The Dark Ascent

by Walter H Hunt

  "Contradicts that conjecture, does the evidence: Inside sources say the High Nest to participate in ceremony on Adrianople her ardently desired to prevent. High Chamberlain of the High Nest indeed opposed to her was."

  "A ruse."

  "Of High Chamberlain, part of ruse was this?"

  The director thought a moment, disentangling M'm'e'e's sentence structure. "Not just by the High Chamberlain. This ruse was perpetrated by Laperriere herself. She was part of this plot at least that long ago."

  "Legend of Qu'u, what of?"

  "Oh, that again."

  "That again, yes," M'm'e'e said. "Director, surely, on the part of zor, the profound reliance upon myth rejects, does not?"

  "M'm'e'e Sha'kan," the director answered. "I am prepared to accept a great deal in service of my Empire and in the proper execution of my duty to the Agency. But I do not see how a legend eight thousand years old bears upon the situation."

  "Signs and portents, Director, portents and signs. Fits well, so it does."

  "M'm'e'e—"

  "Director!" M'm'e'e Sha'kan rose from his seat in a single heaving motion, his substantial bulk towering above his human companion. Rashk expressions did not change very much; they always appeared to be smiling broadly, but the director knew the other was animated with something far from amusement. "Director, from the Three do we come, return to it shall we. Always, say our people, 'if floor wet is, walls leaking are': Not from official sources news must hear we, disaster on the way is.

  "Knows well M'm'e'e, bias against zor in the Agency is, mistrust always, suspicion constant is. Read wings, then, Director! Zor seen have, know do. Considered have you, the walls truly leaking are?"

  "And if they are?"

  M'm'e'e sat down again, cupping all four hands around his drink. He gazed down into it for a long time before answering.

  "Director," he said quietly. "While we here discuss what knew Gyaryu'har, when she it knew, walls leaking are. Signs and portents, Director. Matters it little, then, how Gyaryu'har herself in plot involved: Holds sword now does she. She an ally be can, or rival, or enemy. Better an ally, thinks M'm'e'e."

  "All right," the director said. "What do you propose?"

  M'm'e'e thought for several moments and then described a course of action. Despite the tortured grammar and syntax, it was immediately clear to the director that this was the ultimate destination of their discussion; that his alien companion had thought long and hard about how to present it and had awaited the exact question he had just been asked.

  Jackie stood at the parapet and looked across the valley she had only seen once before, and that was in a Dsen'yen'ch'a: In the distance, etched against the landscape, she could see esYen, the capital city of the People.

  "Quite a view," she said to Byar HeShri, who stood behind her. She did not turn to face him, but ran her hand across the smooth stone of the wall-top, causing motes of grit and sand to drift over the edge, falling hundreds of meters to the valley floor below.

  A few seconds' flight for someone with wings, she thought; and a portion of her memory dredged up the cruel barbs of Shrnu'u HeGa'u, referring to her wingless state.

  She pushed the thoughts away, suppressing anger and the pang of embarrassment that seemed to reverberate between her mind and the ornate sword that hung at her belt. Byar HeShri stood respectfully. "What happened to se—si—S'reth?"

  "si S'reth transcended the Outer Peace, se Jackie," Byar answered, and then approached, half walking and half flying.

  "Yes, I know. That's why I'm here, along with half the Empire." She turned to face him. "But why now? I had questions for him."

  "So did we all," Byar said, his wings forming the Stance of Regretful Disappointment.

  "Was there— I mean, did anyone cause—?"

  "si S'reth was very old." Now it was Byar's turn to look away. "Very old. When the naZora'i—humans . . . eight thousand pardons, se Jackie—were the enemy of the People, si S'reth was emerging from here." Byar placed his claws on the edge of the parapet. "His youth belonged to an era when our species were on opposite sides of the great sSurch'a. He watched things change; he saw . . ." The Master of Sanctuary let the sentence drift off the edge of the lookout and vanish into the clear morning, as if he could not encompass its meaning with some simple phrase or turn of wing.

  Jackie sensed something left unsaid. "se Byar, you called me back from a great distance and asked me here, particularly, for a reason. I can accept that si S'reth's death has occurred since he was very old; and I can even wish him the ultimate joy of union with the Lord esLi. You're not surprised—and you know how I felt about him.

  "But what does this have to do with Sharia'a and seLi'e'Yan? What do you know now that you didn't know before?"

  "You are very perceptive, se Jackie. I would expect no less of the Gyaryu'har . . . yet I am still surprised that you can sense this."

  "Out with it, Master Byar."

  "The High Lord decided that it was necessary to go to the Plane of Sleep." As briefly and succinctly as he could, Byar summarized the experience at the Stone of Remembrance and the fight with the Servant of the Deceiver.

  "'Go to the Stone and ask,'" she said. "Shrnu'u HeGa'u said it to me. Now I understand what he meant."

  As Byar spoke of his conversation with S'reth on the Plane of Sleep, his eyes narrowed and his wings arranged themselves in a posture of extreme deference to esLi. Jackie found herself unable to hold his gaze and looked away again, across the valley.

  "I would hardly consider an esGa'uYe a reliable source of information," she said when he had finished, but already knew what he would say in reply.

  "I consider si S'reth credible, se Jackie. He told us that the servant was speaking the truth."

  "And that's the last word on it. Because you needed to test me, or because you wanted a sSurch'a to prove that I was the genuine Gyaryu'har, you summoned—" She lowered her voice. "You summoned Shrnu'u HeGa'u from long imprisonment and nearly let him kill me."

  "You must see the need—"

  "It had to be Shrnu'u HeGa'u. Not any of the others, not a lesser spirit, but the damned e'Gyaryu'har." At the word, Byar visibly flinched; Jackie wasn't sure that the title was correct, but the meaning was clear. "The Deceiver's top wing-brother, the chief general, the antihero. Qu'u's ancient enemy."

  "I will not deny that he is all of those things, se Jackie, and more, and worse. Yes, it had to be that one—because we sought Qu'u. The Law of Similiar Conjunction—"

  Jackie held up her hands. "All right. I give. Who made the decision? Who chose the flight, se Byar?"

  Byar seemed to take a long time to answer.

  "si S'reth did," he said. "We all agreed on the need for a servant to be summoned to the Dsen'yen'ch'a, but si S'reth insisted it be that one, for that reason. We could not have foreseen—perhaps even hi'i Ke'erl could not have foreseen—what the consequences of this summoning might have been."

  "No one in the High Nest, perhaps."

  Byar did not reply but his wings seemed to inquire, as if there were a question he wished to put, but somehow could not verbalize.

  "Permit me to explain," Jackie said. "From the beginning of the High Nest's involvement with the aliens, you—we—have assumed that the relationship evolved along lines foretold by The Legend of Qu'u. Everything done, every move made by the High Nest was based on the idea that a new Qu'u would emerge to combat the servants of the Deceiver.

  "To have a Shrnu'u for Qu'u to fight, the legend demanded that he be summoned forth: That is why si S'reth probably insisted he be chosen. What's more, by summoning Shrnu'u into the Ordeal, you made it possible for him to assume material form in the World That Is.

  "Shrnu'u HeGa'u, my ancient enemy, the one who has sought to destroy me at every turn, was present—it seems—to deliver the gyaryu into my hands at Center and to arrange my departure. Shrnu'u HeGa'u, Servant of the Deceiver, the ancient enemy of the Lord esLi and thereby the High Nest, has completed the fulfillment of The Lege
nd of Qu'u.

  "If I am here, it is him you have to thank."

  A breeze ruffled through Byar HeShri's wings and stirred the edge of Jackie's cloak.

  "se Jackie," Byar said carefully, "if you are correct, then I must wonder . . . If si S'reth knew that we had to follow an earlier legend in which the sword is recovered from the Plain of Despite, then why did he not tell anyone until it was nearly too late to understand? If our High Lord had been a wingspan less daring, or less discerning, we might never have known. Why did he not reveal this?"

  "Because in the end, S'reth was a teacher. He needed us to discover through sSurch'a what we were to do. Perhaps he even foresaw his own death, his own absence from the councils of the High Nest at the time we needed him most. Now," she finished, placing a hand on the hilt of the gyaryu, "we have to fly this path alone."

  Byar did not reply but instead gazed out across the valley, looking away from Jackie.

  "There's still something I'm not sure I understand," Jackie continued at last. "Why is Shrnu'u HeGa'u trying to kill me?"

  The Master of Sanctuary did not turn around. Another breeze resettled his wings, as if the wind were trying to choose his wing-position. "Shrnu'u HeGa'u is a servant of the Deceiver and you are a servant of esLi. Why should he not seek to destroy you?"

  "I understand that. Then, I have a different question: Why did he give me the sword? Why didn't he just kill me when he could, at Center? What was the point?"

  "Despite does not have a 'point,' se Jackie. There is no point. Shrnu'u HeGa'u seeks to destroy you because that is his nature."

  "Unacceptable. Stone could have killed me on Center—yet he gave me the sword instead. If this, too, is S'reth's doing, then I can only assume that he caused this entire drama to play itself out because there was a point. We must figure out just what sSurch'a he wished us to have. There must be some part of the legend we overlooked."

  Byar turned to face her. "Or perhaps there is some clue in the antecedent legends, the ones on which seLi'e'Yan is based. Our Elder Brother assumed that we should pay heed to an earlier redaction of the Qu'u legend. Perhaps there are other clues."

  "Such as?"

  "We will not know, se Jackie," he replied patiently, "until we look."

  The number of people who turned out for S'reth's memorial was larger than Jackie would have expected. S'reth was the oldest zor she had ever met or even seen; he had emerged from Sanctuary during Marais' war with the zor, most of a century ago, and had served as Speaker for the Young Ones in the Council of Eleven for a number of years. He had even served as a plenipotentiary ambassador to the otran for almost a decade. In short, he knew everyone.

  Still, there were more and more, and different, people than she'd expected. As Gyaryu'har, Jackie had an excellent vantage point in the Hall of the People: a perch modified for humans (a flatter area, accessible by a narrow stairway), just a few meters below where the High Lord normally observed.

  As she stood, trying to remain impassive at the throng, Jackie picked out the portly figure of Rear Admiral César Hsien entering the Hall with his staff. The admiral looked uncomfortable, to say the least: Despite his studied dignity he seemed unable to keep himself from gazing upward at the huge domed ceiling of the Hall, ninety meters above his head, and at the hundreds of perches and other accessways filled with zor, some of whom were gazing back at him.

  She didn't know whether he saw her from ground level, and she couldn't imagine why he might be here: The Navy was full of admirals, active and retired, and César Hsien had never shown any particular love for the People; the Admiralty could hardly have chosen a more insulting way to pay its last respects to an honored servant of the High Nest. A quick inquiry of the gyaryu provided no further insight into the reason for his presence.

  She thought about asking the High Lord, but a glance upward indicated that Sa'a was occupied with three Lords of Nest, whose wing-positions did not seem to brook interruption.

  It was clearly time for a bit of personal reconnaissance.

  By the time Jackie reached ground level—a longer journey without wings—Hsien had made his way over to a wide, semicircular table containing remembrances left by visitors: Mostly comps and books, but there were also small arrangements of living plants, as well as plaques and statues and memorabilia of all kinds. Hsien had been left alone by his adjutants for the moment. There were only a few zor standing near the table as Hsien approached, stopped for a moment as if in thought, and then placed a small holocube on a vacant spot. He said something quietly to himself, looking again toward the apex of the tall chamber; then he turned away.

  Only then did he catch Jackie's glance. She was waiting with her arms crossed, at the edge of the throng milling (and flying) near the table of memories. His two staff officers had already begun to approach, as if to form up around him, but he waved them off and advanced to where Jackie stood waiting for him.

  "Admiral," he said to her. "se Gyaryu'har. I hope I pronounced that correctly."

  "Admiral," she answered. "I'm . . . surprised."

  "I should say the same. But I believe that I understand your surprise; perhaps an explanation is in order." He turned back to the table, nodding for her to follow.

  He picked up the cube from the place he had left it and pressed a stud on the top. A scene formed in the air above it: a rolling plain with mountains in the distance, silhouetted against a deep-blue sky. In the foreground, horses grazed in the brush.

  "Alberta," he said. "North America, on Terra. Where I grew up. I wanted to share it with se—si—S'reth's family and friends."

  Jackie didn't answer, still not sure where Admiral Hsien was going with this. He pressed the stud again and the scene disappeared. He put the cube carefully back on the table.

  "si S'reth saved that place for me," Hsien said, looking directly at Jackie, as if to challenge her. "That's the place I come from. Open plains. Big sky. When the—the vuhls . . ." He was almost unable to speak the word, though not from distaste; there was something else. "When my command reached Adrianople, we found that they had already taken it. They . . . invaded my mind. The idea of such emptiness and wide-open space frightened them. Because I was a part of them, it frightened me as well.

  "To think that something I've known since I was old enough to walk would frighten me . . ." He let the sentence trail away. "si S'reth and the other Sensitives arrived at Adrianople in time to save me from being consumed or destroyed or irrevocably changed. No—that's not quite true: By bringing me back from that experience, by saving my life that way, it did change me. That's why I'm here, to answer your question."

  "I didn't—"

  "You don't have to be polite on my account, Admiral. Madam, se Gyaryu'har. Even if I had a personal axe to grind with you, which I do not, you are out of my jurisdiction. Far out of my jurisdiction. Not that it kept one of my subordinates from telling me off in your defense."

  "Telling you off?"

  "A ship captain under my command defended your actions and character, leaving no room for uncertainty. 'If it pleases the admiral,' indeed."

  She could hardly keep from smiling. "Barbara MacEwan," Jackie said.

  Now it was Hsien's turn to be amused. "That's right. Captain MacEwan stood up to this old bastard to defend someone whose career was in doubt." They began to walk across the hall to an area set up for refreshments. "I'm not sure, but I think I like her."

  "She's the best."

  "Do you think so?" He stopped walking for a moment, and Jackie also stopped, to face him. "I pulled rank and used medical leave to come here for this; to say thanks and . . . farewell. As soon as this is over, my flag is going to Josephson System with a task force to use against the aliens; we'll staff each ship with additional Sensitives. I'd like to include Captain MacEwan and Duc d'Enghien. What do you think?"

  Certain death, she thought to herself. What possible chance—

  "I'm sure she'd be honored," Jackie said. "Surprised, if she was as . . . forthright . . . as you
suggest. But honored." It's what the Navy is there for, she told herself. But without the gyaryu to defend them, they 're powerless against the vuhls.

  Unless she took the gyaryu there with them.

  "What are your orders, sir?"

  "I wouldn't really discuss them here. We're deploying to Josephson System shortly." He gestured to the crowd. "Perhaps after the ceremony we might confer." He straightened up as if he had suddenly concluded that he had no more to say to her. "Now, if you will excuse me," he added, offering a polite salute and turning away toward his staff, who were waiting at a respectful distance.

  The large meditation chamber at Sanctuary was crowded when she arrived; there was obvious tension hanging in the air. Most of the perches were occupied, three and four stories up; every rated Sensitive and senior student at Sanctuary had turned out for the Dsen'yen'ch'a. Owen Garrett was sitting on a cushion in a loosely belted robe, a chya across his lap, his eyes closed. A teacher Jackie didn't know was standing next to him. Something was making Owen tense, almost angry; he seemed to be working hard at contemplating serenity. A large esLi disk hung in the alcove behind him, gently backlit orange.

  As she approached, his eyes opened and focused on her. He had a determined look on his face, as if the Ordeal were something he knew he needed to get through. Still, he seemed to be glad to see her; that was something, at least.

  The last time Jackie had attended a Dsen'yen'ch'a it had been her own—though she hadn't known it at the time. There had been only a few in attendance at Adrianople Starbase: the High Chamberlain T'te'e HeYen, herself and Ch'k'te . . . along with the one that had been invited to participate. She wondered to herself if he'd turn up here as well. Now Ch'k'te was gone, Th'an'ya was gone, and so was Adrianople Star-base. T'te'e was off world somewhere; the Ordeal was under the direction of Byar HeShri.

  She had every confidence in Byar's skill. Still, she wasn't sure what to expect—and it was certain that Owen didn't know, either. Unlike her own Ordeal, though, the subject had a true and trusty friend upon whom he could rely.