Silver - Inverted Frontier Book 2 Read online

  “Beta and gamma continue to report as normal.”

  “Watch them,” he instructed, suspecting alpha probe had crossed a perimeter and been hit by a laser or some other defensive weaponry.

  For the next sixty days the telescope tracked the beta probe as it approached, and then passed beyond, alpha’s last known position. Both beta and gamma continued to function normally. Eventually, Urban concluded the first probe was probably a victim of accident rather than malice—damaged or destroyed in a random collision.

  The two surviving probes continued to converge on Verilotus, returning ever more detail on the ring-shaped world. For a body of its size, it rotated with astonishing speed: ten rotations for every day measured on a standard clock. Its shape was a lean torus, circular in cross section. Only the presence of an artificial gravity could explain how it kept its outer surface wrapped in atmosphere.

  That surface was startlingly Earth-like. The outward-facing half of the torus was mostly land, with diverse terrain: mountains, rolling hills, great rivers, grassy plains, stretches of desert, and to the north and south, long coastlines, ice-locked and arctic where the land extended into polar regions.

  The ring’s inner surface was ocean: a shallow light-blue sea flecked with bright-white floes of ice. A minor tilt in the ring’s orientation allowed the inner wall to receive a measure of sunlight each day. Although days there were short, the ocean did not freeze over.

  As the probes drew still closer to Verilotus, they sighted a large city. It stood in foothills at the edge of a desert, extending for over a hundred kilometers—the first visible indication of human habitation.

  But when additional images came in, Urban wondered if it was a city after all. The new images clearly showed glass towers closely packed across the rolling hills, some of dizzying height, but their arrangement was chaotic, many had fallen, and drifts of broken glass clogged the spaces between them. At night, the supposed city was dark.

  The probes also mapped thousands of small settlements, some with only one or two buildings, others with hundreds, but each settlement, regardless of size, was at least partly enclosed by a tall surrounding wall. Where the walls were incomplete, the probes detected no activity and observed no lights at night. Many of those with intact walls also appeared to be abandoned, but some were clearly occupied. Well-tended fields and orchards surrounded them, and lights came on each evening.

  There was another kind of light that could be seen at night. A strange silvery glow, separate from any settlement. It appeared in branching streams, sometimes in smooth lakes. Urban observed it frequently in mountains, in a few hilly areas, and in the desert near the ruins of the great city. In other places, it appeared only rarely or not at all.

  Eventually, the probes distinguished vehicles moving on a simple network of roads linking the active settlements.

  The DI mapped these roads. It counted the settlements. And it reported its conclusions to Urban: “The present population of this world appears to be very low, on the order of ten to twenty thousand, while the frequency of abandoned habitations indicates a higher population in the recent past, perhaps as high as one to two million.”

  If the DI was right, these people had endured a disastrous plunge in population. What had happened to them? And when?

  The probes looked for activity above the surface of Verilotus, but found none. No elevator column or satellites or space stations. They did pick up radio transmissions, but the DI could not unscramble them.

  How much did these people understand of the workings of their world? Urban had seen historical dramas set in societies where people held nonsensical beliefs, even fighting wars to defend them.

  He pondered what his best approach might be . . . but that would depend on how much time he had. He contemplated the madly spinning world—ten rotations in every twenty-four hours—and concluded this represented the ratio of time passing on Verilotus.

  It was not enough.

  Ten days to each one that passed on the outside did not give him time to insert himself into a strange society, learn its ways, and make use of its technological knowledge. Compounding the problem, his study of Verilotus left him with serious doubts about the extent of that technological knowledge.

  By this time, his observations had convinced him Verilotus was meant to be a beautiful world, a work of art, a tribute to the origin world of Earth that he knew only from history and dramas. But there was one feature on its surface that felt wrong, neither natural nor Earth-like.

  In the great desert adjacent to the ruined city, his probes observed a huge, steep-sided crater, eighty kilometers across, its flat floor sunk more than seven hundred meters deep in the desert’s ruddy-brown plain. The crater was rimmed in black slag shot through with veins of colored minerals: purple and rose-pink, pale green, and electric blue.

  Why would Lezuri create such a feature?

  Urban suspected he had not. The crater looked too much like a wound. A scar of war.

  War had erupted between Lezuri and his partner, his lover. It had been a conflict so violent, Lezuri barely survived it: She cast me away, shattering my mind with the force of her gesture. Lezuri had called her a goddess, but he did not know if she survived.

  Urban watched the strange silvery light of Verilotus illuminate that crater on many nights—far more often than anywhere else—and he couldn’t help thinking something was there. Something with secrets to tell.

  Chapter

  3

  We stopped where the highway crested a rise, my brother Jolly and me, some seventy miles from sanctuary at the Temple of the Sisters. We had seen no other traffic on the road all day.

  The engines of our off-road bikes hummed softly, just audible over the soughing of a wind still warm with the afternoon’s heat. That would change soon. In minutes the sun would be gone behind the distant plateau known as the Kalang Crescent, taking the day’s warmth with it. In the vast desert of the Iraliad, nights were always cold.

  I switched off my bike’s engine and lowered the kickstand. Jolly’s little dog, Moki, jumped down from where he rode in a bin between Jolly’s knees. We all walked to stretch our legs. Beside me, my long, distorted shadow mocked my young-woman’s figure as it flexed over the roadside’s tumbled stone.

  All around us lay the rough, reddish-brown mineral expanse of the Iraliad, an austere land of low ridges and steep gullies, supporting only pockets of brush and the occasional small tree. The ribbon of the white road ran through it, beneath a vast cloudless blue sky. Jolly and I had made excellent time on it all day. The last time I’d come this way, the road had not reached so far south.

  “I wonder how long the road will hold out?” I mused aloud. I did not believe it would take us all the way to the Temple of the Sisters.

  Jolly came to stand beside me, his sunglasses pushed up into his thick black hair and a water bottle in his hand. He was a handsome youth, not yet as tall as me, though I expected that within a year he would be.

  He half closed his eyes. “There will be silver tonight. I can feel it already, gathering under the ground.”

  I did not doubt him, though his words did not stir fear in me as they once would have. “If the road holds out we’ll get there well before the silver rises,” I said.

  He gave me a sideways look and a teasing smile. “And if not we’ll push on anyway. I know you’re in a hurry, Jubilee.”

  Indeed. It had been four long years since we’d said goodbye to my friend Emil and returned home from the Temple of the Sisters. And though I was still but twenty-one, Emil had been a very old man even then. Over the years I’d had a few messages from him, but none for some time, and I only hoped I would still find him there.

  We put on jackets against the coming cold and set off again, doing a fast forty miles through the gathering twilight before the road ran out.

  At its end we came across a black, vibrant, glittering carpet of road-building kobolds—thumb-sized, beetle-like mechanics working together to convert desert sa
nd and stone into concrete, extending the highway south. We rode around them, taking care not to crush any. We did not want to disturb their work.

  After that we made our own way, riding on the backs of low ridges when we could. If the land had not changed, we would eventually reach a wide basin, flat and smooth as any road. I had hoped to come to it before the silver rose and then to run fast the rest of the way to the Sisters. But night came too quickly.

  There is a special kind of silver existing in all players. We call it ha. In most players the ha is dormant; they don’t even know it exists. I didn’t know until four years ago, when my ha first awakened, but Jolly discovered it when he was still a child.

  When the ha becomes active it is visible, appearing as tiny sparks dancing across the hands, whether in sunlight or in darkness. That evening, as twilight deepened, our ha sparkled ever more brightly as if to compete with the light of gathering stars. The thin glittering arc of the Bow of Heaven was also emerging. Already bright in the east, it grew fainter as it reached the apex of the sky, and to the west its gleam was still lost amid twilight’s lingering glow. But full dark was not far off.

  Through my ha I sensed the silver’s imminent presence. I told myself I was not afraid. Still, my heart beat faster. I could feel the silver rising, feel it leaning against my awareness as if awaiting a command from me that I did not know how to give.

  I signaled to Jolly to stop again. “We can wait here,” I said when he pulled up beside me.

  He nodded. “It’s a good place.”

  We had reached the end of a low ridge, with dry washes to either side that were tributaries to a broader dry wash just ahead. All was still. No birds flew, and no breeze stirred the crisp night air. Moki chose to stay in his bin instead of climbing out as he usually did when we stopped. He looked around with pricked ears, anxious, his soft whine the only sound until Jolly comforted him with whispered words and a gentle touch.

  We watched the low ground.

  After a minute, it began. A faint silvery gleam in the sandy floor of the washes. Barely discernible. Brightening a moment later. For a fraction of a second there appeared to be a network of fine, glowing capillaries in the sand. Then that texture vanished as the silver flushed into existence, looking like a ground fog, but luminous, with a silvery light. It covered the floor of both washes. Only an inch deep at first but rising swiftly to knee height.

  Moki’s plaintive whine reflected my own quiet fear.

  Our world was created out of silver, but that was long ago. Since that time, the silver had become an incoherent and unpredictable force, capable of both creation and destruction. Within the veil of its gleaming fog, the nature and constitution of objects could change—a wooden door transformed to jade, a wall of plain gray stone decorated with ancient sigils etched in gold—or an object might be dissolved and taken away altogether, only to be replicated and rebuilt someplace else, in some future time. Or the silver might change nothing. There was no way to know. The only certainty was that any player or animal that came in contact with it would be consumed . . . unless their ha was awake. Then it was possible to fend off the silver.

  “That’s all,” Jolly said softly. “Not a deep flood this time.”

  I nodded. I too could sense through my ha that the silver would rise no higher. “Let’s go on then,” I said. “I want to see Emil . . . if he is still there.”

 

  I led the way down from the ridge toward the gully floor where the silver had gathered, with Jolly following behind me.

  Silver was heavy. If it chanced to arise on a slope, it would flow slowly downhill, pooling in low places. It was also active: swirling, flowing, filled with the restless memory of the world. As we drew near I saw currents of faintly greater or lesser luminescence running through it. Wisps arose from its surface and dissolved.

  It would dissolve me too if I touched it. So I leaned on it with my mind and pushed. Through my ha I could communicate my will, at least for this simple task. Directly in front of me and for several feet ahead, the silver responded to my command and rolled back, revealing the sandy floor of the broad wash, opening a path for us to ride.

  I rolled forward. The silver loomed knee-high on both sides of me as well as ahead. Its luminescence lit my path. I pushed and steadily extended that path—although not quickly.

  As I advanced, I took great care, eyeing the sandy ground, the scattered stones. A fall would be fatal if it led to contact with the silver. Jolly stayed close, fending off the silver behind us, allowing it to wash back across our path only after he had passed.

  In this way we crossed the wash and climbed again onto high ground where we were safe from the silver. But it was dark there, and the reach of my headlight was not enough to let me pick out a good path among the outcrops and deep cuts of that rough country. So I stopped again.

  Full night was on us, the charcoal sky packed with stars and bisected by the pale white gleam of the Bow of Heaven. All around us, ridges and plateaus rose in dark silhouette above a silver flood that gleamed in every wash.

  “I think we’ll go faster if we stay in the washes,” I told Jolly. Aware of my heart, quickening with nervous energy as I said it.

  He sensed my fear and asked, “Jubilee, do you want me to go first?”

  Jolly was not like other players. He’d been brought late into the game and the silver could not harm him. In some sense he was not a player at all, but was instead an element introduced to the world deliberately to bring the game back into balance.

  “I’ll go first for now,” I said, because even though I knew he was better at directing the silver, my fear would be less if I held it off myself.

  So we went down again, and again I opened a path through the silver. In that way, we went on for another hour.

  Then at last, as we climbed out of the silver and onto high ground again, I saw ahead of us a line of pinnacles—wind-sculpted towers of rock against a background of stars, deep black in the night except for the false stars glinting in the face of the central tower. Those were windows belonging to upper rooms in the Temple of the Sisters, a sanctuary long ago carved out of the living stone and inhabited now by scholars who studied the silver, among many other things.

  The first time I visited the Temple of the Sisters, we’d come from the west and the pinnacles had been visible for miles. Now Jolly and I approached from the north. The north-south curve of the world made for a short horizon so even though the pinnacles stood tall, by the time we saw them, we were nearly there.

 

  Most temples are surrounded by high walls constructed to keep the silver out, but the Temple of the Sisters had no outlying wall, relying only on the native rock of the pinnacle, with great double doors of black onyx guarding the ground-floor entrance.

  On that night there was nothing to guard against since the lofty pinnacles stood on high ground and were already well above the shallow silver flood.

  My heart beat with anxious speed as we rode up the last slope, past long rectangles of light cast by bright upper windows. I looked for Emil’s window and was encouraged to see a light there.

  We rode our bikes all the way up to the broad stoop. Sweet vapors exuded by temple kobolds scented the night air. From the windows above, there came a murmur of conversation, and faintly, a melancholy tune skillfully played on a guitar.

  I dropped my bike’s kickstand, dismounted, and approached the double doors. The brass knocker was cold and heavy. I hammered it three times. The conversation ceased. The guitar went silent. A rustle from above and then a voice, fearful and uncertain, but also one that I knew well: “Who is there?”

  I looked up. Saw her leaning out a window on the floor above: Maya Anyapah, the temple keeper. A stern woman, but honorable and not unkind.

  “It is me, Maya,” I said. My voice carried easily in the night’s stillness. “Jubilee, with my brother Jolly.”

  “Ah,” Maya sighed. “Of course it is you. Who else could it be? Who else could t
ravel at night despite the risen silver? Come inside. Come in. You should know there is no lock on our door.”

 

  We brought our bikes with us into the temple’s large ground-floor room, parking them on a strip of stone floor alongside other bikes. A carpet of intricate design covered the rest of the floor. Low couches and scattered pillows were grouped around the room to facilitate conversation. Translucent quartz ceiling panels emitted a soothing low light.

  No one was in sight, but I heard excited murmurings as the scholars descended the stairs or came from the kitchen to meet us. Maya appeared first. Moki ran to greet her, but I was right behind him.

  I am no small woman, but Maya was a full head taller than me, slim and hard as desert stone. Like the other scholars, she was dressed in the desert fashion of loose-fitting tunic and trousers. Her face was thin and sharp-featured, lined by time, and darkened to deep brown by the desert sun. Her long gray hair hung loosely bound over one shoulder. As we embraced, I whispered, “Emil?”

  Her soft chuckle banished my fear. “Emil has not left us yet,” she said. “And now that you are here, I think his curiosity will anchor him in this life long enough to see the next chapter of your story.”

  I needed no more encouragement than that. I called a swift hello to the other scholars and then, leaving Jolly to explain our arrival, I raced up the stairs to see Emil.

  His door stood partly open. I leaned inside, and there he was in his reclining chair, situated beside the tall window, with a light blanket spread across his lap and an open book resting atop it. He met my gaze with a pleased smile as if he’d been waiting for me to come, and here I was at last. But his first words belied this.

  “Ah, Jubilee,” he said in his low, soft, raspy voice. “I did not think to see you again in this life. Such a delight, to see you and to know this life still holds surprises.”