“I want to go out into the city, Grauel.”
“Why?”
“To explore.”
“That is not permitted.”
“Why not?”
“I do not know. Rules are not explained here. They are enforced. Ignorance is no excuse.”
What was the penalty for disobedience?
Marika banished the thought. It was too early to challenge constraints. Still, she felt compelled to say, “If this is life in the fabulous Maksche cloister, Grauel, I may go over the wall.”
“Barlog and I have very little to do either, Marika. They think we are too backward.”
III
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’s sixth week there. It puzzled her till Barlog showed up to announce, “Most Senior Gradwohl is coming here.” Most Senior Gradwohl ruled the entire Reugge Community, which spanned the continent. “They are frantic trying to get ready.”
“Why is she coming?” Marika asked.
“To 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.” In a lower voice Barlog confided, “These 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.”
“So?” Marika asked indifferently.
“That would affect us, Marika.”
“How? 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 one sees us, who can harm us?”
“Do not talk that way, Marika.”
“Why not?”
“These sisters can go around unseen. One of them might hear you.”
“Don’t be silly. That’s nonsense.”
“I heard it from…” Barlog did not finish for fear of compromising her source.
“How much longer can you tolerate this imprisonment, Barlog? What does Grauel think? I won’t endure it much longer, I promise you that.”
“We can’t leave.”
“Says who?”
“It’s not permitted.”
“By whom? Why not?”
“That’s just the way it is.”
“For those who accept it.”
“Marika, please….”
“Go away, Barlog. I don’t want to hear you whine.” As Barlog was about to leave, she added, “They’ve tamed you, Barlog. Made a two-legged rheum-greater out of a once fine huntress.” Use of the familiar mode made Marika’s words all the more cutting.
Barlog’s 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’s 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’s 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. “Marika. They sent me to bring you.”
Grauel seemed badly shaken. There was something in her voice that stirred the dangerous flight-fight response within her. “Who sent you?”
“Senior 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.”
Marika bared her teeth. Grauel was terrified. Probably of the possibility that they would get thrown out of the cloister. “Why does she want me?”
“I don’t know. Probably about what happened at Akard.”
“Now? They’re interested now? After almost two months?”
“Marika. Restrain yourself.”
“Am I not perfectly behaved before our hosts?”
Grauel did not deny that. Marika even treated Moragan with absolute respect. She made a point of giving no one cause to take offense—most 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.
“All right. Show me the way. I’ll try to mind my manners.”
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’s elbow lightly, restraining her. Grauel responded with a massive shrug of resignation—and, 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’s 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’s scent. Something familiar….
In a low voice the servant said, “Mind your manners, pup.” She hitch-stepped off to the sideboard that seemed to be her station.
Barlog!
Barlog. With a limp. And Grauel’s 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.
“This is the one from Akard?” a gravelly voice asked.
“Yes, mistress.”
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.
“I thought she would be older. And bigger,” the most senior said, echoing Marika’s own thoughts.
“She is young,” Moragan said, and Marika noted that she was completely awake and vibrant and alive. Moragan’s 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, “We 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—”
A revenant shrieked in Marika’s mind. Jiana! Doomstalker!
“Zertan.” Most Senior Gradwohl’s voice was coldly cautionary.
Zertan shifted her emphasis slightly. “Gorry 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.”
The object of discussion was growing more irate by the moment. Barlog’s cold stare helped her control her tongue.
“Zertan,” Gradwohl said again. “Enough. I have seen all the reports you have, and more.” For a moment the Maksche senior seemed startled. “Can you tell me anything new? Anything I do not know? How does she feel about the sisterhood?”
After a silence that began to stretch painfully, Zertan admitted, “I have no idea how she feels. But it does not matter. A pup’s attitudes are the clay that the teacher—”
Gradwohl did not seize upon Zertan’s clumsiness. Instead, she shifted approach. “Senior 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—without 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.”
Gradwohl eased down off her stool, surveyed the assembly. “What does it matter what a pup thinks of the Community? Consider two ideas. Trust, and personal loyalty.
“For 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.
“Why? 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.”
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.
“About personal loyalty, few of you know a thing,” the most senior continued in a hard voice. “Let us experiment. Moragan. Proceed.”
Moragan got off her stool. She drew a long, wicked knife from inside her robe, presented it to Senior Zertan.
Gradwohl said, “Carry out your instructions, Zertan.”
Zertan left her stool with obvious reluctance. She looked at Marika for a moment.
She flung herself forward.
Marika’s 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’s 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’s cold stare. “I seldom miscalculate. But when I do, I do it big.” Her paw went to her shoulder, where moisture seeped into the fabric of her robe. “I did not anticipate firearms. Halechk! See to Zertan before she dies on us.”
A silth with healer’s decorations left her stool and hastened to Zertan.
Gradwohl said, “Personal loyalty. Even in the face of certain disaster.” Her teeth ground together. Her wound had begun to hurt.
Zertan’s knife had come to rest only inches from the tip of Marika’s right boot. She kicked it across the floor to the most senior’s feet.
Gradwohl’s cheek began to twitch. She whispered, “Have a care, pup. Had it been real, you might have gotten through it by having surprise on your right paw.”
“Had it been real, there would be only three meth alive in this room right now.” Marika spoke with conviction. She broke eye contact long enough to glance at the knife. “We had a saying in the Ponath. ‘As strength goes.’” She had to say it in dialect. Gradwohl did not react. Perhaps it went past her.
“When I am manipulated or pushed, mistre
ss, I must push back.”
Gradwohl ignored her. She surveyed the silth, still perched upon their stools. “This 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.”
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.
“This assembly is at an end,” Gradwohl said, still holding Marika’s gaze. “Go. All but you, pup.”
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
Gradwohl climbed onto a stool. “Sit if you like,” 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’s loghouse.
“Tell me about yourself, pup.”
“Mistress?”
“Tell me your story. I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
“You know, mistress. Through your agent Moragan.”
Gradwohl seemed amused. “She was that transparent?”
“Only looking back.”
“Nothing substitutes for direct examination. Begin simply. Tell me your story. What is your name?”
“Marika, mistress.”
“Tell me about Marika. From her birth to this moment.”
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’s loghouse, and all her troubles during her stay at the fortress Akard.
Gradwohl nodded. “Interesting. But possibly even more interesting in complete privacy.”