The Paths of the Dead (Viscount of Adrilankha)

by Steven Brust

  And whither did it leap? Well, from the young gentleman, it went at once to his mission, wherefore, with that directness that so characteristic of the Tiassa, she said, “What is this mission upon which the young gentleman has left?”

  “As to that,” said Daro, “I have no knowledge, save that it involves the Enchantress of Dzur Mountain, and that Sethra Lavode considers it important.”

  “The Enchantress of Dzur Mountain!” cried Röaana, astonished.

  Daro smiled. “She was acquainted with my lord the Count before the Interregnum, and even, I believe, considered him a friend.”

  Röaana gasped, dumbfounded. In the meantime, the cook appeared, bringing a bottle of wine, which Daro caused to be opened and poured, after which she held up her glass and said, “Welcome, my dear.”

  Röaana managed to drink the wine, and to mumble a thank-you, though she had not quite recovered her composure from the shock of discovering that Sethra Lavode was not only real, but, moreover, was known to the very people with whom Röaana was now staying. At length, Röaana managed, “Did you ever meet her yourself, my lady?”

  “The Enchantress? Well, I was at court then, and Sethra was there also, and so our paths crossed briefly once or twice, but that is all.”

  “Upon my word, that is sufficient!”

  “You think so?” said Daro, smiling.

  “You must forgive me, madam, but, you perceive, this is outside of my experience, for I am from the duchies, where the Enchantress is a legend, not a reality.”

  “Yes, I understand that well enough. Think nothing of it.”

  At this time, the night-groom entered said, “My lady, our guest’s horse has been stabled, brushed, and fed. But what am I to do with her valise?”

  “Put it in the western-most of the rooms set aside for guests,” said Daro, “for the young lady will be giving us the pleasure of her company for some time.”

  “Yes, my lady. And, if I am permitted, I should like to extend my welcome to the lady who has done us the honor to visit us.”

  Röaana smiled a thanks at the servant, who bowed and departed.

  “To-morrow,” said Daro, “you will meet my lord Khaavren. Until then, as you say you are not hungry, perhaps you would care to rest.”

  “Indeed, my lady, I cannot deny that I long, above all, to sleep in a real bed.”

  “And so you shall, my dear. The cook will show you to your room, and I bid you a good night.”

  Chapter the Thirty-Third

  How Zerika Negotiated

  The Paths of the Dead

  We will now, at last, return to the noble Phoenix, Zerika, whom we last saw having jumped, horse and all, from Deathgate Falls. The reader may have observed that some time has passed; that is, we have brought our history forward since Zerika made what has been called “the Great Leap Into History.” During this time, it may be correct to say that Zerika was suspended, but it would be just as accurate to say that she has fallen behind, because it is well known that time, ordinarily so well behaved, moving forward at a rate of something like sixty seconds for each minute, sixty minutes for each hour, and thirty hours for each day, becomes bewildered in the strange region below Deathgate Falls, and begins to behave in a manner that defies all common sense, so that we would require it to come forward with an explanation for this behavior were there any practical means of enforcing such a decree.

  Put in simpler terms, this is what the reader ought to understand: Time behaves differently in the Paths of the Dead, and, as time is the mode in which history occurs (let the reader try for himself to imagine history without time if he wishes to understand this), there is, in the narration of events that occur within the Paths and have an effect outside of them, a necessary confusion that mirrors this peculiarity of time. We assure the reader that we will do our best to keep this confusion to a minimum, in the first place by not bringing up the matter again during the remainder of this chapter, as it has no effect on the matters we are presently endeavoring to describe.

  This understood, we will discover Zerika at the bottom of the waterfall, which towered above her for a distance she was unable to determine for the simple reason that the mist and the spray from the crashing waterfall clouded her vision. It was while she was considering this, and also attempting to wipe from her eyes the droplets that continued to fall into them, that it occurred to her that she had lived through the fall. Her next thought was, in fact, to wonder if she had lived through it; it was certainly possible that she was dead, and had come, as a dead person, to just the place that the dead go.

  “I feel as if I were alive,” she remarked to herself. “But then, having never been dead, I do not know what that feels like, and am thus unable to make a fair comparison. Well, we will make certain tests, so that at the end of them I will know that I am alive, or I will know that I am dead, or, in the worst (and, I must admit, most likely) case, I will be unable to tell and be forced to conclude that it doesn’t matter.”

  This decision taken, she made her first test by the simple expedient of standing up, only coming to the realization in this way that she had been lying in shallow water. Her next discovery was that, as a result, she was wet, not to mention cold. “Were I a disembodied soul,” she said to herself, “would I feel wet? It seems unlikely. But then, perhaps I would—the mind is capable of lying to itself to a remarkable degree, such as when we fancy we have observed an interested glance on the part of a young man we find attractive, or when we believe that our opponent in some game must have violated the rules, for otherwise we would have won. Well then, do I have a pulse? Yes, it seems that I do, inside of my elbow where it always resides. And, moreover, a remarkably rapid pulse at that. Once more, it is hardly conclusive, but an indication nevertheless.”

  It was only then that she noticed her horse, lying in the stream, and obviously quite dead. “Ah, poor Sparrow!” she sighed. “You were a good friend. Who knows, perhaps you saved me at the end; as I have no memory of my fall, and still less of the sudden stop that always follows a rapid descent, it is possible that I survived because you absorbed the impact for me.” Although, as she thought about it, it seemed unlikely that, even with her fall broken by the horse, she would have emerged without at least a certain number of bruises.

  With a last fond glance at her horse, she continued her inspection of the area. It did not take her long to discover that everywhere, on both banks, all up and down the river, were bones, all of them bare and white, and all of them scattered about, so that none could be seen to be the complete remains of anyone. It took Zerika no time at all to understand what they were or how they had come to this state. She glanced upward to see the giant jhereg circling overhead, and addressed them, saying, “Well, I hope I am truly alive, because to have my body eaten by you would be undignified, although it has been the fate of many who were better than I.”

  With this thought she shrugged, and said, “Now, to remember all of the lessons I was given. It would be a pity to have come all of this distance and through all of these trials only to have my mission fail when I became lost in the Paths simply because my memory did not perform as it should. Let us, then, concentrate, and try to remember.”

  With these stern instructions to herself given, she set to work to follow them, recalling everything the Book of the Phoenix had told her about the proper trails to follow, the dangers to avoid, and the obstacles to overcome. Her sharp, quick eyes looked around for the first landmark, and at once spotted a tree that grew as if it had been bent around a corner, with branches tapering away, save the topmost, which points in the direction to follow, as the book said. And, indeed, there it was; rather smaller than she had expected, but undeniably the tree, and there was no question of where it pointed. The edition of the book she had was amended with cautions that the leaves of the trees could be distracting, but not, evidently, in this season, as the branches were quite bare.

  Zerika wasted no time in setting her feet upon the path appointed. To be sure, it was not much
of a path; she had not gone three steps before she found that she could not go forward because of the thickness of the foliage that sprang up in front of her as if out of nowhere. “Well, it is certainly too soon to be stopped, I have hardly begun. Let us see how deep this is.” With these words, she plunged forward directly through the brush, which was difficult, but not impossible. For some time, the Phoenix was forced to continue on faith, hoping that she was continuing in the same direction as she had set out while looking for the next landmark. As she continued, wishing the book had been more precise about how long it was between signs, she quite naturally slowed her pace, worrying more with each step that she had gone in the wrong direction.

  At length, however, the dense brush cleared, and she discovered that she had come to a small brook, which she could have crossed in three steps without getting her ankles wet, and, with some relief, she stopped momentarily, before starting again abruptly upon recalling that stopping unnecessarily within the Paths was—at the very least—unlucky. Do not drink of the water, else your soul will slip into the brook and be carried away, she had been cautioned. She followed the advice without difficulty, but it did remind her that she was becoming thirsty. “Well, there is nothing to be done now,” she remarked to herself. The stone sticking up from the brook like a poniard menacing the sky was directly in front of her, just as it should have been. She crossed behind it. Then, looking back at the stream, she saw how the flow of the water past the obstruction created two branches, one of which indicated her next direction. She spent some time making certain she was properly in line with it, fixed her eye upon a landmark some distance ahead of her, and set off once more.

  For a while it was tricky, as the marks she had memorized came almost too quickly for her to remember: Step over the stone shaped like a terrapin; make for the place where the brush forms a vee; double back upon your own steps when you see blue flowers in your path, then look for a place where two animal tracks diverge, and cut between them, and so on. It was an exercise in memory, and, moreover, in precision, but it was what she had prepared for.

  She came to a pond, which was roughly circular, and a good thirty or thirty-five feet in diameter. The water was black and very still, and there she stopped, considering it. The book had said only, pass the pond neither to the right nor to the left, touching none of the water, and at no time stray from your path. “Well,” she said to herself. “Here is a pretty little problem. If I go around it, I will be straying from my path, and I can hardly go directly through it without getting at least my feet wet, and perhaps much more, for it looks like it may be deep. If I could leap thirty feet it would solve the problem, and certainly if I could fly I would at once do so. And yet, lacking both wings and material to create a bridge, I—but what is that? A vine? It is above me; can I swing over on it, trusting it not to break? And yet, it does not seem that the vine will reach sufficiently far, it merely goes up to—but stay, to that very branch that stretches over the pond. And on the other side, is there a way down? Well, yes, if I can negotiate from the end of that branch to the one of that tree upon the other side, well, it might be done, and that will certainly put me upon the other side of the pond without straying either to the right or the left, and without touching the water. It looks as if it might be possible. Come, let us attempt it at once.”

  Zerika took into her hand the vine, and, grasping it firmly, began to climb. While she had never before attempted such a maneuver, with vine or even with rope, she found it easy enough to achieve, owing, perhaps, to certain irregularities on the vine itself that provided purchase for her boots. Having arrived at the branch, some five or six feet over her head, she straddled it, and then made her precarious way across by shifting herself along it, until she found that her boot touched the lower branch of a tree upon the other side. The transfer to this branch was easy enough, and, once she was fully upon it, she contrived to hang from it with both hands so that, upon letting go, she had only a drop of four or five feet, which drop she managed without any harm.

  “Well,” she said, catching her breath. “That could have been worse. What will come next? I am now to listen, rather than watch, and, in doing so, I am to continue in the direction in which I was walking before the pond. Very well, we will walk, and we will listen.”

  She set off, and had hardly taken ten steps before she heard a scream, fat off to her right. Do not let the cries of lost souls take you from your path, nor the sight of those who suffer cause your eyes to stray. “Well,” she said. “All right, then.” She held herself still until she was confident she knew from what directions the cries came, then set off in the opposite direction. A little later, she caught fleeting glimpses of figures waving to her, or attempting to find their way through the Paths, but, as she was told, she ignored them. Some, she knew, would eventually reach the Halls of Judgment, others never would; but everyone’s path within the Paths was his own and she could not help them. She wondered how it was that any soul who came to these Paths without preparation ever reached the Halls of Judgment. Yet it was certain that many did. “Well,” she decided, “but they have eternity to make the attempt, and that is certainly a very long time. Indeed, from what I know, eternity is even longer than the amount of time it takes a servant to prepare one’s morning klava in a morning where one is forced to rise early after a night’s excess; and that is the longest time I know.”

  From this point, she continued for some distance in a straight line, her eyes fixed upon a spot in the distance in order to be certain she did not deviate from her path, which path, we should say, was as straight, clear, and as easy as any in that strange landscape where the bizarre was created out of improbable combinations of the mundane. As she walked, some of this appeared: it seemed that far ahead of her, directly on her route, something was stirring. She strained her eyes attempting to determine what it was, reminding herself that there should be nothing that directly threatened her, both because she was on her proper path, and, moreover, because she was living (she had, the reader may perceive, gradually come to the conclusion that she was, in fact, still alive, and proposed to operate under that assumption until she had good reason to reconsider it).

  She frowned, continued walking, and watched. It appeared to her that there were black specks on her path, and that, though she was still unable to determine precisely what they were, they were becoming larger. “Well now,” she said. “As I do not know what those specks represent, well, I cannot say if it is something that ought not to be growing larger. Yet it seems to me that it is just as likely, or, in fact, more likely, that they are remaining exactly the same size, but coming closer. But larger or closer, I certainly wish the book had thought to warn me about this; it seems to be a sufficiently significant event as to be worth two words. But then, if no action is called for, the book would say nothing; it is certainly as practical as a recipe book, and a touch of poetry would have done it no harm whatsoever.”

  The objects continued to grow, or to approach; Zerika continued to walk toward them because she had not yet found the next landmark which was to indicate that she should turn. In a short time, two things became apparent: first that the objects were weapons—in particular, swords and spears, which were all aimed at her; and second that they were, indeed, approaching, and at a furious speed. When she realized this, she very nearly ducked out of their way, and, upon realizing that this would be a mistake, very nearly stopped. “But,” she reflected, “I have been assured by Sethra Lavode that nothing within the Paths can harm me so long as I remain on the proper path, and, moreover, I am told that I must continue to move forward. Well, I will continue to move forward, and if I am punctured, well then—but there, they are gone; and while it looked as if several of them pierced me, at least it didn’t feel as if any of them did.

  “But I wonder what these Paths will throw at me next? I wonder as well when I will find the trees that form an arch, which is my next landmark. Now what is that? Another pond like the last one, only without a convenient vine
laid out for me. Ah, but is that a bridge across it? It seems to be very like a bridge, only thinner. What, now the Paths wish to know if I can walk across a two-inch wide plank without falling in? This place is insupportable. I will walk it then, holding my head steady and keeping my back straight, for that, along with slightly bent knees and arms slightly out from the body, is the secret to balance. There, I have walked across it. What next? It doesn’t matter, I will face it and overcome it with as much grace as I can muster.”

  She continued on, still with no sign of the arch she was looking for. The ground dropped slowly, and she was afraid she’d meet a swamp or a bog, but it continued to be dry enough, appearing to be a sort of valley, full of grass. “Well, it is easy enough to walk, at any rate. But I have never walked through so many different landscapes in such a short time. I cannot have gone two leagues, and I have seen jungle, forest, chaparral, marsh, rocky desert, and grassland. If I did not know this region was magical, well, I should at once deduce that it was enchanted. I wonder at who designed it. It must have been the gods. They sit upon their thrones, laughing and drinking wine, or whatever it is the gods drink, and planning out how to torment the poor souls who want nothing more than to reach the Halls of Judgment where, pah! where most of them are given purple robes anyway, and made to serve the dwellers for some period of time more or less prolonged. I think when my time comes I will leave instructions to permit my body to decay where it is, or be burned, and let my soul fly free into its next life. Yes, that is what I will do, or—what now? Are those trees I see ahead of me? Perhaps there will be two that form an arch, for, whatever direction this is—the directions I know are meaningless here—I am tired of it.”