Jeff Hirsch - The Darkest Path

Nat’s tears came silently, sliding down her face and darkening the collar of her robe. I put my arms around her and pulled her toward me. She dropped her forehead onto my shoulder. Her breath was hot on my neck and ragged. I could feel her heart pounding through the plates in the vest.

“Maybe we can still go,” I said. “We know the way out. Maybe there’s still time to—”

“No,” she said. “There’s no more time.”

Nat raised her head and kissed me, her fingers curled into my back as she pulled me tight against her and I pressed her closer to me. When the bells rang again, Nat broke away. Her eyes closed tight as if she was making one last desperate wish. When she opened them again, they were dry and clear. Her hands no longer shook.

Nat lifted her veil and set it down to cover her face. Her robes fluttered behind her as she descended the hill and walked out into the camp.

I fell in behind a few citizens crossing from their barracks toward the Lighthouse. They were all talking excitedly, but I was thousands of miles away in my head.

“Have you heard, brother? They say he’s come to see us. They say it’s Nathan Hill.”

“Glory to the Path.”

“Glory.”

And then I was inside and the flaps were closing, trapping us in air that ran thick and hot. The first rows of pews were already full with soldiers, all of them with board-straight backs and heads held high. Only three other novices were considered devout enough to attend and I was moved with them into a precise row behind the citizens.

The temperature inside seemed to mount every second along with the waves of voices rising and falling. You could hear the intensity packed behind every word. The soldiers and most of the novices were practically vibrating, threatening to shake the very walls down to the dirt. It became harder and harder to breathe.

A blast of cool air washed through the space. Everyone turned as the tent flap lifted and a band of veiled white moved into the theater and took their places behind the men. Nat was standing on the aisle. There was no bend to her; her shoulders were thrown back, her head was up, staring resolutely at the stage. Her right hand, the one that held the trigger, was down by her side, closed in a fist.

Behind the companions, two armed guards stood on either side of the tent flap, their hands on the sleek black of their weapons. Weapons outside of the ops center, much less in the Lighthouse, were forbidden. They clearly weren’t taking any chances. I turned, sure to keep a look of religious awe on my face as I searched out the rest of the guards.

There were three along each wall and one at either side of the stage. I recognized some from Kestrel, but others were strangers to me. Hill’s private security forces, I guessed. I scanned their faces, all of them filled with the same unyielding focus, until one stopped me cold.

He was standing at the edge of the stage. Average height, sunburned skin, dark hair. Unremarkable. That was, until he turned and I saw the scar along his cheek. Then, I saw him not as he was but as he had been, standing in the midst of a desert, a mad gleam in his eyes as he raised a baseball bat to his ear and let it fall.

Rhames.

My skin went cold. Of course. Cormorant housed the top special forces the Path had, most of whom were focused singularly on the overthrow of California. Now that it had fallen, where else would they be but by the leader’s side?

Cormorant is here , I thought, and then, with a jolt, Is James?

I had no time to wonder. There was a rustle of uniforms as the soldiers snapped to attention. The theater fell silent. Every eye was on the stage.

There was no fanfare. No warning. He simply emerged from the darkness at the back of the stage and walked toward us, the glowing Path insignia over his head. No one clapped. No one breathed.

I had seen Nathan Hill in pictures and had heard him described in awed detail by the people who had been in his presence, but still I wasn’t prepared for the experience of being less than fifty feet from him. I don’t think anyone was. I heard a sharp intake of breath beside me, and when I turned, a bald man I had entered the theater with was weeping.

Hill had the kind of face that seemed ageless. It was unlined, almost boyish, but wise and deeply troubled at the same time. His eyes were dark blue beneath gently curving brows and waves of red-brown hair. Peaking out from the collar of his uniform I could see the topmost edge of the burn scars he received in Saudi Arabia. Everyone said they covered the whole of his back and arms and chest.

But none of those details really meant anything. He could have been tall or he could have been blond. It would have made no difference. Something radiated off of him — a force, gentle as the wind, but overwhelming. Even I felt calm descend upon me as he looked out over us. It was a feeling of rightness, of certainty, of being one of the few people who had the honor to be standing at the axis of the world.

I held my breath as he began to speak.

“With these words, I consecrate my life to the Glorious Path.”

The congregation repeated his words back with one voice.

“God, lead me to my Path. Let me be a light in the darkness and the rod that falls upon the backs of the defiant. The lives of my brothers and the lives of the Pathless are in my hands. If I allow them to fall into the darkness, then so must I. Their loss is my loss. Their death is my death.”

Hill opened his eyes and looked up at us again, his full lips turned up in a smile.

“A lot of very smart people told me not to come here tonight,” he said. “And since I know they’re smart, I guess it follows that I must be monumentally stupid.”

He smiled again, giving permission for the laugh that rippled through the audience.

“We have been told that this great thing could not be done and now here we are, standing on the edge of it. There was once a great light that shone from this country and illuminated the whole of the world. Every one of us lived through that light’s dimming. We were there as brother reached out to brother, not to help him up but to tear him down. We were there when a million backs turned from God to venerate worldly things. When I think of that time, I think of a pit of dogs driven mad by a hunger that can’t be quenched.”

He stepped back and the silence hung, crystalline.

“But then I stood in the desert of Saudi Arabia with my brothers, Riyadh burning behind us, and I was struck dumb by the beauty of the world. There was sand and there was sky and at night there were stars. Finally, I thought, I can find my way.”

He paused again and the silence was crushing. I wanted to turn, to look for Nat, but I couldn’t move.

“We decided then that we would not make a new world. We would find our way back to the one we were never meant to leave.”

The crowd rose as one, applauding wildly. My paralysis broke and I moved low and fast toward the aisle. The Receiving would come soon, and I had to be ready. Just as I expected, the beacons moved toward the altar to assist Hill. But Hill bypassed it and came to the edge of the stage. He stepped off into the crowd and my stomach sank. What was he doing?

The Path discipline vanished and the crowds rushed toward him. Hard-faced soldiers and novices alike knocked aside their chairs until there was a wall of bodies pressing their hands through a circular perimeter that security quickly came in to establish. I looked to where I had last seen Nat, but she was gone.

Hill moved through the space, and the crowd accommodated him, splitting ahead to re-form behind. They all reached out to touch him, and Hill struggled to meet every hand, beaming as he did so. People’s cheeks shone from tears. Their faces glowed.