Sea of Silver Light (76 page)

His smile was gentle. "Is that bad?"

"Not always, no. But when I was just Fredericks, Orlando's shadow, another boy . . . I don't know. It was easier, somehow. I tried more things, I talked different." She laughed. "I swore more."

"Ah. And you have put your finger on it, Sam. That was one of the things that was troubling me."

Surprised, she tripped over a hummock and took a second to regain her footing. "You're troubled because I'm not swearing?"

"No. But wait—we are almost there. Soon you will see what I have been thinking."

Jongleur and Azador were sitting across the fire from each other, sullen and sleepy-eyed. The older man gave them a cold look as they approached. "So, after all your talk about necessity and danger, you find time to take a romantic walk? Very sweet!"

Sam felt her face grow hot and would have said something nasty, but !Xabbu touched her arm.

"There are many ways to solve problems," the small man said evenly. "But we need a new one, or we will still be here when this world melts around us."

Jongleur made a noise of disgust, "So it was a scouting expedition?"

"Of a sort." !Xabbu turned to Azador, who was watching blearily, perhaps regretting the absence of coffee in this meadow beyond the world. "I need to speak to you, Mr. Azador. I have some important questions to ask."

Something flickered behind his eyes, but he only waved his hand negligently. "Ask."

"Tell me again how you came here—how you reached the black mountain, then found yourself in this place."

Sam looked at !Xabbu, puzzled but trying not to show it, as Azador somewhat reluctantly reiterated the story of his arrival—following them into the maze in Demeter's temple, waking into pale nothingness to find the mountain gone.

"But I have been thinking," !Xabbu said abruptly as Azador neared the end of his story. "Thinking that we sat a long time on the side of the black mountain, arguing and talking, after we came through from Troy. Thinking that the gate was gone by the time we began to climb the trail. So how did you step through it without us seeing you?"

"Are you calling me a liar?" Azador half-rose, but sat down again when !Xabbu held up his hand in a calming gesture, as though the violent movement had been mostly bluff.

"Perhaps—but perhaps not." !Xabbu moved a few steps nearer, then seated himself beside the smoking remains of the campfire. Azador slid back a little. Sam found herself staring in fascination. What did !Xabbu know, or at least guess? Azador actually looked frightened. "I believe that you did follow us through," !Xabbu said, "and it could be you are telling what you remember—but I do not think it happened that way."

"Why are we wasting time on this trivia?" growled Jongleur.

"If you want to cross the river before this world disappears," !Xabbu said coolly, "I suggest you close your mouth."

As if the remark had been directed at him, Azador abruptly shut his own gaping jaw. "What are you saying?" he demanded after a moment. "That I am mad? That I don't know what the truth is? Or have you decided I am a simple liar after all?"

"How is it that you came through a gate that had closed, unless it opened again for you? How is it that you found your way off the mountain through all that gray nothing—something that for me needed all the tracking skill that my hunting people have learned in thousands of generations? How is it that you managed to push your raft upstream against the current to catch us? Most strange of all, why do you have clothes when the rest of us came here naked? What are the answers to any of these things if you have not been to this place before?" !Xabbu paused. "Whether you remember being here or not, that is another question."

"Yeah!" Sam said with dawning realization. "Scanbark! I didn't even think about that. He has clothes!"

"That is ridiculous!" Azador sputtered, but the haunted something was in his eyes again. "More sensible to call me a liar."

"If you like," !Xabbu said simply. "But there are other questions, too. Tell me of the Romany, Mr. Azador. Explain how you do not tell secrets to
gorgios
, as you told me before. How you and your Gypsy friends meet at Romany Fair, to pass stories and share information."

Now Azador truly did look befuddled, staring at the smaller man as though !Xabbu had started speaking in tongues. "What do you mean? I have never said any of those things to you—it was the girl who began this Gypsy nonsense."

Watching, Sam realized that her heart was beating painfully fast. Even Jongleur seemed stunned by what was going on.

!Xabbu shook his head. "No, Azador. You began it. In a prison cell, when I first met you. Then on a boat in a river in Kansas. Do you remember? You called me monkey-man, because I wore a baboon's body. . . ."

"You!" Azador leaped to his feet, sending the last embers of the fire in all directions. "You and your bitch of a friend—you stole my gold!" He lunged toward !Xabbu, who only took a step back.

"Stop!" Sam shrieked. She regretted the shrill, panicked sound, but not much. She yanked the haft and broken blade of Orlando's sword out of her waistband. "You touch him and I'll rip your guts out!"

"I will break your neck, girl," Azador snarled, but did not force the issue. Jongleur was on his feet now too, and for a moment they all stood frozen, a four-sided shape of mistrust.

"Before you do anything else," !Xabbu said, "tell me what we stole from you."

"My gold!" Azador shouted, but his face looked troubled, almost fearful. "My . . . gold."

"You do not remember what it was, do you?"

"I know you stole from me!"

!Xabbu shook his head. "We did not. We were separated by a failure of the system," he said as calmly as though Azador had not been glaring bloody murder at him, as though Sam were not standing with a broken sword in her hand leveled at the man's belly. "What do you truly remember? I think you have been here before, inside the so-called White Ocean. Can you not try to think? We are all in terrible danger."

Azador staggered back as though struck. His eyes wild, he waved his arms, then pointed at !Xabbu. "It is you—you are crazy! Azador is not crazy." He glared at Sam and her weapon, then at Jongleur. "All of you crazy!" A sob choked his words, "Not Azador!" He turned and ran limping out of the campsite, staggering across the meadow and up the slope of a low hill until he collapsed into the grass and lay there as if he had been shot.

"What have you done?" Jongleur demanded, but with little of his usual commanding tone.

"Saved us, perhaps. Go to him—I think he will not want either Sam or me to come near, but we need him."

Jongleur gaped as though !Xabbu, too, had thrown his arms in the air and begun to gibber. "Go to him. . . ?"

"Damn you, just go!" Sam shouted, waving the broken blade. "We were ready to leave you behind two days ago. Do something useful for a change!"

Jongleur appeared to consider several responses, but only turned his back on them and stalked off toward the fallen figure of Azador.

"That felt
good
!" said Sam. Her heart was still speeding.

"But Jongleur is an enemy that must be managed carefully," !Xabbu told her. "It is like handling a very poisonous snake—we should not tempt bad luck."

"How did you know? About Azador? And who is he?
What
is he?"

The confrontation over, !Xabbu seemed to shrink a little. "What Azador is, I cannot say for certain—not in a place as confusing as this network. But perhaps he is like the woman Ava we have all seen, or that boy that Jonas met—someone who drifts from world to world in this network, uncertain of his identity. Certainly he is not acting like the Azador I met before, who was very full of himself, too, but mostly cold and superior. And Jonas described an Azador who hardly spoke at all."

"You mean they're all different people?"

"I don't think so. But as I said, in this place, who knows?" !Xabbu seated himself beside the fire. "However, it is not who he is that is important now. Rather, it is where he has been."

"I don't understand."

!Xabbu gave her a weary grin. "Wait and see. Perhaps I will be correct again in my guesses and you will think me a very clever man. But if I am wrong, it will be less shameful if I have not bragged about what I think I can do. What comes next will be difficult."

"You seem different, too," Sam said suddenly. "I don't mean like a different person, but . . . but more confident."

"I have had time to listen to the ringing of the sun," he said. "Even though there is no sun here. To speak to the grandparent stars."

Sam shrugged. "I don't know what any of that means."

!Xabbu reached up and patted her arm. "It does not matter, Sam Fredericks. Now, let us see if we can work some magic on Mr. Azador."

"And what will you do if I don't cooperate?" Azador demanded. "Stab me with that sword?" He spoke with such an exaggerated tone of outrage that for a moment Sam could not help wondering if he might not be another stolen child hidden inside the shape of a grown man.

"It's tempting," she said quietly, but was quelled by !Xabbu's stern look.

"We will do nothing to you," the small man said. "We will simply go back to waiting for this world to disappear around us."

Jongleur stood a little apart, watching. He had regained his usual lizardlike reserve. Sam did not know what he had told the mustached man to bring him back, but she supposed she was grateful for it.

"I am in the hands of madmen," Azador said.

"That could be," !Xabbu replied. "But I promise no harm will come to you." He lifted his hand. "Give me your shirt."

Azador scowled, but stripped it off. !Xabbu took it and stood behind him, then rolled it and tied it around his eyes like a blindfold. "Can you see?"

"No, damn you, of course I can't!"

"It is important. Do not lie to me."

Azador waggled his head from side to side. "I can see nothing. If I break my leg, I will see the same happens to you, even if you gut me."

!Xabbu made a noise of irritation. "Nothing will happen. See, I will walk beside you, Sam on the other side. Come, Mr. Azador, you have said often enough that you are brave, resourceful. Why are you afraid to walk with your eyes covered?"

"I am not afraid. But the whole thing is stupid."

"Perhaps. Now the rest of us will be silent. We will walk beside the river. You will continue, please, until you feel it is a good place to cross."

Sam was puzzled but kept her peace. Even Jongleur appeared to be grudgingly interested in the experiment. They led Azador down to the last firm ground before the river-bank, then turned upstream.

They walked for a long time without talking, the quiet broken only by Azador's frustrated curses when he tripped on some unseen obstacle. In places the reed thickets grew so dense that they almost stumbled into the river; in other places the meadowlands stretched before them so openly that Sam felt her trust in !Xabbu's insights diminish. There was nothing but river and grass for as far as she could see. What difference would a man in a blindfold make?

After a while, Azador's reflexive grumbling began to die away. He moved like a sleepwalker now, walking stolidly forward, resting when the others rested, not even complaining when they wandered into mud. She heard him murmuring, but could not hear the words themselves.

Even the quality of his attention began to change as the first hour rolled into a second; a stillness came over him, and from time to time he stopped and tilted his head as though listening to something the others could not hear.

But by the time the light began to change, darkening just perceptibly as the middle of the day passed, they still had not found anything.

Look at us!
Sam thought. Her feet hurt. She was hot and sticky. She felt a strong urge to lie down and let whatever was going to happen just happen, and had only kept herself moving during the last hour out of loyalty to !Xabbu.
Azador's right—this is stupid. Four people stumbling along the river, looking for something when we already know its not here.

They were just making their way out of another whispering crowd of rushes when they saw the bridge.

Sam gasped. "But how. . . ? We've been here before! There wasn't . . . we didn't see. . . .
Dzang!
"

It was narrow, little more than a wall of piled stones with arch-shaped holes to let the river flow through, but it was wide enough for them all to walk across side by side. Most importantly of all, it stretched all the way to the meadows on the river's far bank—or seemed to, in any case: the other end of the bridge was obscured by low mists.

"You may uncover your eyes," !Xabbu told Azador.

Alone of them all, Azador showed no surprise, as though he had in some way seen the bridge already. Nevertheless, there was a frightened glint to his stare, and after a moment, he turned away. "I . . . I do not want to go there."

"We have no choice," !Xabbu said firmly. "Come. Lead us over."

Azador shook his head, but reluctantly moved toward the near end of the span. He hesitated for a moment before stepping up. !Xabbu followed him, then Sam and Jongleur. Sam marveled at the stony solidity of the thing—she knew they had passed this very spot only a day or so before, but no bridge had stood here.

Azador took a few steps, then stopped. "No," he said, his voice oddly distant. "First we . . . we must say something."

They all waited expectantly.

"Gray goose and gander,"

Azador murmured at last, his voice heavy with some emotion Sam could not decipher,

"Waft your wings together,

And carry the good king's daughter

Over the one-strand river."

After a moment he looked back at them, then stepped out onto the stone path above the glinting, slow-moving waters. Sam was disturbed to see that the man's eyes, hidden for so long, were now wet with tears.