by Steven Brust
She took another step, and the ground shook beneath her feet. She stumbled, but did not fall from the path. “What was that?” she said to herself. “I was never told this would happen.” Another tremor quite nearly knock her from her feet, but she maintained her balance. “I wish,” she said, “that there were someone to glare at.” She took a few more tentative steps, and, as the ground remained firm, was beginning to feel confident once more when a pit, perhaps four feet wide and of unknown depth, opened up directly before her feet.
Zerika made one of those decisions that is half instinct, and half thought out, as a result of which decision she took one more step and allowed her knees to buckle, after which she leapt into the air, her leap taking her across the pit, and landed upon the other side hardly breaking step. After this feat, she still had the presence of mind, after careful consideration, to curse, which she did once, with considerable emotion.
She resumed her walk, then, glaring about her. “If I were in charge,” she remarked, “I should think it was enough to ask the poor soul to stand before me and be judged. I should not require it to go through such peregrinations to even arrive at the place of judgment. And suppose I were some poor pilgrim who managed to pass all of these absurd obstacles and tests and false trails, and then the gods were to judge me as unfit for any advancement, and they should sentence me to life as a norska or a kethna. How unfair! If they presume to judge, they ought to have at least built this place so that one can simply walk to the Halls of Judgment. It is a shame that my Empire, if it is established, does not extend to this region, or I swear by the gods who live here that I should tear it down and start over within a year of the beginning of my reign. There. I have said it, and if the gods should hear me, well, so much the better.”
Having expressed her displeasure with the universe, she turned her mind once more to her path, which led her to the very arch of trees she had been looking for, which discovery pleased her so much she nearly forgot that she was supposed to change direction before it, rather than after passing through it. She remembered in time, however, turned to the right, and continued on her way. It was not long before she found her way blocked again, this time by what seemed to be a boulder, at least twice her height, and laid directly across her path.
No matter that she didn’t wish to, she was forced to stop; and more than stop, to reflect. As she reflected, she observed; and observing, she saw; and seeing, she considered; and, after considering, she planned; and after planning, she moved several small stones in front of the boulder, and laid a log on top of these stones, which permitted her to ascend to the top of the boulder. Once there, she considered once more: this time, the question under consideration was how to get back down without injury.
“Well,” she decided, “I cannot safely jump, but perhaps I can slide.” She did this, and found herself in undignified safety on the path below the boulder. This was followed by a loud crack and the boulder split exactly in half, each part rolling away from the path behind her.
“Useless,” she muttered, “although, no doubt, significant in a mystical way that is beyond my mortal comprehension. Bah.”
She began walking once more, this time taking herself as far as a wide stream, almost a river, which did not, however, appear very deep. She glanced at it suspiciously, but, as she had not been given any other direction, resolved to pass directly through it, hoping to emerge with nothing more than wet feet.
She was brought up sharply by a second look at the river, which revealed two things to her quick eyes and agile mind: the first was that this was the Blood River, and that all of her laborious walking and ducking and jumping and climbing and twisting and turning had done nothing more than to bring her back to the river from which she had begun her walk, albeit some distance downriver, which fact could be deduced by the fact that Deathgate Falls was no longer in sight. The second was that this part of the river was full of corpses, in various states of decay.
It is not our intention, as will some of our brother historians, to dwell upon these decaying corpses, delighting in a discussion of grotesqueries; we are certain our readers can imagine the appearance, not to mention the odor of these bodies; and can imagine as well the effect upon our young Phoenix. By this time, however, she had no inclination to permit anything to interfere with her purpose; she took a deep breath through her mouth, held this breath within her lungs, and walked across the river, which was, in fact, at no time more than knee deep, though it was bitter cold. If her path took her over rotting corpses, well, soon enough she was upon the other side, breathing again, and there were only a few bleached bones there, which were quickly behind her.
“What next?” she said to herself. “Let us attempt to remember. Perhaps the greatest danger lies in all of the distractions causing one to forget what one has learned.” She set this thought firmly aside, and concentrated on recalling everything that the book had taught her was to come next.
The ground rose slightly as she walked away from the Blood River, and soon she was on bare dirt, stone, and a few patches of weeds or grass scattered about like flecks of foam upon a brown ocean. She came to a sequence of three narrow ditches, and, upon reaching the third, turned left to walk in it, following it as it curved back, bringing her to where, it seemed, she ought to have met the Blood River yet again, only she did not; instead the ditch gradually ended and the ground became rockier, until, after some time, she found that she was walking between walls of granite so close together that she barely had room to pass between them. When the wall on her left suddenly appeared to collapse onto her, her reaction, which was to interpose her left hand between the granite and her face, was so instinctive that she could no more have stopped it than she could have prevented herself from falling had she stepped off a cliff. Her difficulty was only increased when, an instant later, the other wall did the same thing, and so she found herself unable to move, each hand engaged in holding back a mass of granite that took nearly all of her strength to keep from falling onto her.
For a moment she held herself very still, but then she remembered that one was never to stop in the Paths, or if one did stop, one should begin moving again as soon as possible. She swallowed, and took a small step forward, adjusting her grip on each side by the smallest amount. As she did, the wall crashed in behind her. Zerika noted it, and continued, moving forward just a little, and carefully adjusting each hand together, and wondering if were true that nothing could actually hurt her. Well, she decided, even if it didn’t hurt her, it would almost certainly slow her down.
She continued as she had, making certain above all that neither her feet nor her hands ever got too far ahead, until finally the wall tapered down to the point where she could simply step forward beyond it. She took a moment to glance back, and there was no trace of where she had gone, only crumbled rock over the path. She wondered what would happen to the next Phoenix to come this way. Did it repair itself? Or was it nothing but illusion in the first place? She shrugged and continued on her way.
The ground climbed a little, the rocks becoming fewer, to be replaced by thin grass and occasional shrubs, after which the ground climbed a little, the rocks becoming fewer, to be replaced by thin grass and occasional shrubs, after which the ground climbed—
“I have been here before,” said Zerika, continuing to walk. A little later she said, “I have been here too many times.
“Well now,” she reflected. “This isn’t right. This was not supposed to happen. I am actually caught. It isn’t illusion—or, if it is, it is a very convincing one. And it suddenly occurs to me that, for all I know, the gods are watching me and laughing even as I go around and around. If I were not a Phoenix, and thus above such mundane emotions, well, I should begin to become not only annoyed, but frustrated, perhaps even to the point where I should weep with anger. It is fortunate that I am above such things.”
She wiped her cheeks and continued both walking and reflecting. After some time, unable to come up with any other idea, she closed he
r eyes. She opened them after ten or twelve paces, to find that nothing had changed. She closed them again, this time keeping them closed rather longer, until, in fact, she tripped and landed on the ground, which was, fortunately, rather soft. Her eyes naturally opened as she stumbled, and she was delighted to find that she was now in a more jungle-like region than hitherto.
She got to her feet, took a deep breath, and continued. “Well, that wasn’t so bad after all. I should be all right now, as long as I didn’t go off in the wrong direction, or miss a landmark, or, by closing my eyes, violate some arcane rule of which I was unaware. So, we will continue hopefully forward, and, why, there it is! A small pile of rocks, arranged in a pyramid, which I am to step over and then, fixing my eyes upon the tallest of the evergreens before me, continue until I reach a place where I am at the bottom of three hills. This should be easy enough, as long as the hills are hills in fact, and neither mountains nor piles of dirt. If I get back, I will attempt to clarify some of these matters for those who follow. It is the least I can do.”
In fact, she found the hills without undue difficulty, and turned as she was directed, feeling more confident now; beginning to think that this was a task that was, after all, within her abilities, and she did not forget, even as she concentrated on looking for the next landmark, to think kind thoughts of Sethra Lavode, who had been so insistent upon her memorizing very nearly the entire Book of the Phoenix.
We should hasten to add that, although confident, she was not over-confident; that is, she maintained a keen awareness that she could take nothing for granted, but, on the contrary, remembered that she required all of her faculties and must remain extraordinarily alert for whatever the Paths might next place before her. And yet, even with this alertness, she very nearly missed what happened next.
The book had said she was to look for the place a cliff no higher than your head stands upon your left, and upon this cliff seek a bush of flowers of the brightest red. This pretended cliff, which was in the event no more than a mound of dirt with, apparently, the front face cut away as if by a shovel, did, indeed, have a bush upon it, and the flowers of this bush were blooming like the reddest of geraniums. That part of her instructions was simple enough, but what followed was the command to turn her back upon the bush, and set her foot onto the animal trail that led directly away. She did this, and, just as her foot was about to descend upon the trail, realized that there were two animal tracks leading away: one seemed to have been made by the passing of medium-sized animals with cloven feet, such as deer or brownstag; but there was another, considerably smaller, which might have been made by many norska. It was this second that led more directly away from the diminutive cliff and the bush, although the difference in direction between the two was hardly noticeable.
Zerika hesitated only an instant before changing her direction and following the smaller of the trails. Once more, she was unsure of her decision, but, having made it, she continued, her eyes sharp for the next landmark, refusing to acknowledge her doubts. “All may yet be very well,” she reminded herself sternly, this having been a favorite remark of her ancestor’s in times of trial.
The animal path widened, until it became fully a trail, which Zerika knew was either a sign that her choice was right, or else meant nothing at all. The next landmark she sought was a brook where the water tumbles down three small steps, none higher than your ankle. There you will step upon the highest of these, stepping off with your right foot and then— “What is that?” She frowned, staring ahead.
Before her, directly in the trail, was a bush of some sort, on the top of which was a nest, and in the nest was a small white bird, evidently sitting on eggs. She considered the shrub, deciding it was too tall to leap over, and too wide to go around. “On the other hand, it is not terribly thick.
“It is interesting,” she continued, “that that bird is the first living thing I have seen here. Well, but of course one cannot expect to find many living things in the Paths. It is something of a blessing that I have seen this bird.” Without breaking stride, she walked through the bush. The bird flew off, screeching, while the nest and the eggs fell to the ground; Zerika only acquiring a few small scratches. “It is sad that it was in my way,” she reflected.
She found the brook with the three stones, and followed the instructions from the book. This brought her, presently, into what appeared to be a large, prepared, tended garden. There were a few flowers, some of them blooming white or blue or yellow; but there were also rows of maize, wheat, and various legumes and tubers, as well as paddies of rice and orchards of plums, olives, rednuts, walnuts, and snow-greens. Had Zerika been more familiar with agriculture (which, in fact, she was to become in the centuries that followed), she would have been aware of the utter impossibility of finding any soil or climate which would permit these disparate items to grow within a stone’s throw of each other; but as she was unaware of this fact, she did not take a moment to consider the peculiarity, but simply made her way past trees and among rows until, after some time, she found her next landmark, and continued.
“I am becoming weary,” she admitted to herself. “More than weary, in fact, I am becoming exhausted. How long have I been walking? Certainly more than a day and a night, as time is normally measured, and far enough to have reached the coast as distance is normally measured—not that any of these measurement apply here. But still, I am not made of iron, or even of hardwood, and there are limits to how long I can remain awake and how many leagues I can travel. If these Paths think to defeat me by nothing more than wearying me, well, they may succeed.
“But then,” she continued, “I shall at least not make it easy for them to do. As long as the landscape itself does not contrive to confuse me, I believe I can continue for some time yet.” Of course, these words were hardly formed before the landscape began to show every sign of attempting to confuse her. With one step, she was high upon a mountain; the next step brought her to the shore of a sea, and before she had adjusted she was deep within a jungle, after which she was trampling through a stream or brook in a deep forest, until it was all she could do to concentrate on looking for the next landmark, which, eventually, she identified as a petrified tree with branches reaching out as if to embrace her. She recalled her instructions and passed it on the right.
The instant she did, the alterations in the landscape ceased, leaving her following what seemed to be an animal trail that led upward to a small hillock, and one that was almost free of vegetation, save for grasses that reached as high as her knees. For the first time, she was able to get something of a view of her surroundings, and, ironically, once there, she could see nothing except a landscape shrouded in mist.
“Well,” she remarked, “it is what I should have expected, that the Paths are best viewed from within, and attempting to observe them from above merely obscures them. It is just the sort of thing that would happen. But it doesn’t seem right that I should be punished for the attempt, as appears to be the case with my foot somehow trapped by a sort of vine or some other piece of vegetation that has wrapped itself around my ankle.”
She considered her predicament. Whatever had grasped her did not appear to be getting any tighter as time went on, but neither was it loosening. She recalled what she had been taught about obstacles in the Paths of the Dead and reflected. “If this is an effort by the Paths, or the gods, to tell me something, well, I wish the statement were a little more clear. If it is something obtuse and metaphorical, such as that the attempt to view the world as if one were outside of it is a philosophical trap, well, I must say that I have never believed that, and so the lesson is wasted and the trap has been sprung upon the wrong person. To the left, if it is a warning about making superficial examinations, I can only comment that I am hardly old enough to have had time to make any examinations of anything that are more than superficial, and I will protest that, once again, the trap has been sprung upon the wrong person.
“Let us consider other possibilities, then. If this is
a warning about the dangers of holding ontology in contempt, then perhaps there is some justification for it, because I have never given this study, and its twin companion epistemology, the attention they truly deserve. Yet I recognize that to leave one’s own method of thought unexamined is to be held captive by the workings of one’s own mind, and that it is by subjecting one’s thought processes to the same criticism to which we subject the subjects themselves that we are able to escape the restraints that hold so many thinkers prisoner of their own prejudices and shallowness. Yes, I am aware of this, and I freely confess that, especially if I am to rule, it is incumbent on me to make this study, and I resolve to do so. Yet, it seems trivially obvious that I will be unable to make this study if I am forever trapped in the Paths of the Dead by whatever has gripped my ankle, wherefore, with the limited understanding I now possess, I will take action, both to accomplish my purpose, and to deepen my understanding of the processes by which I am surrounded.”
This said, she drew her poniard, which was fortunately sharpened for some portion of the edge, and cut at the thick root that had snared her. It permitted itself to be cut easily enough, and so, once free, she wasted no time in continuing her walk in the direction she had been going, a path which now took her down into what appeared to be a valley.
“Of course,” she said to herself, “it might have been simply pointing out to me that one ought to stop as little as possible while negotiating the Paths. One must not forget the mundane explanations, which, after all, are the reflection of the profundities, and are what give them reality.”