“True. And my pack never mentioned them. I was silth before I knew what was happening.” She made the remark sound like a jest. Bagnel tried to respond and failed.

“Well?” he asked. “Would you like to go up? As long as you’re here?”

“Can you do that? Just take off whenever you want?”

“Yes.”

“In cloister we would have to have permission all the way from the senior.” She climbed a ladder to the lower wing of the aircraft. “Only two places. No room for Grauel and Barlog.”

“Unfortunately.” Bagnel did not sound distraught.

“I don’t know if they’d let me.”

“You’re silth. They’re just—”

“They’re just charged on their necks with bringing me back alive. Even if that means keeping me from killing myself. They don’t trust machines. It was a fight just getting to come here again. The idea wasn’t popular at the cloister. Someone made a protest about last time.”

“Maybe another time, then. When they understand that I don’t plan to carry you off to our secret breeding farm.”

“What? Is there such a place? Oh. You are teasing.”

“Yes. We recruit ragtag. Especially where the traditional pack structures still predominate. A lot of the Brown Paw Bond youngsters came out of the Ponath.”

“I see.”

Each spring newly adult males had been turned out of the packsteads to wander the hills and valleys in search of another pack willing to take them in. They had had to sell themselves and their skills. Thus the blood was mixed.

Many, though, never found a place. A pack did not need nearly as many males as females. Marika had not wondered much about what had become of the unsuccessful. She had assumed that they died of exposure or their own incompetence. Their fates had not concerned her, except that of her littermate Kublin, the only male for whom she had ever held much regard.

“Well? Up? Or another time?”

Marika felt a longing so intense it frightened her. She was infatuated with flight. More than infatuated, she feared. She was obsessed. She did not like that. A weakness. Weaknesses were points where one could be touched, could be manipulated. “Next time,” she grated. “Or the time after that. When my companions have learned to relax.”

“As you wish. Want to sit in it? Just to get the feel?”

And so it went, with Marika getting a look at every ship on the field, including the Stings. “Nothing secret about them,” Bagnel assured her. “Nothing you’d understand well enough to tell our enemies about.”

“You have enemies?”

“A great many. Especially in the sisterhoods. Like that old silth—what was her name? Gorry. The one who wanted us thrown back to the nomads when we came to Akard asking help. Like all the other dark-faring silth have become since we joined the Serke and Redoriad in their interstellar ventures.”

“What?” Why had that not been in the education tapes? “I was not aware of that. Brethren have visited the starworlds?”

“There are two ships. One is Serke, one is Redoriad. The silth move them across the void. The brethren deal on the other end.”

“How is that possible? I thought only specially trained silth could stay the bite of the dark.”

“Special ships. Darkships surrounded with a metal shell to keep the air in. Designed by brethren. They put in machines to keep the air fresh. Don’t ask me questions because that’s all I know. That is another bond entirely, and one we have no contact with.”

“And the other sisterhoods are jealous?”

“So I gather. I don’t know all that much. The Brown Paw Bond is an old-fashioned bond involved in trade and light manufacturing. Traditional pursuits. The only place you could get the kind of answers you want would be at the Tovand in TelleRai. I tell you, the one time I saw that place it seemed more alien than the Reugge cloister here. Those are strange males down there. Anyway, I was telling about the Serke and the Redoriad. Rumor says they asked the brethren to help them with their star ventures. That could be why the Reugge have become so disenchanted with the Serke.”

“Don’t fool yourself. The disenchantment did not begin with us. The Serke are solely responsible. There’s something in the Ponath that they want.” She studied Bagnel closely. He gave nothing away.

“The brethren won’t go back to Critza, Bagnel. I thought you said trade was lucrative up there.”

“When there was someone to trade with. There isn’t anymore.”

“Nomads?”

“What?”

“They’re getting their weapons somewhere. They were better armed than ever this summer. They shot down two darkships. There is only one source for firearms.”

“No. We haven’t sold them weapons. Of that I’m certain. That would be a self-destructive act.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

“They had to get them from you. No one else is allowed to manufacture such things.”

“I thought you said the Serke were behind everything.”

“Undoubtedly. But I wonder if someone isn’t behind the Serke. No. Let’s not argue anymore. It’s getting late. I’d better get home or they won’t let me come again.”

“How soon can I expect you?”

“Next month maybe. I get a day a month off now. A reward for service in the Ponath. As long as I’m welcome, I’ll keep coming here.”

“You’ll be welcome as long as I’m security chief.”

“Yes. You owe me, don’t you?”

Startled, Bagnel said, “That, too. But mostly because you break the tedium.”

“You’re not happy here?”

“I would have been happier had the weather never changed and the nomads never come out of the Zhotak. Life was simpler at Critza.”

Marika agreed. “As it was at my packstead.”

III
“Well?” the most senior demanded.

Marika was not sure what to say. Was it in her interest to admit that she suspected Bagnel had been given an assignment identical to her own?

She repeated only what she thought Barlog and Grauel might have overheard. “Mostly we just looked at aircraft and talked about how we would have been happier if we had not had to leave the Ponath. I tried to avoid pressing. Oh. He did tell me about some ships the dark-faring Serke and Redoriad had built special so the brethren could—”

“Yes. Well. Not much. But I did not expect much. It was a first time. A trial, You did not press? Good. You have a talent for the insidious. You will make a great leader someday. I am sure you will have him in your thrall before long.”

“I will try, mistress.”

“Please do, Marika. It may become critical down the path.”

“May I ask what exactly we are doing, mistress? What plans you have for me? Dorteka keeps telling me—”

“You may not. Not at this point. What you do not know you cannot tell anyone else. When it becomes tighter tactically . . . When you and I and the Reugge would all be better served by having you know the goal and able to act to achieve it, you will be told everything. For the present, have faith that your reward will be worth your trouble.”

“As you wish, mistress.”

Chapter Nineteen
I
It was the quietest time of Marika’s brief life, at least since the years before the nomads had come to the upper Ponath and destroyed. The struggle continued, and she participated, but life became so effortless and routine it fell into numbing cycles of repetition. There were few high points, few lows, and each of the latter she marked by the return of her nightmares about her littermate Kublin.

She could count on at least one bout with dark dreams each year, though never at any time predictable by season, weather, or her own mental state. They concerned her increasingly. The passing of time, and their never being weaker when they came, convinced her that they had little to do with the fact that the Degnan remained unMourned.

What else, then? That was what Grauel, Barlog, and even Braydic asked when she did at last break down and share her distress.

She did not know what else. Dreams and reason did not mix.

She did see Braydic occasionally now. The comm technician was less standoffish now it was certain Marika enjoyed the most senior’s enduring favor.

Studies. Always there were studies. Always there were exercises to help her expand and increase her silth talents.

Always there were frightened silth distressed by her grasp of those talents.

Years came and went. The winters worsened appreciably each seasonal cycle. The summers grew shorter. Photographs taken from tradermale satellites showed a swift accumulation of ice in the far north. Glaciers were worming across the Zhotak already. For a time they would be blocked by the barrier of the Rift, but sisters who believed themselves experts said that, even so, it would be but a few years before that barrier was surmounted and the ice would slide on southward, grinding the land.

It never ceased to boggle Marika, the Serke being so desperate to possess a land soon to be lost to nature.

The predictions regarding the age of ice became ever more grim. There were times when Marika wished she were not in the know—as much as she was. The world faced truly terrible times, and those would come within her own life span. Assuming she lived as long as most silth.

Grauel and Barlog were inclined to suggest that she would not, for she never quite managed to control her fractious nature.

The predictions of social upheaval and displacement, most of which she reasoned out for herself, were quite terrifying.

Each summer Marika served her stint in the north, from the time of the last snowfall till the time of the first. Each summer she exercised her ability to walk the dark side, as much as the nomads would permit. Each summer poor Dorteka had to endure the rustification with her, complaining bitterly. Each summer Marika helped establish a new outpost somewhere, and each summer the nomads tried to avoid her outpost, though every summer saw its great centers of conflict. She sometimes managed to participate by smuggling herself into the strife aboard a darkship commanded by a pliable Mistress.

Gradwohl’s strategy of driving the nomads west into Serke territories seemed slow in paying off. The savages clung to Reugge lands stubbornly, despite paying a terrible price.

The Reugge thus settled into a never-ending and costly bloodfeud with the savages. The horde, after continuous decimation through attack and starvation, no longer posed quite so serious a threat. But it remained troublesome because of the rise of a warrior caste. The crucible of struggle created grim fighters among the fastest, strongest, and smartest nomads. Composed of both male and female fighters, and supported by ever more skillful wild silth and wehrlen, it made up in ferocity and cunning what the horde had lost in numbers.

Gradwohl’s line of blockhouses north of Maksche did succeed in their mission. The final southward flow crashed against that barrier line like the sea against an uncrackable breakwater. But the savages came again and again, till it seemed they would never withdraw, collapse, seek the easier hunting to the west.

As the nomad threat waned, though, pressure against the Reugge strengthened in other quarters. Hardly a month passed but what there was not some incident in Maksche involving rogue males. And that disease began to show itself in other Reugge territories.

But none of that touched Marika. For all she was in the middle of it, she seemed to be outside and immune to all that happened. None of it affected her life or training.

She spent the long winters studying, practicing, honing her talents, making monthly visits to Bagnel, and devouring every morsel of flight- or space-oriented information Gradwohl could buy or steal. She wheedled more out of Bagnel, who was pleased to help fill such an excited, eager mind.

He was learning himself, turning his interests from those that had occupied him in the Ponath to those of the future. His special interest was the web of communications and weather satellites the brethren maintained with the aid of the dark-faring silth. The brethren created the technology, and the silth lifted the satellites aboard their void-faring darkships.

Marika became intrigued with the cycle and system. She told Bagnel, “There are possibilities that seem to have escaped everyone.”

“For example?” His tone was indulgent, like that of an instructress watching a pup reinvent the wheel.

“Possibilities. Unless someone has thought of them already and these ridiculous barriers against the flow of information have masked the fact.”

“Give me an example. Maybe I can find out for you.”

It was Marika’s turn to look indulgent. “Suppose I do have an original thought? I know you tradermales think it unlikely of silth, but that possibility does exist. Granted? Should I give something away for nothing?”

Bagnel was amused. “They make you more a silth every time I see you. You’re going to be a nasty old bitch by the time you reach Gradwohl’s age, Marika.”

“Could be. Could be. And if I am, it’ll be the fault of meth like you.”

“I’d almost agree with you,” Bagnel said, his eyes glazing over for a moment.

Those quiet years were heavily flavored with the most senior’s favor. With little fanfare, initially, Marika rose in stature within the cloister. In swift succession she became a celebrant-novice, a celebrant-second, then a full celebrant, meaning she passed through the stages of assistanceship in conducting the daily Reugge rituals, assistanceship during the more important rites on days of obligation, then began directing rites herself. She had no trouble with the actual rituals.

There were those who resented her elevation. Of course. Traditionally, she should not have become a full celebrant till she was much older.

Each swift advancement meant someone else having to wait so much longer. And older silth did not like being left behind one who was, as yet, still a pup.

There was far more resentment when Gradwohl appointed Marika junior censor when one of the old silth died and her place among the cloister’s seven councillors was taken by the senior censor. Zertan was extremely distressed. It was a cloister senior’s right to make such appointments, without interference even from superiors. But Zertan had to put up with Gradwohl’s interference or follow Paustch into exile.

Marika questioned her good fortune less than did Grauel or Barlog, who looked forward to a dizzying fall. Those two could see no bright side in anything.

The spring before Marika’s fourth Maksche summer, shortly before she set out for her fourth season of counterattack, death rested its paw heavily upon the cloister leadership. Two judges fell in as many days. Before Marika finished being invested as senior censor, Gradwohl ordered her elevated to the seventh seat on the council.

Tempers flared. Rebellion burned throughout the halls of the ancient cloister. Marika herself tried to refuse the promotion. She had much more confidence in herself than did any of the Maksche sisters, but did not think she was ready for the duties of a councillor—even though seventh chair was mainly understudy for the other six.

Gradwohl remained adamant in the face of unanimous opposition. “What will be is what I will,” she declared. “And time only will declare me right or wrong. I have decreed it. Marika will become one of the seven judges of this house.”

As strength goes. There was no denying the strong, for they had the power to enforce their will.

But Gradwohl’s will put Marika into an unpleasant position.

The sisters of Maksche had not loved her before. Now they hated her.

All this before she was old enough to complete her silth novitiate. Officially. But age was not everything. She had pursued her studies so obsessively that she was the equal or superior of most of the sisters who resented her unnaturally fast advancement. And that was half their reason for hating her. They feared that which possessed inexplicable strength and power.

The strengthened resentment caused her to turn more inward, to concentrate even more upon studies which were her only escape from the misery of daily cloister life. Once a month, there was Bagnel.

And always there was a touch of dread. She suspected doom lurking in the shadows always, at bay only because Gradwohl was omnipresent, guarding her while she directed the northern conflict. While she let the sisterhood beyond Maksche run itself.

Marika was sure there would be a price for continued favor of such magnitude. She believed she was prepared to pay it.

Gradwohl had plans for her, shrouded though they were. But Marika had plans of her own.

II
The summer of Marika’s fourth return to the Ponath marked a watershed.

It was her last summer as a novice. On her return to Maksche she was to be inducted full silth, with all the privileges that implied. So she began the summer looking beyond it, trying to justify the ceremonies in her own mind, never seeing the summer as more than a bridge of time. The months in the north would be a slow vacation. The nomads were weak and almost never seen in the Ponath anymore. The snows up there were not expected to melt. There was no reason to anticipate anything but several months of boredom and Dorteka’s complaints.

Gradwohl assigned her the entire upper Ponath. She would be answerable only to Senior Educan at Akard. She made her headquarters in a log fortress just miles from the site of the Degnan packstead. In the boring times she would walk down to the site and remember, or venture over hill and valley, through dead forest, to Machen Cave, where first she became aware that she had talents different from those of ordinary packmates.

A great shadow still lurked in that cave. She did not probe it. Because it had wakened her, she invested it with almost holy significance and would not desecrate the memory by bringing it out into the light for a look.

She was responsible for a network of watchtowers and blockhouses shielding the Ponath from the Zhotak. It seemed a pointless shield. The Zhotak was devoid of meth life. Only a few far arctic beasts lingered there. They were no threat to the Reugge.

That Gradwohl considered the northernmost marches safe was indicated by Marika’s command. She had twenty-three novices to perform the duties of silth, and Dorteka to advise her. Her huntresses and workers—commanded by Grauel and Barlog, who had risen by being pulled along in the wake of her own rise—were ragtag, of little use in areas more active. Except inasmuch as the command gave her some experience directing others, Marika thought the whole show a farce.

The summer began with a month of nonevents in noncountry. The Ponath was naked of meth except for its Reugge garrisons. There was nothing to do. Even those forests that were not dead were dying. The few animals seen were arctic creatures migrating south. Summer was a joke name, really. Despite the season, it snowed almost every day.

There was a momentary break in the boredom during the third week. One of the watchtowers reported sighting an unfamiliar darkship sliding down the valley of the east fork of the Hainlin, traveling so low its undercarriage almost dragged the snow. Marika dived through her loophole, caught a strong ghost, and went questing.

“Well?” Dorteka demanded when she returned.

“There may have been something. I could not make contact, but I felt something. It was moving downstream.”

“Shall I inform Akard?”

“I do not think it is necessary. If it is an alien darkship, and is following the east fork down, they will spot it soon enough.”

“It could have been an unscheduled patrol.”

“Probably was.”

A darkship out of Akard patrolled Marika’s province each third day. Invariably, it reported a complete absence of nomad activity. What skirmishing there was was taking place far to the south. And the few nomads seen down there were now doing as Gradwohl wished. They were migrating westward, toward Serke country.

There were rumors that Serke installations had been attacked.

“Looks like the Serke have lost their loyalty,” Marika told Dorteka after having examined several such reports.

“They have used them up. They will be little more than a nuisance to our cousins.”

“I wonder what the Serke bought them with. To have held them so long on the bounds of death and starvation.”

Dorteka said, “I think they expected to roll over us the year they took Akard. The intelligence says they expected to take Akard cheaply and follow that victory with a run that would take them all the way to Maksche. Maksche certainly could not have repelled them at the time. The glitch in their strategy was you. You slew their leading silth and decimated their best huntresses. They had nothing left with which to complete the sweep.”

“But why did they keep on after they had failed?”

“Psychological momentum. Whoever was pulling the strings on the thing would have been high in the Serke council. Someone very old. Old silth do not admit defeat or failure. To me the evidence suggests that there is a good chance the same old silth is still in charge over there.”

“By now she must realize she has to try something else. Or must give up.”

“She cannot give up. She can only get more desperate as the most senior thwarts her every stratagem.”

“Why?”

“The whole world knows what is happening, Marika. Even if no one admits seeing it. Our hypothetical Serke councillor cannot risk losing face by conceding defeat. We are a much weaker Community. Theoretically, it is impossible for us to best the Serke.”

“What do you feel about that?”

“I feel scared, Marika.” It was a rare moment of honesty on Dorteka’s part. “This has been going on for eight years. The Serke councillors were all old when it started. They must be senile now. Senile meth do things without regard for consequences because they will not have to live with them. I am frightened by Gradwohl, too. She has a disregard for form and consequence herself, without the excuse of being senile. The way she has forced you onto the Community . . . ”

“Have I failed her expectations, Dorteka?”

“That is not the point.”

“It is the only point. Gradwohl is not concerned about egos. The Reugge face the greatest challenge of their history. Survival itself may be the stake. Gradwohl believes I can play a critical role if she can delay the final crisis till I am ready.”

“There are those who are convinced that your critical role will be to preside over the sisterhood’s destruction.”

“That doomstalker superstition haunts my backtrail still?”

“Forget legend and superstition—though they are valid as ways of interpreting that which we know but do not understand. Consider personality. You are the least selfless silth I have ever encountered. I have yet to discern a genuine shred of devotion in you, to the Community or to the silth ideal. You fake. You pretend. You put on masks. But you walk among those who see through shadows and mists, Marika. You cannot convince anyone that you are some sweet lost pup from the Ponath.”

Marika began to pace. She wanted to issue some argument to refute Dorteka and could not think of a one she could wield with conviction.

“You are using the Reugge, Marika.”

“The Reugge are using me.”

“That is the way of—”

“I do not accept that, Dorteka. Take that back to Gradwohl if you want. Though I am sure she knows.”

Grauel witnessed this argument. She grew very tense as it proceeded, fearing it would pass beyond the verbal. Dorteka had been having increasing difficulty maintaining her self-restraint.

Marika had worked hard to bind Grauel and Barlog more closely to her. Again and again she tested them in pinches between loyalties to herself and loyalties to the greater community. They had stuck with her every time. She hoped she was laying the foundations of unshakable habit. A day might come when she would want them to stick with her through extreme circumstances.

For all she had known these two huntresses her entire life, Marika did not know them very well. Had she known them well, she would have realized no doubt of their loyalties ever existed.

Barlog entered the room. “A new report from Akard, Marika.”

“It’s early, isn’t it?

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Another sighting.”

“Another ghost darkship?”

“No. This time it’s a possible nomad force coming east on the Morthra Trail. Based on two unconfirmed sightings.”

“Well, that is no problem for us.”

The Morthra Trail was little more than a game track these days, lost beneath ten feet of snow. At one time it had connected Critza with a tradermale outpost on the Neybhor River, seventy miles to the west. The Neybhor marked the western frontier of Reugge claims in that part of the Ponath.

“Sounds like wishful thinking,” Marika said. “Or a drill being sprung on us by the most senior. But I suppose we do have to pass the word. Dorteka, you take the eastern arc. I will take the western.” Marika sealed her eyes, went inside, extended a thread of touch till she reached an underling in an outlying blockhouse. She relayed the information.

Two days later touch-word brought the news that Akard had lost contact with several western outposts. Darkships sent to investigate had found the garrisons dead. An aerial search for the culprits had begun.

One of the darkships fell out of touch.

Senior Educan sent out everything she had.

When found, the missing darkship was a tangle of titanium ruin. It had buried itself in the face of a mountain, evidently at high speed. The Mistress of the Ship and her bath appeared to have suffered no wounds before the crash.

“That is silth work,” Marika said. “Not nomads at all, but Serke.” She shivered. For an instant a premonition gripped her. Grim times were in the offing. Perhaps times that would shift the course of her life. “This must be the desperate move you predicted, Dorteka.”

The instructress was frightened. She seemed to have suffered a premonition of her own. “We have to get out of here, Marika.”

“Why?”

“They would send their very best. If they would go that far. We cannot withstand that. They will exterminate us, then ambush any help sent from Maksche.”

“Panic is not becoming in a silth,” Marika said, parroting a maxim learned at Akard. “You are better at the long touch than I am. Get Akard to send me a darkship.”

“Why?”

“Do it.”

“They will want to know why. If they have lost one already, they will want to hoard the ones that are left.”

“Invoke the most senior if you have to.”

Sighing, Dorteka started to go into touch.

“Dorteka. Wait. Find out which outposts were silenced. And where that darkship went down.”

“Yes, mistress,” Dorteka replied.

“Sarcasm does not become you. Hurry. Before those fools panic and run away.”

Dorteka went into touch. Her strained, twisting face betrayed her difficulty getting through, then an argument ensuing. Marika told Grauel, “If those fools don’t come across, I’ll hike down there and take a darkship myself. Why did they put Educan in charge? She is worse that Paustch ever was. She couldn’t . . . ” Dorteka had come out of touch. “What did they say?”

“The darkship is coming. I had to lie, Marika. And I had to invoke Gradwohl. I hope you know what you are doing.”

“What state were they in?”

“You can guess.”

“Yes. Educan was packing. Grauel. Get my coats, boots, and weapons.” On the frontier Marika dressed as one of the huntresses, not as silth.

Dorteka studied a map while Marika dressed. Marika glanced over her shoulder. “A definite progression, yes?”

“It does look like a developing pattern.”

“Looks like? They will hit here next, then here, here, and then try Akard. No wonder Educan is in a dither. They will reach the Hainlin before dawn tommorow.”

“You have that look in your eye, Marika. What are you going to do?”

No particular thought went into Marika’s answer. “Ambush them at Critza.” It was the thing that had to be done.

“They would sense our presence.”

“Not if we use our novices to keep our body heat concealed.”

“Marika . . . ”

“We will hit them on huntress’s terms initially. Not as silth. They will not be looking for that. We will chew them up before they know what is happening.”

“Critza is not inside your proper territory.”

“If we do not do something, Educan will run off and leave us here. The Serke will not have to come after us. They can leave us to the grauken if they take Akard.”

“True. But—”

“Perhaps one of the reasons Gradwohl favors me is that I am not bound by tradition. Not if form’s sake means sticking my head into a kirn’s den.”

“Perhaps.”

“Contact the outposts. We will gather everyone. Grauel. Prepare for two days of patrol for the whole force.”

III
Marika kept the darkship aloft continuously, bringing huntresses to Critza, till she felt the Serke party could be within an hour of her ambush. The western outposts had fallen as she had predicted. Akard was in a panic. The leadership there had so wilted, Marika no longer bothered trying to stay in touch.

A pair of darkships raced over, fleeing south, practically dripping meth and possessions. “That,” Marika observed, “is why we silth are so beloved, Dorteka. Educan has saved everthing she owns. But how many huntresses and laborers were aboard?”

Dorteka did not try to defend Educan. She was as outraged as Marika was, if not quite for the same reasons. The Akard senior’s flight was indefensible on any grounds.

“Everyone in place?” Marika asked. There were no tracks in the snow, nothing to betray the ambush physically. The huntresses had dropped into their positions from the darkship. “See if you can detect anybody, Dorteka. If you do, get on the novice covering.” She could detect nothing with her own less skillful touch.

Fear proved to be a superb motivator. The novices hid everyone well.

“That is it for Chaser,” Marika said as the last of the major moons settled behind the opposite ridge. But there was light still. Dawn had begun to break under a rare clear sky. Long shadows of skeletal trees reached across the Hainlin. The endless cold had killed all the less hardy. They were naked of needles. Occasionally the stillness filled with the crash following some elder giant’s defeat in its battle with gravity. Farther north, where the winds kept the slopes scoured of snow, whole mountains were scattered with fallen trees, like straw in a grain field after harvest.

A far hum began to build in the hills opposite Critza. “Utter silence now,” Marika cautioned. “Total alertness. Nobody move for any reason. And hold your fire till I give the word. Hold your fire.” She hoped it would not be much longer. The cold gnawed her bones. They had dared light no fires. The smell of smoke would have betrayed them.

A machine thirty feet long and ten wide eased down the far slope, sliding between trees. It slipped out onto the clear highway of the rivercourse, surrounded by flying snow. For a moment Marika was puzzled. It seemed like a small darkship of odd shape, floating above the surface. It made a great deal of noise.

Then she recalled where she had seen such a vehicle. At the tradermale station at Maksche.

Ground-effect vehicle. Of course.

A second slithered through the trees, engine whining as it fought to keep from charging down the slope. Marika silently praised Grauel and Barlog for having established superb discipline among the huntresses. They were waiting as instructed.

They dared not open fire till all the craft were in the open.

She could see meth inside them, ten and an operator for each of those first two. At a guess she decided two silth and eight fighters aboard each. And definitely not nomads.

What had Bagnel told her about ground-effect vehicles? Yes. They were not sold or leased outside the brethren. Ever.

This ambush would stir one hell of a stink if she pulled it off.

A third and fourth vehicle left the forest. These two appeared to be supply carriers. No heads were visible through their domes, only unidentifiable heaps.

A fifth vehicle descended the slope, and a sixth. And still those already on the river hovered, waiting.

Marika ground her teeth. How much longer could fire discipline hold among huntresses already badly shaken by what faced them?

Not long. As the eighth vehicle appeared, making four carrying meth and four carrying supplies, a rifle cracked.

The huntress responsible was a competent sniper. Her bullet stabbed through a dome and killed an operator. The vehicle surged forward, gained speed rapidly, rose, and smashed into a bluff a third of a mile upriver. Its fuel exploded.

Long before that happened Marika’s every weapon had begun thundering at the Serke. For a while the vehicles were hidden by smoke and flying snow.

Two more vehicles came down into the storm of death.

“Get that darkship up over the trail,” Marika snapped at the Mistress of the Ship. “Wait. I am going with you. I do not want you following Educan. Dorteka. Keep hitting them. Get the personnel carriers first.”

A vehicle broke out of the fury and scooted away north, sideslipping around the burning vehicle upstream. “That was a transport. We will catch it later. Take it up.”

The darkship rose. At a hundred feet Marika could see that the remaining craft had been disabled. Huntresses had come out of some and were returning fire.

A fuel tank blew, spread fire to other crippled vehicles. The conflagration generated a battle between volatile fuel and melting snow. Burning fuel spread atop the running melt.

Marika reached with her touch and found several silth minds among the survivors, all bewildered, shocked, unready to respond. She jerked back, ducked through her loophole, grabbed the first suitable ghost she found, and hurtled down there. Slap. Slap. Slap. She dispatched three silth.

There were at least four more vehicles in the forest, all carrying silth and huntresses. They had halted. Marika flung herself that way, hammered at silth hearts and minds till she encountered one that hurled her back and nearly broke through her defenses.

She ducked back into the world long enough to order the darkship forward. The bath carried automatic weapons and grenades. She would wrestle the Serke sisters while the darkship crew demolished them with mundane weapons.

And so it went for a few minutes, the bath crippling two of the vehicles. Marika fenced the strong Serke sister, and ducked around her occasionally, discovered that hers was the only Serke silth mind still conscious.

On the river the survivors of the ambush were getting organized. The Serke silth ducked away from Marika and went to prevent Dorteka and the novices from overwhelming her fighters.

The huntresses on the mountainside headed down to help their sisters. They fired on the darkship as they went.

You are a strong one, the Serke silth sent. But you will not survive this.

I have survived the Serke before, Marika retorted. This is the end of the Serke game. Here, today, you will all die. And you will leave the Reugge the proof needed to call the wrath of all the Communities down upon the Serke. You have fallen into the trap.

You are the one called Marika?

Yes. Which great Serke am I about to destroy?

None.

The silth slammed at her. Marika barely turned the blow, interposing her ghost between herself and that ruled by the Serke. She had made a tactical error. She had issued too strong a challenge before fully assessing the strength of the other’s ghost. It was more powerful than hers.

Bullets hummed around the darkship. One spanged off the metal framework. Marika wondered why the ship was not moving, making itself a more difficult target. She ducked into reality for a second, saw that one bath had been wounded and another had been knocked entirely off the darkship. The Mistress had only one bath to draw upon. She could do little but remain aloft, a target for rifle fire.

Marika flung a hasty touch Dorteka’s way. Dorteka. Get some mortar fire into the woods up here. Under the darkship. Before they bring us down and we are all lost.

The Serke attacked again. She wobbled under the blow, fought its effects, tried to locate a more powerful ghost. There was none to be reached quickly enough. There were some great ones high above that might have been drawn in had she had time, but the Serke would give her no time.

She dodged another stroke, slipped back into reality. Bombs had begun to fall on the slope below. Had she had the moment, Marika would have been amused. Those mortars were all captured weapons, taken from slain nomads. The brethren were adamant in their refusal to sell such weapons to the Reugge.

She located the Serke silth visually. The female stood beside her disabled vehicle. Marika tried a new tack, hammering at the snow in the trees above the meth.

A shower fell, distracting the silth. Marika used the moment won to stab at the huntresses firing on the darkship. She slew several. The others broke and ran.

The silth regained her composure, punched back, adding, You do not play the game by the rules, pup.

Marika dodged, sent, I play to win. I own no rules. She struck at a tree instead of the silth. The brittle trunk cracked. The giant toppled—in the wrong direction. She cracked another, then fended off the silth again.

This was not going well. The Serke was wearing her down. And the darkship had begun to settle toward the surface. For the first time she felt uncertainty. The Serke sensed it, hurled mockeries her way.

Angered, she cracked several more trees. This time the Serke was forced to spend time dodging the physical threat.

Marika used the time to unsling her rifle and begin firing. Her bullets did not touch the silth, but they forced her to keep moving, ducking, too busy evading metal death to employ her talent.

Marika hurled a pair of grenades. One fell close. Its blast threw the silth ten feet and left her stunned.

Marika took careful aim, pumped three bullets into the sprawled form, the last through the brain.

“That should do—”

The darkship began to wobble, to slide sideways, to tilt.

The Mistress of the Ship had been hit by a stray bullet.

She had wanted to fly for so long. Marika’s thoughts were almost hysterical. She hadn’t wanted her first opportunity at flight to come at a time like this! She grabbed at the ship with her mind, trying to put into practice what she knew only as theory, while she edged out the long arm toward the wounded Mistress.

Tree branches crackled as the darkship settled. Marika was afraid a giant would snap and in its fall sweep her and the darkship to the surface.

Without her and the darkship, the Serke would win still.

The darkship was low. She’d probably survive the fall. Still, she had to do more than survive. She had to save the darkship. She had to be available to support her huntresses, who were in a furious firefight with the Serke huntresses. She had to . . .

She reached the Mistress of the Ship. Despite the meth’s salvageable condition, Marika pitched her off the position of power, ignored her cry of outrage as she fell. There was no time for niceties.

Marika closed into herself, felt for those-who-dwell, who had begun scattering, summoned them, made them stabilize the craft before it fell any farther. She drew upon the bath and willed the ship to rise.

It rose. Smoothly and easily, it rose, amazing her. This was easy! She turned it, drove it toward Critza, brought it down a little roughly just a few feet from its original hiding place.

The wounded bath died moments later, drained of all her strength. The other passed out. Marika had drawn upon them too heavily.

Marika had nothing left herself. Darkness swam before her eyes as she croaked, “Dorteka! What is the situation?”

“They have gotten dug in. There are too many of them, and they still have a few silth left. Enough to block our dark-side attacks. We dare not assault them. They would cut us apart. I am hoping the mortars will give us the needed edge. You killed the leader?”

“Yes. It was a close thing, too. I had to trick her, then shoot her. Keep using the mortars to pin them down till I recover. No heroics. Hear?”

Dorteka gave her a look that said she was a fool if she expected heroics from her teacher.

Marika drained her canteen, ate ravenously, rested. Weapons continued to crackle and boom, but she noticed them not at all.

The Serke huntresses had gotten out of their transport with nothing but small arms. Thank the All for that. Thank the All that she had been able to think quickly aboard the darkship. Else she would be dead now and the Serke would soon be victorious.

The moment she felt sufficiently strong, she ducked through her loophole, found a monster of a ghost, flung it toward where the surviving Serke silth cowered, arguing about whether or not they should try to retreat to the two unharmed vehicles and flee.

They were terrified. They were ready to abandon their followers to their fates. The one thing that held them in place was their certain knowledge of what defeat would mean to their Community.

Marika sent, Surrender and you shall live.

One of them tried to strike at her. She brushed the thrust aside.

She killed them. She touched their huntresses and told them to surrender, too, then slaughtered those who persevered till she had no more strength. She returned to flesh. “The day is yours, Dorteka. Finish it. Round up the survivors.”

When it was all done neither Marika nor Dorteka had strength enough to touch Akard and let the garrison there know that the threat had been averted.

Grauel started fires and began gathering the dead, injured, and prisoners inside the ruins of Critza. She came to Marika. “All rounded up now.”

“Many surrender?”

“Only a few huntresses.” Her expression was one of contempt for those. “And five males. Tradermales. They were operating those vehicles.”

“Guard them well. They mean the end of the threat against the Reugge. I will examine them after I have rested.”
Chapter Twenty
I
The moons were up, sprawling skeletal shadows upon the mountainsides. As Marika wakened, it seemed she could still hear the echoes of shots murmuring off the river valley walls. “What is it?” Barlog had shaken her gently. The huntress wore a grim expression.

“Come. You will have to see. No explanation will do.” She offered a helping paw.

Marika looked at Grauel, who shrugged. “I’ve been here watching over you.”

Barlog said, “I moved the prisoners over here, where I thought we could control them better. I did not notice, though, till one of the males asked if they could have their own fire. I spotted him when the flames came up. Before that it was like he was somebody else.”

“What are you talking about?” Marika demanded.

“I want you to see. I want to know if I am wrong.”

Mairka eased between fallen building stones, paused. “Well?”

Barlog pointed. “There. Look closely.”

Marika looked.

The astonishment was more punishing than a physical blow. “Kublin!” she gasped.

The tradermale jerked around, eyes widening for a moment.

Kublin. But that was impossible. Her littermate had died eight years ago, during the nomad raid that destroyed the Degnan packstead.

Grauel rested a paw upon Marika’s shoulder, squeezed till it hurt. “It is. Marika, it is. How could that be? Why did I not recognize him earlier?”

“We do not look for ghosts among the living,” Marika murmured. She moved a couple of steps closer. All the prisoners watched, their sullenness and despair for a moment forgotten.

The tradermale began shaking, terrified.

“Kublin,” Marika murmured. “How? . . . Grauel. Barlog. Keep everybody away. Don’t say a word to anyone. On your lives.” Her tone brooked no argument. The huntresses moved.

Marika stood there staring, remembering, for a long time. Then she moved nearer the fire. The prisoners crept back, away. They knew it was she who had brought them to this despair.

She settled onto a stone vacated by a Serke huntress. “Kublin. Come here. Sit with me.”

He came, sat on cold stone, facing away from the other prisoners, who pretended not to watch. Witnesses. Something would have to be done . . .

Was she mad?

She studied her littermate. He was small still, and appeared no stronger than he had been, physically or in his will. He would not meet her eye.

Yet there was an odor here. A mystery more than that surrounding his survival. Something odd about him. Perhaps it was something in the way the other males eyed him beneath their lowered brows. Was he in command? That seemed so unlikely she discarded the notion immediately.

“Tell me, Kublin. Why are you alive? I saw you cut down by the nomads. I killed them . . . ” But when the fighting ended, she recalled, she had been unable to find his body. “Tell me what happened.”

He said nothing. He turned slightly, stared into the fire. The other males came somewhat more alert.

“You’d better talk to me, Kublin. I’m the only hope you have here.”

He spat something derogatory about silth, using the dialect they had spoken in their packstead. He mumbled, and Marika no longer used the dialect even with Grauel and Barlog. She did not catch it all. But it was not flattering.

She patted his arm. “Very brave, Kublin. But think. Many of my huntresses died here today. Those who survived are not in a good temper. They have designs on you prisoners. Especially you males. You have broken all the codes and covenants. So tell me.”

He shrugged. “All right.”

He was never strong with her, Marika reflected. Only that time he tried to murder Pohsit.

“I crawled into Gerrien’s loghouse after dark. There was still a fire going in the male end. I tried to get to it, but I fell into the cellar. I passed out. I do not remember very much after that. I kept trying to get out again, I think. I hurt a lot. There was a fever. The Laspe found me several days later. I was out of my mind, they said. Fever and hunger.”

Marika drew one long, slow, deep breath, exhaled as slowly. Behind closed eyes she slowly played back the nightmare that had haunted her for so long. Being trapped in a dank, dark place, badly hurt, trying to climb a stair that would not permit climbing . . .

“The Laspe nursed me back to health, out of obligation. I must have been out of my head a long time. My first clear memories are of the Laspe three or four weeks after the nomads came. They were not pleased to have me around. Next summer, when tradermales came through, I went away with Khronen. He took me to Critza. I lived there till the nomads came and breached the walls. When it became obvious help from Akard would not arrive in time, the master put all the pups aboard the escape vehicles and helped us shoot our way out. We were sent someplace in the south. When I became old enough, I was given a job as a driver. My orders eventually brought me here.”

A true story, Marika thought. With all the flesh left off the bones. “That’s it? That’s all you can tell me about eight years of your life?”

“Can you say much more about yours?”

“What were you doing here, Kublin?”

“Driving. That is my job.”

A truth that was at least partly a lie, Marika suspected. He was hiding something. And he persisted in using the formal mode with her. Her. When they had been pups, they had used only the informal mode with one another.

“Driving. But driving Serke making an illegal incursion into Reugge territory, Kublin. You and your brethren knowingly violated age-old conventions by becoming directly involved in a silth dispute. Why did you do that?”

“I was told to drive. Those were my orders.”

“They were very stupid orders. Weren’t they?”

He would not answer.

“This mess could destroy the brethren, Kublin.”

He showed a little spirit in answering, “I doubt that. I doubt it very seriously.”

“How do you expect the Communities to respond when they hear what brethren have done?”

Kublin shrugged.

“What’s so important about the Ponath, that so many must die and so much be risked, Kublin?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

That had the ring of truth. And he had given in just enough to have lapsed into the informal mode momentarily.

“Maybe you don’t.” She was growing a little angry. “I’ll tell you this. I’m going to find out.”

He shrugged a third time, as though he did not care.

“You put me in a quandary, Kublin. I’m going to go away for a little while. I have to think. Will you be a witness for me? Before the Reugge council?”

“No. I will do nothing for you, silth. Nothing but die.”

Marika went away, amazed to find that much spirit in him. And that much hatred of silth. So much that he would not accept her as the littermate he had shared so much with.

Marika squatted beside Grauel. She nodded toward the prisoners. “I don’t want anyone else getting near them,” she whispered. “Understand?”

“Yes.”

Marika found herself a place beside the main fire, crowding in among her surviving novices. She did not pay them any heed.

Kublin! What was she to do? All they had shared as pups . . .

She fell asleep squatting there. Despite the emotional storm, she was too exhausted to remain awake.

Marika wakened to the sting of cold-blown snow upon her muzzle and the crackle of small-arms fire. She staggered up, her whole body aching. “What now?”

Snow was falling, a powder driven by the wind. A vague bit of light said it was near sunrise. She could see just well and far enough to discover that yesterday’s bodies and wreckage already wore a coat of white. “Dorteka! What is happening?”

“Nomads. There was a band following the Serke force. They stumbled onto the voctors I had going through the vehicles on the far slope.”

“How many are there?”

“I do not yet know. Quite a few from the sound of it.”

Marika moved out into the open to look across the valley. She was surprised at the effort it took to make her muscles carry out her will. She could see nothing through the falling snow. “I am still worn out. I used up far more of me than I thought yesterday.”

“I can handle this, Marika. I have been unable to detect any silth accompanying them.”

Marika’s head had begun to throb. “Go ahead. I must eat something. I will be with you when I can.”

The firing was moving closer. Dorteka hurried off into the falling snow. Marika turned, stiffly returned to the fire where she had slept, snatched at scraps of food. She found a half-finished cup of soup that had gone cold, downed it. That helped some almost immediately.

Stiffly then, she moved on to the prisoners.

Grauel sat watching them, her eyes red with weariness. “What is all the racket, Marika?”

Marika glared at the prisoners. “Nomads. Our friends here had a band trailing them, probably to take the blame.” They must have known. “I wondered why the reports mentioned sighting nomads but not vehicles.” She paused for half a minute. “What do you think, Grauel? What should I do?”

“I can’t make a decision for you, Marika. I recall that you and Kublin were close. Closer than was healthy, some thought. But that was eight years ago. Nearly half your life. You’ve gone different paths. You’re strangers now.”

“Yes. There is no precedent. Whatever I do will be wrong, by Degnan law or by Reugge. Get some rest, Grauel. I’ll watch them while I’m thinking.”

“Rest? While there is fighting going on?”

“Yes. Dorteka says she can handle it.”

“If you say so.”

“Give me your weapons. In case they get ideas. I don’t know if my talents would respond right now.”

“Where are your weapons?”

“I left them where I fell asleep last night. Beside the big fire. Go on now.”

Grauel surrendered rifle and revolver, tottered away.

Marika stared at the prisoners for a few minutes. They were all alert now, listening to the firing as it moved closer. Marika suspected they would be very careful to give no provocation. They nurtured hopes of rescue, feeble as those hopes might be.

“Kublin. Come here.”

He came. There seemed to be no defiance left in him. But that could be for show. He was always a crafty pup.

“What do you have to say this morning?” she asked.

“Get me out of this, Marika. I don’t want to die.”

So. He knew how much real hope there was for a rescue by the nomads. “Will you stand witness for me?”

“No.”

That was an absolute, Marika understood. The brethren had won Kublin’s soul.

“I don’t want you to die, Kublin. But I don’t know how to save you.” She wanted to say a lot more, to lecture him about having asked for it, but she refrained. She recalled how well he had listened to lectures as a pup.

He shrugged. “That’s easy. Let me run. I overheard your huntresses saying there were two vehicles that weren’t damaged. If I could get to one . . . ”

“That’s fine for you. But where would it leave me? How could I explain it?”

“Why would you have to explain anything?”

Marika indicated the other prisoners. “They would know. They would tell when they are interrogated. You see? You put me into a terrible position, Kublin. You face me with a choice I do not want to have to make.”

The firing beyond the river rose in pitch. The nomad band seemed to be very large. Dorteka might be having more trouble than she had expected.

“In the confusion that is causing, who is going to miss one prisoner? You could manipulate it, Marika.”

She did not like the tone of low cunning that had come into his voice. And she could not shake the feeling that he was not entirely what he seemed.

“My meth aren’t stupid, Kublin. You would be missed. And my novices would detect you sneaking toward those vehicles. They would kill you without a thought. They are hungry for blood. Especially for male blood, after what they have learned here.”

“Marika, this is Critza. Critza was my home for almost four years. I know this land . . . ”

“Be quiet.” Marika folded in upon herself, going away, opening to the All. It was one of the early silth lessons. Open to intuition when you do not know what to do. Let the All speak to your soul.

The dream returned. The terrible dream with the pain and the fever and the fear and the helplessness. That had been Kublin. Her mind had been in touch with his while he was in his torment. And she had not known and had not been able to help.

Grauel was right. Though he appealed to the memory, this Kublin was not the Kublin with whom she had shared the loft in their dam’s loghouse. This was a Kublin who had gone his own way, who had become something . . . What had he become?

That horrible dream would not stay away.

Perhaps her mind was not running in appropriate channels. Perhaps her sanity had surrendered briefly to the insanity of the past several dozen hours, to the unending strain. Without conscious decision she captured a ghost, went hunting her novices, touched each of them lightly, striking them unconscious.

Dorteka, though, resisted for a moment before going under.

She returned to flesh. “All right, Kublin. Now. Start running. Go. Take one of your vehicles and get out of here. This may cost me. Don’t slow down for anything. Get away. I can’t cover you for long.”

“Marika . . . ”

“Go. And you’d better never cross my path again, in any circumstances. I’m risking everything I’ve become for your sake.”

“Marika . . . ”

“You damned fool, shut up and get out of here!” She almost shrieked it. The pain of it had begun gnawing at her already.

Kublin ran.

The other prisoners watched him go, a few of the males rising, taking a pace or two as if to follow, then freezing when they saw the look in Marika’s eye. Their mouths opened to protest as, slowly, as if of its own volition, Grauel’s rifle turned in her paws and began to bark.

They tried to scatter. She emptied the rifle. Then she drew the pistol and finished it.

Grauel and the surviving bath sister rushed out of the snowfall. “What happened?” Grauel demanded.

“They tried to run away. I started to nod off and they tried to run away.”

Grauel did not believe her. Already she had counted bodies. But she did not say anything. The bath looked studiedly blank. Marika asked her, “How do you feel this morning? Able to help me move ship?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Good. We’ll start toward Akard as soon as Dorteka finishes with the nomads.”

The firing was rolling toward the river quickly, Marika realized.

Then she gasped, suddenly aware of what she had done. By knocking out the novices so Kublin could slip away, she had robbed her huntresses of their major advantage in the fight. They had no silth to support them. She plunged into the hollowness inside herself, reached out, found a ghost, flogged it across the river.

She had done it for sure. The huntresses were in retreat from a nomad party that had to number more than two hundred. Most of the novices had been found and slain where she had left them unconscious.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

She captured a stronger ghost. With it she hit the nomads hard, decimating them. They remained unaware of what was happening because so few could see one another through the snowfall. They came on, and they kept overtaking Marika’s huntresses.

She extricated Barlog from a difficult situation, scanned the slopes, killing here and there, and by the time she returned to Barlog found the huntress trapped again.

Only a dozen of her meth made it to the river.

Only when they assembled before taking up the pursuit in the open did the nomads discover how terribly they had been hurt.

Marika ravened among them then, and they panicked, scattered.

She searched for Kublin. She found him starting up the far slope safely downstream from the action. She stayed with him till he reached an operable vehicle, silencing any nomad who came too near. Though he seemed aware of their presence almost as soon as she, and shied away. And as he had said, he knew the land and made use of its masking features.

Even so, she hovered over him while he transferred fuel to fill one vehicle’s tanks, then got it going. As it began climbing the trail over which the attack had come, Marika hurried back to her proper form.

When she came out she was more exhausted than she had been the evening before.

“Marika?” Grauel asked. “Are you all right?”

“I will be. I need food and rest. Get me something to eat.” The firing had stopped entirely. “Any word from over there?”

“Not yet. You went?”

“Yes. It looked awful. There were hundreds of savages. And Dorteka guessed wrong. There were silth with them. Wild silth. Most of our meth are dead, I think. Certainly most of the novices are. I could find no sign of them.”

Grauel’s lips twitched, but she said nothing. Marika wondered what thoughts lay behind her expressionless eyes.

Huntresses began to straggle in almost as soon as Grauel had gotten a cookfire going. Only seven showed. Marika turned inward and remained that way, loathing herself. She had fouled up about as bad as it was possible to do. That All-be-damned Kublin. Why did he have to turn up? Why couldn’t he have stayed dead? Why had fate dragged him across her trail just now?

“Marika? Food.” Grauel gave her of the first to come from the fire. She ate mechanically.

Dorteka staggered out of the snowfall fifteen minutes after Marika began eating. She settled beside the fire. Grauel gave her food and drink. Like all the rest of them, she ate and stared into the flames. Marika did not wonder what she saw there.

After a while Dorteka rose and trudged toward where the prisoners had been held. She was gone fifteen minutes. Marika was only marginally aware that she had gone.

Dorteka returned. She settled beyond the fire, opposite Marika. “The prisoners tried to get away during the fighting?”

“Yes,” Marika said, without looking up. She accepted another cup of broth from Grauel. The broth was the best thing for a silth who reached this exhausted state.

“One got away. A trail runs down the slope. I heard an engine over there while I was coming back. Must have been one of the males.”

“I do not know. I thought I got them all.” She shrugged. “If one got away he will take warning to the rest.”

“Who was he, Marika?”

“I do not know.”

“You helped him. Your touch cannot be disguised. You were directly responsible for the deaths of all of our novices and most of the huntresses. Who was he, Marika? What is this thing you have with males of the brotherhood? Why was the escape of this one so important you destroyed yourself?”

Was there no end to it?

Marika clutched Grauel’s revolver beneath her coat. “You believe what you have said. Yes. I see that. What are you going to do about it, Dorteka?”

“You have left me no choice, Marika.”

Powder burned Marika’s paw. The bullet struck Dorteka in the forehead, threw her backward. She lay spasming in the snow, her surprise lingering in the air of touch.

The huntresses yelped and began to rise, to grab for weapons. Grauel and Barlog did the same, but slowed by tangled loyalties.

This would be the ultimate test of their faith, Marika thought as she slipped through her loophole, grabbed a ghost, and struck at the seven.

The last fell. Marika waited for the bullet that would tell her Grauel or Barlog had turned against her. It did not come. She returned to flesh, found both huntresses staring at her in horror. As was the bath from the darkship, who had been sleeping for so long Marika had forgotten her.

She summoned what remained of her strength and energy and rose, collected a rifle, put several bullets into each of the downed huntresses so it would look like nomads had slain them.

“Marika!” Barlog snarled.

Grauel laid warning fingers upon her wrist.

Marika said, “The snow will cover everything. We will report a huge battle with savages. We will be the only survivors. We will be stricken with sorrow. The Reugge do not Mourn their dead. There is no reason anyone should investigate. Now we rest.”

Her companions radiated the sort of fear huntresses betrayed only in the presence of the mad. Marika ignored them.

She would pull it off. She was sure she would. Grauel and Barlog would say nothing. Their loyalties had passed the ultimate test. And now their fates were inextricably entwined with hers.

II
Just a few minutes more, Marika thought at the All. Just a few more miles. They had to be close.

The limping darkship was just a hundred feet up, and settling lower all the time. And making but slight headway. Snowflakes swirled around Marika. The north wind pushed at her almost as hard as she was able to push against it. When she risked opening her eyes to glance back, she could barely distinguish the bath at the girder’s far end. Grauel and Barlog, riding the tips of the crossarm, were scarcely more visible.

The huntresses had little strength she could draw, but she took of them as well as of the bath. She also dredged deep into her own reserves. She knew she was not doing this right, that she was devouring far more energies than needful in her crude effort, but survival was the prize.

Only savage will kept the darkship aloft and moving.

Will was not enough. Cold gnawed without mercy. Weariness ravened as Marika rounded the last bend of the Hainlin before it forked around Akard, the ship’s rear grounding strut began to drag in the loose snow concealing the river’s face. Marika sucked one final dollop of strength from the bath and herself, raised the darkship a few yards, and threw it forward.

The draw was too much for the bath. Her heart exploded.

The rear of the darkship dropped into the snow. The ship began tilting left. The left arm caught. Grauel and Barlog tumbled off. The flying dagger tried to stand on its point. Marika arced through bitter air and, as snow met her, flung one desperate touch at the shadowy fortress looming above her.

III
Marika opened her eyes. She was in a cell walled with damp stone. A single candle provided weak light. She could not distinguish the features of the face above her. Her eyes refused to focus.

Had she damaged them? A moment of panic. Nothing was so helpless as a blind meth.

“Marika?”

“Is that you, Grauel?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we? Did we make it to Akard?”

“Yes. Most Senior Gradwohl is on comm from Maksche. She wants to talk to you.”

Marika tried to rise. Her limbs were quicksilver. “I can’t . . . ”

“I’ll have you carried there.”

The face disappeared. Darkness and dreams returned. The dreams were grim. Ghosts wandered through them, taunting her. The most prominent was her littermate, Kublin.

She was lying in a litter when she revived. The smell of soup tempted her. She opened her eyes. Her vision was better this time. Barlog walked beside her, her gait the strained labor of a tired old Wise meth. She carried a steaming stoneware pot. Her face was as empty as that of death. The bitter chill behind her eyes when she met Marika’s gaze had nothing to do with weariness.

“How did we get here?” Marika croaked.

“You touched someone. They sent huntresses out after us.”

“How long ago?”

“Three days.”

“That long?”

“You went too far into yourself, they say. They say they had trouble keeping you anchored in this world.” Did she sound the slightest disappointed?

So many times Dorteka had warned her against putting all her trust in those-who-dwell. There were ways less perilous than walking the dark . . . So close.

Barlog said, “They sent huntresses to Critza to find out what happened there. In case you did not make it. Their fartoucher reported by touch this morning. The most senior wanted to know when she did. She wanted you wakened when that happened. Even she was not certain you could be drawn back.”

Gradwohl had taken a direct interest? Mild trepidation fluttered through Marika. But she hadn’t the energy for real fear. “Give me a cup of that soup.”

Barlog stopped the stretcher-bearers long enough to dole out a mug of broth. Marika gulped it down. In moments she felt a surge of well-being.

The soup was drugged. But not with chaphe. That would have propelled her back into the realm of nightmare.

Barlog said, “The most senior did not think to question simple huntresses such as Grauel and I.”

Marika understood the unstated message.

Grauel met them at the comm room door. “I have placed a chair facing the screen, Marika. I will be over here, out of hearing, but watching. If you have trouble, signal me and we will develop technical difficulties.” The huntress chased the technicians out. There would be no outside witnesses.

“I can handle it,” Marika said, wondering if in fact she could match her show of confidence with actions. The most senior was difficult enough to fool even when Marika had full control of her faculties.

She kept her eyelids cracked as Grauel and Barlog levered her into the chair.

The face on the screen was not that of the most senior at all, but of Braydic. Braydic looked as if she had put in some hard hours of worry. Good Braydic. She would have to be remembered in times to come.

The distant communications technician said something to someone at her end, moved out of view of the pickup.

Gradwohl replaced her. The most senior appeared concerned but neither suspicious nor angry. Maybe the effort to make it look like the nomads had wiped out the ambush had been successful.

Marika opened her eyes. “Most senior. I am here.”

“I see. You look terrible.”

“They tell me I did stupid things, mistress. I may have. It was a desperate and narrow thing. But I think I will recover.”

“Tell me about it.”

Marika told the story exactly as it had happened till the moment she had discovered Kublin. She left her littermate out of it. She left her treachery out of it. Of course. “I am not sure why the nomads were following so far behind. Maybe the Serke outdistanced them in their eagerness to reach and silence Akard before help was summoned. Whatever, I was unprepared for the advent of nomads. They surprised us while I was unconscious and my huntresses were scattered, going through the damaged vehicles. They overran everyone and crossed the river before anyone wakened me. Then the prisoners broke away and added to the confusion.

“Had the snowfall not been so heavy the savages might have been intimidated by their losses. But they could not see those. It came to hand-to-hand fighting in our camp before I managed to slay the last silth protecting them. And then I did not have the strength to finish them. All I could do was lie there while my huntresses died around me.

“Mistress, I must take responsibility for this disaster. I have betrayed you. Through my inattention I turned victory into defeat.”

“What defeat, Marika? It was costly, yes. I will miss Dorteka. But you broke the Serke back. You saved the Ponath. They will not try anything like this again.”

“Mistress, I . . . ”

“Yes?”

“I lost my command. I lost Dorteka. I lost many valuable novices. I lost everything. This is not a thing to celebrate.”

“You won a triumph, pup. You were the only one to stand her ground. Your seniors lost heart and fled before the battle was joined. And I am certain the Serke did not make it easy for you. Or you would not be in the state you are now.”

“There was one of their great ones with them,” Marika reiterated. “I bested her only through trickery.”

Gradwohl ignored her remarks. Her voice took on a flint-knife hardness. “Educan is going to rue her male cowardice. The tall tales she told when she reached Maksche will cost her every privilege she has.” A glint of humor appeared in the most senior’s eye. “You would have appreciated her expression when the news came that you had saved Akard. That the garrison she abandoned there never saw hair of the invaders.”

“Mistress, I fear what might happen if news of this gets out to other Communities.”

“I am two steps ahead, pup. Let the villains quake and quiver. Let them wonder. What happened is not going to leave the circle of those who know now. We will let the snows devour the evidence.”

Marika sighed.

“We are not ready for the upheaval going public would cause. We have years yet to go.”

Marika was puzzled by what Gradwohl said. She told herself not to underestimate the most senior. That female had a labyrinthine mind. She was but a little animal being run through its maze, hoping she could keep her head well enough to use as much as she was used. “Yes, mistress. I was about to suggest that.” Let the snows devour the evidence.

“I think we will have less trouble with the Serke now. Do you agree? Yes. They will walk carefully for a while, now. Come back to Maksche, Marika. I need you here.”

Marika could think of nothing to say. Her mind refused to function efficiently.

“You flew the darkship blind, untrained, with but one bath to support you. I am impressed and pleased. You give me hope.”

“Mistress?”

“It is time your education moved into new, more practical areas.”

“Yes, mistress.”

“That is all for the moment, Marika. We will examine this more closely after you return. When you are more fully recovered. A darkship will come for you soon.”

“Thank you, mistress.”

The most senior stepped off pickup. Braydic reappeared for a moment, made an encouraging gesture. Then the screen blanked.

“You ducked that one, didn’t you?” Grauel asked. When Marika glanced her way, she found the huntress’s back turned.

The most senior turned out the cloister in Marika’s honor. Because only a very few knew the whole story, the older sisters acclaimed her only grudgingly.

“What do they want of me?” Marika asked Grauel. “No matter what I accomplish, they resent it.” She was surprised that, after all these years facing the disdain of the Reugge Wise, she could still be hurt by their attitudes.

“I do not know, Marika.” Grauel’s voice was tired, cold, remote. “You are a heroine now. Your future is assured. Is that not enough?” She would not criticize, but censure choked her body language.

For a very long time she and Barlog would speak to Marika only when the course of everyday business required it.

Chapter Twenty-one
I
For a year the Reugge were free from outside pressures. The Serke Community assumed a posture of retrenchment that baffled the silth world. They seemed to be digging in quietly in anticipation of some great fury while overtly shifting more of their energies into offworld ventures. But nothing happened.

Some who watched the brethren closely noted that they, too, sought a lower profile. Some of the constituent bonds, especially those strongest politically within the brotherhood, also seemed to anticipate some great terror. But nothing happened.

Except that Most Senior Gradwohl of the Reugge gathered legates of the Communities at the Reugge complex in TelleRai to formally announce a major victory over the savages plaguing the Reugge northern provinces. She declared those territories officially pacified.

The savages had come to concern several other Communities whose lands bounded the Reugge and would have been threatened had the Reugge campaign been unsuccessful. Those Communities were pleased by Gradwohl’s declaration.

Gradwohl publicly announced that a young Reugge sister named Marika had engineered the end of the savages’ tale.

Privately, Marika did not believe the threat to be extinct. She thought it only dormant, a weapon the Serke would unsheathe again if that seemed profitable.

TelleRai, where many silth Communities maintained their senior cloisters, simmered with speculations. What was the truth behind this bland bit of Reugge folkloring? Who was this deadly Marika, of whom there had been rumors before? Why was Gradwohl taking so little genuine note of what in fact amounted to a withering defeat for Serke intrigues? What was the Reugge game?

Already Gradwohl was a shadowy, almost sinister figure to the silth of TelleRai, known by reputation rather than by person. Her intensity and determination on behalf of a relatively minor, splinter Community, while she herself remained an enigma, were making of her an intimidating legend, large beyond her actual strength. Her spending most of her time away from TelleRai only strengthened the aura of mystery surrounding her.

Was the legend striving toward some goal greater than plain Reugge survival? Her plots were intricate, complex, though always woven within the law . . . She made more than the Serke ruling council uncomfortable.

Once a month, on no set day, Marika left the Maksche cloister and walked to the brethren enclave. The only escort she accepted consisted of Grauel and Barlog.

“I will not be loaded down with a mob of useless meth,” she insisted the first time after her return from the north. “The more I drag along, the more I have to worry about protecting.”

It had become customary for a silth sister daring the streets to surround herself with a score of armed guards. Invariably there would be at least one sniping incident.

Marika wanted to get the measure of the rogue infestation. In the back of her mind something had begun to see them as potentially useful, though she had as yet formulated nothing consciously.

Silth learned to listen to their subconscious even when not hearing it clearly.

The rogues did not bother her once, though she presented an inviting target.

Grauel and Barlog invariably chided her. “Why are you doing this? It’s foolish.” They said it a dozen ways, one or the other, every time.

“I’m proving something.”

“Such as?”

“That there is a connection between the rogue problem and the nomad problem.”

“That has been the suspicion for years.”

“Yes. But the Serke always get blamed for all our troubles. This is more in the nature of a practical experiment. If they feel I really burned their paws in the Ponath, maybe they’ll be afraid to risk troubling me here. I want to be satisfied that the same strategists are behind both troubles.”

She had other suspicions that she did not voice.

More than once Barlog admonished, “Do not become too self-important, Marika. The fact that we do not draw fire in the street may have nothing to do with it being you that is out there.”

“I know. But I think if we are ignored often enough, it would be safe to say it’s purposeful. Especially if everybody else still gets shot at. Right?”

Reluctantly, both huntresses admitted that that might be true. But Grauel added, “The Serke will now think that they have a blood debt to balance. They will want your life.”

“I might stoop to murder to achieve my ends,” Marika admitted. “But the Serke will not. That’s more a male way of doing things, don’t you think?”

Grauel and Barlog looked thoughtful.

Marika continued, “The Serke are too tradition-bound to eliminate an important enemy that way.” She did not add that others with, perhaps, an equal interest in her death would not be bound by silth customs. Let the huntresses figure that out for themselves.

Those untraditional meth might be the ones who controlled the rogues tactically.

“You’re in charge, Marika,” Grauel said. “You know what you are doing, and you know the ways of those witches. But that city out there is wild country, for all its pretense to civilization. The wise huntress remains always alert when she is on the stalk.”

“I will keep that in mind.”

She did not need the admonition. She made each trip by a different route, carefully keeping near cover, with more wariness than even Grauel demanded. She probed every foot of the way with ghosts before she traversed it.

Not once did she divine the presence of would-be assassins.

Did that mean the Serke in fact controlled their unholy alliance with the brethren—or only that all her enemies were equally intimidated?

During that, the year of silence, Marika and Bagnel sparred carefully and subtly, each gently mining the other for flecks of information. Marika often wondered if he was as conscious of her probable mission as she was of his. She suspected he was. He was quite intelligent and perceptive. For a male.

Halfway through the year Bagnel began teaching her to fly one of the brethren’s simplest trainers. His associates and hers alike were scandalized.

The visits to Bagnel relieved a growing but as yet unspoken pressure upon Marika. On returning from the Ponath she had been eligible for the final rites of silth adulthood, the passage that would admit her into full sisterhood among the Reugge. But she had not asked to be passed through the ritual. She evaded the subject however obliquely it arose, hinting that she was too busy with her duties, too involved with learning the darkship, to take out the months needed for preparation.

She did spend most of her waking time studying and practicing the methods of the silth Mistresses of the Ship, driving herself to exhaustion, trying to become in months what others achieved only after years.

II
It was not her darkship, of course, but she fell into the habit of thinking of it that way. It was the cloister’s oldest and smallest, its courier and trainer. There were no other trainees and few messages to be flown. Its bath were old and drained, no longer fit for prolonged flights. They were survivors of other crews broken up by time or misfortune during the struggle with the savages. They did not mesh perfectly, the way bath did after they had been together a long time, but they did so well enough to give a young Mistress-trainee a feel for what she had to learn.

Marika had the most senior’s permission to avail herself of the darkship anytime it was not employed upon cloister business. It almost never was. She had it to herself most of the time. So much so that when an occasion for a courier flight did arise, she resented having it taken from her.

She spent as much time aloft as the bath would tolerate.

They did have the right to refuse her if they felt she was using them or herself too hard. But they never did. They understood.

One day, drifting on chill winds a thousand feet above Maksche, Marika noticed a dirigible approaching. She streaked toward it, to the dismay of Grauel and Barlog, and drifted alongside, waving at the freighter’s master. He kept swinging away, disturbed by silth attention.

She thought of Bagnel, realized she had not seen him in nearly two months. She had been too engrossed in the darkship.

She followed the frieghter in to the enclave.

She dropped the darkship onto the concrete just yards from Bagnel’s office building. Tradermales surrounded her immediately, most of them astonished, many of them armed, but all of them recognizing her as their security chief’s strange silth friend.

Bagnel appeared momentarily. “Marika, I swear you’ll get yourself shot yet.” He ignored the scowls his familiarity won from Grauel and Barlog.

“What’s the matter, Bagnel? Another big secret brethren scheme afoot out here?” She taunted him so because she was convinced such schemes did exist. She hoped to garner something from his reactions.

“Marika, what am I going to do with you?”

“Take me up in a Sting. You’ve been promising for months. Do you have time? Are you too busy?”

“I’m always busy.” He scratched his head, eyed her and her huntresses and bath, all hung about with an outrageous assortment of weapons. Marika refused to leave the cloister unarmed, and even there usually carried her rifle. It was her trademark. “But, then, I’ve always got time for you. Gives me an excuse to get away from my work.”

Right, Marika thought. She grew ever more certain that she was his primary occupation. “I’ve got a better idea than the Sting. You’re always taking me up in your ships. Let me take you up on mine.”

Grauel and Barlog snapped, “Marika!”

The eldest of the bath protested, “Mistress, you forget yourself. You are speaking to a male.” She was scandalized by Marika’s use of the familiar even more than by her invitation.

“This male is my friend. This male has ridden a darkship before. He did not defile it then. He will not now. Come on, Bagnel. Do you have the courage?”

Bagnel eyed the darkship. He examined the small platform at the axis, usually shared by Grauel and Barlog. He licked his lips, frightened.

Marika said, “Grauel, Barlog, you stay here. That will give him more room.”

The huntresses surveyed the unfriendly male crowd with narrowed eyes. Unconsciously, Barlog unslung her rifle. Grauel asked, “Is that wise, Marika?”

“You’ll be all right. Bagnel will be my hostage for your safety. Come on, tradermale. You claim to be the equal of any female. Can you fly with no cushion under your tail and no canopy to keep the wind out of your whiskers?”

Bagnel licked his lips and approached the darkship.

Grauel and Barlog stepped down. Marika suggested, “Use the harness, Bagnel. Don’t try to show off the first time. First-timers have been known to get dizzy and fall if they aren’t harnessed.”

Bagnel was not too proud to harness himself. He did so carefully, under the grim gaze of the leading bath.

They were angry, those old silth. Marika expected them to resist when she tried to take the darkship up, so she lifted off before they were ready, violently, shocking them into assuming their roles for their own safety’s sake.

She made a brief flight of it, stretching her capabilities, then brought the darkship down within inches of where it had settled before.

Bagnel unfastened his harness with trembling fingers. He expelled a great breath as he stepped down to the concrete.

“You look a little frayed,” Marika teased.

“Do I, now? Ground crew! Prepare the number-two Sting. Come with me, Marika. It’s my turn.”

Grauel, Barlog, and the bath watched, perplexed, as Bagnel seated Marika in the Sting’s rear seat and strapped her in.

“What’s this?” Marika asked. She had worn no harness when they had flown in trainers.

“Parachute. In case we have to jump.”

Bagnel wriggled into the forward seat, strapped himself in. One of the ground crew spun the ship’s airscrew. The engine coughed, caught, belched smoke that stung Marika’s eyes and watered her nose. The ground crew jerked the blocks away from the ship’s wheels.

The aircraft bucked and roared with a power unlike any Marika had seen in the trainers. Its deep-throated growl swelled, swelled. When Bagnel let off the brakes, the ship raced down the airstrip, jumped into the air, climbed faster than was possible for any darkship.

Bagnel leveled off at one thousand feet. “All right, smart pup. Let’s see about your courage.”

The Sting tilted, dove. The airstrip swelled, spun. Buildings whirled dizzyingly. “You’re getting too close,” Marika said.

The ground kept coming up. Slam! It stopped spinning. Slam! Marika’s seat pressed into her back hard. Her guts sagged inside her. The ground slid away ahead. The horizon appeared momentarily, then whipped upward as Bagnel dumped another fifty feet of altitude. It reappeared and rotated as Bagnel rolled the aircraft. It seemed she could pluck the frightened growls from the lips of Grauel and Barlog as the ship roared past them.

The great engine grumbled more deeply as Bagnel demanded more of it. Clouds appeared ahead—and slid away as Bagnel took the ship over onto its back. He completed the loop, resumed the climb, reached five thousand feet, and went into a stall. The ship spun and fluttered.

Bagnel turned, said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that business in the Ponath last summer. What happened anyway? I’ve heard so many different stories . . . ”

Marika could make no sense of what was happening outside. She clung to her courage by a thread. “Shouldn’t you be paying attention to what you’re doing?”

“No problem. I thought this would be a chance to talk without those two arfts hanging over your shoulder.”

“I ambushed a mob of nomads. It was a tough fight. Hardly anybody got out on either side. That’s all there was to it.” Her eyes grew wider as the surface drew closer.

“Really? There are so many rumors. I suppose they’re exaggerated.”

“No doubt.” He was digging. Carrying out an inquiry on instructions from his masters, she supposed. The brethren seniors would be getting nervous. They would want to know the Reugge game. That amused her mildly. She did not know the game herself. The most senior kept its strings held close to her heart.

“Looks like time to do something here,” Bagnel said. “Unless you’d like to land the hard way?”

“I’d rather not.”

“You’re a cool one, Marika.”

“I’m scared silly. But silth aren’t allowed to show fear.”

He glanced back, amused, then faced forward intently. He took control. The world stopped rocking and spinning. Then Bagnel went into a hard roll.

Something popped in the right wing. Marika watched a strut tear away, dragging fabric and wire. The ship staggered. The fragment spun behind, whipping at the end of a wire, threatening to pull more wing with it. “I think we might have trouble, Bagnel.”

“I think you might be right. Hang on. I’ll take us down.”

His landing was as stately and smooth as any he had made in a trainer. He brought the wounded ship to a halt just yards from his ground crew, killed the engine. “What did you think, Marika?”

The roar in her ears began to fade. “I think you got even. Let’s don’t do that to each other anymore.”

“Right.” He unbuckled, climbed out, and dropped from the lower wing to the concrete. Marika followed. When he finished briefing the ground crew about the strut, he told Marika, “You’d better leave now. My masters won’t be happy as it is.”

“Why not?”

“You dropped in unannounced. Better give warning from now on. Every time.”

Marika glanced at the freighter. She wondered if it really had brought in something the tradermales did not want seen by silth eyes. “All right. Whatever you say. Oh. I wanted to tell you. The most senior says it’s all right if you want to visit me at the cloister. If you have time off and have nothing better to do. My time isn’t as tight as it once was. I spend most of it learning the darkship. Maybe we could try another flight on one.”

News of that permission had scandalized the older sisters. Already they considered her friendship with Bagnel a filthy reflection upon the cloister, a degradation, though there was nothing even a little scandalous in the relationship. When her periodic estrus threatened, Marika was scrupulous about sinter, the self-isolation of silth who had not yet completed the Toghar ceremonies leading to full sisterhood. The pressure remained silent, but it was mounting. Her resistance was becoming more conscious.

III
Marika learned to manipulate a darkship as well as any Mistress of the Ship assigned to the Maksche cloister. And she did so in months instead of years.

She was not accepted within the select group of Mistresses, in their separate and sumptuous cloister within a cloister, though they did condescend to speak with her and give her advice when she asked it. No more was she accepted by the bath, who, in their way, formed a subCommunity even more exclusive than that of the Mistresses. They, like everyone else, had become frightened of the talent she showed.

There was nothing more she could learn from them anyway. She told herself she did not hurt for lack of their society. She had become the best again.

She received a summons to Gradwohl’s presence. She believed her accomplishments were the reason for it, and felt vindicated in her belief when, after the amenities and obeisances, Gradwohl said, “If you belonged to a major Community, Marika, you would be destined for the big darkships. For the stars. There are moments when I hurt because the Reugge are too small for you. Yet, there is tomorrow.”

In private Gradwohl seemed partial to such cryptic remarks. “Tomorrow, mistress?”

“You once asked why we do not build our own darkships anymore. When the brethren announced that they would no longer replace darkships lost by the Reugge, I started looking into that. I located sisters willing to soil their paws on the Community’s behalf. I found more of them than I expected. We are not as far gone in sloth and self-importance as one like yourself might think. I have them hidden away now, with a good crew of workers to help them. They have begun to report modest successes. Extracting the titanium is more difficult than we expected.

“But there are several golden-fleet groves within the Reugge territories. Those most immediately threatened by the advancing ice I have ordered harvested. Old shipwrights with the ancient skills promise me that we do not need to be fancy, and that wood can be substituted many places even in the brethren designs.

“So we will no longer be dependent. May a curse fall upon all male houses. If this works out the way I expect, we may even be able to build our own void darkships.”

Marika arrayed her face in a carefully neutral expression. Now she understood the additional, intensified silth exercises she had been assigned on her return from the Ponath.

There was little more she could learn from teachers available at Maksche. Indeed, she seemed to have exhausted the Reugge educational resources. Her responsibilities as a councillor took up very little time. She was free to pursue private studies and to expand her silth capacities. Gradwohl insisted she do the latter, feeling she was especially weak in her grasp of the far touch.

The far touch was a talent increasingly rare because the use of telecommunications was so much easier. One side of Marika was lazy enough to want to ignore the talent—just as that lazy side throughout the Reugge Community was responsible for the talent’s diminution. She rebelled against that laziness, hammered away at learning. And at times was very amused at herself. She, the outsider, the cynic about silthdom’s traditional values, seemed to be the Community’s most determined conservator of old ways and skills.

Often she wrestled the question of why Gradwohl wanted her to become the complete silth when what she really wanted was to create a Mistress of the Ship able to darkwar for the Reugge.

In one of her more daring moods, Marika asked the most senior, “Is Bestrei getting old, mistress?”

“You cannot be fooled, can you? Yes. But we all age. And the Serke, knowing how much their power depends upon their capacity for darkwar, have other strong darksiders coming up behind Bestrei.”

“Yet you believe I will be able to conquer them.”

“In time, pup. In time. Not now. I have never encountered anyone with your ability to walk the dark side. Not even Bestrei herself. And I have met her. But you are far from ready for such a confrontation. The Reugge must survive till you have been tempered, and hardened in your heart, and till we have built ourselves a true voidfaring darkship, and assembled bath who can fare the dark with you.”

“So that is why you have been avoiding confrontation when you knew you could force it and probably win the backing of the other Communities.”

“Yes. I am playing this game for the biggest stakes imaginable.”

Marika put that aside. She said, “I have had an idea for a device I think would be useful. To test it I would need someone from communications to modify one of the receivers for taking signals off the satellite network.”

“You are zigging when I am zagging, Marika.” Gradwohl appeared mildly baffled.

“I want to try to steal the signals of other sisterhoods, mistress. From what Bagnel has said, doing so should not be difficult. Just a matter of altering one of the receivers so it will accept signals other than our own.”

Gradwohl reflected for a moment. “Perhaps. The males would be most incensed if ever they discovered the fact.” Like mechanized transport, communications equipment came from the brethren on lease. Only minor repairs were permitted the lessees.

“They will not find out. I will use receivers we took away from the nomads.”

“All right. You have my permission. But I suspect you will find it more trouble than it is worth. Any messages of importance will be couched in the secret languages of the Communities sending them. And in code besides, if they are critical. Still, much could be learned from the daily chatter between Serke cloisters.”

Marika was more interested in intercepting data returned from tradermale research satellites, but she could not have interested the most senior in that. Gradwohl was an obsessive, interested only in defeating the Serke and augmenting Reugge power. “We might even find out what is so important about the Ponath,” Marika said. “If we knew that we might become a more powerful Community simply by possessing the knowledge.”

“That is true.” Gradwohl did not seem much interested in pursuing the thought, though. Something else was on her mind. Marika had a glum suspicion. Gradwohl said, “Let us get to the point, Marika. To the reason I called you here.”

“Yes, mistress?”

“Utiel is about to retire.”

“Mistress?” Marika knew what was coming. Utiel was fourth on the Maksche council. Only first chair, or senior, held more real power.

“I want to move you to fourth chair, Marika.”

“Thank you, mistress. Though there will be protests from—”

“I can quiet the egos of those passed over, Marika. Or I could if I did in fact move you up. I said I want to move you. I cannot. Not the way things stand.”

Marika slipped into her cautious role. “Mistress?” She controlled her emotions rigidly. Fourth chair she wanted badly. It could become her springboard into the future.

“Fourth chair is understudy for third as well as being responsible for cloister security, Marika.”

She knew that well. In the security responsibility she saw opportunities that seemed to have evaded those who had held the chair before.

Gradwohl continued, “Third chair is liaison with other cloisters, Marika. A coordinating position. A visible, public position. As fourth, understudying, you would be expected to begin making contacts outside the Maksche cloister. As fourth you would become known to the entire sisterhood as my favorite. As fourth you would be seen to have ambitions beyond Maksche.

“For all those reasons your behavior and record would be subjected to the closest scrutiny by those who hope to place obstacles in your path.

“From fourth chair, Marika, it is only a step to an auditor’s seat at conventions of the Reugge seven at TelleRai.”

“I understand, mistress.”

“I do not think so, Marika.”

“Mistress?”

“Never has one so young sat upon the Maksche council. Or any other cloister council, except in legend. But the sisters here accept your age, if grudgingly, because of your demonstrated talent, because of all you have done for the Community, and especially because you have my favor. They can brag about you before sisters from other cloisters. You have helped put a remote cloister upon the map, so to speak. But there are limits to what their pride and my power can force them to swallow.”

“Mistress?”

“They would revolt before they permitted you to assume a position in which you would represent this cloister elsewhere, pup.”

“You have lost me, mistress.”

“I doubt that. I doubt that very much. You know exactly what I am talking about. Don’t you? I am talking about Toghar, Marika. You have been eligible for the ceremony since you returned from the Ponath. You have put it off repeatedly, calling upon every excuse you can muster.”

“Mistress . . . ”

“Listen, Marika. I am speaking of roads to the future opened and closed. If you continue to evade the ceremony you will not only not rise any higher than you are now, you will begin to slide. And there will be nothing I can do. Tradition must be observed.”

“Mistress, I—”

“Marika, you have many dreams. Some I know, some I infer, and some must be entirely hidden. You are one moved by dreams.” The most senior stared at her intently. “Listen, pup. Marika. Your dreams all live or die with that ceremony. No Toghar, no stars. And the darkship will go. We cannot invest so much of the Reugge in one who will not invest of herself in the Community.”

She awaited an answer. None came.

“Pay the price, Marika. Demonstrate your dedication. So many smaller, weaker, less dedicated silth have done so before you.”

Still Marika did not respond.

She had witnessed the Toghar ceremonies. They were not terrible, just long. But the cost . . . The price of acceptance as an adult silth, with full privileges . . .

She had no plans to birth pups, ever. She did not wish to be burdened with trivial, homey responsibilities. Yet to surrender the ability to dam them . . . it seemed too great a price.

She shook her head. “Mistress, do you have any idea what Grauel would give to possess the ability you are asking me to surrender? What she would do? We came out of the Ponath, mistress. I carry the burden of ten years of living with and accepting those frontier values that—”

“I know that, pup. The entire cloister knows. That is why I am being pressed to push your ceremonies. There are those who hope you will stumble upon that early training.”

She had already. When she had released her littermate Kublin. Where was he now? There had been none of the terrible nighmares since that day on the Hainlin. Had she laid some ghosts?

“Make up your mind, Marika. Will you be silth? Or will you be a Ponath huntress?”

“How long do I have, mistress?”

“Not long. There are pressures I cannot resist forever. So make it soon. Very soon.”

Smug bitch, Marika thought. She was sure what the decision would be. She thought she had Marika’s every emotional end tied to a puppet string.

“But enough of that now, Marika. I also want your thoughts on the rogue situation. Did you hear that there was another factory explosion last night?”

“At another place belonging to someone friendly to us?”

“It was at the tool plant. That pushes the brethren down the list of suspects, does it not?” When she spoke in council, Marika always insisted the brethren were connected with the rogues.

“No.”

There had been a series of explosions lately, all of which had damaged meth bonded to the Maksche cloister. One bomb had gone off in a farm barracks during sleeping hours, killing twenty-three male field workers. Rumor blamed disaffected males. As yet there had been no captures of those responsible.

Marika, like everyone else in the cloister, believed the Serke were responsible. But unlike everyone else, she believed the rogues were drawing support from within the tradermale enclave. Were, perhaps, striking from there, and thus remaining unseen.

“There is no such evidence, Marika,” the most senior argued. “Males are naturally foolish, I admit, but there are few fools among the Brown Paw Bond—with whom we have had an understanding for centuries.”

“There is no evidence because no one is trying to collect it, mistress. Why is it that Utiel cannot catch the males responsible for these explosions? Is she not trying? Or is she just inept? Or could it be that she still does not believe the rogues to present a threat worth taking seriously? Do they have to start throwing bombs over the cloister wall before we take direct action? I have heard that several of the Communities have begun watching us here.”

“Do not lecture me, pup. Utiel has tried. She is old and has her faults, I admit, but she has tried. She has been unable to detect them. It is almost as if the rogues have found a way to hide from the touch.”

“So must we be so dependent upon our talents? Must we be wholly committed to one method of looking? We cannot assume a reactionary stance and expect to handle this sort of threat.”

“You have a better idea?”

“Several. Again, does Utiel take all this seriously enough? I do not believe she does. Old silth grumble about rogues but just go on about their business. They say there are always a few rogues. It is a pestilence that will not quite go away. But this is a disaffection that has been growing for years. As you know. And it is clear that there is organization behind it. Organization and widespread communication. It is worst here in Maksche, but the same shadow falls upon a dozen other Reugge cloisters. I think we would be fools to just try waiting it out. Before long we would be watching the Educans run away when reality closes in.”

“You will not forgive her, will you?”

“I lost a lot of meth because of her. If she had not lost her nerve, we could have devoured the nomads and Serke before they knew what hit them.”

The most senior looked at her hard. Marika was sure Gradwohl had not swallowed her whole story about what had happened at Critza. But she was equally certain that the most senior did not suspect the truth.

She hoped Kublin had had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

“I would have had her shot, mistress. Before the assembled cloister.”

“Perhaps. You think you can do better with the rogues? You think you can handle the security function of fourth chair? Then take charge.”

“Mistress?”

“It is fourth chair’s responsibility.”

“Will you assign me the powers I will need to get the job done?”

“Will you take the Toghar rites?”

“Afterward.”

Gradwohl eyed her coldly. “This is your watershed, pup. You had better. There will be no more bargaining. Be silth, or be gone. You can have whatever you need. Try not to walk on too many toes.”

Chapter Twenty-two
I
Marika moved quickly, drafting every silth and huntress she respected. Two nights after receiving the most senior’s blessing, she began moving small teams into every site she believed to be a potential rogue target. She followed the dictum of the ancient saw, “The night belongs to the silth.” She moved in the dark of the moons, by low-flying darkship, unseen even by those who managed the places she chose to protect.

She was certain there would be an attack soon. Some show of strength. She had written Bagnel bragging about her appointment, transparently implying that she suspected his bond of being behind the rogues.

If he was what she believed, and reported the contents of her letter to his factors, there should be a move made in an effort to show nothing so simple would frighten them off. Or to make it appear the Brown Paw Bond really had no control over the rogue group.

She hoped.

Her planted teams kept themselves concealed from those who worked and dwelt in and around the potential targets. Marika herself shifted to a nighttime schedule, remaining aloft on the trainer darkship she had made her own.

The rogues waited four days. Then they walked into it. It could not have gone better for Marika had she been giving the villains their orders.

Three were slain and two captured in an action so swift no shots were fired. Marika lifted the captives out quietly and carried them to the cloister aboard her darkship.

One of those two managed to poison himself. The other faced a truthsaying.

He yielded names and addresses.

Marika threw teams out aboard every darkship the cloister possessed, ignoring all protests, invoking the most senior where she had to. By dawn seven more prisoners had been brought into the cloister. Five lived long enough to be questioned.

A second wave of raids found several rogues forewarned or vanished completely. This time there was some fighting. Few rogues were taken alive.

Even Marika was surprised at how many rogues Maksche boasted.

The third wave of raids took no prisoners at all. Few rogues were found. But weapons and explosives enough for an arsenal were captured, along with documentary evidence of rogue connections in TelleRai and most cities where the Reugge maintained cloisters.

Marika had the captured arms laid out upon the cloister square. The dead rogues joined them.

“Very good, Marika,” Gradwohl said as she and the Maksche councillors inspected the take. “Very impressive. You were right. We were too passive, and even I underestimated the scale and scope of what was happening. No one could see this and remain convinced that we are dealing with the usual scatter of malcontents. I will order all the Reugge cloisters to—”

“Excuse me for interrupting, mistress. It would be too late for that. The rogues will have vanished everywhere. Posting rewards might help a few places, if they are large enough. A point that I have to make, over and over till everyone understands, is that for all their broad antisilth sentiments, and all that the evidence shows them established almost everywhere, these rogues are attacking nobody but the Reugge.”

“Noted,” Gradwohl replied. “And right again. Yes, Marika. The Serke are behind them somewhere, though the rogues themselves would not know that.”

“They did not when we questioned them.”

“Where did they go? Those who disappeared?”

Marika felt certain the most senior knew the answer she was about to give—and did not want to hear it. “Mistress?”

“You did not collect two thirds of those you identified. I know this. So where did they go?” Gradwohl seemed resigned to a great unpleasantness.

“Into the tradermale enclave, mistress. I had the gate watched. As a sort of experiment. Inbound traffic grew rapidly after we began raiding. It peaked before our third round. Almost no one came out.”

“So they are safe from retribution. Accursed—”

“Safe? Mistress? Are you certain? What are the legalities? Is there no mechanism for extracting fugitives from convention territories?”

“We shall see.” Gradwohl flung a curt gesture at the rest of the council. “Come.”

“If there is no mechanism, I will make one,” Marika said softly.

The most senior gave her a narrow look. “I believe you would, pup.” A few paces later, “Take care, Marika. Take care. Sometimes this world will show a toughness that is different from that of the Ponath. Sometimes losing can be the better path to winning.”

“You didn’t let me know you were coming,” Bagnel complained. “How come you’re back already? You usually stall around.” He looked abashed. He also looked as if he was under a strain.

“Official business this time.” Marika glanced at the clipboard she carried, though she knew the names and numbers by heart. She turned it so he could see the list. “These meth, all fugitives from the law, were seen entering this gate yesterday.”

His lips peeled back in an unconscious snarl, and she knew the cause of the strain that had him so edgy.

“I have brought the orders necessary for their removal from the enclave. They have a future in the mines.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“None whatsoever, Bagnel. Each of these meth has been convicted in court, on evidence presented by confederates. Sentence has been passed. Each was seen entering here. Would you like photographs of them doing so? I will have to send to the cloister for them.” She ran a spur-of-the-moment, inspired bluff with that remark. Photo surveillance had occurred to her only in retrospect.

“Holding the job you do, by now you have heard about the ruckus in town. I presume your staff were involved in this behind your back.” Give him a ready-made excuse. “The males on this list fled here. They are here still. No airships have left the enclave. You have two hours to deliver them to Grauel and Barlog. If you do not, you will be considered in violation of the conventions and your charter.”

Bagnel looked aghast.

Grauel and Barlog waited outside with a dozen armed huntresses.

“Marika . . . ” Bagnel’s tone was plaintive. “Marika, that sounds like a threat.”

“No. Here I have a copy of the charter negotiated before your brethren assumed control of this enclave. I have added a map for your personal information.”

Bagnel examined the map first. “I do not understand.” He couched his speech in the formal mode.

“You will note that it shows your enclave surrounded entirely by land belonging directly to the Reugge Community. At the time they assumed control, the Brown Paw Bond had no aircraft. Now they do. You must know that the conventions say that no aircraft of any sort may be flown over silth lands without direct permission of the sisterhood involved.”

“Yes, but—”

“The Brown Paw Bond have never obtained that permission for the Maksche enclave, Bagnel. They have never applied. The enclave is in violation of the conventions. Overflights will cease immediately. Otherwise sanctions will be applied.”

“Sanctions? Marika, what in the world is going on here?”

“Any aircraft or airship attempting to leave this enclave will be destroyed. Come.” She led him to the doorway, showed him three darkships slowly circling the enclave.

Bagnel opened and closed his mouth several times, said nothing.

Marika presented a fat envelope. “This contains a formal notice of the Reugge Community’s intent to cancel all Brown Paw Bond charters that now exist within Reugge territories.”

“Marika . . . ” Bagnel began to get hold of himself. “These fugitives. You really want them that badly?”

“Not really. Not personally. It would not matter now if you did sneak them out. They are dead. Bounties have been posted on them—very large bounties. As you once noted, the Reugge are a very wealthy Community. No. What is at stake is a principle. And, of course, my future.”

Bagnel looked puzzled. She had come at him hard, from unexpected directions, and had managed to keep him off balance.

“I have reached a position of substance within my sisterhood, Bagnel. I am very young for it. My age alone has made me many foes. Therefore I have to consolidate my position and fashion a springboard to a greater future. I have chosen to do that in my usual way, by taking the offensive against enemies of the Community. My opponents inside the sisterhood are unable to fault that.” A pause for effect. “Those who get in my way can expect the worst.”

“You intend to climb over me?”

“If you get in my way.”

“Marika, I am your friend.”

“Bagnel, I value you as a friend. I have treasured your friendship. Often you were the only one I could turn to.”

“And now you are so strong you do not need me anymore?”

“Now I am so strong I do not need to blind myself to what you are doing. Nor was I ever so weak as to allow crimes to be committed simply because a friend was involved.”

“Involved?”

“Drop the act, Bagnel. You know the brethren are backing the Serke effort to steal the Ponath from us. You know the brethren have been sponsoring the terrorism practiced by disaffected males. It is another ploy against us. You use criminals now that there are no more nomads to be your proxies. You even flew in males from outside because Maksche did not produce enough villains of its own. Now, is that something I should ignore simply because one of the behind-scenes movers is a friend?”

“You are mad, Marika.”

“You will stop. Cease. Give me my prisoners and do nothing more. Or I will see the Brown Paw Bond torn apart like an otec rent by kagbeasts.”

“You are totally insane. They have given you a taste of power and it has gone to your head. You begin imagining nonexistent plots.”

“Phoo! Think, Bagnel. I struck near the mark, yes? Insofar as you know? Naturally, you have not been trusted with full knowledge. You deal with me. You traffic with silth. Can they trust you? When they hoard knowledge the way old Wise females hoard metal in the Ponath? You recall my great triumph up there, so called? Did you know that nomads had very little to do with it? Did you know that what I defeated was actually an invasion carried out by Serke and armed brethren, with a few hundred nomads along for show? If you do not know these things, then you have been used worse than I suspect.”

Almost out of pity she stopped hitting him. She could see that he was hearing much of this for the first time. That, indeed, he had been used. That he did not want to believe, yet his faith was being terribly tested.

“Enough of that. Friend. When you report to your factors, as inevitably you must before you dare yield the criminals I want, tell them for me that I can produce thirteen burned-out ground-effect vehicles, with their cargoes and the corpses of their drivers and passengers, anytime I feel inclined to assemble delegates from the various Communities.”

Bagnel composed his features, but could not help staring.

“You do not have to believe me, Bagnel. Just tell them what I said. Nice word, ‘driver.’ It is from the brethren secret speech, is it not? Not everyone aboard those vehicles died in the ambush.”

“What is this madness you’re yammering?”

He was innocent of guilty knowledge, she was now sure. A tool of his factors. But he had heard so many wild rumors that she now had him on the edge of typical male panic. Composed as he kept his face, his eyes glittered with fear. His hackles had risen and his head had dropped against his shoulders. She wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, to reassure him. To tell him she did not hold him personally responsible. She could not. There were witnesses. Any softening would be perceived as weakness by those who were not here and did not know them.

“The message will register once you pass it along, Bagnel. Tell them the price of silence is their desertion of the Serke. Tell them they can tell the Serke that if they want to do us in, henceforth they must come at us directly, without help.”

He began to understand. At least, to understand what she wanted him to understand. He whispered, “Marika. As a friend. Not as Bagnel the tradermale or Bagnel the security chief of this enclave. Don’t push this. You’ll get rolled under. I know nothing of the things you have talked about. I do know that you cannot withstand the forces that are ranged against the Reugge. If you really have the sort of evidence you claim, and I report it, they will kill you.”

“I suspect they’ll be reluctant to try, Bagnel.” She spoke in a whisper herself, and pointed to one of the circling darkships, to make those watching think she was talking about her threats. “Their force commander in the Ponath was the Serke number four. Stronger than anyone but Bestrei herself. She’s dead. And I’m here.”

“There are other ways to kill.”

Marika rested a paw upon the butt of her rifle. “And I know them. They may have their way with the Reugge. But they will pay in blood. And pay and pay and pay. We have just started fighting, Gradwohl and I.”

“Marika, please. You’re too young to be so ruled by ambition.”

“There are things I want to do with my life, Bagnel. This struggle with the Serke is a distraction. This scramble is something I want to get over early. If I sound confident of the Reugge, that’s because I am. In the parlance of your brethren, I believe the hammer is in my paw. I’d rather you and your silth allies just went away and left us alone. I’d rather not fight. But I am ready to bring on the fire if that is the way they want it. You may tell them that we Reugge believe we have very little to lose. And more to gain than they can imagine.”

Bagnel sighed. “You always were headstrong and deaf to advice. I will tell my factors what you’ve said. I’ll be very much interested in their response myself.”

“I’m sure you will. As you walk over there, keep one eye on the darkships up top. Keep in mind that they have orders to kill anyone who tries to leave the enclave. You can shoot them down if you like. But I don’t think even the Serke will tolerate that.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Marika. I really do. I think, though, that you don’t. I think you have made some grave and erroneous accusations, and based serious miscalculations upon them. I fear for you.”

She was making a long bet, setting the price of protecting the rogues so high the brethren factors would have no choice but to surrender them. A success would cement her standing within the Community.

She did not care if the silth liked her, so long as they respected and feared her.

“I intend to be very careful, Bagnel. I give these things more thought than you credit me for. Go. Grauel and Barlog will be waiting here at the gate.” She walked through the building beside him, halted at the door to the airstrip, counted silently while he walked fifteen steps. “Bagnel!”

“What?” he squeaked as he whirled.

“Why is the Ponath worth risking the very existence of the brethren?”

An instant of panic betrayed him. If he did not know, he had firmly founded suspicions. Perhaps because the tradermales of Critza had been involved from the beginning?

“The plan is for the brethren to betray the Serke after they take over, isn’t it? The brethren think they have some way to force the Serke out without a struggle.”

“Marika . . . ”

“I questioned some of the drivers who were with the Serke invaders, Bagnel. What they didn’t know was as interesting as what they did.”

“Marika, you know very well I do not know what you are howling about. Tell me. Does Most Senior Gradwohl know what you are doing here?”

“The most senior has ambitions greater than mine.”

That was not a direct answer, but Bagnel nodded and resumed walking, his step tentative. He glanced at the circling darkships only once. His head lowered against his shoulders again.

She had rattled him badly, Marika knew. Right now he was questioning everything he knew and believed about his bond. She regretted having had to use him so harshly. He was a friend.

Given her victory, the day would come when things would balance.

When she returned to the street outside the enclave, Grauel asked, “Are they going to cooperate?”

“I think they will. You can put anything over on anybody if you sound tough enough and confident enough.”

“And if they are guilty as charged?”

“That will help a lot.”

Barlog looked at one of the darkships. “Did you really order . . . ?”

“Yes. I could not run the bluff without being willing to play part of it out. They might test me.”

Barlog winced, but said nothing.

II
Grauel received the rogue prisoners within the deadline. “But nine of them were given over dead, Marika,” she reported.

“I expected that. They resisted being turned over, did they?”

“That is what Bagnel told me.”

“Want to bet the dead ones could have connected the brethren of the enclave with their movement?”

“No bet. They had to get their weapons and explosives somewhere. Bagnel slipped me a letter, Marika. A personal communication, he said.”

“He did?” She was surprised. After what she had put him through? “Let’s see what he has to say.”

Bagnel said much in few words. He apologized for his brethren having betrayed the conventions. He had not believed her at the gate, but now he had no choice. He was ashamed. As his personal act of contrition, he appended two remarks. “Petroleum in the Zhotak. Pitchblende in the western Ponath.”

Petroleum she understood instantly. She had to go to references to make sense of the other.

She hurried to Gradwohl’s quarters. “My cultivating the male Bagnel has finally paid a dividend, mistress,” she reported. She did not mention the brethren yielding the criminals. Gradwohl’s meth would have reported all that already. “He has told me what is so important about our northern provinces.”

“You broke him down? How? I had begun to think him as stubborn as you.”

“I shamed him. I showed him how his factors had been making a fool of him, using him in schemes he would not have touched had they asked him directly. But no matter. He has turned over the rogues, and he has given me the reason behind all the years of terror.

“Petroleum and pitchblende. Our natural resources. Considering what they were willing to risk, the deposits must be huge.”

“Petroleum I understand.” It was a scarce commodity, very much in demand in the more advanced technological zones farther south. “But what is pitchblende? I have never heard of it.”

“I had to look it up myself,” Marika admitted. “It is a radioactive ore. A source of the rare heavy elements radium and uranium. There is very little data available in our resources, but there is at least the implication that the heavy elements could become an energy source far more potent than petroleum or other fossil fuels. The brethren already use radioactives as power sources in some of their satellites.”

“Space. I wonder . . . Now I wonder why the Serke would . . . ?”

“Yes. Suddenly, it looks like we have seen everything backward, does it not? For a long time I thought the Serke were using the brethren. Now I think the brethren have been using the Serke the way the Serke used the nomads. The Serke promised a great prize and secret support. The savages had little real choice, pressed as they were by the onset of the ice age. The brethren in turn baited their snare with the petroleum of the Zhotak. And the Serke leapt on it like an otec onto the scraps of greasy bread huntresses use in their traps along the side creeks. I am sorry. The brethren. I believe they are interested in the pitchblende.”

“You have evidence?”

“Only intuition at this point.”

Silth accepted intuition as a reliable data base. Gradwohl nodded. “Can you guess what their motives might be?”

“I think that brings us full circle, back to the problem that put me in a position to learn what I have. I think their ultimate goal is the destruction of the silth. Not just the Reugge, a minor Community, but all silth everywhere.”

“That is stretching intuition into the wildest conjecture, Marika. Into implausible conjecture.”

“Perhaps. Yet there were those who said that about the connection between the rogues and the enclave brethren. And there is no evidence to the contrary. Nothing to show any great tradermale love for silth. Not so? Who does love us? We even hate ourselves.”

“I will not permit that kind of talk, Marika.”

“I am sorry, mistress. Sometimes I grow bitter and am unable to contain myself. May I proceed upon my assumptions?”

“Proceed? It seems to me that you have handled the situation.” Gradwohl glared suspiciously, sensing that Marika wanted to cling to power momentarily gained. “Now it is time we started planning your Toghar ceremonies.”

“There will be more incidents, mistress. The brethren have been allowed to create an alternative society. One with far greater appeal to the mass of meth. One in which silth are anachronistic and unnecessary. In nature, the species that is unnecessary soon vanishes.”

“I am becoming fearful for your sanity, Marika. Intuition is a fine thing, but you persist in going far beyond intuition, into the far realms of speculation, then treating your fantasies as though they are fact. That is a dangerous habit.”

“Mistress, the brethren have created a viable social alternative. Please think about that. Honestly. You will see what I mean. Their technology is like a demon that has been released from a bottle. We have let it run free for too long, and now there is no getting it back inside. We have let it run free so long that now it nearly possesses the power to destroy us. And we have no control over it. They have cunningly held that in their own paws so long that tradition now has the virtual force of law. Our own traditions of not working with our paws cripple us.”

“My head understands your arguments. My heart insists you are wrong. But we cannot listen to our hearts always. I will reflect.”

“We cannot confine ourselves to reacting to threats only, mistress. As in the old folklore, devils spawn devils faster than they can be banished. They will keep on gnawing off little chunks of us unless we go straight after the demons who raise the demons.”

Gradwohl set aside a traditionalist silth’s exasperation with ideas almost heretical. That, more than her grasp of silth talents, was the ability that had fueled her rise to the first position among the Reugge. “All right, Marika. I will accept your arguments as a form of working hypothesis. You will be replacing Utiel soon. By stretching the imagination, the problems you conjure will fall within the purview of fourth chair. You may pursue solutions. But be careful who you challenge. It will be years yet before the Reugge are in any position to assert independence from the brethren.”

Marika controlled her features carefully. She exulted inside. Saying that, Gradwohl revealed far more than she knew. She did believe! And somehow, though she did not want it known, she was moving to loosen the chains of tradermale technology.

“As you wish, mistress. But let us not remain so enamored of our comforts that we allow ourselves to be destroyed for fear of losing them.”

“The ceremonies, Marika. All your arguments, all your desires, all your ambitions are moot without Toghar. Will you stop ducking and changing the subject? Are we going to secure your future? Or deliver it into the paws of those who would see you fail?”

Marika sighed. “Yes, mistress.”

“Can we set a date, Marika? Sometime soon?”

Fear twisted Marika’s guts. What was the matter with her? Toghar was simple. Countless silth had survived it. None that she had heard of had not. It was less to be feared than facing down the brethren over a few dozen criminals. Why could she not overcome her resistance? “Yes, mistress. I will begin my preparations immediately.”

Maybe something would come up to delay it.

III
“Grauel . . . I’m terrified.”

“Thousands have been through it, Marika.”

“Millions have been through birthing.”

“No one has ever died.”

Hard edge to Grauel’s words. The birthing remark was the wrong thing to say before her two packmates. “It’s not that. I don’t know how to explain. I’m just scared. Worse than when the nomads came to the packstead. Worse than when they attacked Akard and we all knew we were not going to get out alive. Worse than when I was bluffing Bagnel about attacking brethren aircraft if they tried to leave the enclave.”

“You were not bluffing.”

“I guess not. I would have done it if he had forced me. But I didn’t want to. And I don’t want to do this.”

“I know. I know you’re scared. When you’re genuinely terrified, you can’t shut up.”

Startled, Marika asked, “Really? Do I give myself away so easily?”

“Sometimes.”

“You will have to educate me. I can no longer allow myself to be easily read.”

Barlog stepped around Grauel, held out the white under-shift that was the first of the garments Marika would don. She appeared less empathetic than did Grauel. But when Marika leaned forward to allow her to slide the shift over her head, Barlog hugged her.

Each huntress, in her own way, understood well the price of becoming silth. Grauel, who never could bear pups, and Barlog, who had not been allowed since accepting the Reugge bond. Barlog said, “It isn’t too late to leave, Marika.”

“It’s too late, Barlog. Far too late. There’s nowhere we could go. Nor would they tolerate us trying. I know too much. And I have too many enemies, both within and outside the Community. The only way out is death.”

“She’s right,” Grauel said. “I’ve heard the sisters talking. Many hope she won’t go through with it. There is a powerful faction ready to take all our heads.”

Marika walked to a window, looked out on the cloister. “Remember when we rated nothing better than a cell under Akard?”

“You’ve come a long way,” Grauel admitted. “You’ve done many things of which we couldn’t approve. Things I doubt we can forgive, even knowing what moved you. There are moments when I can’t help but believe what some say, that you’re a Jiana. But I guess you’ve only done what the All demands, and that you’ve had no more choice than we do.”

“There’s always a choice, Grauel. But the second option is usually the darker. Today the choice is Toghar or die.”

“That’s why I say there really isn’t any choice.”

“I’m glad you understand.” She turned, let Barlog pull the next layer of white over her head. There would be another half-dozen layers before the elaborate outer vestments went into place. “I hope you’ll understand in future. There will be more evil choices. Once I fulfill Toghar, my feet will settle onto a path from which there will be no turning aside. It is a path into darkness, belike. A headlong rush, and the Reugge dragged right along with us, into a future not even the most senior foresees.”

Grauel asked, “Do you really believe the tradermales want to destroy the silth? Or is that just an argument you’re using to accumulate extraordinary powers?”

“It’s an argument, Grauel, and I’m using it that way. But it also happens to be true. An obvious truth to which the sisters have blinded themselves. They refuse to believe that their grasp is slipping. But that’s of no moment now. Let’s move faster. Before they come to find out why I’m taking so long.”

“We’re right on time,” Barlog said, arranging the outer vestments.

Grauel slipped the belt of arft skulls around her waist. Barlog placed the red candidate’s cap upon her head. Grauel passed her the gold-inlaid staff surmounted by a shrunken kagbeast head indistinguishable from a meth head in that state. In the old days it would have been the head of a meth she had killed.

Grauel brought the dye pots. Marika began staining her exposed fur in the patterns she had chosen. They were not traditional silth or Reugge. They were Degnan patterns meant for a huntress about to go into single, deadly combat. She had learned them as a pup, but never had seen them worn. Neither had Grauel or Barlog, nor anyone of the pack that they could recall. Marika was confident none of today’s witnesses would understand her statement.

She stared at herself in a mirror. “We are the silth. The pinnacle of meth civilization.”

“Marika?”

“I feel as barbaric as any nomad huntress. Look at me. Skulls. Shrunken head. Bloodfeud dyes.” For weeks she had done nothing but prepare for the ceremonies. She had gone into the wild to hunt arfts and kagbeasts, wondering how other candidates managed because the hunting skills were no longer taught young silth.

The hunt had not been easy. Both arfts and kagbeasts were rare in this winter of the world. She had had to slay them, to bring the heads in, and to boil the flesh off the arft skulls and to shrink the head of the kagbeast. Grauel and Barlog had assisted only to the limits allowed by custom. Which was very little.

They had helped more preparing the dyes and sewing the raiments. They were better seamstresses than she, and the sewing had been done in private.

“Do you want to go over your responses again?” Grauel asked. Barlog dug the papers out of the mess on Marika’s desk.

“No. Any more and it’ll be too much. I’ll just turn off my mind and let it happen.”

“You won’t have any problems,” Barlog prophesied.

“Yes,” said Grauel. “Overstudy . . . I studied too hard when they made me take the vector exams.”

“Voctor” was the silth word that approximated the Degnan “huntress,” though it also meant “guard” and “one who is trusted in the silth presence bearing weapons.”

“There were questions where I just went blank.”

Barlog said, “At least you got a second chance at the ones you missed. Marika won’t.”

It did not matter terribly, insofar as the outcome of the ceremonies proper, if Marika stumbled occasionally. But to be less than perfect today would lend her enemies ammunition. They would use any faltering as a sign that she was less than wholly committed to the silth ideal.

Appearances, as always, were more important than substance.

“Barlog. Are you still keeping the Chronicle?”

“Yes.”

“Someday when I have the free time I’d like to see what you have said about what has happened to us. What would Skiljan and the others have thought if they could read what you’ve written, only fifteen years ago? If they’d had that window into the future.”

“They would have stoned me.”

Marika applied the last daub of vegetable dye. Gathering the dyes had been as difficult as collecting the animal heads. There had been no choice but to purchase some, for the appropriate plants were extinct around Maksche, destroyed by the ongoing cold.

Marika went to the window again, stared north, toward her roots. The sky was clear, which was increasingly rare. The horizon glimmered with the intensity of sunlight reflected off far snowfields. The permanent frostline lay only seventy miles from Maksche now. It was expected to reach the city within the year. She glanced at the heavens. The answer lay up there, she believed. An answer being withheld by enemies of the silth. But there would be nothing she could do for years. There would be nothing she could do, ever, unless she completed today’s rites.

“Am I ready?”

“On the outside,” Grauel said.

“We haven’t forgotten a thing,” Barlog said, referring to a checklist Marika had prepared.

“Let’s go.”

Turmoil twisted into hurricane ferocity inside her.

The huntresses accompanied Marika only as far as the doorway to the building where the ceremonies would be held. The interest was such that Gradwohl had set the thing for the great meeting chamber. Novices turned the huntresses back. Ordinarily the Toghar rites were open to everyone in the cloister. Only those involved and their friends turned out. But Marika’s ceremonies had drawn the entire silth body. She was no ordinary novice.

Her enemies were there in hopes she would fail, though novices almost never did so. They were there in hopes their presence would intimidate her into botching her responses, her proper obeisances. They were there in hopes of witnessing a stumble so huge that it could not be forgiven, ever.

Those who were close to Gradwohl, and thus to the most senior’s favorite, were there to balance the grim aura of Marika’s enemies.

The enemies made sure no nonsilth were present. Marika was more popular among the voctors, whom she had given victories, whom she treated as equals, and who liked the promise of activity she presented.

Marika stepped through the doorway and felt a hundred eyes turn upon her, felt the disappointment in enemies who had hoped she would not show. She took two steps forward and froze, waiting for the sisters not yet seated to enter the hall and take their places.

Fear closed in.

It was not a proper time. Gradwohl and Dorteka both repeatedly had tried to tell her not to place all her trust in those-who-dwell. Even knowing she should not, she slipped down through her loophole, into that otherworld that overlapped her own, and sought the solace of a strong dark ghost.

She found one, brought it in, and used it to ride through the chamber ahead, reassuring herself that the ceremonies would proceed in the usual way. It was a cold world out there, with the ghosts. Emotion drained away. Fear dribbled into the ether, or whatever it was through which the ghosts swam. The coldness of that plane drained into her.

She was ready. She had control. She could do it now. She could forget what it would cost her, could forget all her nurture as a huntress-to-be, dam-to-be, of the Degnan pack. She released the ghost with a stroke of gratitude, pulled back to the world of everyday, of continuous struggle and fear. She scanned the hall ahead with cold eyes. All the sisters had taken their places.

Coolly, she stepped forward, standing straight, elegant in her finery. She paused while two novices closed the door behind her. She faced right and bent to kiss the rim of an ancient pot that looked like a crucible used till it had had to be discarded. She dipped a finger in, brought thick, sweet daram to her lips and tongue.

That pot was older than the Reugge. Older, even, than the dam Community, the Serke. Its origins had been lost in the shadows of time. Its rim had been worn by the touch of countless lips, its interior crusted by residue from the tons of daram that had filled it over the ages. It was the oldest thing in the Reugge world, an icon-link that connected the Community with the protosilth of prehistory, the symbolic vessel of the All from which silth were granted a taste of infinity, a taste of greater power. It had been the kissing bowl of seven gods and goddesses before the self-creation of the All.

The glow of the daram spread through Marika, numbing her as chaphe would, yet expanding her till she seemed to envelope everyone else in the hall. They, too, had tasted daram. Their mind guards were down a fraction. Touch leaked from everyone, pulling her into a pool of greater consciousness. Her will and personality became less sharply defined and singular. It was said that in the ancient lodges, before civilization, silth had melded into a single powerful mind by taking massive doses of daram.

That part of her, the majority, which remained wholly Marika, marveled that hidden beyond this welcoming glow there could be so much fear, spite, enmity, and outright irrational hatred.

Her sponsor Gradwohl and the chief celebrants waited at the far end of the hall. She spoke her first canticle, the novice requesting permission to approach and present her petition for recognition. A silth somewhere to her right asked a question. She replied automatically, with the proper response, noting in passing that her primary interrogator would be Utiel, the old female she would replace in fourth chair. All the Maksche councillors seemed to have assumed roles in the ceremonies, even the senior, who had been all but invisible since falling out of favor with Gradwohl.

Before she realized what was happening, the initial interrogatory ended. She approached the celebrants. Again there were questions. She did not become involved on a conscious level. She responded crisply, automatically, made her gestures at the exact appropriate instant. She felt like a dancer perfectly inserted into her dance, one with the music, leaping, twisting, turning with absolute grace, the thing itself instead of an actor, the ultimate and ideal product of a perfect sorcery. Her precision, her artistry, fed back to the celebrants so that they, too, fell into her matchless rhythm.

The slight tension brought on by the presence of enemies faded from the shared touch of the daram, expunged by the experience of which she was heart. That experience began to swell, to grow, to drown everything.

And yet, deep within her, Marika never wholly surrendered to the commitment the rite was supposed to represent.

The celebrants completed the final interrogatory. One by one, Marika surrendered her staff, her belt of skulls, her cap, her ceremonial raiments to the kettle of fire around which the celebrants stood. Noisome smoke rose, filled the hall. In moments she stood before the assembly wearing nothing but her dyes.

Now the crux. The stumbling stone. The last hope of those who wished her ill. The truly physical part, when they would stretch her on the altar and a healer sister would reach into the ghost realm and summon those-who-dwell, lead a ghost into her recumbent form, and destroy forever her ability to bear young.

Marika met Gradwohl’s eye and nodded. The most senior stepped around the smoking kettle, presented the wafer. Marika took it between her teeth.

And added her bit of style, her own fillip to the ceremony. She faced the assembly before biting down, chewing, swallowing. She felt the stir in the entwined touch, the slight, unwilling swell of admiration.

The wave of well-being came over her as concentrated chaphe spread through her flesh. The celebrants stepped around the kettle and allowed her to settle into their arms. They lifted her to the altar. The healer sister loomed over her.

That reluctant something tried to wriggle forth, tried to scream, tried to will her to move, break away, flee. She stifled it.

She felt the ghost move inside her. Felt her ovaries and tubes being destroyed. There was no pain, except of the heart. There would be little discomfort later, she had been promised.

She turned inward, felt for the ghost world, fled there for several moments.

It was all over when she returned. The observers were filing out. The celebrants and their assistants were cleaning up. Gradwohl stood over her, looking down. She seemed pleased. “That was not so bad, was it, Marika?”

Marika wanted to say the hurt was all in her mind, but she could not. The daram and chaphe held her. She reflected momentarily upon a pack still unMourned and wondered if their spirits would forgive her. Wondered if she could ever forgive Gradwohl for forcing her into this crime against herself.

It would fade. The heart’s pains all faded.

“You did very well, Marika. It was a most impressive Toghar. Even those who dislike you had to admit that you are extraordinary.”

She wanted to protest that they never had denied that, that that was the reason they feared her, but she could not.

Gradwhol patted her shoulder. “You are fourth chair now. Utiel officially announced her retirement the moment the ceremony was complete. Please use your power wisely. Your two voctors will be in to help you shortly. I will tell them to remind you that I want to see you after you have recovered.” Gradwohl touched her gently, almost lovingly, in a fashion her own dam never had managed. For a moment Marika suspected there might be more to her patronage than simple interest in the fate of the Reugge.

She forced that out of mind. It was not difficult with the chaphe in her blood.

“Be well,” Gradwohl murmured, and departed.

Grauel and Barlog appeared only several minutes after the last of the silth departed. Marika was vaguely amused as she watched them prowl the chamber, peering into every shadow. They, who believed silth could render themselves invisible with their witchcraft. Finally, they came to her, helped her down off the altar.

“How did it go?” Barlog asked. She seemed under a strain.

“Perfectly,” Marika croaked through a throat parched by drugs.

“Are you all right?”

“Physically, I’m fine. But in my soul I feel filthy.”

Again both huntresses scanned the shadows. “Can you speak business? Are you too disoriented?” Grauel asked.

“I can. Yes. But take me away from here first.”

“Storeth found those workers,” Grauel told Marika, after they had taken her to her quarters. “She reported while you were in that place. They were reluctant to talk, but she convinced them she came from you. They acknowledged their debt. They knew very little, but they did say there is a persistent rumor that the rogues have found themselves a powerful wehrlen. One who will be able to defeat silth at their witchcraft when he is ready. So the thing is not done. As you thought.”

In the questioning of all the rogues taken, there had been that thread of belief in something great about to befall the criminal movement. Marika had not been able to identify it clearly. In the end she had decided to seek out two Maksche workers who had served her in the Ponath years ago, workers who had vowed they would repay an imagined debt.

“Warlock,” she murmured. “And a great one, of course. Or he would not be able to inspire this mad hope.”

She had not mentioned anything of this to the most senior. Intuition told her this was a thing best kept to herself. For the present, at least.

“We must find him. And kill him, if he cannot be used.”

For once Grauel and Barlog concurred in a prospective savagery.

They remembered the wehrlen who first brought the nomads out of the Zhotak.