you think it could stretch that far?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.” It was a strange kind of luck I had; a kind that didn’t make me happy.
“Come on,” Liam said. “Let’s get going. It’s later than I like.” He nodded toward the city. “If those towers are accessible, we can stay in them tonight. But if not, it’s going to be a long run to Olino Mesa.”
I nodded. We would need to be in some kind of sanctuary by nightfall, in case the silver should rise. High ground was safest. If we could get into one of the towers we could camp on an upper floor, where we’d be beyond the reach of all but the worst silver storms. But if the towers were closed to us, we’d have to cross a hundred miles of wilderness to reach Olino Mesa, the only significant eminence on the plateau. Of course, even if we were forced to camp on the plain, the odds favored us, for in this country the silver still came only an average of one night in ten. But when it’s your life being gambled, one in ten odds are not so good.
I climbed onto my bike, balanced it, then kicked up the stand. “I hope Yaphet stays home, and that I’m the one to do the traveling.”
Liam grinned. “Your mother knew you’d feel that way. It’s why she didn’t want to tell you about Yaphet.” He touched his ignition and his bike whispered to life, a soft purr of pumps. “I don’t know anything about this boy of yours, Jubilee, but I can tell you that no father of mine would have been able to keep me home if I found a lover like you.”
I blushed, then looked down, fumbling at the ignition switch to start my bike.
“Put your glasses on,” Liam said.
I did. Then, in a small voice, I whispered my greatest fear. “What if I hate him?”
“It won’t matter.”
“Liam! Don’t say that.”
He studied me a moment through his dark sunglasses. Then he turned back to the city. “It’ll be all right for you, Jubilee. Don’t worry. But it’s late. We need to go.”
The plateau was a softly undulating land, covered in crisp brown, waist-high grasses that hid the dry streambeds riddling its surface like cracks in the glaze of a dropped dinner plate. We followed the drainages when we could—that way at least we couldn’t fall into them—but the dry streams meandered in lazy paths while we knew our destination. So we spent the better part of an hour stirring up clouds of dust as we slid in or climbed out of a chaos of shallow gullies. We disturbed a few rabbits and a small herd of ankle deer, but it was a blue hawk, drifting overhead, that marked our arrival at the city.
We stopped just short of a stark boundary. The grasslands of the plateau ran up against the gleaming white stone of low buildings separated by equally white streets that looked as if they had been sliced off from outlying neighborhoods by some great knife. Stark, brilliant white was the color of every surface, even the shingled rooftops, which caught the sunlight and split it apart, so that the buildings were haloed in a rainbow glow. Despite its weight, despite its great size—the city was larger by far than the enclaves of Halibury and Xahiclan together—it had about it a sense of impermanence as if it might melt in a rain, or crumble in a drying wind, or vanish o
vernight into another silver flood like the one that had created it. It made me think of some gigantic fancy of sugar crystal. I wondered if it might really be sugar, or salt. When we advanced to the city’s edge I tasted a wall, but it was not.
Many of the buildings looked as if they’d been reworked by silver, perhaps many times, before the whole city was finally taken. Their walls were melted, the white stone puddled in round lenses that sent dancing heat shimmers rising into the baking air. Liam looked grim as he surveyed the damage. “If the silver touched only the outlying buildings at first, then the residents might have had time to get away before the final flood came.”
That was the way history described the erosion of an enclave. A failing temple could not produce enough kobolds to ward off the silver. As the defensive perimeter thinned, silver would creep over the walls, licking first at the outlying buildings, then moving deeper into the city’s heart on each subsequent night. Only someone with a death wish would stay to meet it.
Our world had existed for thousands upon thousands of years. That was clear from the fragmented histories that had come down to us, but most of the past was lost, washed away by time and silver floods. Uncounted enclaves have vanished from the world and no one now remembers their names. I could not guess what city this might have been, or how long its memory had been preserved in the silver before it was finally rebuilt by the flood. Perhaps it had been swallowed up only yesterday, in some far land on the other side of the world. Or perhaps it had existed in an epoch recalled by no one for a thousand years.
I walked along the city’s perimeter, gazing down the narrow streets, each much like the one before it. Nothing moved among the buildings that I could see, not even birds.
Choosing a street at random we entered the city, walking our bikes between ornate buildings three and four stories high, their arched windows sealed with panes of clear glass. Heat reflecting off the street and the buildings had sent the temperature soaring, even above the oppressive heat of the open plateau. It might have been a hundred ten degrees in that little street. Sweat shone on my bare arms and shoulders, and my sunglasses weren’t nearly dark enough.
We tried the doors on several buildings, but none of them could be opened. They were like decorative panels—imitation doors cast in the same pour of stone that had made the walls. We peered through the windows but saw only barren rooms. There was no furniture, no shelves, no art of any kind. No books. Each sealed room appeared empty and pristine. “As if no one ever lived here,” Liam muttered.
Then we found a building with double doors standing open. They were false doors like all the others, part of the solid block of the house so that they could not be swung shut, but at least we could get inside.
I entered, hoping the open doors would mean this house had a different history from all the rest, but I was disappointed. The rooms were as empty as those we’d seen through windows. We wandered the house, looking into every open room and climbing the stairs. All the walls, all the floors, and even the ceiling were made of the same white stone. The only other element was the glass in the windows, but the windows would not open. There were no plumbing fixtures, no panels for lights, no mechanism for electricity. The monotony was unsettling, as if we had stumbled onto a stage set being prepared for some terrible drama.
“There’s no point in doing a house-to-house,” Liam said, “if all the houses are like this.”
I nodded. Already I was hungering for some color other than white. “Let’s find the towers.” We needed to know if we could spend the night here, or if we would have to move on.
So we returned to the street, and rode swiftly for the city center.
The engines of our bikes made only a soft hum, and the sound of their tires was like the sound of gentle rain, but in that empty city even these slight noises reverberated like the carousing of vandals.
We rode for a mile, until our street ended suddenly at a wide square, at least two acres in size, surrounded on all sides by decaying buildings that must have once been beautiful. Most had wide stairs and columns and graceful balconies, but all of them were badly damaged. Many had collapsed roofs. Some had fallen walls that had spilled white rubble into the square, each fragment a perfect cube. But it wasn’t the buildings that commanded my attention.
At the center of the square was a working fountain. Thin jets of clear water rose from all around its edge, arching inward for a few feet before falling back to the pool in a splashing rainbow of light. In the center of this pool was a large circular platform raised a foot above the water. It was perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, and rising from its center was a white mast.
The mast was a gigantic structure. It dominated the square, reaching at least ten stories high, and I knew at once that this was the smaller tower we had seen from the highway. A cross pole branched from it at half its height, with arms as wide as the island platform. A second cross pole, half as wide, branched at right angles above the first, and two successively smaller spars split off near the top. White ropes trailed from these arms, their ends touching the stone like the broken strands of some abandoned spiderweb.
I could not imagine what purpose such a structure might serve. I tried to picture it as an antenna, but why give an antenna a position of such prominence in the city? Maybe it was to display banners? But it looked too massive, too powerfully built for that purpose. “Perhaps it’s a folly of the silver,” I said softly.
Liam shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it.” He squinted at the mast, like an artist bent on seeing a scene in its essential shapes. “I think I’ve seen something like this before … in a picture maybe.”
“I don’t like it. It gives me a bad feeling.”
“This whole city is a nasty place. Have you noticed we haven’t passed a single temple?”
I hadn’t noticed, but now that he mentioned it, I knew it was true. Temples have a distinctive architecture, with their sprawling walls and one-story structures. We’d seen nothing like that since entering the city. I nodded at the monstrosity in the square. “So what do you think this is?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like I should know.” He swung off his bike, kicked down the stand, then opened one of the compartments behind the seat. His savant was there, packed within the thin cushion of his sleeping bag. He took it out, unfolded its narrow wing, and released it. It drifted before him, its silver skin shimmering. “Find a match for this scene if you can,” Liam instructed it. Then he turned to me. “Let’s get out of the sun.”
We drank water and ate chocolate on a veranda held up by tall columns carved to resemble the trunks of royal palms. Our water supply was dwindling rapidly, so I took the filter and walked out into the sun again, filling all our empty water cells from the fountain. There was no wind at all to stir the air and the heat had become overwhelming. Actually frightening. I had never felt anything like it before and I dreaded returning to the narrow streets where the temperature was sure to be even higher. But we would have to move on soon. We needed to know if the second tower could offer us refuge for the night, or if we would have to make the long run to Olino Mesa.
Whether it was the heat or the anxiety this city wakened in me I cannot say, but as I returned to the veranda’s shade I was conscious of my heart fluttering in a weak and rapid beat like the heart of a frightened bird. Liam was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the veranda, studying the mimic screen of his savant. “Did you find something?” I asked as I collapsed beside him.
“Yes. I know where we are now.” He nodded at the screen.
I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and leaned forward. Displayed on his mimic screen was a ghastly painting. I could see the texture of the paint, so I knew it was not a true image, but that did little to assuage my horror. Pictured there was the very square where we found ourselves, but changed. The white buildings were all of dark gray stone. Thousands of people crowded the pavement, most of them men in uniforms of black and red. Black banners were draped from the balconies of the enc
ircling buildings, while black flags flew from the top of the mast and from the ends of its cross poles. The purpose of the mast was quite clear. At least a hundred tiny figures hung from the cross poles, suspended by black ropes tied about their necks. Their faces were covered, but their legs were shown in postures of kicking, twisting agony. All of them had their hands tied behind their backs.
“Mother of all!” I whispered, and turned away, wishing I had not looked, and that I didn’t know.
Liam cleared the mimic screen. “The painting is ancient. It’s supposed to be an illustration of the crusade of Fiaccomo.”
“Fiaccomo?” I knew that name. Everyone did, for Fiaccomo was a legendary figure.
It was said that in the beginning of the world the silver obeyed the will of players and all was paradise. Then the dark god came, and the goddess withdrew from the world to wage war against him. The silver vanished with her, and players were left without food or tools or clothing or the simplest pleasures, for all such things had come to them through the silver. Great armies formed to fight over what remained. Hunger and war were everywhere, and so many players died that none of those left could find a lover and there were no children. The world lay on the edge of ruin.
Fiaccomo had been trained as a warrior, but he loved life, and could not bear to see the world die. So he gathered about him brave players, and together they fought their way past the scavenging armies and ventured into the high mountains, where it was said traces of the goddess might still be found.
The goddess had won her victory over the dark god, but not without cost. The battle had left her wounded and delirious. When Fiaccomo’s entreaties caused her to turn her mind again to the world she was horrified to behold her beautiful land all in ruins and her beloved players sunk in wickedness and war. She came upon the band of heroes in a fury, and in the guise of a silver flood she swept all those good players away. Among them, only Fiaccomo kept his wits. Even as his mind dissolved in the silver, he whispered to the goddess all the desires of his heart, and his passion was so like hers that she loved him, and their minds entwined in a kind of lovemaking never known in the world before and never since, and in those moments of union Fiaccomo seized the creative power of the silver and dreamed the first kobolds into existence.