The Dark Path

by Walter H Hunt

  "I wanted to find some real-world analog, not to act out the Legend of Qu'u in my mind. This doesn't seem to be any help."

  "esLiHeYar," Th'an'ya answered cryptically, arranging her wings in the Posture of Polite Deference. "The Eight Winds blow where they will."

  "But I don't know what to do."

  Th'an'ya did not answer. Both zor drew their chya'i and crept closer, prepared to follow.

  She shrugged and began to make her way forward.

  The standing boulders seemed to be poised at the edge of a steep slide. As she moved forward, she could begin to make out a wide valley below, with tendrils and streamers of fog traveling through like living creatures that had no particular destination. She could see zor traveling about on foot, also aimless, their gazes directed downward as if they were incapable of lifting their heads.

  Beyond the valley was the huge, imposing backdrop of a blackish-blue façade . . . the Icewall. It stretched left and right as far as she could see; its base was lost in the fog below Somewhere near the middle she could make out an impossibly steep stair. It was actually less a stairway and more a series of platforms, clawholds for flying creatures ascending from the Plain of Despite to . . .

  She looked up. It was an act that seemed to drain almost all of her energy; far above on the wall she saw an imposing fortress, overgrown with towers and outbuildings. Lightnings from nowhere, cascading toward nowhere, played around its parapets and turrets: the Fortress of Despite.

  "Is this the Valley of Lost Souls?"

  "Yes," Th'an'ya said. "If you can find the base of the Stairs, you can begin your ascent. The legend says that the inhabitants of the Valley fail to notice the passing of the hero. Only the guardian of the base of the steps recognizes him because he had known Qu'u from the World That Is.

  "The guardian was only there to warn him that esGa'u could be defeated but never destroyed," she continued. "Still, you must not assume that the esGa'uYal will play by the same rules. We may well be attacked."

  "I seem to be unarmed."

  "No," Th'an'ya answered. "You merely do not possess a chya."

  ***

  Hundreds of parsecs from where Dan McReynolds and Karla Bazadeh stood guard, and infinitely far from the internal landscape that their three companions inhabited, an alien queen turned to listen to the words of her advisor.

  =The prey approaches the trap,= the advisor said. Its words were a combination of speech and thought, but the queen understood the remark and all of its undertones. The advisor appeared as a box containing a multihued cloud of gas with a silver sphere floating on the top.

  The Ór had been the guide and counselor, the near-omniscient tentacles and listening membranes for many of her predecessors, since it had catalyzed the unification of her race and instilled in them the will and desire to conquer.

  It was the Ór, after all, that had directed her attention to the capture of the device that the winged meat creatures so highly prized. It was the Ór that had directed the thought patterns to follow in order to try and get it back. The idea of it was laugh able, of course: neither the winged meat creatures nor the far more populous wingless ones that they served could even hope to attempt such a thing . . . their minds were so weak, their science so primitive, their resources so limited.

  Conquering both of them, despite what the other advisor had said twelves of years ago, would be only marginally more difficult than conquering either of them alone. The queen, as well as the Ór itself, had been surprised at the way in which the two species had been able to reconcile after being at each other's thoraxes for so long . . . but, no matter.

  She had the Sensitive device; it would only be necessary to spring the trap on the foolish primitive sent to fetch it. Then the conquest could begin. Even to a creature as alien as the Ór, it must seem to be a sign.

  ***

  She had nightmares like this, in which she had walked through the streets of a city while its inhabitants did not or could not notice her. In her dreams, the city and its residents had been human: here they were zor. But it made it no less unnerving to move in the midst of so many souls that seemed to be oblivious to her presence.

  Under a canopy of iridescent fog, the indigenous population of the Valley of Lost Souls moved as in a dream. The Valley was like a large, spread-out L'le, except that it rarely climbed higher than a second story. The inhabitants seemed to crouch, afraid to lift their wings into the pervasive cloud cover. It had a terrible wrongness to it that she felt; she could read it openly in Ch'k'te and Th'an'ya's troubled eyes as they followed her.

  At first, she had used the shadows and moved stealthily from building to building, but as she moved further into the L'le, it hardly seemed to matter. Near the outskirts of the settlement, the inhabitants seemed to be mimicking zor daily life, but deeper in the Valley they were less and less active—as if proximity to the center rendered them as lifeless as statues.

  Jackie and her two companions passed through a wide, octagonal town square under the gaze of—but unobserved by—hundreds of zor, their only movements resulting from a tenuous breeze ruffling their wings, half-arranging them in new yet more despairing positions.

  Ch'k'te and Th'an'ya also seemed to be caught up in this dreamlike lethargy, requiring her to stop several times while they gathered the energy to continue. Lassitude mixed with genuine fear gazed up at her each time she caught their eyes. The meaning was all too clear to her.

  When they finally seemed unable to rise and follow she said, "I'm going alone to the center. If you follow, you'll only be trapped here."

  Reluctantly, as if it required a great effort for them to reply, they both nodded and took up a position of guard, back to back.

  She moved on alone. To her surprise, the terrible lethargy seemed not to be affecting her as she moved through the silent streets, now peopled only by zor statues whose wings drooped in positions that indicated their despair. Shortly she could see a huge wall with wide stairs set into it. At its base was a zor with its back to her, unmoving like the rest—but at her approach, it turned to face her.

  She was stunned. She stopped in her tracks as it did so, for it had a human face: one she recognized.

  "Damien?"

  "ha Qu'u," the human-faced zor said. "Mighty hero, I am stationed here to warn you." The figure that bore the image of Damien Abbas, captain of the Negri Sembilan, did not seem to recognize her except as the zor hero.

  It figures, she thought.

  "Warn me?"

  "You have come," the Abbas-zor said, "to ascend the Perilous Stair to the Fortress of Despite. You believe you have come far, but all of your journeying thus far is but a fraction of the task compared to what lies ahead."

  She reviewed the Qu'u legend in her mind, casting about for the correct response. "Still, I am bound by oath to continue."

  "Even those condemned to life may die the true death," the Abbas-zor replied.

  "The Lord esLi protects me and commands that I follow this quest to its end," she answered.

  "Have you questioned why such a powerful Lord would choose one so young and inexperienced? You are unarmed," the Abbas-zor said, gesturing toward the empty scabbard at her belt. "Surely you do not expect to fill that scabbard with the blade the Lord of the Fortress possesses?"

  "That's what I had in mind."

  "The Deceiver, and all of his minions, will seek to destroy you at the moment you touch it."

  "That's what they've been doing all along."

  "You do not understand, mighty Qu'u. That is the honor and the burden of the sword. Once taken up it cannot be laid down. This responsibility that you will undertake is not one of conveyance but rather one of commitment."

  "I still don't understand." She didn't remember this exchange. She was listening intently now, wishing Th'an'ya was here to interpret.

  "This is the Perilous Stair." The Abbas-zor gestured to the worn steps behind him. She looked up and saw the Stair ascending, impossibly high above her; a few dozen meters above
she could make out another zor clinging to the stair; it also had a human face, but the mist obscured the other's features. "By it you may ascend to your eventual destiny. It is a stair which only has one direction." He pointed upward, where the steps disappeared into the weirdly luminous fog. "If you step onto it you have committed an irreversible act, one that ends with you standing within the Circle. All of those that preceded you will be there to help, but the burden is ultimately yours alone.

  "This is a shNa'es'ri, a crossroads, mighty hero. A step away—or a step forward. It is up to you to choose."

  "I'm not going up there alone."

  "You deceive yourself if you believe differently. In the final analysis, mighty Qu'u, you must be alone. It is your destiny."

  "Why do you have a human face?"

  "It is a sign to you, ha Qu'u, a guidepost so that you might find this place again. As you know, this place is fixed, but the time is not yet decided. You may retreat now as you wish: the esGa'uYal have not yet determined your guise. But if you place one step upon the Perilous Stair, it will only lead to one place."

  "The Fortress of Despite?"

  "Standing Within the Circle, mighty Qu'u. While all about you is torn to ruin."

  She felt an impulse to place a foot on the stair behind the Abbas-zor but hesitated: she had left her companions behind her and she didn't completely understand the situation.

  One step, she thought. Like everything else before, my destiny is set by an agenda I don't even understand.

  "The time is not yet decided," the Abbas-zor repeated.

  With a great effort of will Jackie stepped back from the foot of the stair, retreating slowly. The Abbas-zor arranged his wings in a posture of deference to esLi, the first time she'd seen something like that on the Plain of Despite.

  It was only a short distance back to where Ch'k'te and Th'an'ya waited, back to back, their chya'i drawn and ready against the army of statues that gazed, unseeing, upon them.

  "I think I got the message I wanted," she said. "Let's go home."

  Chapter 22

  The actual number of people that could fit on a gig was nearly thirty. Only a few crew members had come down from the Negri Sembilan; Marcel Liang, the Negri's chief surgeon, had come planetside to replenish the Negri's medical stores, under the watchful eye of one of the aliens.

  "There are only a few aliens aboard," Liang said as they slowly moved through the upper atmosphere with Owen in the pilot's seat. "The captain is one."

  "No kiddin'," Abbas said from a rear seat. "Glad you noticed."

  "The day the Negri destroyed the Gustav we noticed." Liang looked at Abbas. "The day the captain spaced a dozen members of the crew we noticed. We thought you were one of them, Cap."

  "They dumped us on Center," Abbas said. "Are there aliens to replace everyone they've offloaded?"

  "Truthfully," Liang said, "I don't think so. The Sensitives are under their control"—Abbas shot Owen a told you so look—"but I think there are no more than five or six on board. And they don't get along very well: they're in competition. Each one has an agenda, or belongs to some faction. They've had direct confrontations on the bridge and at least one of them was killed by the others."

  "How do you know?"

  "A month or so ago I got orders to clear out part of sick bay." Liang exchanged a glance with one of the med crew. "A wounded officer was brought in—I only got a quick look: She—it—could hardly hold a human shape. I went to help but two Marines were ordered in my way by the captain. It didn't come back out."

  "Is one of them stronger than the others?" Owen asked.

  "The captain." Liang looked from Owen to Abbas and back.

  Outside the shuttle the sky had gone dark; they were in the upper atmosphere. On the pilot's board in front of Owen, there were several ship icons visible, including the Negri's. He corrected course toward it.

  "Tell me about him," Owen said.

  "He's very sure of himself," the doctor said. "The bridge crew is pretty scared of him; one of the junior helm officers landed in my sick bay in a state of nervous collapse—he hadn't made a course change quickly enough, and the captain had made him believe he'd been spaced. He's never been right since."

  Owen thought about this for a moment. "What do you think, Captain? Could you scare 'em enough to make them believe you were an alien?"

  "I don't know how long I could keep it up."

  "They only have to be fooled for a few minutes. We'll do the rest."

  ***

  Jackie moved through the corridors of Crossover Port with grim determination. Ch'k'te walked alongside with his eyes shielded from the glare by his sunglasses, but she didn't have time for amusement. She knew what she was looking for now: When she'd asked the Abbas-zor why he had a human face, he had replied, "A guidepost so that you might find this place again.'' It was a calculated hunch, but it made sense. According to the Qu'u tradition, the base of the Perilous Stair was guarded by someone Qu'u knew in life.

  Maybe Damien Abbas was here at Crossover. The mental link had given her no other clues other than Abbas' face, but it was more than she'd had beforehand.

  The last thing Dan McReynolds had said before she and Ch'k'te went ashore was: "You want some help on this?"

  She'd said no. Another hunch . . . Or was it that she didn't want him to get into the line of fire? She'd even tried to dissuade Ch'k'te from coming along, pointing at the piece of the legend they'd most recently experienced—that only Qu'u reaches the Perilous Stair. It wasn't to be. Ch'k'te merely belted on his chya, as if to ask, What do we do next?

  She couldn't even say what it would mean to find Abbas here. If she found him, what would she say to him? What happened out there? Where's the Negri? Can I buy you a drink?

  Truth to tell, she didn't really know what she'd do. It was tactically foolish to go into a situation without having a plan, but even that didn't seem to matter anymore.

  ***

  It made sense to start at the Steps. The coincidence was too much for her to stand, so she began her search at the bar where she'd last heard the voice. Some heads turned when a human and a zor entered together, but no lingering gazes followed them. There were a few zor on the station; they moved about almost oblivious to each other, and of course didn't fly. A zor, even in human company, was a curiosity—but not for very long.

  The Steps served egeneh. It wasn't very good; perhaps it had been jostled about in transit, or was left to age a bit too long. There weren't many who drank it at Crossover.

  There were no esGa'uYal in the Steps, and Damien Abbas wasn't there either.

  They moved on, trying bars, eateries and other off-duty spots first. She was accustomed to the Imperial Navy's data access and realized that she was at a loss to look for someone, even someone she knew reasonably well, without even a vid image. How could she distinguish him from any other member of the human race? He was tall, but not especially so; dark-skinned with high cheekbones, full lips and a rather small nose. He was clean-shaven with a slightly receding hairline; his speech was clear and clipped. He cracked his knuckles.

  Narrows it from one in a million to one in ten thousand, she thought. There were dozens of people they saw that would match the description but who were not Damien Abbas.

  ***

  "We would have noticed it already," Ch'k'te said as they walked slowly along the pedestrian way, past cargo dock after cargo dock. They had circumnavigated the hub of the station, nearly reaching the Steps again.

  "It's worth checking again. Unless you have a better idea."

  "I do not. But I do not expect a ship the size of the Negri Sembilan to have escaped our notice."

  They walked along in silence for the next few minutes, examining each berth in turn. A few were empty, showing the scheduled arrival of some ship that had made it insystem and was navigating into the gravity-well. Most were full, warrens of activity, loading and unloading cargo. It was unnerving how much business was being done here, away from the inspections of I
mperial customs. The normalcy of it all was bringing her slowly around to Dan's position: This couldn't be Sargasso, the place that had made two Imperial ships disappear, had destroyed the squadron, and where Admiral Tolliver had gone mad.

  At last the Fair Damsel came into view and she stopped walking and turned to Ch'k'te. "All right," she said. "We've walked all the way around. The Negri isn't here, but maybe it has been here. Dan thought it had gone pirate, remember? There must be some record of it berthing here."

  "Agreed."

  "We'll need a public comp—there." She pointed toward the main deck where there was a public booth. They rode a lift down and stepped into it. Ch'k'te had his hand near his chya and kept his attention toward the deck as Jackie gestured toward the screen, her own comp in her hand.

  "Query commercial records," she said to the blank screen. "Arrivals and departures of vessel Negri Sembilan, Imperial Navy."

  Somewhere far off in the station she imagined the request being processed. There was no sound to indicate it, but the screen showed the request in process. Then it went dark and the screen began to display text.

  You have come to ascend the Perilous Stair to the Fortress of Despite. You believe that you have come far, but all of your journeying thus far is but a fraction of the task compared to what lies ahead.

  Go to the Center, Mighty Hero. The Icewall awaits.

  "What the—"

  Ch'k'te shot a glance over his shoulder and quickly scanned the text. He looked from it to Jackie and then returned his attention to watching behind them.

  The text disappeared. The comp seemed to be offline. As she turned around, she could see someone coming toward it with a satchel in his hand.

  "Broken," he said. "Out of order. I've come to fix it."

  "Broken? But I just—"

  "It's offline," he insisted, coming up to the booth. "Broken. Out of service." He wore a set of coveralls with the Crossover emblem at the left lapel. He gave Ch'k'te a long look, sizing him up and down, and then said, "I got a call from the Center less than half a Standard hour ago. You got any complaints, sister, take em to the Center."