{"id":2974,"date":"2026-01-03T22:58:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/darkwar-02-warlock-cook-glen\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T22:58:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:58:38","slug":"darkwar-02-warlock-cook-glen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/darkwar-02-warlock-cook-glen\/","title":{"rendered":"Darkwar 02 – Warlock – Cook, Glen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
\n
\n

\nWARLOCK<\/span>
\n

\nby<\/span>
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\nGlen Cook<\/span>
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\nBook Two of The Darkwar Trilogy<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
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BOOK THREE:<\/span>
MAKSCHE<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Chapter Fifteen
I<\/span>
Bullets hammered the north wall of the last redoubt, Akard\u2019s communications center. Mortars crumped. Their bombs banged deafeningly. Bullets leaking through the two small north windows had made a shambles of the communications gear.

Marika had done what she could to stem the nomad tide, and she had failed. She had only two regrets: that her pack, the Degnan, would go into the darkness unMourned, and that for her there would be no journey to the Reugge cloister at Maksche. For her there would be no next step on the road that might have led to the stars.

The hammer of savage weapons rose to an insane crescendo. The nomads were closing in for the last kill. Then the uproar ended. Braydic, the communications technician, whimpered into the sudden silence, \u201cNow they will come.\u201d

Marika nodded. The last minutes had arrived. The inevitable end of the siege had come.

Marika did something never done before. She hugged the only surviving members of her pack, the huntresses Grauel and Barlog. The scent of fear was heavy upon their rough fur.

Pups of the upper Ponath packs hugged no one but their dams, and that seldom after the first few years.

The two huntresses were touched deeply.

Grauel turned to the tradermale Bagnel, who was teaching her to operate a firearm. His comrade, last of those who had survived last week\u2019s fall of the tradermale packfast Critza, had fallen defending one of the north windows. Someone had to hold that against the savages. Grauel\u2019s heavy spear was too unwieldy.

\u201cWait!\u201d Marika gasped. Her jaw went slack. \u201cSomething . . . \u201d

The universe of the touch, the ghost plane into which silth like Marika ducked to work their witchery, had gone mad. Some mighty shadow, terrible in its power, was raging up the valley of the Hainlin River, which this last bastion of the fortress Akard overlooked. For a moment Marika was paralyzed by the power of that shadow. Then she flung herself to a south-facing window.

Three great daggerlike crosses stormed up the frozen river. They drove into the fangs of the wind in a rigid V. That fierce and dreadful shadow-of-touch preceded them, flaying the mind with terror. Upon each cross stood five black-clad silth, one at each tip of each arm, the fifth at the axis. The incessant north wind howled around them and tore at their dark robes. They seemed to notice it not at all.

\u201cThey are coming,\u201d Marika shouted to Grauel and Barlog, who crowded her against the windowsill.

An explosion thundered out behind them. It threw them together. Marika gasped for breath. Grauel turned, pointed her rifle. It barked in unison with that of the tradermale Bagnel as savages appeared in the dust swirling in the gap created by the explosion.

Marika clung to the windowsill, looking out, waiting for death.

The rushing crosses rose as they neared Akard, screaming into lightly falling snow, parting. Marika slipped through her loophole into the realm of ghosts and followed them as they plunged toward the attacking nomads, spreading death and terror.

Grauel and Bagnel stopped firing. The nomads had fled the breach. In minutes the entire besieging horde was in full flight. Two of the flying crosses harried the savages northward. The third returned and hovered over the confluence of the forks of the Hainlin, above which Akard brooded on a high headland.

Akard\u2019s pawful of survivors crowded the window, staring in disbelief. Help had come. After so long a wait. In the penultimate moment, help had come.

The cross drifted closer till the tip of its longest arm touched the fortress on the level above the communications center. Marika pushed weariness aside and went to meet her rescuers. She was only fourteen, as yet far from being a full silth sister, but was the senior silth surviving. The only silth surviving. Through eyes hazed with fatigue and reaction, she vaguely recognized the dark figure which came to meet her. It was Zertan, senior of the Reugge Community\u2019s cloister at Maksche.

It looked like she would get to see the great city in the south after all.

A moment after she had fulfilled the necessary ceremonial obsequiences, exhaustion overtook her. She collapsed into the arms of Grauel and Barlog.

Marika wakened after the fading of the light. She found herself perched precariously upon the flying cross. In one hasty glance she saw that she shared the strange craft with the other survivors of Akard. Grauel and Barlog were as near her as they could get\u2014as they always were. Bagnel was next nearest. He rewarded her with a cheerful snarl as her gaze passed over him. Communicator Braydic seemed to be in shock.

The wind seemed almost still as the cross ran with it. To the left and below, the ruins of Bagnel\u2019s home, Critza, appeared. \u201cNo bodies anymore,\u201d Marika observed.

In a hard, low voice, Bagnel said, \u201cThe nomads feed upon their dead. The grauken rules the Ponath.\u201d The grauken, the monster lying so close beneath the surface of every meth. The archetypal terror of self with which every meth was intimately familiar.

The Maksche senior eyed Bagnel, then Marika from her standing place upon the axis of the cross. She pointed skyward. \u201cIt will get worse before it gets better. The grauken may rule the entire world. It comes on us with the age of ice.\u201d

Marika looked skyward, trying to forget the dust cloud that was absorbing her sun\u2019s power and cooling her world. She tried to concentrate on the wonder of the moment, to take joy in being alive, to forget the horror of the past, of losing first the pack with which she had lived her first ten years, then the silth packfast where she had lived and trained the past four. She tried to banish the terror lurking in her future.

Jiana! Doomstalker! Twice!

The voice in her mind was the voice of a ghost. She could not make it go away.

The hills of the Ponath gave way to plains. The snowfall faded. And the flying cross fled with the breath of the north wind licking behind.

II
For months Marika had seen nothing but overcast skies. Always the bitter north wind had been present, muttering of even colder times to come. But now the gale could not catch her. She mocked it quietly.

Cracks began to show in the cloud cover. One moon, then another, peeped through, scattering the white earth with silver.

\u201cHello, strangers,\u201d Marika said.

\u201cWhat?\u201d

The response startled Marika, for she had been enclosed entirely within herself, unmindful of her bizarre situation. \u201cI was greeting the moons, Grauel. Look. There is Biter. One of the small moons is running behind her. I cannot tell which. I do not care. I am just glad to see them. How long has it been?\u201d

The huntress shifted her weapon and position gingerly. It was a long fall to the frozen river. \u201cToo long. Too many months.\u201d Sorrow edged Grauel\u2019s voice. \u201cHello, moons.\u201d

Soon Chaser, the second large moon, showed its face too, so that shadows below looked like many-fingered paws.

\u201cLook there!\u201d Marika said. \u201cA lake. Open water.\u201d She too had not seen unfrozen water in months.

Grauel would not look down. She clung to their transport with a death grip.

Marika glanced around.

Five strangers, five friends. All astride a metal cross the shape of a dagger, running with the wind a thousand feet above the earth and snow. Grauel and Barlog, known since birth. Bagnel, known only months, strange, withdrawn, yet with the aroma of someone who could become very close. At that moment she decided he would become an integral part of her destiny.

Marika was silth. The Akard sisters had called her the most powerful talent ever to be unearthed in the upper Ponath. Sometimes the strongest silth caught flashes intimating tomorrow.

Braydic. The only friend the exile pup had made in her four years at Akard. Marika was glad that Braydic had survived.

Finally, two pups of meth who had served the silth, holding one another, terrified still, not yet knowing their fates. She realized that she did not know their names. She had saved them, as she had saved herself, for redoubled exile. Shared terror and last-second salvation ought to account for more intimacy.

\u201cSo,\u201d she said to Grauel and Barlog. \u201cHere we go again. Into exile once more.\u201d

Barlog nodded. Grauel merely stared straight ahead, trying to keep her gaze from taking in the long fall to the silvered snows.

The Hainlin twisted away to the west and out of sight for a time, then swept back in beneath. It widened into a vast, slow stream, though mostly it remained concealed behind a mask of white. Time passed. Marika shook off repeated fits of bleak memory. She suspected her companions were doing the same.

Meth were not reflective by nature. They tended to live in the present, letting the past lie and allowing the future to care for itself. But the pasts of these meth were not the settled, bucolic pasts of their foredams. Their pasts reechoed with bloody hammer strokes. Their futures threatened more of the same.

\u201cLights,\u201d Grauel croaked. And in a moment, \u201cBy the All! Look at the lights!\u201d

Ten thousand pinpricks in the night, like a nighttime sky descended to earth. Except that the sky of Marika\u2019s world held few stars, filled as it was with a dense, vast cloud of interstellar dust.

\u201cMaksche,\u201d Senior Zertan said. \u201cHome. We will reach the cloister in a few minutes.\u201d

The flying crosses pacing them suddenly swept ahead, vanished into the darkness. The lights ahead bobbed and rocked and swelled, and then the first passed below, maybe five hundred feet down. Marika felt no awe of the altitude. She exulted in the flying.

Soon the cross settled into a lighted courtyard, to a point between crosses already arrived. Scores of silth in Reugge black waited silently. The cross touched down. Zertan stepped off. Several silth approached her. She said something Marika did not catch, gestured, and stalked away. The other silth left their places at the tips of the cross.

A meth female in worker apparel approached Marika and the others. \u201cCome with me. I have been instructed to show you quarters.\u201d She assessed them cautiously. \u201cNot you,\u201d she told Bagnel, diffidently. \u201cSomeone from your Bond is coming for you.\u201d

Marika was amused, for she knew this meth saw only savages out of the Ponath. Even her, for all she was silth. And she knew this city meth was frightened, for savages from the Ponath had reputations for being unpredictable, irrational, and fierce.

Marika gestured. \u201cWe go. You, lead the way.\u201d

Bagnel stood aside, looking forlorn, one paw raised in a gesture of farewell.

Grauel followed the worker. Marika followed her. Barlog stayed close behind, weapon at port. Braydic and the pups tagged along at the end.

The Degnan refugees searched every shadow they passed. Marika listened with that talented silth ear that was inside her mind. She felt silth working their witcheries all around her. But the shadows were haunted by nothing more dangerous than projected fears of the unknown.

The servant led them through seemingly endless hallways, dropping first the pups, then Braydic. Marika sensed Grauel and Barlog becoming edgy. Their sense of location was confused. She grew uncomfortable herself. This place seemed too large to encompass. Akard was never so vast or tortuous that she had feared for her ability to get out.

Get out. Get out. That built within her, a smoldering panic, a dread of being unable to escape. She was of the upper Ponath, where pack meth ran free, at will.

The worker detected their mounting tension. She led them up stairs and outside, to the top of a wall at least vaguely reminiscent of the north wall at Akard, where Marika had made her away place, the place she went to be alone and think.

Each silth found such a place wherever she might be.

\u201cIt is huge,\u201d Barlog breathed from behind Marika. Marika agreed, though she knew not whether Barlog meant the cloister or city.

The Maksche cloister was a square compound a quarter mile to a side. Its outer wall stood thirty feet high. It was constructed of a buttery brown stone. The structures it enclosed were built of the same stone, all topped with steep roofs of red tile. The buildings were all very old, very weathered, and all very rectilinear. Some had corner towers rising like obelisks peaked by triangles of red.

The worker said, \u201cA thousand meth live in the cloister, separate from the city. The wall is the edge of our world, a boundary that is not to be passed.\u201d

She meant what she said, no doubt, but the fierceness that rose in her charges made her drop the subject. Marika growled, \u201cTake us where we are supposed to go. Now. I will hear rules from those who make them, and will decide if they are reasonable then.\u201d

Their guide looked stricken.

Grauel said, \u201cMarika, I suggest you recall all that has been said about this place.\u201d

Marika stared at the huntress, but soon her gaze wandered. Grauel was right. At the beginning she had best submit to the local style.

\u201cStop,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to look.\u201d She did not await approval.

The cloister stood at Maksche\u2019s heart, upon a contrived elevation. The surrounding land was flat all the way to the horizons. The Hainlin, three hundred yards wide, looped past the city in a broad brown band two miles west of Marika\u2019s vantage. Neat squares of cropland, bounded by hedgerows or lines of trees, showed through the snow covering the plain.

\u201cNot a single hill. I think it will not be long before I become homesick for hills.\u201d Marika used the simple dialect of her puphood, and was surprised when the worker frowned puzzledly. Could the common speech be so different here?

\u201cI think so. Yes,\u201d Grauel replied. \u201cEven Akard was less foreign than this. It is like ten thousand little fortresses, this thing called a city.\u201d

The buildings were very strange. But for Akard and Critza, every meth-made structure Marika had ever seen had been built of logs and stood under twenty-five feet high.

\u201cI am not allowed much time away from my regular duties here,\u201d the worker said, her tone whining. \u201cPlease come, young mistress.\u201d

Marika scowled. \u201cAll right. Lead on.\u201d

The quarters assigned had been untenanted for a long time. Dust lay thick upon what tattered furniture there was. Marika coughed, said, \u201cWe are being isolated in some remote corner.\u201d

Grauel nodded. \u201cOnly to be expected.\u201d

Barlog observed, \u201cWe can have this livable in a few hours. It is not as bad as it looks.\u201d

Feebly, the worker said, \u201cI must take you two to . . . to . . . \u201d She fumbled for a word. \u201cI guess you would say, huntress\u2019s quarters.\u201d

\u201cNo,\u201d Marika told her. \u201cWe stay together.\u201d

Grauel and Barlog snarled and gestured toward the door with their weapons.

\u201cGo,\u201d Marika snapped. \u201cOr I will tie a savage\u2019s curse to your tail.\u201d

The female fled in terror. Grauel said, \u201cProbably whelped and raised here. Scared of her own shadow.\u201d

\u201cThis is a place where shadows are terrors,\u201d Barlog countered. \u201cWe will hear from the shadow mistresses now.\u201d

But Barlog was wrong. A week passed without event. It was a week in which Marika seldom left her quarters and had no intercourse at all with the Reugge of Maksche. She let Grauel and Barlog do the physical exploration. No one came to her.

She began to wonder why she was being ignored.

The time free began as a boon. In her years at Akard she had spent most of every waking hour in study, learning to become silth. The only respite had come during summers when she had joined hunting parties stalking the nomadic invaders who brought Akard and the Ponath to ruin.

Once her quarters were clean and she had sneaked a few exploratory forays into nearby parts of the cloister, and had penetrated the rest of it riding ghosts, and had found herself an away place in a high tower overlooking the square where she had arrived, she grew bored. Even study became appealing.

She snarled her dissatisfaction at the worker who brought their meals. That was on her tenth day in Maksche.

Things seemed to move slowly in Maksche. Marika\u2019s complaints continued for a week, growing virulent. Yet nothing happened.

\u201cDo not cause trouble,\u201d Grauel cautioned. \u201cThey are studying our conduct. It is all some sort of test.\u201d

\u201cPardon me if I am skeptical,\u201d Marika said. \u201cI have walked the dark side a hundred times since we have been here. I have seen no indication that they even know we are here, let alone are watching. We have been put out of sight, out of mind, and are imprisoned in a dungeon of the soul.\u201d

Grauel exchanged glances with Barlog. Barlog observed, \u201cAll things are not seen by the witch\u2019s inner eye, Marika. You are not omnipotent.\u201d

\u201cWhat is that supposed to mean?\u201d

\u201cIt means that one young silth, no matter how strong, is not going to use her talent to see what a cloister full of more practiced silth are doing if they do not want her to see.\u201d

Marika was about to admit that that might be possible when someone scratched at the door. She gestured. \u201cIt is not time to eat. The drought must be over.\u201d

Barlog opened the door.

There stood a silth older than any Marika had encountered before. She hobbled in, leaning on a cane of some gnarled dark wood. She halted in the center of the room, surveyed the three of them with rheumy cataracted eyes. Her half-blind gaze came to rest upon Marika. \u201cI am Moragan. I have been assigned as your teacher and as your guide upon the Reugge Path.\u201d She spoke the Reugge low speech with an intriguing, elusive accent. Or was it a natural lisp? \u201cYou are the Marika who stirred so much controversy and chaos at our northern fastness.\u201d Not a question. A statement.

\u201cYes.\u201d Marika had a feeling this was no time to quibble about her role at Akard.

\u201cYou may go,\u201d Moragan told Grauel and Barlog.

The huntresses did not move. They did not look to Marika for her opinion. Already they had positioned themselves so that Moragan stood at the heart of a perilous triangle.

\u201cYou are safe here,\u201d Moragan told Marika when no one moved.

\u201cIndeed? I have your sworn word?\u201d

\u201cYou do.\u201d

\u201cAnd the word of a silth sister is worth the metal on which it is graven.\u201d She had been studying the apparel of the old sister and could not make out the significance of its decorations. \u201cAs we who were under the sworn guardianship of the Reugge discovered. Our packsteads were overrun without aid coming. And when we fled to the Akard packfast for safety, that too was allowed to be destroyed.\u201d

\u201cYou question decisions of policy about which you know nothing, pup.\u201d

\u201cNot at all, mistress. I simply refuse to allow policy to snare and crush me in coils of deceit and broken oaths.\u201d

\u201cThey said you were a bold one. I see they spoke the truth. Very well. We will do it your way. For now.\u201d Moragan hobbled to a wooden chair, settled slowly, slapped her cane down atop a table nearby. She seemed to go to sleep.

\u201cWho are you besides Moragan?\u201d Marika asked. \u201cI cannot read your decorations.\u201d

\u201cJust a worn-out old silth so far gone she is past being what you would call Wise. We are not here to discuss me, though. Tell me your story. I have heard and read a few things. Now I will assess your version of events.\u201d

Marika talked, but to no point. A few minutes later Moragan\u2019s head dropped to her chest and she began to snore.

And so it went, day after day, with Moragan doing more asking and snoring than teaching. That day of her first appearance, she had been in one of her more lucid periods. Sometimes she could not recall the date or even Marika\u2019s name. Most of the time she was of little value except as a reference guide to the cloister\u2019s more arcane customs. Always she asked more questions than she answered, many of them irritatingly personal.

Her role, though, provided Marika with a role of her own. As a student she occupied a recognized place in cloister society and was answerable principally to Moragan for her conduct. Safely knit into the cultural fabric, Marika felt more comfortable teaching herself by exploring and observing.

Marika liked little of what she did learn.

Within the cloister the least of workers lived well. Outside, in the city, meth lived in abject want, suffering through brief lives of hunger, disease, and backbreaking labor. Everyone and everything in Maksche belonged to the Reugge silth Community, to the tradermale brotherhood calling itself the Brown Paw Bond, or to the two in concert. The Brown Paw Bond maintained its holdings by Reugge license, under complicated and extended lease arrangements. Residents of Maksche who were neither tradermale nor silth were bound to their professions or land for life.

Marika was bewildered. The Reugge possessed meth as though they were domestic animals? She interrogated Moragan. The teacher just looked at her strangely, evidently unable to comprehend the point of her questions.

\u201cGrauel,\u201d Marika said one evening, \u201chave you figured this place out? Do you understand it at all? That old carque Moragan cannot or will not explain anything so it makes any sense.\u201d

\u201cTake care with her, Marika. She is more than she seems.\u201d

\u201cShe is as All-touched as my granddam was.\u201d

\u201cShe may be senile and mad, but she is not harmless. Perhaps the more dangerous for it. It is whispered that she was not set to teach you but to study you. It is also whispered that she was once very important in the order, and that she still has the favor of some who are very high up. Fear her, Marika.\u201d

\u201cI should fear someone I could break?\u201d

\u201cAs strength goes? This is not the upper Ponath, Marika. It is not the strength of the arm that counts. It is the strength of the alliances one forms.\u201d

Marika made a sound of derision. Grauel ignored her.

\u201cMarika, suppose that some of them hope you try your strength. Suppose some of them want to prove something to themselves.\u201d

\u201cWhat?\u201d

\u201cOur ears are sharp from many years of hunting the forests of the upper Ponath. When we go among the huntresses of this place\u2014and sorrier huntresses you will never see\u2014we sometimes overhear whispers never meant for our ears. They talk about us and they talk about you and they talk about the thinking of those around Senior Zertan. In a way, you are on trial. They suspect\u2014maybe even know\u2014about Gorry.\u201d

\u201cGorry? What about Gorry?\u201d

\u201cSomething happened to Gorry in the final hours of the siege. There was much speculation, overheard by everyone. We said nothing to anyone about that, but we are not the only survivors brought out of the ruins of Akard.\u201d

Marika\u2019s heart fluttered as she thought of her one-time instructress. But she felt no remorse. Gorry had deserved the torment she had suffered, and more. All Marika felt was a heightened apprehension about being ignored. It had not occurred to her that it was that sort of deliberateness. She would have to be careful. She was in no position of strength.

Grauel watched expectantly while Marika wrapped her mind around the implications.

\u201cWhy are you looking at me that way?\u201d

\u201cI thought you might have some regrets.\u201d

\u201cWhy?\u201d

\u201cShe was\u2014\u201d

\u201cShe was a carque of an old nuisance, Grauel. She would have done it to me if she could have. She tried often enough. She got what she asked for. I do not want to hear her mentioned again.\u201d

\u201cAs you wish, mistress.\u201d

\u201cHave you found Braydic yet?\u201d

\u201cShe was assigned to the communications center here, as you might expect. Students are not permitted entry there. And technicians are not allowed out.\u201d

\u201cWhy not?\u201d

\u201cI do not know. This is a different world. We are still feeling our way. They never tell you what is permitted, only what is not.\u201d

Marika realized that Grauel was upset with her. When Grauel was distressed, she insisted on using the formal mode of speech. But Marika had given up trying to interpret the huntress\u2019s moods. She was exercised about something most of the time.

\u201cI want to go out into the city, Grauel.\u201d

\u201cWhy?\u201d

\u201cTo explore.\u201d

\u201cThat is not permitted.\u201d

\u201cWhy not?\u201d

\u201cI do not know. Rules are not explained here. They are enforced. Ignorance is no excuse.\u201d

What was the penalty for disobedience?

Marika banished the thought. It was too early to challenge constraints. Still, she felt compelled to say, \u201cIf this is life in the fabulous Maksche cloister, Grauel, I may go over the wall.\u201d

\u201cBarlog and I have very little to do either, Marika. They think we are too backward.\u201d

III<\/span>
The absolute, enduring stone of the cloister became a hated enemy. It crushed in upon Marika with the weight of massively accumulated time and alien tradition. Enforced inactivity made it almost intolerable. Each day she spent more time in her towertop away place. Each day meditation did less to ease her spiritual malaise.

Her place overlooked nothing but the courtyard, the city, and the works of meth. There was a constant wind, a north wind, but it did not speak to her as had the winds at Akard. It carried the wrong smells, the wrong tastes. It was heavy with the sweat of industry. It was a foreign, indifferent wind. That wind of the north had been her friend and ally.

Often she did not leave her cell at all, but lay on her pallet and used a finger to draw stick figures in the sweat on the cold wall.

Sometimes she went down through her loophole into the realm of ghosts, but she found little comfort there. Ghosts were scarce where so many silth were gathered. She sensed a few great monsters way high above, especially in the night, but she could not touch them. She might as well reach for Biter.

There was a change in atmosphere in the cloister around the end of Marika\u2019s sixth week there. It puzzled her till Barlog showed up to announce, \u201cMost Senior Gradwohl is coming here.\u201d Most Senior Gradwohl ruled the entire Reugge Community, which spanned the continent. \u201cThey are frantic trying to get ready.\u201d

\u201cWhy is she coming?\u201d Marika asked.

\u201cTo take personal charge of the effort to control the nomads. Two days ago nomads were seen from the wall of the packfast at Motchen. That is only a hundred miles north of Maksche, Marika. They are catching up with us already.\u201d In a lower voice Barlog confided, \u201cThese Maksche silth are frightened. They have a contract with the tradermales that obligates them to protect traders anytime they are in Reugge territory. They have been unable to do that. Critza is just one of three tradermale packfasts that were overrun. There is a rumor that some tradermales want to register an open petition for the Serke sisterhood to intercede in Reugge territories because the Reugge can no longer maintain order.\u201d

\u201cSo?\u201d Marika asked indifferently.

\u201cThat would affect us, Marika.\u201d

\u201cHow? We have no part in anything. We are tolerated for some reason. Barely. We are fed. And otherwise we are ignored. What do we have to fear? If no ones sees us, who can harm us?\u201d

\u201cDo not talk that way, Marika.\u201d

\u201cWhy not?\u201d

\u201cThese sisters can go around unseen. One of them might hear you.\u201d

\u201cDon\u2019t be silly. That\u2019s nonsense.\u201d

\u201cI heard it from . . . \u201d Barlog did not finish for fear of compromising her source.

\u201cHow much longer can you tolerate this imprisonment, Barlog? What does Grauel think? I won\u2019t endure it much longer, I promise you that.\u201d

\u201cWe can\u2019t leave.\u201d

\u201cSays who?\u201d

\u201cIt\u2019s not permitted.\u201d

\u201cBy whom? Why not?\u201d

\u201cThat\u2019s just the way it is.\u201d

\u201cFor those who accept it.\u201d

\u201cMarika, please . . . \u201d

\u201cGo away, Barlog. I don\u2019t want to hear you whine.\u201d As Barlog was about to leave, she added, \u201cThey\u2019ve tamed you, Barlog. Made a two-legged rheum-greater out of a once fine huntress.\u201d Use of the familiar mode made Marika\u2019s words all the more cutting.

Barlog\u2019s lips parted in a snarl of fury. But she restrained herself and even closed the door gently.

Marika went to her tower to observe the most senior\u2019s arrival. Gradwohl came in on one of the flying crosses, standing at its axis. Marika watched it drop past the tower, the silth at the tips of its arms standing rigidly with their eyes closed. There was a thrumming rhythm between them that Marika had missed during her flight south. But then she had been exhausted physically, drained mentally and emotionally, and had been interested in little but leaving a shattered fortress and life behind.

She went down inside herself and through her loophole and was astonished to find the cross surrounded by a roiling fog of ghosts, great ghosts similar to the dark killing ghosts she had ridden in the north. The sister at the tip of the longer arm controlled them. They moved the ship. The other sisters provided reservoirs of talent from which the senior sister drew. The most senior did nothing. She was but a passenger.

This, finally, was something about which Marika could get excited. How did they manage it? Was it something she could learn to do? It would be fantastic to ride above the world by night upon one of those great daggers. She studied the silth. What they were doing was different from killing, but it did not appear difficult. She touched the senior sister, trying to read what was happening, as the cross neared the ground.

Her touch distracted the silth. The cross dropped the last foot. Marika recoiled quickly. A countertouch brushed her, but was not specific. It did not return.

A great deal of pomp and ceremony followed the most senior\u2019s landing. Marika remained where she was. The most senior, her party, and those who welcomed her, vanished into the labyrinthine cloister. Marika gazed over the red rooftops at the horizon. For once the wind carried a hint of the north. That chill breath of home worsened her feeling of alienation.

Grauel found her still there near midnight, chin on arms on stone, eyes vacant, staring at the far fields of moon-frosted snow as if awaiting a message. \u201cMarika. They sent me to bring you.\u201d

Grauel seemed badly shaken. There was something in her voice that stirred the dangerous flight-fight response within her. \u201cWho sent you?\u201d

\u201cSenior Zertan. On behalf of the most senior. Gradwohl herself wants to talk to you. That Moragan was with them. I warned you to watch yourself with her.\u201d

Marika bared her teeth. Grauel was terrified. Probably of the possibility that they would get thrown out of the cloister. \u201cWhy does she want me?\u201d

\u201cI don\u2019t know. Probably about what happened at Akard.\u201d

\u201cNow? They\u2019re interested now? After almost two months?\u201d

\u201cMarika. Restrain yourself.\u201d

\u201cAm I not perfectly behaved before our hosts?\u201d

Grauel did not deny that. Marika even treated Moragan with absolute respect. She made a point of giving no one cause to take offense\u2014most of the time.

Nevertheless, she was not liked by the few sisters who crossed her path. Grauel and Barlog claimed the Maksche sisters feared her. Just as had the sisters at Akard.

\u201cAll right. Show me the way. I\u2019ll try to mind my manners.\u201d

They made Grauel stop at the door to the inner cloister, the big central structure opened only for high ceremonies and days of obligation. Marika touched Grauel\u2019s elbow lightly, restraining her. Grauel responded with a massive shrug of resignation\u2014and, Marika thought, just the faintest hint of amusement in the tilt of her ears. It was a hint only one who knew Grauel well would have caught.

What was she up to? And where was Grauel\u2019s rifle? She had not been parted from the weapon since she had received it from Bagnel. She slept with it, it was so precious. Her carrying it all the time had to be cause for consternation and comment.

Almost, Marika looked back. Almost. Native guile stopped her.

Two silth led her to a vast, ill-lighted chamber. No electricity there, just tapers shuddering in chilly drafts. As must be in a place where silth worked their magics. Electromagnetic energies interfered with their talents.

This was the chamber where the most important Reugge rites were observed. Marika had been there before only as a dark-walker. Other than in its symbolic value, the place was nothing special.

Two dozen ranking silth waited, perched silently upon tall stools. Only the occasional flick of an inadvertently exposed tail betrayed the fact that anything was happening behind their cold obsidian-flake eyes. Every one of those eyes was fixed upon Marika.

She was less intimidated than she expected.

Several worker-servants moved among the silth, managing wants and refreshments. One with a tray approached Marika. She was an ancient whose fur had fallen in patches, leaving only ugly bare spots. She dragged her right leg in a stiff limp. As Marika waved her away, she was startled by the meth\u2019s scent. Something familiar . . .

In a low voice the servant said, \u201cMind your manners, pup.\u201d She hitch-stepped off to the sideboard that seemed to be her station.

Barlog!

Barlog. With a limp. And Grauel\u2019s treasure was missing.

With that rifle Barlog could cut down half the silth in the room before any even thought of employing their witchery.

Marika was pleased by the resourcefulness of Grauel and Barlog. But she felt no more confident of her ability to handle the subtleties of the coming interview.

Of the silth in that room, Marika recognized only two. Zertan and Moragan. Marika faced the senior and performed the appropriate ceremonial greeting to perfection. She would show Barlog who could mind her manners.

\u201cThis is the one from Akard?\u201d a gravelly voice asked.

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

The most senior, Marika assumed. Younger than she had expected. She was a hard, chunky, grizzled female with slightly wild eyes. Like a Gorry still sane. A sister who was as much huntress as silth, and a hungry huntress at that.

\u201cI thought she would be older. And bigger,\u201d the most senior said, echoing Marika\u2019s own thoughts.

\u201cShe is young,\u201d Moragan said, and Marika noted that she was completely awake and vibrant and alive. Moragan\u2019s stool stood between those of Zertan and the most senior, an inch nearer that of the latter, subtly proclaiming her most important tie.

Senior Zertan said, \u201cWe do not know what to do with her. Her history is repellent at best. She is an astoundingly strong feral detected accidentally four years ago. Akard took her in. That was soon after the first nomadic incursions into the upper Ponath. Her hamlet was one of the first overrun. It seems that, with no training whatsoever, purely instinctively she drew to the dark and slew several savages. Her latent ability in that respect so disturbed some of our sisters that they labeled her Jiana, after the mythological and archetypal doomstalker Jiana. A sister, Gorry, who had a Community-wide reputation before the necessity for her rustification arose\u2014\u201d

A revenant shrieked in Marika\u2019s mind. Jiana! Doomstalker!

\u201cZertan.\u201d Most Senior Gradwohl\u2019s voice was coldly cautionary.

Zertan shifted her emphasis slightly. \u201cGorry had very strong, very negative feelings about the pup. In one way of seeing, Gorry was correct. She has twice been almost the only survivor of monstrous disasters that befell those who nurtured her. Gorry was very much afraid of her, but was her teacher. Thus her training there was haphazard at best. Reliable reports do indicate that she achieved a commanding ability to reach and command the darkest of those-who-dwell.\u201d

The object of discussion was growing more irate by the moment. Barlog\u2019s cold stare helped her control her tongue.

\u201cZertan,\u201d Gradwohl said again. \u201cEnough. I have seen all the reports you have, and more.\u201d For a moment the Maksche senior seemed startled. \u201cCan you tell me anything new? Anything I do not know? How does she feel about the sisterhood?\u201d

After a silence that began to stretch painfully, Zertan admitted, \u201cI have no idea how she feels. But it does not matter. A pup\u2019s attitudes are the clay that the teacher\u2014\u201d

Gradwohl did not seize upon Zertan\u2019s clumsiness. Instead, she shifted approach. \u201cSenior Koenic reported to me shortly before Akard fell. Among other things, we discussed a feral silth pup named Marika. This Marika, though only fourteen years old, was directly responsible for the deaths of several hundred meth. Senior Koenic was as scared of her as Gorry was. Because, as she put it, this Marika was an embryonic Bestrei or Zhorek\u2014without the intellectual handicaps of those two dark-walkers. Senior Koenic knew Bestrei and Zhorek before her rustification. She watched Marika for four years. She was in a position to form an intelligent estimate of the pup.\u201d

Gradwohl eased down off her stool, surveyed the assembly. \u201cWhat does it matter what a pup thinks of the Community? Consider two ideas. Trust, and personal loyalty.

\u201cFor all the backbiting that goes on, trust cements the Reugge Community. We know we are in no physical danger from one another. We know none of our sisters will willfully work to the detriment of the order. Our subordinates know we will protect and nurture them. But Marika believes none of that.

\u201cWhy? Because her hamlet and hundreds of others were overrun by savages the Reugge were pledged to repel. Because genuine attempts have been made upon her life. Because she has not been educated to see the good of the Community as paramount.\u201d

Gradwohl sounded like some windy Wise meth giving the convocation on a day of high obligation. The longer Gradwohl talked, the less closely Marika listened and the more she became wary. There was some silth game running and she was just a counter.

\u201cAbout personal loyalty, few of you know a thing,\u201d the most senior continued in a hard voice. \u201cLet us experiment. Moragan. Proceed.\u201d

Moragan got off her stool. She drew a long, wicked knife from inside her robe, presented it to Senior Zertan.

Gradwohl said, \u201cCarry out your instructions, Zertan.\u201d

Zertan left her stool with obvious reluctance. She looked at Marika for a moment.

She flung herself forward.

Marika\u2019s response was instantaneous and instinctive. She ducked through her loophole into the ghost realm. A thought captured a ghost. A mental shout scattered the few others before any other silth could come through and seize them. She hurled her ghost at the vaguely perceived form plunging toward her.

She returned to reality while the bark of a rifle still reverberated through the chamber. Zertan was pitching forward, dropped knife not yet to the floor. Gradwohl was turning, spun by Barlog\u2019s bullet. Marika flung up a paw, restraining Barlog before she commenced a massacre.

The chamber door exploded inward. The guards posted outside tumbled through. Grauel leaped through with a Degnan ululation, shield on one arm, javelin poised for the cast. Behind her, a quivering Braydic menaced the guards with a sword she had no idea how to use.

Not one of the silth on the stools moved more than the tip of a tail.

Some silth game.

Most Senior Gradwohl recovered. The bullet had but clipped her shoulder. She met Marika\u2019s cold stare. \u201cI seldom miscalculate. But when I do, I do it big.\u201d Her paw went to her shoulder, where moisture seeped into the fabric of her robe. \u201cI did not anticipate firearms. Halechk! See to Zertan before she dies on us.\u201d

A silth with healer\u2019s decorations left her stool and hastened to Zertan.

Gradwohl said, \u201cPersonal loyalty. Even in the face of certain disaster.\u201d Her teeth ground together. Her wound had begun to hurt.

Zertan\u2019s knife had come to rest only inches from the tip of Marika\u2019s right boot. She kicked it across the floor to the most senior\u2019s feet.

Gradwohl\u2019s cheek began to twitch. She whispered, \u201cHave a care, pup. Had it been real, you might have gotten through it by having surprise on your right paw.\u201d

\u201cHad it been real, there would be only three meth alive in this room right now.\u201d Marika spoke with conviction. She broke eye contact long enough to glance at the knife. \u201cWe had a saying in the Ponath. \u2018As strength goes.\u2019 \u201d She had to say it in dialect. Gradwohl did not react. Perhaps it went past her.

\u201cWhen I am manipulated or pushed, mistress, I must push back.\u201d

Gradwohl ignored her. She surveyed the silth, still perched upon their stools. \u201cThis assembly has served its purpose. It is as I suspected. Someone has been remiss. Someone allowed prejudice to overwhelm reason. Listen! This pup ambushed and destroyed a ranking sister of the Serke Community. And I promise you, that House is giving that fact a lot more attention than this one has.\u201d

Gradwohl stared at Marika hard. Marika continued to meet her gaze, refusing to be intimidated. Beneath, beyond the test of wills, she sensed a kindred soul.

\u201cThis assembly is at an end,\u201d Gradwohl said, still holding Marika\u2019s gaze. \u201cGo. All but you, pup.\u201d

Silently, silth began filing out. Two helped carry Senior Zertan.

Barlog and Grauel did not move.

Braydic, though, Marika noted, had disappeared. Ever cautious and timid Braydic.

Just as well, perhaps. Just as well.

Marika focused upon this meth strong enough to rule the fractious Reugge Community.

Chapter Sixteen
I<\/span>
Gradwohl climbed onto a stool. \u201cSit if you like,\u201d she told Marika.

Marika settled crosslegged upon the floor, as had been the custom among the packs of the upper Ponath. Furniture had been unknown in her dam\u2019s loghouse.

\u201cTell me about yourself, pup.\u201d

\u201cMistress?\u201d

\u201cTell me your story. I want to know everything there is to know about you.\u201d

\u201cYou know, mistress. Through your agent Moragan.\u201d

Gradwohl seemed amused. \u201cShe was that transparent?\u201d

\u201cOnly looking back.\u201d

\u201cNothing substitutes for direct examination. Begin simply. Tell me your story. What is your name?\u201d

\u201cMarika, mistress.\u201d

\u201cTell me about Marika. From her birth to this moment.\u201d

Marika sketched an autobiography which included her first awarenesses of her talent, her unusually close relationship with her male littermate Kublin, her troubles with one of the Wise of her dam\u2019s loghouse, and all her troubles during her stay at the fortress Akard.

Gradwohl nodded. \u201cInteresting. But possibly even more interesting in complete privacy.\u201d

\u201cMistress?\u201d

\u201cYou have told me very little about Marika inside.\u201d

Marika grew uneasy.

\u201cDo not be frightened, pup.\u201d

\u201cI am not, mistress.\u201d

\u201cLiar. I met a most senior when I was your age. I was petrified. There is no need. I am here to help. You are not happy, are you? Honestly, now.\u201d

\u201cNo, mistress.\u201d

\u201cWhy not?\u201d

She thought she had made that clear. Perhaps their backgrounds were too alien. She rambled till Gradwohl lost patience. \u201cGet to the point, pup. There are no ears here but mine. Even were there, your sisters would make no reprisals for what you say. I will not permit that. And do not lie. I want to know what the real Marika thinks and feels.\u201d

Irked, Marika tested the water with a few mild remarks. When Gradwohl did not explode, she continued till she had revealed most of her dissatisfactions.

\u201cExactly what I suspected. An absolute lack of vision from the very beginning. I was not a feral myself, but I endured similar troubles. They sense strength and power, and it frightens them. In their way, silth have minds as small as any common meth. Those who might be surpassed want to stifle you before you develop the skills to command them. It is a severe shortcoming of the society silth have developed. Now. Tell me more about Akard.\u201d

Gradwohl spoke no more of Marika\u2019s place in things, nor of her feelings. Instead, she concentrated upon a minute examination of events during Akard\u2019s final days. \u201cWhat has become of the other survivors? Especially the commtech and the tradermale?\u201d She used the Ponath dialect word tradermale as though it was unfamiliar.

Marika reflected carefully before saying, \u201cBraydic was assigned work in the communications center here.\u201d Had the most senior noted the sword-carrying meth who had threatened the guards behind Grauel, keeping them from interfering? \u201cThey will not let me see her. Bagnel vanished. I assume he rejoined his brotherhood. They say there is a tradermale place here in Maksche.\u201d

\u201cPresumably I could reach him through his factors.\u201d

\u201cDarkship, mistress?\u201d

\u201cThe flying cross. That was you in the tower, was it not? You touched Norgis just before we set down.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

\u201cWhat did you think?\u201d

\u201cI was awed, mistress. The idea of riding such a thing. . . . I rode one coming down from Akard, but most of that escapes me.\u201d

\u201cYou are not frightened by it?\u201d

\u201cNo, mistress.\u201d

\u201cYou do not find those-who-dwell frightening?\u201d

\u201cNo, mistress.\u201d

\u201cGood. That will be all, pup. Return to your quarters.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

\u201cThere will be changes in your life, pup.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress,\u201d Marika said as she walked toward the doorway.

Grauel went through first, surveyed the hallway, nodded. Barlog backed out behind Marika, rifle still trained on the most senior.

Not one word about the confrontation passed between the three of them.

The changes began immediately. The morning following the interview, a silth the age of Marika\u2019s dam came to her cell. She introduced herself as Dorteka. \u201cI am your instructress, detached from the most senior\u2019s staff for that purpose. The most senior has ordered an individualized program for you. We will get started now.\u201d Plainly, Dorteka did not like her assignment, but she was careful to avoid saying so.

Marika would soon note a cloisterwide shift of attitude toward one who had caught the most senior\u2019s interest.

That first morning Dorteka took her to a meditation chamber. They sat upon the floor, across a table of the same stone as the cloister, in the eerie light of a single oil lamp. On Dorteka\u2019s side lay a clipboard and papers. Dorteka said, \u201cYour education has been erratic. The most senior wants you to go back and begin at the beginning.\u201d

\u201cI would be with pups . . . \u201d

\u201cYou will proceed at your own pace, independent of everyone else at every level. Where your training has been adequate, you will advance rapidly, to your limits.\u201d Dorteka straightened a paper. \u201cWhat would you like to do for the sisterhood?\u201d

Marika did not hesitate. \u201cFly the darkships. To the starworlds.\u201d

A trace of amusement showed in the tilt of Dorteka\u2019s ears. \u201cSo the most senior suggested. The darkship is possible. The starworlds are not.\u201d

\u201cWhy?\u201d

\u201cWe were too late going out. We looked in the wrong places. The starworlds are all enfiefed, and they are guarded jealously by the sisterhoods who own them. Even to leave the planet now would mean an immediate challenge to darkwar. So darkwar can be our only reason for entering the dark. We will not. We have no one capable of challenging.\u201d

Puzzled, Marika asked, \u201cWhat is darkwar? No one will explain.\u201d

\u201cAt your level it will be difficult to comprehend. In essence, darkwar is a bloodduel between the leading Mistresses of the Ships of Communities in conflict. The survivor wins the right of the dispute. Darkwar is rare because it usually seals the fate of an entire Community.\u201d

Bloodduel Marika understood. She nodded.

\u201cTime enough for such things after you gain a solid foundation. You wish to become involved with the ships. Then you shall become involved, if you remain interested once you become qualified. There are never enough sisters willing to work them. You do read and write?\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

Dorteka handed her a sheet of paper. \u201cThis is our schedule. We will adjust it as needed.\u201d

Marika looked it over. \u201cNot much time left for sleep.\u201d

\u201cYou wish to fly darkships, you must learn to endure sleeplessness. You wish to see your friend Braydic, you will remain stubbornly devoted to your studies.\u201d Dorteka pushed a scrap of paper across the table. The notes on it were in a paw almost mechanically perfect. \u201cSuggested motivators for the feral subject Marika.\u201d

\u201cThe most senior?\u201d

\u201cYes.\u201d

The interest shown by the most senior was a bit intimidating.

The sheet was filled with a complicated diagram for earning the right to visit Braydic or the city.

\u201cAs you see, a visit to your friend requires you to accumulate one hundred performance points. Those are mapped out for you there. Leave to go outside the cloister will be more difficult to obtain. It is subject to my being satisfied with your progress. You will never get out if I feel you are giving less than one hundred percent.\u201d

Crafty old Gradwohl. She had speared to the heart of her and tapped forces which could make her learn. The thought of seeing Braydic sparked an immediate urge to begin. The opportunity to get into the city, too, stirred her, but less concretely.

\u201cI doubt that I will permit a city visit anytime soon. Perhaps we will accumulate several opportunities for later.\u201d

\u201cWhy, mistress?\u201d

\u201cThe streets could be dangerous for an untrained silth. We have been having a problem with rogue males. I expect the Serke are behind that, too. Whatever, silth have been assaulted. Last summer ringleaders were rounded up and sentenced to the mines, but that did little good. The brethren\u2014those you call tradermales\u2014may have a paw in the movement.\u201d

\u201cThe world is not so complicated on an upper Ponath packstead,\u201d Marika observed.

\u201cNo. You see the schedule and rewards. Are they acceptable?\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

\u201cYou will become a full-time student, with no other duties. You will accept the discipline of the Community?\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d Marika was surprised to find herself so eager. Till this morning she had cared about nothing. \u201cI am ready to begin.\u201d

\u201cThen begin we shall.\u201d

II<\/span>
Marika\u2019s education commenced before the next dawn. Dorteka wakened her and took her to a gymnasium for an hour\u2019s workout. A bath followed.

Marika\u2019s determination almost broke. She nearly broke her vow to obey and conform.

A bath! Meth\u2014of the upper Ponath, at least\u2014hated water. They never entered it voluntarily. Only when the populations of insects in one\u2019s fur became too great to stand . . .

The bath was followed by a hurried meal prior to the first class of the day, which was an introduction to being silth. Rites and ceremonies, dogma and duties, and instruction in the secret languages of the sisterhood, which she hardly needed. She discovered that there were circles of sisterhood mysteries silth were supposed to penetrate as they became older and more skilled. Till Dorteka, she had no idea how much she had been shut out.

She ripped through those studies swiftly. They required rote learning. Her memory was excellent. Seldom did she need to be shown anything more than once.

She excelled in the gymnasium. She was her dam\u2019s pup. Skiljan had been fast, strong, hard, and tough.

The second class lay across the cloister from the first. Dorteka made her run all the way. Dorteka made her run everywhere, and ran with her. The second class was not as susceptible to rote learning, for it was mathematics. It required the use of reason. Silth naturally tended to favor intuition.

After mathematics came the history of the sisterhood, a class which Marika devoured in days. The Reugge were a minor Community with a short, uneventful past, an offshoot of the Serke that had established independence only seven centuries earlier. Sustenance of that independence was the outstanding Reugge achievement.

Silth had a history that stretched into prehistory, countless millennia back, when all meth lived in nomadic packs. The earliest sisterhoods existed long before the keeping of records began. Most silth had little interest in those days. They lived in an eternal now.

Marika\u2019s pack had maintained a record of its achievements called the Degnan Chronicle. That it had been kept in her dam\u2019s loghouse had been a source of pride to the pup. Barlog still kept it up, for she and Grauel believed that as long as it survived and remained current, the Degnan pack survived. As a historical instrument, the Degnan Chronicle was superior to any kept by the Reugge even now. For the Reugge Community, history was an oral tradition mainly of self-justification.

Broader historical studies proved no more informative. They raised more questions than they answered, as far as Marika could see. What were the origins of the meth? In olden times\u2014as now among the nomads of the north\u2014they were pack hunters. Physically, they resembled a carnivore called a kagbeast. But kagbeasts were not intelligent, nor did their females rule their packs. In fact, female meth did not rule the primitive packs of the southern hemisphere, where silth births were rare. There the males hunted on equal footing.

When Marika asked, Dorteka theorized, \u201cFemale rule developed because of the high incidence of silth births in northern litters. So I have heard.

\u201cPrimitive packs such as your own are structured around the strong. When the strong become weakened by time or disease, they are pushed aside. But a silth could stave off challengers even though she was weak physically, and once in command would tend to be partial to those who shared her talent. In primitive packs where breeding rights are reserved for the dominant females, silth dominance would mean especial favor to the spread of the silth strain.\u201d

Marika observed, \u201cThen an old female like my instructress Gorry, at Akard, could stay in control till she died, yet could not lead or make rational decisions, really.\u201d

Dorteka snorted. \u201cWhich indicts the silth structure, yes. For all the most senior said about trust and whatnot in your interview\u2014yes, I have heard all about that\u2014we live under rule by terror, pup. The most capable do not run the Communities. The most terrible do. Thus you have a Bestrei among the Serke without a brain at all but in high station because she is invincible in darkwar. She is one of many who would not survive long if stripped of her talent.\u201d

After general history came another meal, followed by a long afternoon spent trying to harness and expand Marika\u2019s talents.

Dorteka went through everything with her, side by side. She graded herself, making herself the standard against which Marika should perform.

Marika almost enjoyed herself. For the first time since the fall of the Degnan packstead, she felt like her life was going somewhere.

The exercises, the entire program, were nothing like what she had had to suffer through with Gorry. There were no monsters, no terrors, no threats, no abuses. For silth class Marika seated herself upon a mat, closed her eyes, led herself into a trance where her mind floated free, unsupported by ghosts. Dorteka adamantly insisted she shun those-who-dwell.

\u201cThey are treacherous, Marika. Like chaphe is treacherous. You can turn to them too often, till you become dependent upon them and turn to them every time you are under pressure. They become an escape. Go inside and see how many other paths lie open.\u201d

Marika was amazed to discover that most silth could not reach or manipulate the deadly ghosts. That was a rare talent, dark-walking. The rarest and most dread talent of them all was being able to control the giants that moved the darkships\u2014the very giants she had summoned at Akard for more lethal employment against nomads.

Her heart leapt when she learned that. She would fly!

Flight had become a goal bordering upon obsession.

\u201cWhen can I begin learning the darkships, mistress?\u201d she asked. \u201cThat is what interests me.\u201d

\u201cNot soon. Only after you have a sound grounding in everything it takes to become true silth. The most senior would like you to become a flying sister, yes, but I feel she wants you to be much more. I suspect she plans a great future for you.\u201d

\u201cMistress?\u201d At Akard there had been much talk of a great future, little of which anyone had been willing to explain.

\u201cNever mind. Go through and see how far you can extend your touch.\u201d

\u201cTo whom, mistress?\u201d

\u201cNo one. Just reach out. Do you need a target?\u201d

\u201cI always have.\u201d

\u201cTo be expected of the self-taught, I suppose.\u201d Dorteka never became exasperated, even when she had cause. \u201cIt is not necessary. Try it without.\u201d

Despite the grind, which left little time for sleep, Marika often visited her tower, sat staring at the stars, mourning the fate that had enlisted her in a sisterhood incapable of reaching them.

Dorteka\u2019s sessions could be as intense as Gorry\u2019s, if not as dangerous. Marika found herself grasping skills instinctively, progressing so rapidly she unsettled her instructress. Dorteka began to see what the most senior had intuited. That much talent in the paws of one raised to the primitive huntress world view, with its harsh and uncompromising values . . . The possibilities were frightening.

Evenings after supper, Marika\u2019s education turned to the mundane, to the sciences as the Reugge knew them. Though they were laden with a mysticism that left Marika impatient, her progress was swift, and limited only by her ability to grasp and internalize the principles of ever more complex mathematics.

Word came down from the most senior: expand the time given math. Let the sisterhood trivia slide.

Dorteka was offended. The forms of silthdom were important to her. \u201cWe are our traditions,\u201d she was fond of saying.

\u201cWhy is the most senior doing this?\u201d Marika asked. \u201cI do not mind. I want to learn. But what is her hurry?\u201d

\u201cI am not sure. I am certain she would disapprove of my guessing. But I believe she may be thinking in terms of sculpting some sort of liberator for the Reugge. If the Serke keep pressing us and the winter keeps pushing south, we could be devoured within ten years. She does not want to be remembered as the last most senior of the Reugge Community. And she has begun to feel her mortality.\u201d

\u201cShe is not that old. I was surprised when first I saw her. I thought she would be ancient.\u201d

\u201cNo, she is not old. But always she hears the Serke baying behind her. However, that is not our worry. Mine is to teach. Yours is to learn. The whys are not relevant now. Time will unfold its leaves.\u201d

Marika continued to advance at a rate that shocked Dorteka. The teacher observed, \u201cI begin to suspect that, despite themselves, our sisters at Akard taught you a great deal. At this rate you will, in every way, surpass your own age group before summer. In some ways you already exceed many sisters accounted full silth.\u201d

Much of what Marika encountered was new. She did not tell Dorteka that, afraid of frightening her teacher with the ease with which she learned.

After evening classes there was an events-of-the-day seminar conducted by the Maksche senior\u2019s second, a silth named Paustch. This took place in the hall where Marika had confronted Gradwohl, and Marika was required to attend. She kept the lowest profile possible. Her presence was tolerated only because Gradwohl insisted. No one asked her opinion. She offered none. She had no illusions about her presence there. She was the senior\u2019s marker, but she did not know in what game. She ducked out first when the seminar ended.

Thus she stayed close to the warming feud with the Serke, with the latest on nomad predations, gained an idea of the shape of politics between sisterhoods, heard of all their squabbles, caught rumors about the explorations of distant starworlds. But mostly the Maksche leadership discussed the nomads and the ever more common problem of male sedition.

\u201cI came into this in the middle,\u201d Marika told Dorteka. \u201cI am not certain I understand why the problem is such a problem.\u201d

\u201cThese males are few and really only a minor irritant,\u201d Dorteka said. \u201cTaken worldwide their efforts would not be noticeable. But they have concentrated their terrorism in Reugge territories, especially around Maksche. And a large portion of their attacks have been directed against guests of the Reugge\u2014clearly an effort to make us appear weak and incapable of policing our fiefs. And the Serke, as you might expect, have been making the most of the situation. We have been subjected to a great deal of outside pressure. All part of the Serke maneuver against us, of course. But we cannot prove they are behind it.\u201d

\u201cIf the behavior of males here is unusual . . . Are these rogues homegrown?\u201d As an afterthought, she added the appropriate, \u201cMistress?\u201d

Dorteka\u2019s ears tilted in mild amusement. \u201cYou strike to the heart of the matter. In fact, they are not. Our native males are perfectly behaved, though they often lend passive support by not reporting things they should. Sometimes they even grow so bold as to provide places of hiding. Certainly they sympathize with the rogues\u2019 stated goals.\u201d

Those goals were nothing less than the overthrow and destruction of all silthdom. A grand vision indeed, considering the iron grip the Communities had upon the world.

III<\/span>
Marika\u2019s first attempt to visit Braydic did not go well at all. Called out of the communications center, the technician met her with evasive eyes and an obvious eagerness to be away. Marika was both amused and pained, for she recalled who it was who had held the door guards at bay in the heat of crisis.

\u201cNo one saw you, Braydic,\u201d she said. \u201cYou are safe. I doubt the guards themselves could identify you. They were on the edge of hysteria and probably recall you as being a demon nine feet tall and six wide.\u201d

Braydic shuddered and stared at the floor. Marika was disappointed, but knew what that momentary commitment had cost Braydic. She had risked everything.

\u201cI owe you, Braydic. And I will not forget. Go, then, if you fear having me for a friend. But I promise my friendship will not falter for it.\u201d

Marika returned two weeks later. Braydic was no more sure of herself. Pained, Marika determined that she would not return again till she had attained some position of power, the shadow of which could fall upon Braydic.

She had begun to grow aware of the value and uses of power, and to think of it. Often.

That second visit, cut short, left her an hour free. She went to her away place in the tower.

Spring now threatened Maksche. The city lay under a haze from factories working overtime to fulfill production quotas before their workers had to report to the fields. Because of the shortening growing seasons, every worker now had to labor in the fields to get sufficient crops planted, tended, and harvested. Else the city would not make it through the winter.

This failing winter had been the worst in Maksche\u2019s history, though it was mild compared to those Marika had seen in the upper Ponath. But succeeding winters would be worse. The Maksche silth were now driving their tenants, their dependents, their meth property, so Maksche would be prepared for the worst when it came.

A darkship rose from the square below. The blade of the dagger turned till it pointed northward. Once it was above Maksche\u2019s highest structures, it fled into the distance.

From the date of the most senior\u2019s arrival, darkships had been airborne every day the weather permitted, hunting nomads, tracking nomads, scouting out their strong points and places of meeting, gathering information for a summer campaign. The Reugge could not challenge the Serke directly. They had neither the strength nor proof other Communities would consider adequate. So the most senior meant to defeat their efforts by obliterating their minions.

She was tough and bloodyminded, this Gradwohl. She meant to fertilize the entire northern half of the Reugge province with nomad corpses. And if she could manage it, she would add several hundred troublesome rogue males to the slaughter.

The cloister was ahum with an anticipation Marika hardly noticed. She did not expect to become involved in Gradwohl\u2019s campaign.

How long before Dorteka allowed her to explore Maksche? She was eager to be away from the cloister, to break for a few hours from this relentless business of becoming silth.

Maksche was odd, a city of marked contrasts. Here sat the cloister, all but its ceremonial heart electrically lighted and heated. One could get water simply by lifting a lever. Wastes were carried away in a system of sewage pipes. But outside the cloister\u2019s walls few lights existed, and those only candles or tallow lamps. Meth out there drew their water from wells or the river. Their sewers consisted of channels in the alleyways, washed clean when it rained.

It had not rained all winter.

Meth out there walked, unless they were the rare, rich, favored few who could rent dray beasts, a driver, and a carriage from the tradermales of the Brown Paw Bond. Silth sisters going abroad in the town usually rode in elegant steam coaches faster than any carriage. If Dorteka allowed her out, would she be permitted the use of such a vehicle? Not likely. They were guarded jealously, for they were very expensive. They were handcrafted by one of the tradermale underbrotherhoods not part of the local Brown Paw Bond, and imported. They were not silth property.

The traders sold no vehicle outright, but leased them instead. Lease contracts demanded huge penalty payments for damages done. Marika suspected that was motivated by a desire to keep lessees from dismantling the machines to see how they worked.

A tradermale operator came with every vehicle. Outsiders were not allowed to learn how to drive. Those males obligated to the vehicles of the cloister lived in a small barracks across the street from the cloister\u2019s main gate, whence they could be summoned on a moment\u2019s notice.

When her hour was up, Marika went to Dorteka and asked, \u201cHow many more points do I have to accumulate before I can go into the city?\u201d

\u201cIt is not a point system, Marika. You can go whenever I decide you deserve the reward.\u201d

\u201cWell? Do I?\u201d She had held back nothing. Having been used as a counter in a contest she did not understand, for reasons she could not comprehend, she had gone all out to arm herself for her own survival. Dorteka could not have demanded more. There was no more she could give.

\u201cPerhaps. Perhaps. But why go out into that fester at all?\u201d

\u201cTo explore it. To see what is out there. To get out of this oppressive prison for a while.\u201d

\u201cOppressive? Prison? The cloister?\u201d

\u201cIt is unbearable. But you grew up here. Maybe you cannot imagine freedom of movement.\u201d

\u201cNo. I cannot. At least not out there. My duties have taken me into the city, Marika. It is disgusting. I would rather not traipse around after you while you crawl through the muck.\u201d

\u201cWhy should you, mistress?\u201d

\u201cWhat?\u201d

\u201cThere is no reason for you to go.\u201d

\u201cIf you go, I have to go.\u201d

\u201cWhy, mistress?\u201d

\u201cTo keep you out of trouble.\u201d

\u201cI can take care of myself, mistress.\u201d

\u201cMaksche is not the Ponath, pup.\u201d

\u201cI doubt that the city has dangers to compare with the nomad.\u201d

\u201cIt is not danger to your flesh I fear, Marika. It is your mind that concerns me.\u201d

\u201cMistress?\u201d

\u201cYou do not fool me. You are not yet silth. And you are no harmless, eager student. A shadow lives behind your eyes.\u201d

Marika did not respond till she carefully stifled her anger. \u201cI do not understand you, mistress. Others have said the same of me. Some have called me doomstalker. Yet I do not feel unusual. How could the city harm my mind? By exposing me to dangerous ideas? I have enough of those myself. I will create my own beliefs here or there, regardless of what you would have me believe. Or could it harm me by showing me how cruelly Reugge bonds live so we silth can be comfortable here? That much I have seen from the wall.\u201d

Dorteka did not reply. She, too, was fighting anger.

\u201cIf I must have company and protection, send my packmates, Grauel and Barlog. I am certain they would be happy to accept your instructions.\u201d Her sarcasm was lost on Dorteka.

She and Grauel and Barlog had been at odds almost since the confrontation with the most senior. The two huntresses had been making every effort to appear to be perfect subjects of the Community. Marika did not want them to surrender quite so fast.

\u201cI will consider that. If you insist on going out there.\u201d

\u201cI want to, mistress.\u201d

The great ground-level gate rolled back. Grauel and Barlog stepped out warily. Marika followed, surprised at their reluctance. Behind her, Dorteka said, \u201cBe back before dark, Marika. Or no more passes.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress. Come on!\u201d She ran, exulting in her freedom. Grauel and Barlog struggled to keep pace. \u201cIsn\u2019t it wonderful?\u201d

\u201cIt stinks,\u201d Grauel said. \u201cThey live in their own ordure, Marika.\u201d

And Barlog; \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d Already it was evident that Marika had a definite destination in mind.

\u201cTo the tradermale enclosure. To see their flying machines.\u201d

\u201cI might have guessed,\u201d Barlog grumbled. \u201cSlow down. We\u2019re not as young as you are. Marika, all this obsession with flying is not healthy. Meth were not meant for it. Marika! Will you slow down?\u201d

Marika glanced back. The two huntresses were struggling with the cumbersome long rifles they carried. \u201cWhy did you bring those?\u201d She knew Grauel preferred the weapon she had gotten from Bagnel.

\u201cOrders, Marika. Pure and simple and malicious orders. There are some silth who hope you\u2019ll get killed out here. The only reason you get a pretense of a bodyguard is because you have the most senior\u2019s favor.\u201d

\u201cPretense?\u201d

\u201cAny other silth would have at least six guards. If she was insane enough to come out on foot. And they would not be so shoddily armed. They would not have let us come except that we are two they won\u2019t miss if something happens.\u201d

\u201cThat\u2019s silly. Nobody has been attacked since we\u2019ve been here. I think all that is just scare talk. Good old grauken in the bushes.\u201d

\u201cNo one has been foolish enough to walk these streets either, Marika.\u201d

Marika did not want to argue. She wanted to see airships. She pressed ahead. The tradermales built machines that flew. She had seen them in her education tapes and from her tower in the nether distance, but it was hard to connect vision screen images and remote specks with anything real. The airfield lay too far from the cloister for examination from her tower.

An aircraft was circling as Marika approached the fence surrounding the tradermale enclave. It swooped, touched down, rolled along a long concrete strip, and came to a halt with one final metallic belch. Marika checked Grauel and Barlog for their reactions. They had seen nothing like it before. Servants of the silth saw very little of the world, and tradermale aircraft were not permitted to fly near the cloister.

They might have been watching carrion birds land upon a corpse.

\u201cLet\u2019s get closer,\u201d Marika said. She trotted along the fence, toward a group of buildings. Grauel and Barlog hurried after her, glancing over their shoulders at the aircraft and at two big transport dirigibles resting in cradles on the far side of the concrete strip.

The advantage of being silth, Marika believed, was that you could do any All-bedamned thing you wanted. Ordinary meth would grind their teeth and endure. She breezed into an open doorway, past a desk where a sleepy tradermale watched a vision screen, dashed down a long hallway and out onto the field proper, ignoring the startled shout that pursued her. She headed for the freighters.

The nearest was a monster. The closer she ran, the more she was awed.

\u201cOh,\u201d Grauel said at last, and slowed. Marika stopped to wait. Grauel breathed, \u201cAll bless us. It is as big as a mountain.\u201d

\u201cYes.\u201d Marika started to explain how an airship worked, saw that she had lost both huntresses, said instead, \u201cIt could haul the whole Degnan pack. Packstead and all. And have room left over.\u201d

Tradermale technicians were at work around the airship\u2019s gondola. One spotted them. He yelled at the others. A few just stared. Most scattered. Marika thought that was amusing.

The fat flank of the ship loomed higher and higher. She leaned back, now as awed as Grauel and Barlog. She beckoned a male either too brave or too petrified to have fled. He approached tentatively. \u201cWhat ship is this, tradermale?\u201d

He seemed puzzled by that latter, dialect word, but got the sense of the question. \u201cDawnstrider.\u201d

\u201cOh. I do not know that one. It is so big, I thought it must be Starpetal.\u201d

\u201cNo. Starpetal is much larger. Way too big for our cradles here. Usually only the smaller ships come up to the borderlands.\u201d

\u201cBorderlands?\u201d Marika asked, bemused by the size of the ship.

\u201cWell, Maksche is practically the end of the world. Last outpost of civilization. Ten miles out there it turns into Tech Three Zone and just gets worse the farther you go.\u201d He tilted his ears and exposed his teeth in a way that said he was making a joke.

\u201cI thought I hailed from the last outpost,\u201d Marika countered in a bantering tone. \u201cNorth edge of the Tech Two.\u201d If she could overcome his awe, he might have something interesting to say. She did realize that most meth considered Maksche the end of the world. It was the northernmost city of consequence in the Hainlin basin, the limit of barge traffic and very border of Tech Four-permitted machine technology. It had grown up principally to service and support trade up the Hainlin, into the primitive interior of the vast and remote northern Reugge provinces. \u201cWell, savagery is relative. Right? We are civilized. They are savages. Come, Barlog. Grauel.\u201d

\u201cWhere are you going?\u201d the tradermale squeaked. \u201cHey! You cannot go in there.\u201d

\u201cI just want to look at the control cabin,\u201d Marika said. \u201cI will not touch anything. I promise.\u201d

\u201cBut . . . wait . . . \u201d

Marika climbed the ladder leading to the airship\u2019s gondola. After a moment of silent debate, Grauel and Barlog followed, shaking visibly, driven onward only by their pride. A Degnan huntress knew no fear.

Dawnstrider was a freighter. Its appointments were minimal, designed to keep down mass so payload could be maximized. Even so, the control cabin was bewildering with its array of meters and dials, levers, valves, switches, and push-buttons. \u201cDo not touch anything,\u201d Marika warned Grauel and Barlog for the benefit of the technician, who refused to leave them unsupervised. \u201cWe do not want this beast to carry us away.\u201d

The huntresses clutched their weapons and stared around. Marika was puzzled. They were not ignorant Ponath dwellers anymore. They had been exposed to the greater meth universe. They should have developed some flexibility.

She did not remain impressed long. Dawnstrider was a disappointment, though she could not pin down why. \u201cI have seen enough. Let us go look at the little ships.\u201d

She went down the ladder behind the technician, amused by the emotion betrayed in his every movement. She was getting good at reading body language.

She did not sense the wrongness till she had moved several steps from the base of the ladder. Then it was too late.

Tradermales rushed from beneath the airship, all of them armed. Grauel and Barlog snapped their weapons to the ready, shielded Marika with their bodies.

\u201cWhat is this?\u201d Marika snapped.

\u201cYou do not belong here, silth,\u201d a male said. \u201cYou are trespassing on brethren land.\u201d

Marika\u2019s nerve wavered. Yet she stared the male in the eye with the arrogance of a senior and said, \u201cI go where I please, male. And you mind your manners when you speak\u2014\u201d

\u201cYou are out of line, pup. No one comes into a brethren enclave without permission of the factors.\u201d

He had the right of it. She had not thought. There were compacts between the Reugge and the tradermales. She had overlooked them in her enthusiasm.

A stubborn something within her refused to back down, insisted that she up the risk. \u201cYou better have these males put their weapons aside. I do not wish to harm anyone.\u201d

\u201cI have twenty rifles, pup. I count two on your side.\u201d

\u201cYou are speaking to a darkwalker. I can destroy the lot of you before one trigger can be pulled. You think about dying with your heart ripped out, male.\u201d

His lips peeled back in a snarl. He was ready to call her bluff. The set of Grauel\u2019s shoulders said that the huntress thought her mad to provoke the male so, that she would get them all killed for nothing.

Fleetingly, Marika wondered why she did provoke almost everyone who ever challenged her.

\u201cWe shall see.\u201d The tradermale gestured.

Marika felt an odd tingling, like that she experienced around high-energy communications gear. Something electromagnetic was being directed at her. She spotted a tradermale in the background aiming a boxlike device her way.

She dived down inside herself, through her loophole, snagged a ghost, and slammed it into the guts of the box. She twisted that ghost and compressed it into an ever more rapidly spinning ball, all within an instant. She watched it shred wires and glass.

She came back in time to watch the box fly apart, to hear the technician\u2019s startled yelp. He raised a bleeding paw to his mouth.

Fingers strained at triggers. The leading tradermale betrayed extreme distress. \u201cYou see?\u201d Marika demanded.

\u201cHold it! Hold it there!\u201d someone shouted from the distance. Everyone turned.

More males were running along the airstrip. In a moment Marika realized why one seemed familiar. \u201cBagnel,\u201d she said softly. Her spirits rose. Maybe she would escape the consequences of her own stupidity after all.

The instant she began to see hope, she started worrying about the consequences that would follow the report that would reach the cloister. There would be a complaint, surely. Tradermales were said to be militant about their rights. They had struggled for ages to obtain them. Their organization was by-the-rules where those were concerned.

Marika was mildly amazed to discover she was more afraid of Dorteka than she was of this potentially lethal confrontation.

A few tradermale weapons sagged as they awaited those approaching. Tension drooped with them. Grauel and Barlog relaxed, though they did not lower their weapons.

Bagnel rushed up, puffing. \u201cTimbruk, what have you got here?\u201d He peered at Marika. \u201cHa! Well! And I actually thought of you when they told me. Marika. Hello.\u201d He interposed himself between Marika and the male he had called Timbruk. \u201cCan we have a little relaxation here, meth? Everybody. Put the weapons down. There is no call to get anyone hurt.\u201d

Trimbruk protested, \u201cBagnel, they have trespassed . . . \u201d

\u201cObviously. But no harm done, was there?\u201d

\u201cHarm is not the point.\u201d

\u201cYes. Yes. Well, Trimbruk, if they need shooting we can do that later. Put the weapons down. Let me talk. I know this sister. She saved my life in the Ponath.\u201d

\u201cSaved your life? Come on. She is just a pup. She is the one who . . . ?\u201d

\u201cYes. She is that one.\u201d

Trimbruk swallowed. His eyes widened. He looked spooked. He stared at Marika till she became uncomfortable. Twice his gaze seemed pulled toward a group of buildings at the north end of the field. Each time he jerked it back to her with sudden ferocity. Then he said, \u201cRelax, brothers. Relax. Weapons on safety.\u201d

Marika said, \u201cGrauel, Barlog, stand easy. Put your weapons on safe.\u201d

Grauel did not want to do it. Her every muscle was tense with a rigidly controlled fight-flight response. But she did as she was told, though her eyes continued to smolder.

Barlog merely heaved a sigh of relief.

Bagnel did likewise. \u201cGood. Now, shall we talk? Marika, what in the name of the All did you think you were doing, coming in here like that? You cannot just walk in like you own the place. This is convention ground. Have they not taught you anything over there?

\u201cI know. It was stupid.\u201d She stepped closer, spoke more softly. \u201cI was just wandering around, exploring. When I saw the airships I got so excited I lost my head. I forgot everything else. I just had to look. Then these males . . . \u201d She broke off, realizing she was about to make accusations that would be unreasonable and provocative.

Bagnel was amused. But he said, \u201cDid you have to be so . . . I see. They have taught you\u2014taught you to be silth. I mean, the way silth here understand being silth. Cold. Arrogant. Insensitive. Never mind. As they say, silth will be silth. Timbruk. It is over. There is no need for you here now. This is to be forgotten. No record. No formal protest. Understand?\u201d

\u201cBagnel . . . \u201d

Bagnel ignored him. \u201cI owe you a life, Marika. But for you I would have become meat in a nomad\u2019s belly more than once. I repay a fraction of the debt here. I forgive the trespass.\u201d In soft humor, he added, \u201cI am sure your seniors would have a good deal to say to you if they heard about this.\u201d

\u201cI am sure they would. Thank you.\u201d

Timbruk and his males were stalking away, some occasionally glancing back. Except for the male who had tried to use the box. Despite his wound, he was crouched over the remains, prodding them with a finger, shaking his head. He seemed both baffled and disturbed.

\u201cCome,\u201d Bagnel said. He started toward the buildings through which Marika had made her dash.

She asked, \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d

\u201cI am assigned here now. As assistant security chief for the enclave. Since I did such a wonderful job as security officer at Critza, they awarded me a much more important post.\u201d His sarcasm was thick enough to cut. Marika could not determine its thrust, though. Was he his own target? Or were the seniors who had given him the job?

\u201cThat was what you were doing up there? I always had a feeling you were not a regular wander-the forests-with-a-pack-on-your-back kind of tradermale.\u201d

\u201cMy job was to protect the fortress and manage any armed operations undertaken in the region of its license.\u201d

\u201cThen you were in charge of that hunting party you were with the first time we met.\u201d

\u201cI was.\u201d

\u201cI thought old Khronen was in charge.\u201d

\u201cI know. We allowed you think so. He was just our guide, though. He had been in the upper Ponath all his life. I think he knew every rock and bush by name.\u201d

\u201cHe was a friend of my dam. At least as near a friend as she ever had among males.\u201d

Bagnel, daring beyond belief, reached out and touched her lightly. \u201cThe memories do haunt, do they not not? We all lost so much. And those who were never there just shrug it off.\u201d

Marika stiffened her back. \u201cCan we look at the small aircraft on the way to the gate?\u201d

Bagnel rewarded her with a questioning look.

\u201cThe crime is committed,\u201d she replied. \u201cCan I compound it?\u201d

\u201cOf course.\u201d He altered course toward a rank of five propeller-driven aircraft.

\u201cStings,\u201d Marika said as they approached. \u201cDriven by a single bank nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engine that develops eighteen hundred meth power. Top speed two hundred ten. Normal cruising speed one sixty. Not fast, but capable of carrying a very large payload. A fighting aircraft. Who do tradermales fight, Bagnel?\u201d

\u201cYou amaze me. How did you find out? We fight anyone who attacks us. There are a lot of wild places left in the world. Even here in the higher Tech Zones. There is always a demand for the application of force.\u201d

\u201cAre these ones here for the push against the nomads?\u201d

\u201cNo. We may reoccupy our outposts if the Reugge manage to push the nomads out, but we will not help push.\u201d

\u201cWhy not? The Brown Paw Bond suffered more than we did, if you do not count the packs. Posts all along the Hainlin . . . \u201d

\u201cOrders, Marika. I do not pretend to understand. Politics, I guess. Little one, you picked the wrong sisterhood at the wrong time. Strong forces are ranged against the Reugge.\u201d

\u201cThe Serke?\u201d

\u201cAmong others. They are the most obvious, but they do not stand alone. That is off the record, though. You did not hear it from me.\u201d

\u201cYou did not tell me anything I did not know. I do wonder why, though. No one has bothered the Reugge since they split from the Serke. Why start now?\u201d

\u201cThe Reugge are not strong, Marika, but they are rich. The Hainlin basin produces a disproportionate amount of wealth. Emeralds out of the Zhotak\u2014those alone might be reason enough. We Brown Paw Bond traders have done very well trading junk for emeralds.\u201d

Marika harkened to younger days, when tradermales had come into the upper Ponath afoot or leading a single rheum-greater, exchanging a few iron tools, books, beads, flashy pieces of cloth, and such, for the clear green stones or otec furs. Every year Dam\u2019s friend Khronen had come to the Degnan packstead, bringing precious tools and his easy manner with pups, and had walked away with a fortune.

The Degnan had been satisfied with the trades. Emeralds were of little value on a frontier. Otec fur was of more use, being the best there was, but what it would bring in trade outweighed its margin of value over lesser furs.

Junk, Bagnel called the trade goods. And he was right from his perspective. Arrowheads, axe heads, hoes, hammers, rakes, all could be manufactured in bulk at little cost in Maksche\u2019s factories. One emerald would purchase several wagonloads here. And books, for which a pack might save for seasons, were produced in mass in the city\u2019s printshops.

\u201cIs that why the Ponath is kept savage?\u201d

Meth, with the exceptions of tradermales and silth, seldom moved far from their places of birth. Information did not travel well in the mouths of those with an interest in keeping it close. How angry Skiljan would have been had she known the treasures she acquired for the pack cost the traders next to nothing. She would have believed it robbery. Just another example of innate male perfidy.

\u201cPartly. Partly because the silth are afraid of an informed populace, of free movement of technology. Your Communities could not survive in a world where wealth, information, and technology traveled freely. We brethren would have our troubles. We are few and the silth are fewer still. Between us we run everything because for ages we have shaped the law and tradition to that end.\u201d

They walked around the fighting aircraft. Marika found its presence disturbing. For that matter, the presence of Dawnstrider was unsettling. Trade in and out of Maksche did not require a vessel so huge. There was more here than met the eye. Maybe that explained Timbruk\u2019s hostility.

\u201cThe Sting\u2019s main disadvantage is its limited range when fully fight-loaded,\u201d Marika said, continuing with the data she had given earlier.

\u201cYou are right. But where did you learn all that, Marika? I would bet only those of us who actually fly the beasts know all you have told me.\u201d

\u201cI learned in tapestudy. I am going to be a darkship flyer. So I have been learning everything about flying. I know everything about airships, too.\u201d

\u201cI doubt that.\u201d Bagnel glanced back at Dawnstrider.

\u201cBut those craft . . . \u201d Marika indicated several low, long, ovoid shapes in the shadow of a building on the side away from the city. \u201cI do not recognize those.\u201d

\u201cGround-effect vehicles. Not strictly legal in a Tech Four Zone, but all right as long as we keep them inside convention ground. You came close to catching us using them that time you first met me.\u201d

\u201cThe noise and the smell. And Arhdwehr getting so angry. Engines and exhaust. Of course.\u201d

\u201cEvery brethren station has a few for emergency use. Mainly for hurried getaways. You remember the odd tracks going away from Critza? Where I said some of our brethren got out? Ground-effect vehicles made those. They leave a pretty obvious trail in the snow.\u201d He went on to explain how the machines worked. Marika had no trouble grasping the concept.

\u201cThere is much I do not yet know, then,\u201d she said.

\u201cNo doubt. There is much we all do not know. Let me give you some advice. Try to consider the broader picture before you let impulse carry you away again.\u201d

\u201cWhat?\u201d

\u201cThere is a great deal of tension between the Brown Paw Bond and the Reugge right now. Our factors not only refused to help reclaim the provinces overrun by the nomad, they would not lease the fighting aircraft the Reugge wanted. I do not pretend to understand why. It was a chance for us to sweep up a huge profit.\u201d

\u201cI see.\u201d Marika considered the fighting aircraft once more. It was a two-seat, open cockpit biplane with two guns that fired through the airscrew, four wing-mounted guns, and a single gimbal-mounted weapon which could be fired rearward by the occupant of the second seat. \u201cI would love to fly one of those,\u201d she said. The tapes mentioned capabilities that could be matched by no darkship.

\u201cIt is an experience,\u201d Bagnel agreed.

\u201cYou fly?\u201d

\u201cYes. If there was trouble and the aircraft had to be employed, I would be a backup flyer.\u201d

\u201cTake me up.\u201d

\u201cMarika!\u201d Grauel snapped.

Bagnel was amused. \u201cThere is no limit to her audacity, is there?\u201d

\u201cMarika,\u201d Grauel repeated, \u201cyou exceed yourself. You may be silth, but even so we will drag you back to the cloister.\u201d

\u201cNot today, Marika,\u201d Bagnel said. \u201cI cannot. Maybe some other time. Come back later. Be polite at the gate, ask for me, and maybe you will be permitted entrance\u2014without all this fuss. Right now I think you had better leave before Timbruk goes over my head and gets permission to shoot you anyhow.\u201d Bagnel strode toward the gateway buildings. Marika followed. She was nervous now. There would be trouble when she got home.

Bagnel said, \u201cI do not think your sisters would be upset if Timbruk did you in either. You still have that smoky look. Of the fated outsider.\u201d

\u201cI have problems with the silth,\u201d Marika admitted. \u201cBut the most senior has given me her protection.\u201d

\u201cOh? Lucky for you.\u201d

They parted at the gate, Bagnel with a well-wish and repeated invitation to return under more auspicious circumstances.

Outside, Marika paused to scan the field, watched Bagnel stride purposefully toward distant buildings. Her gaze drifted to those structures in the north. Cold crept down her spine. She shivered.

\u201cCome. We are returning to the cloister right now,\u201d Grauel said. Her tone brooked no argument. Marika did not protest, though she did not want to go back. She did have to cling to the goodwill of Grauel and Barlog. They were her only trustworthy allies.

Chapter Seventeen
I<\/span>
Marika went from the gate to her tower, where she sat staring toward the tradermale compound. Several dots soared above the enclave, roaming the sky nearby.

Grauel came to her there. She looked grim. \u201cTrouble,\u201d she said.

\u201cThey have registered their protest already? That was fast.\u201d

\u201cNot that kind of trouble. Home trouble. Somebody got into our quarters.\u201d

\u201cOh?\u201d

\u201cAfter we turned in the weapons they gave us, we went up to clean up. My rifle was gone.\u201d

\u201cAnything else?\u201d

\u201cNo. The Degnan Chronicle had been opened and moved slightly. That is all.\u201d

\u201cThe most senior should spend more time here instead of talking about spending more time here.\u201d

Marika had noted that in Gradwohl\u2019s absence she was treated far more coolly. She wished that most senior would move into Maksche in fact as well as name. Despite declarations of intent, she just visited occasionally, usually without warning.

\u201cI will not tolerate invasions of my private space, Grauel. No one else in the entire Community has to suffer such intrusions. Back off and give me a few minutes of quiet.\u201d

She slipped down through her loophole and cast about till she found a ghost she thought sufficiently strong. She took control and began roaming the cloister, beginning in places she thought were most likely to reveal the missing weapon.

Finding it took only minutes. It was in the cloister arsenal, where some sisters argued it belonged anyway. A pair of silth were dismantling it.

Marika returned to flesh. \u201cCome.\u201d

\u201cYou found it? That quickly?\u201d

\u201cIt is not hidden, actually. It is in the arsenal. We will take it back.\u201d

\u201cAnd I was right there a few minutes ago.\u201d

The arsenal door was closed and locked now. Marika had no patience. Rather than scratch, wait, ask permission to enter, and argue, she recalled her ghost and squeezed it down as she had done when she had destroyed the electronic box belonging to the tradermale. She shoved the ghost into the lock and destroyed the metal there.

That made enough noise to alert the silth inside. They peered at her with fear and guilt when she stalked into the room where the parts of Grauel\u2019s weapon were scattered upon a table. One started to say something. Marika brushed her soul lightly with the ghost. \u201cGrauel. Put it back together. You. Where is the ammunition? I want it here. Now.\u201d

The sister to whom she spoke thought of arguing, eyed Marika\u2019s bare teeth, thought better of it. She collected the ammunition from a storage box. After placing it upon the table, she retreated as far as the walls would allow. She choked out, \u201cThe orders came from Paustch. You will be in grave\u2014\u201d

\u201cAsk me how much I care,\u201d Marika snapped. \u201cThis is for you to remember. And perhaps even share. The next meth who enters my quarters without my invitation will discover just how vicious a savage I really am. We invented some truly fascinating tortures to get nomads to tell us things we wanted to know.\u201d

Grauel cursed under her breath.

\u201cIs it all there?\u201d

\u201cYes. But they have mixed things up. It will take me a few minutes.\u201d

Marika used the time to glare at the two sisters till they cringed.

She heard Grauel slam the magazine home and feed a round to the chamber. \u201cReady?\u201d

\u201cReady,\u201d Grauel said, sweeping the weapon\u2019s aim across the silth. Her lips pulled back in a snarl that set them on the edge of panic. \u201cI do suppose I should thank them for cleaning it. They did that much good.\u201d

\u201cThank them, then. And let us be gone.\u201d

Gradwohl might not have been present in Maksche, but her paw was firmly felt. Darkships began arriving, bearing Reugge whose accents seemed exotic. They paused only to rest and eat and further burden their flying crosses. Some of the darkships lifted so burdened with meth and gear they looked like something from the worst quarters of the city.

\u201cEveryone that can be spared,\u201d Barlog said as she and Marika and Grauel watched one darkship lift and another slide in under it. \u201cThat is the word now. The cloister is to be stripped. They have begun soliciting workers from the city, offering special pay. I would say the most senior is serious.\u201d

There had been some silth, at the evening meetings Marika attended, who had thought Gradwohl\u2019s plans just talk meant to form the basis for rumors that would reach the Serke. Rumors that would make that Community chary of too bold interference. But the lie had been given that view. The stream of darkships was never ending. The might of the Reugge was on the move, and impressive might it was.

Mistresses of the Ship could be seen in the meal halls almost all the time. Bath\u2014the sisters who helped fly the darkships from their secondary positions at the tips of the shorter arms\u2014sometimes crowded Maksche silth out of the meal lines. Scores seemed to be around all the time. Marika spent all her free time trying to get acquainted with those bath and Mistresses. But they would have little to do with her. They were an order within the order, silent, separate beings with little interest in socializing and none in illuminating a pup.

Three small dirigibles, contracted to the Reugge before the Brown Paw Bond elected not to support the offensive, appeared over the cloister and took aboard workers and silth and construction equipment. The cloister began to have a hollow feel, a deserted air. A shout would echo down long, empty halls. No one was there to answer.

The dirigibles would all make for Akard, which the most senior wanted rebuilt and reoccupied. It would become the focal point of a network of satellite fastnesses meant to interdict any nomad movements southward.

\u201cI do not think she realizes how many nomads there are,\u201d Marika told Grauel. \u201cOr really how vast her northern provinces are. All that might is not a tenth enough.\u201d

\u201cShe knows. I believe she is counting on the nomads having spent the best they had in the past few years. I think she expects it to be a job of tracking down remnants of the real fighting bands, then letting next winter finish the rest.\u201d

\u201cI think she would be wrong if that is the basis of her strategy.\u201d

\u201cSo do I.\u201d

\u201cWe shall see, of course. Let us hope the answer is not savages in the cloister.\u201d

The early reports from the north told of a big harvest of nomads, of kills far more numerous than anyone expected. The numbers caused a good deal of uneasiness. They implied other numbers that might prove troublesome. For everyone agreed that there would be a dozen live and concealed nomads for every one dead.

II<\/span>
The dream was a nightmare Marika had not known for several years, but it was old and familiar.

She was trapped in a cold, dark, damp place, badly hurt, unable to call for help, unable to climb out.

The dream had tormented her every night since her return from the tradermale enclave. She had told no one, but Grauel and Barlog sensed that something was torturing her.

Marika wished she could go visit Braydic. The last time the dreams had come, soon after her arrival at Akard, following the destruction of the Degnan packstead, she had shared her pain with the communications technician. Braydic had been unable to interpret the dream. Eventually, she had agreed it must be Marika\u2019s conscience nagging her because the dead of the Degnan pack had not gone into the embrace of the All with a proper Mourning.

After the return of the dreams, she had asked Grauel and Barlog where they stood in regard to that unsettled debt.

\u201cWe can do nothing now,\u201d Barlog told her. \u201cSomeday, though, we will take care of it. Perhaps when you are important and powerful. The score is not forgotten, nor considered settled.\u201d

That was good enough for Marika. But meantime she had to endure the horror of her nights.

Dorteka wakened her from this dream. She was early, but Marika was too fuddled to realize that till after they had been into their gymnasium routine for some time. \u201cWhy are we up so early?\u201d she asked.

\u201cWe have new orders, you and I. We are headed north.\u201d

\u201cUp the river? To chase nomads?\u201d Marika was astonished. It was the last thing she expected.

\u201cYes. The great hunt is in full cry. The most senior is sending everyone who has no absolute need to remain. She sent a note saying that means us especially.\u201d

Just last evening word had come round that the most senior had ordered all patrolling darkships to destroy any meth they found upon the ground. They were to operate on the assumption that no locals had survived. No mercy was to be shown.

\u201cWhat is it all about, mistress?\u201d Marika asked. \u201cWhy is Gradwohl so determined? I have heard that winter may not break this year, at least in the upper Ponath. That the ground will remain frozen. No crops could be planted there. So why fight for useless territory?\u201d

\u201cSomeone exaggerated, Marika. There will be a summer. Not that it matters. We are not going to send settlers into the Ponath. We are simply validating our claim to our provinces. In blood. Gradwohl is leading us in a fight against the Serke, and this is the only way we can battle them. Indirectly.\u201d

\u201cWhy are the Serke so determined, then? I am told wealth is the reason. I know about the emeralds, and there is gold and silver and copper and things, but nobody ever did any mining up there. It is a Tech Two Zone. There must be some other reason the Serke risk conflict.\u201d

\u201cProbably. We do not know what it is, though. We just know we cannot allow them to steal the Ponath. Them or the brethren.\u201d

\u201cYou think the reason the tradermales will not help us is because they want to steal the Ponath, too?\u201d

\u201cI expect the Brown Paw Bond would stand with us if they could. We have been close associates for centuries. But higher authority may have been offered a better cut by the Serke.\u201d

\u201cCould we not impose sanctions?\u201d

Dorteka appeared amused by her naivet\u00e9. \u201cWithout proof? Wait. Yes. You know, and I know, and everyone else alive knows what is happening. Or we think we do. We suspect that the brethren and the Serke Community have entered into a conspiracy prohibited by the conventions. But no Community extant will act on suspicion. The Serke have Bestrei, and flaunt it. As long as the Reugge cannot present absolute and irrefutable proof of what is happening, no other Community faces the disagreeable business of having to take sides. They would rather sit back and be entertained by our travails.\u201d

\u201cBut if the Serke get away with this, they will be a threat to everyone else. Do the other orders not see that? Armed with all our wealth, and Bestrei besides . . . \u201d

\u201cWho knows what is really going on? Not you or I. The other sisterhoods may be in it with the Serke. There are ample precedents.\u201d

\u201cIt all seems silly to me,\u201d Marika said. \u201cWill Grauel and Barlog be able to go with me?\u201d

\u201cI am sure they will. You are a single unit in most eyes.\u201d

Marika glanced at her instructress, not liking her tone. She and Dorteka tolerated one another because the most senior insisted, but there was no love between them.

Marika, Grauel, Barlog, and Dorteka, with their gear, boarded a northbound darkship about the time Marika should have begun her mathematics class. The bath, before going to their places at the tips of the short arms, made certain the passengers strapped themselves to the darkship\u2019s frame. All gear went into bins fixed around the cross\u2019s axis.

Marika paid much more attention to the darkship and its operators this trip. \u201cMistress Dorteka. What is this metal? I have seen nothing like it before.\u201d It seemed almost invisible when probed with the touch.

\u201cTitanium. It is the lightest metal known, yet very strong. It is difficult to obtain. The brethren recover it in a process similar to that they use to obtain aluminum. They fairly rob us for these ships.\u201d

\u201cThey make them?

\u201cYes.\u201d

\u201cI would think it something we would do for ourselves. Why do we let them rob us?\u201d

\u201cI am not sure. Maybe because to argue is too much trouble. We do buy them, I think, because their ships are better. We have been buying them for only about sixty years, though. Before that most of the orders made their own. There was a lot of artistry involved. Most of those old darkships are still in service down south, too, around TelleRai and the other big cities.\u201d

\u201cWhat were they like? How were they different? And what do you mean, buy? I thought the tradermales only leased.\u201d

\u201cQuestions, questions, questions. Pup . . . They do not lease darkships. We would not let them get away with that. In some ways they have us too much in their power now.

\u201cThe old ships are not much different from those you have seen. Maybe smaller, generally. They were wooden, though. A few were pretty fanciful because they were seen as works of art. They were pawcrafted from golden fleet timber, a wood that is sensitive to the touch. The trees had to be at least five hundred years old before they could be cut. They were considered very precious. The groves are protected by a web of laws even now. So-called poachers can be slain for even touching a golden fleet tree.

\u201cEvery frame member and strut in the old ships was individually carved from a specially selected timber or billet. The way I hear, a shipbuilder sister might spend a year preparing one strut. It might take a building team twenty years to complete a ship. No two darkships were ever alike, unlike these brethren products. These things are plain and all business.\u201d

All business maybe, but hardly plain. This one was covered with seals and fanciful witch signs that, Marika suspected, had something to do with the Mistress and her bath.

\u201cYou say those old ones are still around?\u201d

\u201cMost of them. I have seen some in TelleRai that are said to be thousands of years old. Silth have been flying since the beginning of time. The Redoriad museum at TelleRai has several prehistoric saddleships that are still taken up once in a while.\u201d

\u201cSaddleships?\u201d Here was something she had missed in her search for information on flying.

\u201cIn olden times that sort of silth who today would become a Mistress of the Ship usually flew alone. Her ship was a pole of golden fleet wood about eighteen feet long with a saddle mounted two-thirds of the way back. You would find the Redoriad museum interesting, what with your interest in flight. They have something of everything there.\u201d

\u201cI sure would. I will find out about it if I ever get to TelleRai.\u201d

\u201cYou will get there soon enough if Gradwohl has her way.\u201d

\u201cThen I suppose the reason for buying metal ships is because that is easier than making them.\u201d

\u201cNo doubt.\u201d

\u201cAre there any artisans left? Sisters who could build darkships if necessary?\u201d

\u201cI am sure there are. Silth are conservative. Old things take a thousand years to die. And about darkships there are many still devoted to the old. Many who prefer the wooden ships because the golden fleet wood is more responsive than cold metal. Also, many who feel we should not be dependent upon the brethren for our ships.

\u201cThe brethren keep taking over chunks of our lives. There was a time when touch-sisters did everything comm techs do now. Their greatest bragged that they could touch anyone anywhere in the world. That far reach is almost a lost art now.\u201d

\u201cThat is sad.\u201d

The darkship was fifty miles north of the city already. Ahead, Marika could just distinguish the fire-blackened remains of a tradermale outpost. Kharg Station. It marked the southernmost flow of nomad raiding for the winter. Its fall had been the final insult that had driven Gradwohl into the rage whence this campaign had sprung. Its fall had come close to costing Senior Zertan her position, for she had made no effort to relieve the besieged outpost.

\u201cI think so, too. We live in the moment, we silth, but many long for the past. For quieter times when we were not so much dependent upon the brethren.\u201d Dorteka eyed the ruins. \u201cZertan is one of those. Paustch is another.\u201d

The darkship moved north at a moderate pace. After marveling at the view of the plain and the brown, meandering Hainlin, Marika slid down inside herself. For a time she studied the subtle interplay of talent between the bath and the Mistress of the Ship. These were veterans. They drew upon one another skillfully. Fatigue would be a long time coming.

Once she thought she understood what they were doing, Marika began cataloging all she knew about her own and others\u2019 talents. She found what she was seeking. She returned to the world.

\u201cDorteka, could we not make our own metal darkships? Assuming we want to produce the ships quickly? We have sisters who could extract the metal from ore with their talents. It could not be difficult to build a ship if the metal was available.\u201d

\u201cSilth do not do that kind of work.\u201d

Marika ran that through her mind, looking at it from every angle but the logical. She already knew the argument made no logical sense. She must have missed something because she still did not understand after trying to see it as silth. \u201cMistress, I do not understand.\u201d

Dorteka had forgotten already. \u201cWhat?\u201d

\u201cWhy should we not build a metal darkship if it is within our capacity? When it is all right for us to build a wooden one? Especially if the tradermales are working against us.\u201d There was some circumstantial evidence that a tradermale faction was supporting the ever more organized efforts of the rogue males plaguing the Reugge.

Dorteka could not explain in any way that made sense to Marika. She became confused and frustrated by her effort. She finally snapped, \u201cBecause that is the way it is. Silth do not do physical labor. They rule. They are artists. The wooden darkships were works of art. Metal ships are machines, even if they perform the same tasks. Anyway, we have tacitly granted that they fall inside the prerogatives of the brethren.\u201d

\u201cWe could have our own factory inside the cloister . . . \u201d Marika gave it up. Dorteka was not interested in a pup\u2019s foolish notions. Marika invested in a series of mental relaxation exercises so she could clear her thoughts to enjoy the flight.

The darkship did not pursue a direct course toward Akard. It roamed erratically, randomly, at times drifting far from the river, on the off chance contact would be made with nomads. The day was far advanced when Marika began to see landmarks she recognized. \u201cThere, Grauel. What is left of Critza.\u201d

\u201cThe tradermales will not be restoring that. That explosion certainly took it apart.\u201d

Bagnel had set off demolition charges in what the nomads had left of the packfast, to deny it value to any nomads who thought to use it later.

\u201cNow. There it is. Straight ahead,\u201d Barlog said as the darkship slipped around a bend in the river canyon.

Akard. Where Marika had spent four miserable years, and had discovered that she was that most dreaded of silth, a strong darkwalker.

The remains of the fortress were perched on a headland where the Hainlin split into the Husgen and an eastern watercourse which retained the Hainlin name. It was webbed in by scaffolding. Workers swarmed over it like colony insects. The darkship settled toward the headland.

It was a scant hundred feet off the ground when Marika felt a sudden, strong touch.

Hang on. We have a call for help.

That was the Mistress of the Ship with a warning so powerful even Grauel and Barlog caught its edges.

Marika barely had time to warn them verbally. The darkship shot forward, rose, gained speed rapidly. The robes of the Mistress and bath crackled in the rushing wind. Marika ducked down through to examine the altered relationship between the Mistress and bath. The Mistress was drawing heavily on the bath now.

The darkship climbed to three hundred feet and arced to the east, into the upper Ponath. A few minutes later it passed over the site of the Degnan packstead, where Marika had lived her first ten years. Only a few regular lines in the earth remained upon that hilltop clearing.

Marika read grief in the set of Grauel\u2019s upper torso. Barlog refused to look and respond.

The darkship rushed on toward the oncoming night. Way, way to her left Marika spotted a dot coming down from the north, angling in, occasionally spilling a crimson flash as sunlight caught it. Another darkship. Then to the south, another still. All three rushed eastward on intersecting courses.

Marika\u2019s ship arrived first, streaking over a forest where rifles hammered and heavier weapons filled the woods with flashes. A clearing appeared ahead. At its center stood an incomplete fortress of logs. It was afire. Huntresses enveloped in smoke sniped at the surrounding forest.

Something black and wicked roiled around Marika. The darkship dropped away beneath her, plunging groundward. The darkness cleared. The Mistress of the Ship resumed control of her craft, took it up. Chill wind nibbled at Marika\u2019s face.

Screams came from the forest.

The second and third darkships made passes while Marika\u2019s turned. Marika went down through her loophole, located a ghost not bearing the ship, and went riding. She located a band of wild silth and wehrlen. They were feeble but able to neutralize the three silth who commanded the besieged workers and huntresses.

A hum past her ear pulled Marika back. The Mistress was into her second pass. Rifles flashed ahead. Bullets whined past the darkship. One spanged against metal and howled away.

Marika dived through her loophole, found a steed, lashed it toward the wild silth. She allowed her anger full reign when she reached them.

She was astonished by her own strength. It had grown vastly during her brief stay at Maksche. A dozen nomads died horribly. The others scattered. In moments the nomad fighters followed.

The darkships began flying fast, low-level circles, spiraling outward from the stronghold, exterminating fugitives. Marika\u2019s Mistress of the Ship did not break off till after three moons had risen.

III<\/span>
Paustch was in charge of the reconstruction of Akard. She was no friend of that uppity pup Marika or her scandalously undisciplined savage cohorts, Grauel and Barlog. She tolerated their presence in her demesne only a few days.

During those days Marika wangled a couple of patrol flights with the Mistress on whose darkship she had come north. The Mistress was not being sociable or understanding of the whims of a pup. She respected Marika\u2019s darker abilities and hoped they would help her survive her patrols.

No contact came during either flight.

On her return from the second venture, Marika found Dorteka packing. \u201cWhat is happening, mistress? Have you been recalled?\u201d

\u201cNo. We have been assigned the honor of establishing a blockhouse directly astride the main route from the Zhotak south into the upper Ponath, somewhere up near the Rift.\u201d The look she gave Marika said much more. It said this was an exile, and that it was all Marika\u2019s fault because she was who and what she was. It said that they were being sent out into the wilderness because Paustch wanted her both out of her fur and into a difficult position.

Marika shrugged. \u201cI would rather be away from here anyway. Paustch and her cronies persist in aggravating me. I am long-suffering, but under the circumstances I might eventually lose my temper.\u201d

Dorteka first tilted her ears in amusement, then came near losing her temper. \u201cThis hole is primitive enough. Out there there will be nothing.\u201d

\u201cThe life is not as hard as you imagine, mistress. And you will have three experienced woodsmeth to show you how to cope.\u201d

\u201cAnd how many nomads?\u201d

Marika broke away as soon as she could. She did not want to argue with Dorteka. She had plenty of firm enemies already among those who had power over her. Dorteka would never be a friend, but at present she could be counted upon for support as an agent of the most senior.

She was pleased to be assigned to a blockhouse garrison. It meant a respite from the grinding silth life, with all its ceremony and all the animosity directed her way. She did not enjoy that, though perforce she must live with it.

Next morning a school of darkships lifted Marika, Grauel, Barlog, Dorteka, and another eight huntresses and ten workers across the upper Ponath. The assigned site overlooked the way that had been both the trade route with and invasion route for the nomads of the Zhotak. Marika did not anticipate any real danger from nomads. She believed the savages all to have left the Zhotak long since. The vast majority should be looking for easy hunting far to the south of the upper Ponath.

\u201cDorteka. The nomads have lived hard lives ever since I have been aware of their existence. The Zhotak was a harsh land even before the winters worsened. Before they became organized, the raids they made were all acts of desperation. Now that they are fighting everywhere, all the time, they do not seem so desperate.\u201d

\u201cWhat are you driving at, pup?\u201d They had just landed at the site, a clearing on a slope overlooking a broad, meadowed valley. There was a great deal of snow among the trees on the opposite slope yet.

\u201cIn the past they did not have time free from trying to get ready for the next winter to spend their summers attacking and plundering. Now they have that time. To me it would seem their problems getting food have lessened. But I do not see how that could be. They are hunters and gatherers, not farmers. The winters have wiped out most of the game animals. So where are they getting food? Besides from eating their dead?\u201d

\u201cFrom the Serke, I suppose. I do not know. And I do not care.\u201d Dorteka surveyed the valley, which Marika thought excitingly beautiful. \u201cI do not see why we bother fighting them for this wasteland. If they want it so badly, let them have it.\u201d

She was in a mood. Marika moved away, joined Barlog and Grauel, who were helping the workers unload supplies and equipment.

\u201cWe will need some sort of barrier right away,\u201d Grauel said. \u201cI hear there are still a few kagbeasts in these parts. If so, they would be hungry enough to attack meth.\u201d

\u201cI saw some snarltooth vines just west of here as we were coming in,\u201d Marika said. \u201cDrive stakes and string some of those with some briars from the riverbank down there. That will do till we get a real palisade up.\u201d

\u201cGrauel and I will work out a watch rotation. We will need big fires at night. Do we have permission to harvest live wood if there is not enough dead?\u201d

\u201cIf necessary. But I think you will find plenty of deadwood. The winters are killing some of the less hardy trees already.\u201d

The outpost had to be built from the ground up. The task took a month. That month passed without incident, though on a couple of occasions Marika sensed the presence of strange meth on the far side of the valley. When she grabbed a ghost and went to examine them, she found that they were nomad scouts. She did not bother them. Let them prime themselves for falling into a trap.

Marika was unconcerned for her own safety, so unconcerned she sometimes wandered off alone, to the distress of Grauel and Barlog, who tracked her down each time.

Marika often joined in the physical work, too. She found it a good way to work out the frustrations she had accumulated during her months in Maksche. And in labor she found temporary surcease from concerns of the past and future.

This close to the Degnan packstead she could not help thinking often of the Mourning she owed. But there were no nightmares. Could that be because of the work? That did not seem reasonable.

After a time most of the southern huntresses joined the work, too, for all of Dorteka\u2019s disapproving scowls. There was nothing else to do but be bored.

The workers appreciated the help, but did not know what to make of it. Especially of a silth who actually dirtied her paws. Marika suspected they began to think well of her despite all the rumors they had heard. By summer\u2019s end she had most of them talking to her. And by summer\u2019s end she had begun consciously trying to cultivate their affection.

Dorteka refused to do anything but tutor Marika. That assignment she pursued doggedly, as if motivated mainly by an increasing desire to get the job over with. Their relationship deteriorated as the summer progressed, and Marika steadfastly refused to be molded into traditional silth shape.

Though the summer gave Marika a respite from her concerns and fears, she did spend a lot of time thinking about the future. She approached it with a pragmatic attitude suitable for the most cynical silth.

The only attack came soon after the blockhouse was complete. It was not a strong one, though the savages thought it strong enough. They cut through the snarltooth vine fencing and evaded the pit traps and booby traps. They used explosives to breach the palisade. Distressed, Dorteka reached out to Akard with the touch and asked for darkship support.

Marika obliterated the attackers long before the one ship sent arrived.

She deflected and destroyed the attackers almost casually, using a ghost drawn from high in the atmosphere. She had learned that the higher one could reach, the more monstrous a ghost one could find.

Afterward, Dorteka shied away from her the way she might from a dangerous animal, and never did get over being nervous when Marika was close.

Marika did not understand. She was even pained. She did not need Dorteka\u2019s friendship, but she did not want her fear.

Was her talent for the dark side that terrible? Did she exceed the abilities of other silth by so much? She could not believe that.

Soon after the first snowflakes flew, a darkship arrived bearing winter stores and a replacement silth. Marika and Dorteka received orders to return to the Maksche cloister.

\u201cI am not going,\u201d Marika told Dorteka.

\u201cPup! I have had about all of your insubordination that I am going to stand. Get your coat on and get aboard that ship.\u201d Dorteka was so angry she ignored Grauel and Barlog.

\u201cThis is the last darkship that will come here till spring, barring a need for major support if the blockhouse comes under attack. Not so?\u201d

\u201cYes. So what? Do you love these All-forsaken woods so much that you want to stay here forever?\u201d

\u201cNot at all. I want to go home. And so do these workers.\u201d

That caught Dorteka from the blind side. She could do nothing but look at Marika askance. Finally, she croaked, \u201cWhat are you talking about? So what?\u201d

\u201cThese meth were hired for the season. They were promised they would return home in time for the Festival of Kifkha. The festival comes up in four days. And no transportation has been provided them yet. You go ahead. You go south. You report to the most senior. And when she asks why I did not come back with you, you tell her why. Because once again the Reugge Community is failing to live up to a pledge to its dependents.\u201d

Dorteka became so angry Marika feared she would have a stroke. But she stood there facing her teacher in a stance so adamant it was clear she would not be moved. Dorteka went inside herself and performed calming rituals till she was settled enough to touch someone at Akard.

The workers went out next morning. From all over the upper Ponath they went, with an alacrity that said that Gradwohl herself must have intervened. Before they left, two workers very quietly told Marika where they could be reached in Maksche if ever she needed them to repay the debt. Marika memorized that information carefully. She had Grauel and Barlog commit it to memory too, protecting it through redundance.

She meant to use those workers someday.

She had plans. During that summer she had begun to look forward in more than a simpleminded, pup-obsessed-with-flying sort of way. But she was careful to mask that from everyone. Even Grauel and Barlog remained outside.

\u201cWill your holiness board her darkship now?\u201d Dorteka demanded. \u201cIs the order of the world arranged to your satisfaction?\u201d

\u201cIndeed. Thank you, Dorteka. I wish you understood. Those meth may be of no consequence to you. Nor are they to me, really. But a Community can only be as good as its honor. If our own dependents cannot trust our word, who else will?\u201d

\u201cThank the All,\u201d Dorteka muttered as Marika began strapping herself to the cold darkship frame.

\u201cSuch indifference may well be the reason the cloister is having so much trouble keeping order in Maksche. Paustch is determined not to do right and Zertan is too lazy or too timid.\u201d

\u201cYou will seal your mouth, pup. You will not speak ill of your seniors again. I still have a great deal of control over how happy or miserable your life can be. Do I make myself understood?\u201d

\u201cPerfectly, mistress. Though your attitude does not alter the truth a bit.\u201d

Dorteka was furious with her again.

Chapter Eighteen
I
I<\/span>n most respects Marika had attained the knowledge levels expected of silth of her age. In many she had exceeded those. As she surpassed levels expected, she found herself with more and more free time. That she spent studying aircraft, aerodynamics, astronomy, and space, when she could obtain any information. The Reugge did not possess much. The brethren and dark-faring sisterhoods clung to their knowledge jealously.

Marika had a thousand questions, and suspected the only way to get the answers was to steal them.

How did the silth take their darkships across the void? The distances were incredible. And space was cold and airless. Yet darkships went out there and returned in a matter of weeks.

She ached because she would never know. Because she was stuck in a sisterhood unable to reach the stars, a sisterhood that might not survive much longer.

To dream dreams that could not be attained, that was a horror. Almost as bad as the dreams that came by night.

The nightmares resumed immediately upon her return to Maksche. They were more explicit now. Often her littermate Kublin appeared in them, reaching, face tormented, as if crying for help. She hurt. She and Kublin had been very close, for all he was male.

Most Senior Gradwohl had shifted from TelleRai to Maksche in fact as well as name while Marika was in the north. Four days after Marika\u2019s return, the wise ones of Maksche, and many others from farflung cloisters of the Community, gathered in the ritual hall. Marika was there at Gradwohl\u2019s command, though she had not as yet seen the most senior.

After a few rituals had been completed, Gradwohl herself took the floor. Meth who had accompanied her from TelleRai began setting up something electrical, much to the distress of Zertan. They tried to argue that such should not be permitted within the holy place of Maksche.

Gradwohl silenced them with a scowl. It was well-known that the most senior was not pleased with them. Though she remained outside the mainstream of cloister life, Marika had heard many rumors. Most made the futures of the Maksche senior and her second sound bleak.

The device set up projected a map upon a white screen. Gradwohl said, \u201cThis is what the north looked like at its low ebb, last winter. The darker areas are those that were completely overrun by savages.

\u201cOur counterattack seems to have caught them unprepared. I would account the summer\u2019s efforts a complete success. We have placed a line of small but stout fortresses up the line of the Hainlin, running from here to Akard. A second line was gone in crosswise, here, roughly a hundred miles north of Maksche. It runs from our western boundary to the sea. Each fastness lies within easy touch of its neighbors. Any southward movement can be detected from these, and interdicted with support from here in Maksche.

\u201cAkard is partially restored. It now forms the anchor for a network of fastnesses in the Ponath. They will allow us to maintain our claim there without dispute. A small fleet of darkships based there will thwart any effort to reduce the fastnesses. Work on Akard should be completed next summer.

\u201cNext summer also, I hope to begin squeezing the savage packs from the north, south, and east, giving them no choice but to flee west into the territories of our beloved friends the Serke. Where they may do more evil than they have done. The Serke raised them up like demons. May they suffer as a witch whose demon breaks the ties that bind.\u201d

Gradwohl scanned the assembly. Nearly a hundred of the most important members of the Reugge Community were present. No one seemed inclined to comment, though Marika sensed that many disapproved of Gradwohl and her plans.

\u201cAs strength goes,\u201d Marika murmured. Gradwohl was getting her way only because she was the strongest of Reugge silth.

\u201cAlso next spring we will begin restoring several brethren strongholds that will be of use to us. Especially the fortress Mahede. From Mahede it will be possible to mount year-round darkship patrols and up the pressure on the savages even more.\u201d

Gradwohl tapped the screen with a finger. Mahede lay halfway between Maksche and Akard. She used a claw to draw a circle around Mahede. It was obvious that circles of the same size centered upon Akard and Maksche would overlap, covering the entire Hainlin rivercourse north of the city. The Hainlin was the main artery of the northern provinces.

\u201cMeantime, this winter we will continue hunting the savages the best we can, with all the resources we can bring to bear. We must keep the pressure on. It is the only way to beat the Serke at their own game.\u201d

Several senior silth disagreed. A murmur of discontent ran through the audience. Marika scanned faces carefully, memorizing those of her mentor\u2019s opponents. They would be her enemies, too.

In the course of the discussion that followed, it began to appear that those who opposed Gradwohl\u2019s scheme did so principally because it interfered with their comfort and their abilities to exploit their own particular demesnes. Several seniors of cloisters complained because they had been stripped of their best silth and, as a result, were having trouble maintaining order among their workers. Especially among the males.

The pestilence of rebellion was spreading.

\u201cI suspect our problems with workers are the shadows of the next Serke move against us,\u201d Gradwohl said. \u201cIt is unlikely that they expected me to collapse under pressure from the savages. The northern packs were expendable counters in their game. So will our workers be. But we will deal with that in its turn. The most critical task facing us is to make sure the northern provinces are secure no matter what troubles plague us elsewhere.\u201d

\u201cWhy?\u201d someone demanded. The shout was anonymous, but Marika thought the voice sounded like that of Paustch.

\u201cBecause the Serke want them so desperately.\u201d

Once the grumbling faded, Gradwohl expanded somewhat. \u201cI see it this way, sisters. The Serke appear willing to spend a great deal, and to risk even more, in order to wrest the north from our paws. They must have very powerful reasons for their behavior. If they have reasons, then we have reasons for taking every measure to retain our territories. Even though we do not know what they are.

\u201cBut I will find out what they are. And when I do, you will be informed immediately.\u201d

More grumbling.

\u201cWhile I am most senior none of this is subject to debate. It will be done as I have decreed. In coming days I will speak to each of you individually and have more to say at that time. Meantime, this assembly is adjourned. Senior Zertan. Paustch. I wish to speak to you immediately. Marika. I want you to remain here. I will call upon the rest of you as I have the opportunity.\u201d

That was a dismissal. Silth rose from stools and began drifting out. Marika studied the groups they formed, identifying alliances of interest. She heard several seniors grumbling about being tied down at Maksche when they had problems at home demanding immediate attention.

Paustch and Zertan left their stools and moved forward to face Gradwohl. Marika remained upon her stool in the shadows, well away. The Maksche senior and her second did not need to be reminded of her presence.

Gradwohl said, \u201cMildly stated, I am not pleased with you two. Zertan. You are walking close to the line. Your problem is plain laziness compounded by indifference and maybe a dollop of malice. I will be here for some time now, watching over your shoulder. I trust my presence will lend you some incentive to become more ambitious.

\u201cPaustch. For a number of years you have been the true moving spirit here in Maksche. You have been responsible for getting done most of what has gotten done. It is my sorrow that most of that has been negative. I have in mind several directives that you carried out to the letter but managed to sabotage in spirit. I cannot shake the feeling that I have clung too close to TelleRai since becoming most senior. My paw should have been more evident in the outlying cloisters.

\u201cI will no longer tolerate undermining and backstabbing by subordinates. To that end, you will be transferred to TelleRai immediately. A courier darkship will be leaving at dawn. You will be aboard. When you reach TelleRai, you will report to Keraitis for assignment to duties there. Understood?\u201d

Her entire frame shaking with rage, Paustch bowed her head. \u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

\u201cYou may leave us.\u201d

Paustch drew herself up, turned, marched out of the hall. Marika thought she might become trouble unless Gradwohl made further moves to neutralize her malice. Unless by its very nature her new assignment placed her where she could do no harm.

Gradwohl turned to Zertan once Paustch was outside. \u201cDo you feel a spark or two of wakening ambition, Zertan? Do you feel you can become more productive?\u201d

\u201cI believe I do, mistress.\u201d

\u201cI thought you might. You may go, too.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

Only the sounds of Zertan\u2019s slippers disturbed the silence of the hall. Then she was gone, and Marika was alone with the most senior. Silence reigned. Lamplight set shadows dancing. Marika waited without fear, without movement.

Finally, Gradwohl said, \u201cCome forward.\u201d

Marika left her stool and approached the most senior.

\u201cCome. Come. Not to be frightened.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d Marika slipped into the role she assumed with every superior, that of simplicity.

\u201cMarika, I know you, pup. Do not play that game with me. I am on your side.\u201d

\u201cMy side, mistress?\u201d

\u201cYes. Very well. If you insist. How was your summer?\u201d

\u201cA pleasant break, mistress. Though the Ponath is colder now.\u201d

\u201cAnd going to get a lot colder in years to come. Tell me about your day on the town.\u201d

\u201cMistress?\u201d The debacle in the tradermale enclave had slipped her mind completely.

\u201cYou visited the brethren enclave, did you not?\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d Now she was disturbed.

Her reaction was not well concealed. Gradwohl was amused. \u201cYou had quite an adventure, I gather. No. No need to be concerned. The protest was an embarrassment, but a minor one, and a blessing as well. Am I right in assuming that the male Bagnel is the male we brought out of Akard?\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

\u201cAnd you are on friendly terms? He kept the fuss to a minimum.\u201d

\u201cHe thinks I saved his life, mistress. I did not. I was saving myself. That the others were saved was incidental.\u201d

\u201cThe fact is seldom as important as the perception, Marika. Illusion is the ruling form. Shadow signifies more than substance. Silth always have been more fancy than fact.\u201d

\u201cMistress?\u201d

\u201cIt is not important whether or not you made an effort to save this male. What signifies is his belief that you saved him. Which in fact you did.\u201d

Marika was puzzled. Why the interest in Bagnel?

\u201cYou have been away for a while. Living in rather primitive, difficult circumstances. Would you like another day on the city?\u201d

Yes, she thought excitedly. \u201cI have studies, mistress.\u201d

\u201cYes. I hear you have added your own regimen to Dorteka\u2019s.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress. I have been studying flying, space, and\u2014\u201d

\u201cWhen do you sleep?\u201d

\u201cI do not need much sleep, mistress. I never have.\u201d

\u201cI suppose not. I was young once, too. Are you learning anything?\u201d

\u201cThere is not much information available, mistress. Most paths of inquiry lead to dead ends where tradermales or other Communities have invoked a privilege.\u201d

\u201cWe will find you fresh sources. About this Bagnel.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress?\u201d

\u201cWill he accept a continued friendship?\u201d

Warily, Marika replied, \u201cHe invited me to return, mistress. He told me I should ask for him, and he would see that there was no trouble.\u201d

\u201cExcellent. Excellent. Then go see him again. By all means.\u201d

\u201cMistress? What do you want?\u201d

\u201cI want you to cultivate him. The brethren are supporting our enemies for reasons we do not understand. It is not like them to compromise their neutrality. You have a contact. See more of him. In time you might learn something to help us in our struggle with the Serke.\u201d

\u201cI see.\u201d

\u201cYou do not approve?\u201d

\u201cIt is not my place to approve or disapprove, mistress.\u201d

\u201cYou have reservations then?\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress. But I cannot say what they are exactly. Except that the thought of using Bagnel makes me uncomfortable.\u201d

\u201cIt should. We should not use our friends. They are too precious.\u201d

Marika gave the most senior a calculating look. Had she meant more than she had said? Was that a warning?

\u201cYet at times greater issues intervene. I think Reugge survival warrants pursuit of any path to salvation.\u201d

\u201cAs you say, mistress.\u201d

\u201cWill you pursue it? Will you cultivate this male?\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d She had decided instantly. She would, for her own purposes. For information she wanted. If some also fell the most senior\u2019s way, good. It would keep the cloister doors open.

\u201cI thought you would.\u201d The most senior\u2019s tone said she knew Marika\u2019s mind. It said also that she was growing excited, though she concealed it well.

Perhaps she could read minds, Marika thought. Some silth could touch other minds and steal secrets. Was that not how a truthsaying worked? And would that not be a most useful talent for one who would command an entire unruly Community?

\u201cI will tell Dorteka to let you out whenever you want. Do not overdo it. You will make the brethren suspicious.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

\u201cThere is plenty of time, Marika. We will not reach the time of real crisis for many years yet.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress.\u201d

Gradwohl again expressed restrained amusement. \u201cYou could become one of the great silth, Marika. You have the proper turn of mind.\u201d

\u201cThey whisper behind my back, mistress. They call me doomstalker and Jiana.\u201d

\u201cProbably. Any of us who amount to anything endure a youth filled with distrust and fear. Our sisters sense the upward pressure. But no matter. That is all for today. Unless there is something you want to discuss.\u201d

\u201cWhy do we not make our own darkships, mistress? Why depend upon tradermales?\u201d

\u201cTwo answers come to mind immediately. One is that most sisters prefer to believe that we should not sully our paws with physical labor. Another, and the one that is more close to the honest truth, is that we are dependent upon the brethren in too many other areas. They have insinuated tentacles into every aspect of life. If they came to suspect that we were trespassing on what they see as their proper rights, they might then cut us off from everything else they do for us.

\u201cThere is an ecological balance between male and female in our society, as expressed in silth and brethren. We are interdependent, and ever more so. In fact, I suspect an imbalance is in the offing. We have come to need them more than they need us. Nowadays we would be missed less than they.\u201d

Marika rose. \u201cMaybe steps ought to be taken to change that instead of pursuing these squabbles between Communities.\u201d

\u201cAn idea that has been expressed often enough before. Without winning more than lip service support. The brethren have the advantage of us there, too. Though they have their various bonds and subbonds, they answer to a central authority. They have their internal feuds, but they are much more monolithic than we. They can play one sisterhood against another.\u201d

\u201cFind ways to split them into factions,\u201d Marika said from the doorway. And, \u201cWe built our own ships for ages. Before the tradermales.\u201d

Gradwohl scowled.

\u201cThank you, mistress. I will visit Bagnel soon.\u201d
II<\/span>
Grauel and Barlog were beside themselves when Marika announced another expedition to the tradermale enclave. They did everything possible to dissuade her. She did not tell them she had the most senior\u2019s blessing. They gossiped. She knew, because they brought her snippets about the Maksche sisters. She did not doubt but what they paid in kind.

The huntresses became suspicious soon after they left the cloister. \u201cMarika,\u201d Grauel said after a whispered consultation with Barlog, \u201cwe are being followed. By huntresses from the cloister.\u201d

Marika was not pleased, but neither was she surprised. A silth had been set upon by rogue males not a week before her return from the upper Ponath. \u201cIt\u2019s all right,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re looking out for us.\u201d

Grauel nodded to herself. She told Barlog, \u201cThe most senior protecting her investment.\u201d

\u201cWe\u2019ll be watched wherever we go,\u201d Marika said. \u201cWe have a friend.\u201d

\u201cOne is more than we did have.\u201d

\u201cDoes that tell me something?\u201d

\u201cDid you know that we were not supposed to come back from the Ponath?\u201d

\u201cWe weren\u2019t?\u201d The notion startled Marika.

\u201cThe story was whispering around the barracks here. We were sent out to build that blockhouse behind the most senior\u2019s back. We were not supposed to get out of it alive. That is why Paustch was demoted. It was an attempt to kill us.\u201d

Barlog added, \u201cThe senior councillors here are afraid of you, Marika.\u201d

\u201cWe survived.\u201d

Grauel said, \u201cIt is also whispered that nomad prisoners confessed that our blockhouse wasn\u2019t attacked once they found out who the keeper was. You have gained a reputation among the savages.\u201d

\u201cHow? I don\u2019t know any of them. How could they know me?\u201d

\u201cYou slew the Serke silth at Akard. That has been bruited about all the Communities, they say. The one who died had a great name in her order, though the Serke aren\u2019t naming it. That would mean admitting they were poaching on the Ponath.\u201d

\u201cI love this hypocrisy,\u201d Marika said. \u201cEveryone knows what the Serke are doing, and no one will admit it. We must learn the rules of this game. We might want to play it someday.\u201d

\u201cMarika?\u201d

Grauel\u2019s tone warned Marika that she had come too far out of her role. \u201cWe have to play the silth game the way it is played here if we are to survive here, Grauel. Not so?\u201d She spoke in the formal mode.

\u201cI suppose. Still . . . \u201d

Barlog said, \u201cWe hear talk about the most senior sending you to TelleRai soon, Marika. Because that is where they teach those who are expected to rise high. Is this true? Will we be going?\u201d Barlog, too, shifted to the formal mode.

Marika shifted back. \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about it, Barlog. Nothing\u2019s been said to me. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything to it. But I will not be going anywhere without you two. Could I survive without touch with my pack?\u201d

How could she survive without the only meth she had any reason to trust? Not that she trusted even them completely. She still suspected they reported on her to curry favor, but to do that they had to stay close and remain useful.

\u201cThank you, Marika,\u201d Barlog said.

\u201cHere we are. Do not hesitate to admonish me if I fail to comport myself properly.\u201d Marika glanced back. \u201cAny sign of our shadows?\u201d She could have gone down through her loophole and looked, but did not care enough.

\u201cNone, Marika.\u201d

\u201cGood.\u201d She touched the fence lightly, examined the aircraft upon the field. Today the airstrip was almost naked. One small freight dirigible lay in one of the cradles. Two Stings sat near the fence. There were a couple of light craft of a type with which she was unfamiliar. Their design implied them to be reconnaisance or courier ships.

She went to the desk in the gateway building. The same guard watched the same vision screen in the same state of sleepy indifference. He did not notice her. She wondered if his hearing and sense of smell were impaired, or if he just enjoyed being rude to meth from the street. She rapped on the desk.

He turned. He recognized her and his eyes widened. He sat up.

\u201cI would like to speak to Assistant Security Chief Bagnel,\u201d Marika told him.

He gulped air, looked around as if seeking a place to hide, then gobbled, \u201cYes, mistress.\u201d He hurried around the end of his desk, down the hallway leading to the airfield. Halfway along he paused to say, \u201cYou stay here, mistress.\u201d He made a mollifying gesture. \u201cJust wait. I will hurry him all I can.\u201d

Marika\u2019s ears tilted in amusement.

The guard turned again at the far door, called back, \u201cMistress, Bagnel is no longer assistant chief. He was made chief a few months ago. Just so you do not use the wrong mode of address.\u201d

\u201cThank you.\u201d Wrong mode of address? What difference? Unless it was something the nervous guard had let carry over from the mysteries of the tradermale brethren.

She supposed she ought to examine the relevant data\u2014what was known\u2014if she was going to be dealing with Bagnel regularly.

Time enough for that later. After today\u2019s encounter had shown its promise, or lack thereof. \u201cGrauel, go down the hall and keep watch. Barlog, check the building here, then watch the street.\u201d She stepped around the desk and began leafing through the guard\u2019s papers. She found nothing interesting, if only because they were printed in what had to be a private male language. She opened the desk\u2019s several drawers. Again she found nothing of any interest.

Well, it had been worth a look. Just in case. She rounded the desk again, recalled Grauel and Barlog. To their inquisitive looks she replied, \u201cI was just curious. There wasn\u2019t anything there.\u201d

The guard took another five minutes. He returned to find them just as he had left them. \u201cKentan Bagnel will be here shortly, mistress. Can I make your wait more comfortable somehow? Would you care for refreshments?\u201d

\u201cNot for myself, thank you. Barlog? Grauel?\u201d

Each replied, \u201cNo, mistress,\u201d and Marika was pleased with their restraint. In years past they would have chastised any male this bold.

\u201cYou called Bagnel Kentan. Is that a title or name?\u201d

The guard was fuddled for a moment. Then he brightened. \u201cA title, mistress. It denotes his standing with the brethren.\u201d

\u201cIt has nothing to do with his job?\u201d

\u201cNo, mistress. Not directly.\u201d

\u201cI see. Where does a kentan stand with regard to others? How high?\u201d

The guard looked unhappy. He did not want to answer, yet felt he had to conform to orders to deal with her hospitably.

\u201cIt must be fairly high. You are nervous about him. The year has treated Bagnel well, then.\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress. His rise has been . . . \u201d

\u201cRapid?\u201d

\u201cYes, mistress. We all thought your last visit would cause him grave embarrassment, but . . . \u201d

Marika turned away to conceal her features. A photograph graced the wall opposite the desk. It had been enlarged till it was so grainy it was difficult to recognize. \u201cWhat is this place?\u201d

Relieved, the guard came around his desk and began explaining, \u201cThat is the brethren landhold at TelleRai, mistress.\u201d

\u201cYes. Of course. I have never seen it from this angle.\u201d

\u201cMarika?\u201d

She turned. Bagnel had arrived. He looked sleek and self-confident and just a bit excited. \u201cBagnel. As you see, I\u2019m behaving myself this time.\u201d She used the informal mode without realizing it. Grauel and Barlog gave her looks she did not see.

\u201cYou\u2019ve grown.\u201d Bagnel responded in the same mode. His usage was as unconscious as Marika\u2019s.

Grauel and Barlog bared teeth and exchanged glances.

\u201cYes. Also grown up. I spent the summer in the Ponath, battling the nomad. I believe it changed me.\u201d

Bagnel glanced at the guard. \u201cYou\u2019ve been grilling Norgis. You\u2019ve made him very uncomfortable.\u201d

\u201cWe were talking about the picture of the Tovand, kentan,\u201d the guard said.

Bagnel scowled. The guard retreated behind the barrier of his desk. He increased the volume of the sound accompanying the display on his screen. Marika was amused, but concealed it.

\u201cWell,\u201d Bagnel said. \u201cYou\u2019re here again.\u201d

Grauel and Barlog frowned at his use of the familiar mode.

\u201cI hoped I could look inside the aircraft this time. Under supervision, of course. Nothing secret seems to be going on now. The fighting ships and the big dirigibles are gone.\u201d

\u201cYou tease me. Yes, I suppose we could look at the light aircraft. Come.\u201d

As they stepped outside, Marika said, \u201cI hear you\u2019ve been promoted.\u201d

\u201cYes. Chief of security. Another reward for my failure at Critza.\u201d

\u201cYou have an unusual concept of reward, I\u2019d say.\u201d

Grauel and Barlog were displeased with Marika\u2019s use of the familiar mode, too.

\u201cI do?\u201d Bagnel was amused. \u201cMy superiors do. I haven\u2019t done anything deserving.\u201d Softly, he asked, \u201cDo you need those two arfts hanging over your shoulder all the time?\u201d

\u201cI don\u2019t go anywhere without Grauel and Barlog.\u201d

\u201cThey make me nervous. They always look like they\u2019re planning to rip my throat out.\u201d

Marika glanced at the huntresses. \u201cThey are. They don\u2019t like this. They don\u2019t like males who can or dare do more than cook or pull a plow.\u201d

He gave her a dark look. She decided she had pushed her luck. Time to become Marika the packless again. \u201cIsn\u2019t this a Seifite trainer?\u201d She indicated an aircraft standing straight ahead.

\u201cStill studying, are you?\u201d

\u201cAlways. When I can get anything to study. I told you I plan to fly. I have flown three times, on darkships. Each flight left me more convinced that flight is my tomorrow.\u201d She glanced at several males hurrying toward them. Grauel and Barlog interposed themselves quickly, though the males were not armed.

\u201cGround crew,\u201d Bagnel explained. \u201cThey see us coming out here, they expect us to take a ship up.\u201d

The males slowed when they discerned Marika\u2019s silth garb. \u201cThey\u2019re having second thoughts,\u201d she said.

\u201cYou can\u2019t blame them, can you? Silth are intimidating by nature.\u201d

\u201cAre they? I\u2019ve never seen them from the outside.\u201d

\u201cBut you grew up on a packstead. Not in a cloister.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

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Book Preview WARLOCK by Glen Cook Book Two of The Darkwar Trilogy BOOK THREE:MAKSCHE Chapter FifteenIBullets hammered the north wall of the last redoubt, Akard\u2019s communications center. Mortars crumped. Their bombs banged deafeningly. Bullets leaking through the two small north windows had made a shambles of the communications gear.Marika had done what she could to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[165],"class_list":["post-2974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glen-cook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}