She tried to pull free but it was useless. The creature, some sort of uniformed guard, dragged her back to the edge of the pit.
With one hand around her throat it held her out over the edge, giving her an unobstructed view of the tormented souls below. Only they weren’t so tormented now that she saw them-closely. If anything the naked writhing figures seemed to be engaged in activities from the opposite end of the spectrum.
“There is no escape, harlot,” said the creature. “You have sinned, and you have been judged.”
With a chill, Ezri realized it meant to throw her back into the pit, to cast her down into that seething hedonistic mass.
She’d never been particularly claustrophobic before but her short time in the pit had pushed her limits to the breaking point. She had no wish to endure a repeat performance.
Ezri kicked viciously at the creature but it was no use. She was flung screaming out into the center of the mass.
Immediately, she felt the hands on her, tearing at her clothes, trying again to drag her down. As before, she fought through to the surface only to be met by the boot of another of the massive guards.
Each time she fought her way to the edge of the mass of bodies, one of the black-robed brutes was there to force her back down. She was bruised, tired, and not a little frightened that there might not be a way out of this.
Even without the guards to prevent her escape, she took a terrible pummeling each time she tried for the pit’s edge.
Most troubling was that Jadzia had promised that there was a solution and that any Dax should be able to find it.
She rifled through her near-endless store of memories in desperation. Lela Dax’s life of bureaucratic intrigues offered nothing. Nor did Audrid’s. Nor, even, Curzon’s, whose pleasure-seeking tendencies were the stuff of legend. Tobin’s engineering skills were meaningless in this situation, as was Joran Dax’s talent for murder.
Torias, she thought even as she fought to keep herself aloft. Test pilot.
He’d flown more experimental vessels than any six Trill combined. Sometimes, even often, things went wrong.
What was it he always said?
“When nothing’s working, trust the flow.”
He’d coined the notion after a particularly awful moment with an engine burnout ten miles above the surface of Trill. Another pilot would have fought the planet’s pull, burnt out his other engine in the process thereby killing himself and the ship he flew. Not Torias. Instead of fighting gravity, he let it take him, using retro jets to change his angle of entry.
A few seconds later he’d gained enough momentum that a simple refiring of the operational engine had been enough to skip his ship off Trill’s atmosphere and save himself from fiery death in reentry.
Find the flow, Torias’s voice seemed to whisper to her.
Everything about this place told her to fight to get out of the pit, to try to find a way past the brutal and implacable guards. What if that were the trick? She’d assumed the exit was somewhere away from all this. What if it wasn’t? What if it had been beneath her all the time?
Ezri relaxed, let the fingers grasping at her feet take hold. She stifled the flash of panic as they drew her down and down into the sea of bodies.
I’ll only get one shot at this, Torias, she thought. You’d better be right.
The dog lowered its middle head, growling as it prepared for another pounce. Ezri had avoided the teeth so far—no mean feat with that many heads to keep track of—but she was getting tired.
This third world was nothing more than one enormous abattoir. Bodies and bits of bodies lay strewn all over. The rough stone walls were soaked with something that had to be blood and from the shadows she could hear the sound of, well, munching.
Then there was the dog. Big as a runabout and sporting three heads, the dog stood directly between her and the only obvious exit from the place.
The most maddening aspect was that the whole thing was so damned familiar. Jadzia had been fascinated with the stories of other cultures, other worlds. Ezri knew this whole thing was culled from one of them, but there were so many with so many overlapping symbols that she couldn’t lift one out of the mosaic.
And, of course, there was still the dog.
It pounced again. She dodged again, barely, the blood-slick floor forcing her to skid to the far side of the room. Worse, she had lost the broken length of chain she had been using to keep the thing at bay.
She was cornered, weaponless, tired, and the dog knew it. Its approach this time was deliberate, even blasé. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Think, dammit, she told herself. There’s a solution to this. A Trill solution. A Dax—
Tobin Dax had once become obsessed with a trinket from Earth called a finger trap. It was some sort of flexible tube. You stuck a finger in either end and then couldn’t get them back out again. Not by pulling, at any rate. The secret was to give in to the trap and push. The flexible trap would then expand just enough for the fingers to be drawn slowly free.
Why would she think of that just now?
What about a giant holographic dog trying to make a meal of her was similar to ...
She smiled and rose from the defensive crouch she’d fallen into.
“Come and get me, boys,” she said, hoping it was the right answer. If it wasn’t, the next few minutes were really going to hurt.
Dante.
The answer came to her as the dog’s jaws closed harmlessly over her head. This whole scenario was culled from the work of an obscure human poet.
As a young woman Jadzia had been mad for his stuff for about a month. What was this one called?
The Inferno.
It was a travelogue of some sort of place of eternal punishment that humans had once believed reserved for the wicked after they died. Being a Trill, whose culture had no such views, Jadzia had found the piece both beautiful and amusing. Each of these holographic worlds corresponded to one of the Circles of Dante’s supposed Hell ... or, rather, Jadzia’s unique reinterpretation of it.
You were right, Jadzia, she thought. Only a Dax would come up with something like this.
She’d survived the first three challenges on wit and memory. Now that she knew the pattern, she was ahead of Jadzia’s game. If the rules held true she’d made it to the Fourth Circle, where the greedy found punishment.
Yes, she thought, taking in the tableau before her. I expected something like this.
Three people—a Romulan, a Cardassian, and someone in a Starfleet uniform—were ahead of her, seated at a table in the center of a large but otherwise featureless room. They were playing a game of cards for a massive pile of golden discs. There was one empty chair.
The players barely noted her as she approached the table.
“What are you playing for?” she said.
“Power,” said the Romulan.
“Survival,” said the Cardassian.
“Knowledge,” said the Starfleet officer, who bore not a little resemblance to the younger Jadzia Dax.
“That’s what I thought,” said Ezri and kicked the table over. The chips went flying. The players, screaming, scrambled to collect what they could of their scattered loot. Ignoring them, Ezri proceeded to the suddenly visible door and passed through.
This isn’t right, she thought as she took in the pack of Kytharri hunters that were taking her in. Only one had a blaster, thankfully, but the cleavers sported by the others weren’t much comfort. And then there were their claws.
This should be the Fifth Circle, she thought. The place of Wrath. They’re just standing there.
Then she remembered. Circles Five through Eight in Dante’s poem all had to do with violence.
Jadzia had puzzled over Dante’s separating them into different flavors. It had seemed incomprehensible to her Trill sensibilities. Violence was violence. It was useful sometimes, other times not. This human fascination with attaching binary moral formulae to every aspect of Life must have been very tiresome.
This was something for Curzon Dax, she thought. Part brawl, part diplomacy.
Curzon could talk his way through nearly anything and fight his way out of the rest. He’d always longed for the chance to meet the Kytharri himself and bring them into the civilized fold.
Ezri wasn’t Curzon, though, not in size or inclination. She could never fight or talk her way past these brutes. Jadzia hadn’t planned on someone like Ezri ever being Dax’s host.
“There are many ways to skin a targ,” she remembered some nameless Klingon telling Jadzia.
Curzon had been fond of rule bending too—of finding the unaccounted for edges of things and using them to his own advantage. In that, it seemed to Ezri, they were very much alike.
Ezri might not be the host Jadzia had expected or planned for, but she was still a Dax.
She had the memory of Emony’s gymnastic skills to help her, as well as decades of combat training as a member of Starfleet. Her current lack of mass made direct conflict almost certain suicide.
Joran Dax, the serial murderer, had been fond of violence, though he’d never have admitted it. He had been adept in fact. Jadzia hadn’t known about him when she created this maze.
Creation is destruction, she remembered Joran thinking. The world has a shape, a pattern. To change that shape, one has to see it and be willing to do what’s necessary.
Leafing through his ugly memories, Ezri formed a plan. Only one of the Kytharri had a blaster. He was also the only one with a leather thong around his neck. The thong denoted leadership status among the Kytharri. Ezri had other uses for it.
“You want me?” she said to the collection of brutes. Obviously they did. “Then I will go with whoever is strongest.”
For a moment nothing much happened. If anything, the Kytharri looked confused. Then, all at once, they exploded into a fantastic orgy of cleavers, claws, and knives flashing like lightning as the hunters cut each other to bloody shreds.
Watching the carnage intently, Ezri inched toward the Kytharri with the blaster, who was in turn looking for a clear shot at one of his former comrades.
Ezri’s hands had the ends of his leather collar drawn tight around his throat in an instant and her knee in the small of his back. A quick jerk, a sharp twist and the Kytharri’s neck snapped like a dry stick. The blaster fell to the floor. Ezri managed to snatch it up even as the other Kytharri realized something bad was about to happen.
Seven shots later the Circle of Violence was gone.
Wherever she was, it was dark. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear and, aside from the floor on which she stood, nothing to touch.
Suddenly there was a bright light in her face.
“Lieutenant Dax,” said a familiar voice. “You okay?”
The light withdrew a bit and, as her eyes readjusted, Ezri could make out several figures, all in Starfleet EVA suits, silhouetted in the halo of some sort of handheld lamp.
“Must have bumped her head,” said one of the others.
“Is that you, Captain Medoxa?” said Ezri.
Someone snickered at that.
“Uh,” said Medoxa. It sounded like Medoxa anyway. “You’re the senior here, Lieutenant.”
“I think she may be injured,” said a placid masculine voice.
“I’m fine,” said Ezri. It wasn’t true. Her head was splitting all of a sudden.
“Good,” said the one she thought was Medoxa. “Because we’ve found something.”
Someone took Ezri’s hand and led her away.
Her head hurt. Something was glowing in the distance and her head hurt.
“What is it?” Ezri managed. She wasn’t sure what exactly was happening but figured the best thing to do was to play along.
“We have no idea,” said Maybe-Medoxa.
“Getting some strange readings here,” said one of the others.
“Should we get closer, Lieutenant?”
Were they talking to her? It was so hard to think with her head about to split in half.
“Lieutenant?”
“Sure,” she managed. “Check it out.”
Why had she said that? What was wrong with her?
“You heard her,” said Medoxa or whoever. “Get in there and scan the hell out of that thing.”
The others moved off toward the glow. Medoxa bent toward Ezri and had enough time to ask if she was really feeling all right before the screaming started.
“What the hell?” said Medoxa.
Ezri looked up to see the three figures closest to the glow screaming and clawing at their helmets. Two of them fell and didn’t move again. The third lay where he fell, moaning piteously.
“Gods below,” said Medoxa. “That thing is killing them.”
Ezri couldn’t think for the thunder in her brain. What was happening? Was this part of the maze? Who were these people?
“We’ve got to get them out of there,” said Medoxa.
“No!” Through the haze of pain, Ezri clutched at her. It was too late. Medoxa’s black shape sprinted toward her fallen friends. In mute horror Ezri watched as she too was caught in the grip of some unseen force and broken. Medoxa crumbled like the others before she’d taken five steps.
Then the space was silent again except for—was someone crying?
Ezri hauled herself to her feet and stumbled toward the sound. To her dismay she realized that the sound of weeping and that central point of light were in the same location.
It didn’t matter. The pain in her head would kill her soon anyway. She might as well see what all the fuss was about.
One step, two, three and she reached the place were Medoxa lay. Two more steps and she had passed the others. Four more steps and she was in sight of the origin of the glow.
There on her knees, weeping uncontrollably, was Jadzia Dax.
“I’m sorry,” said the prostrate figure between sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
Ezri, her own pain forgotten for the moment, knelt beside her and ran a gentle hand across her temple.
“I didn’t know,” said Jadzia. “How could I know?”
“It’s all right,” said Ezri. “It’s all over now.”
“NO!” said Jadzia, jerking away. “I betrayed them. They’re dead because of me.”
“Not all of them,” said Ezri soothingly. “You saved Y’Lira and Axael.”
“Y’Lira,” said Jadzia, suddenly far away. “She was so happy, so beautiful. Look what I’ve done to her.”
I no longer dream, said Captain Medoxa’s voice in Ezri’s memory.
“And Etoli,” said Jadzia. “It was his first mission. Sovak was going to be married.”
“Jadzia ...”
“I have to be punished,” said Jadzia softly, so softly.
There was a knife between them suddenly, a glittering curved thing of Syroccan design. There was no reason for it to be there, no way for it to have come.
I’m still in the maze, Ezri thought.
The pain in her skull and the shock of those deaths had disoriented her. She knew where she was now. This was the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Hell; the one reserved for traitors.
Oh, Jadzia, she thought. What did this place do to you?
So. Was the answer to use the knife or to leave it? A human, knowing what Ezri knew of Jadzia, might choose the former. Even this stupid binary paradigm of Heaven and Hell had room for mercy. But Ezri was Trill. No human could ever know Jadzia Dax the way Ezri Dax could.
Ezri was Dax was Jadzia was Dax was Curzon wa
s Dax was Joran was Dax was Torias was Dax was Audrid was Dax was Emony was Dax was Tobin was Dax was Lela was Dax was Ezri. She knew the answer to this riddle as well as she knew her own soul.
I forgive you, Jadzia, she thought.
“Suffer,” she said aloud.
Then the pain was an iron spike through her brain. This time, when the world went away, Ezri Dax went with it.
Ezri remembered ...
... Etoli saying something about a new cavern. He was excited, almost dancing with the desire to be the first to discover Something New. His boyish Deltan features radiating pleasure even through the polarized face plate of his EVA suit.
... Sovak, almost certainly as eager, but holding it inside under the weight of implacable logic.
... Axael clucking merrily over his tricorder, wondering aloud at the strange spikes in the violet wavelengths.
... Y’Lira asking what they should do, if they should check in with the ship before they went on.
... Jadzia thinking, Now, Curzon. Now, I’m finally free of your damned ghost.
... All of them moving toward—something—something beautiful and glowing and not quite present.
... Etoli reaching, crying out, dying.
... Sovak going down beside him.
... Axael twitching and writhing in the dust as his nerves were set on fire.
... Y’Lira screaming as the part of her that dreamed was ripped away.
... Something ... something not quite there ... something not quite alive ... something that knew only longing ... and searching ... and a fear of the increasing cold ... something alone ... wanting and feeling, yes, feeling, its own incompleteness ... trying with her, with all of them ... to join ... with their minds ... to make itself whole ... pouring more into them than their poor brains could ever hold ... the first fire ... the final ice ... and everything between ... trying and Jailing and killing them over and over and ...
She fell to the floor, only realizing she was crying from the drops of water that splashed against her hands.
Behind her the doors, open, and before her, mere meters away, the sidereal engine of her—no, of Jadzia’s—friends’ destruction.
STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change Page 34