“There are two ships. One is Serke, one is Redoriad. The silth move them across the void. The brethren deal on the other end.”
“How is that possible? I thought only specially trained silth could stay the bite of the dark.”
“Special ships. Darkships surrounded with a metal shell to keep the air in. Designed by brethren. They put in machines to keep the air fresh. Don’t ask me questions because that’s all I know. That is another bond entirely, and one we have no contact with.”
“And the other sisterhoods are jealous?”
“So I gather. I don’t know all that much. The Brown Paw Bond is an old-fashioned bond involved in trade and light manufacturing. Traditional pursuits. The only place you could get the kind of answers you want would be at the Tovand in TelleRai. I tell you, the one time I saw that place it seemed more alien than the Reugge cloister here. Those are strange males down there. Anyway, I was telling about the Serke and the Redoriad. Rumor says they asked the brethren to help them with their star ventures. That could be why the Reugge have become so disenchanted with the Serke.”
“Don’t fool yourself. The disenchantment did not begin with us. The Serke are solely responsible. There’s something in the Ponath that they want.” She studied Bagnel closely. He gave nothing away.
“The brethren won’t go back to Critza, Bagnel. I thought you said trade was lucrative up there.”
“When there was someone to trade with. There isn’t anymore.”
“Nomads?”
“What?”
“They’re getting their weapons somewhere. They were better armed than ever this summer. They shot down two darkships. There is only one source for firearms.”
“No. We haven’t sold them weapons. Of that I’m certain. That would be a self-destructive act.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“They had to get them from you. No one else is allowed to manufacture such things.”
“I thought you said the Serke were behind everything.”
“Undoubtedly. But I wonder if someone isn’t behind the Serke. No. Let’s not argue anymore. It’s getting late. I’d better get home or they won’t let me come again.”
“How soon can I expect you?”
“Next month maybe. I get a day a month off now. A reward for service in the Ponath. As long as I’m welcome, I’ll keep coming here.”
“You’ll be welcome as long as I’m security chief.”
“Yes. You owe me, don’t you?”
Startled, Bagnel said, “That, too. But mostly because you break the tedium.”
“You’re not happy here?”
“I would have been happier had the weather never changed and the nomads never come out of the Zhotak. Life was simpler at Critza.”
Marika agreed. “As it was at my packstead.”
III
“Well?” the most senior demanded.
Marika was not sure what to say. Was it in her interest to admit that she suspected Bagnel had been given an assignment identical to her own?
She repeated only what she thought Barlog and Grauel might have overheard. “Mostly we just looked at aircraft and talked about how we would have been happier if we had not had to leave the Ponath. I tried to avoid pressing. Oh. He did tell me about some ships the dark-faring Serke and Redoriad had built special so the brethren could—”
“Yes. Well. Not much. But I did not expect much. It was a first time. A trial. You did not press? Good. You have a talent for the insidious. You will make a great leader someday. I am sure you will have him in your thrall before long.”
“I will try, mistress.”
“Please do, Marika. It may become critical down the path.”
“May I ask what exactly we are doing, mistress? What plans you have for me? Dorteka keeps telling me—”
“You may not. Not at this point. What you do not know you cannot tell anyone else. When it becomes tighter tactically…. When you and I and the Reugge would all be better served by having you know the goal and able to act to achieve it, you will be told everything. For the present, have faith that your reward will be worth your trouble.”
“As you wish, mistress.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I
It was the quietest time of Marika’s brief life, at least since the years before the nomads had come to the upper Ponath and destroyed everything. The struggle continued, and she participated, but life became so effortless and routine it fell into numbing cycles of repetition. There were few high points, few lows, and each of the latter she marked by the return of her nightmares about her littermate Kublin.
She could count on at least one bout with dark dreams each year, though never at any time predictable by season, weather, or her own mental state. They concerned her increasingly. The passing of time, and their never being weaker when they came, convinced her that they had little to do with the fact that the Degnan remained unMourned.
What else, then? That was what Grauel, Barlog, and even Braydic asked when she did at last break down and share her distress.
She did not know what else. Dreams and reason did not mix.
She did see Braydic occasionally now. The comm technician was less standoffish now it was certain Marika enjoyed the most senior’s enduring favor.
Studies. Always there were studies. Always there were exercises to help her expand and increase her silth talents.
Always there were frightened silth distressed by her grasp of those talents.
Years came and went. The winters worsened appreciably each seasonal cycle. The summers grew shorter. Photographs taken from tradermale satellites showed a swift accumulation of ice in the far north. Glaciers were worming across the Zhotak already. For a time they would be blocked by the barrier of the Rift, but sisters who believed themselves experts said that, even so, it would be but a few years before that barrier was surmounted and the ice would slide on southward, grinding the land.
It never ceased to boggle Marika, the Serke being so desperate to possess a land soon to be lost to nature.
The predictions regarding the age of ice became ever more grim. There were times when Marika wished she were not in the know—as much as she was. The world faced truly terrible times, and those would come within her own life span. Assuming she lived as long as most silth.
Grauel and Barlog were inclined to suggest that she would not, for she never quite managed to control her fractious nature.
The predictions of social upheaval and displacement, most of which she reasoned out for herself, were quite terrifying.
Each summer Marika served her stint in the north, from the time of the last snowfall till the time of the first. Each summer she exercised her ability to walk the dark side, as much as the nomads would permit. Each summer poor Dorteka had to endure the rustification with her, complaining bitterly. Each summer Marika helped establish a new outpost somewhere, and each summer the nomads tried to avoid her outpost, though every summer saw its great centers of conflict. She sometimes managed to participate by smuggling herself into the strife aboard a darkship commanded by a pliable Mistress.
Gradwohl’s strategy of driving the nomads west into Serke territories seemed slow in paying off. The savages clung to Reugge lands stubbornly, despite paying a terrible price.
The Reugge thus settled into a never-ending and costly bloodfeud with the savages. The horde, after continuous decimation through attack and starvation, no longer posed quite so serious a threat. But it remained troublesome because of the rise of a warrior caste. The crucible of struggle created grim fighters among the fastest, strongest, and smartest nomads. Composed of both male and female fighters, and supported by ever more skillful wild silth and wehrlen, it made up in ferocity and cunning what the horde had lost in numbers.
Gradwohl’s line of blockhouses north of Maksche did succeed in their mission. The final southward flow crashed against that barrier line like the sea against an uncrackable breakwater. But the savages came a
gain and again, till it seemed they would never withdraw, collapse, seek the easier hunting to the west.
As the nomad threat waned, though, pressure against the Reugge strengthened in other quarters. Hardly a month passed that there was not some incident in Maksche involving rogue males. And that disease began to show itself in other Reugge territories.
But none of that touched Marika. For all she was in the middle of it, she seemed to be outside and immune to all that happened. None of it affected her life or training.
She spent the long winters studying, practicing, honing her talents, making monthly visits to Bagnel, and devouring every morsel of flight- or space-oriented information Gradwohl could buy or steal. She wheedled more out of Bagnel, who was pleased to help fill such an excited, eager mind.
He was learning himself, turning his interests from those that had occupied him in the Ponath to those of the future. His special interest was the web of communications and weather satellites the brethren maintained with the aid of the dark-faring silth. The brethren created the technology, and the silth lifted the satellites aboard their voidfaring darkships.
Marika became intrigued with the cycle and system. She told Bagnel, “There are possibilities that seem to have escaped everyone.”
“For example?” His tone was indulgent, like that of an instructress watching a pup reinvent the wheel.
“Possibilities. Unless someone has thought of them already and these ridiculous barriers against the flow of information have masked the fact.”
“Give me an example. Maybe I can find out for you.”
It was Marika’s turn to look indulgent. “Suppose I do have an original thought? I know you tradermales think it unlikely of silth, but that possibility does exist. Granted? Should I give something away for nothing?”
Bagnel was amused. “They make you more a silth every time I see you. You’re going to be a nasty old bitch by the time you reach Gradwohl’s age, Marika.”
“Could be. Could be. And if I am, it’ll be the fault of meth like you.”
“I’d almost agree with you,” Bagnel said, his eyes glazing over for a moment.
Those quiet years were heavily flavored with the most senior’s favor. With little fanfare, initially, Marika rose in stature within the cloister. In swift succession she became a celebrant-novice, a celebrant-second, then a full celebrant, meaning she passed through the stages of assistanceship in conducting the daily Reugge rituals, assistanceship during the more important rites on days of obligation, then began directing rites herself. She had no trouble with the actual rituals.
There were those who resented her elevation. Of course. Traditionally, she should not have become a full celebrant till she was much older.
Each swift advancement meant someone else having to wait so much longer. And older silth did not like being left behind one who was, as yet, still a pup.
There was far more resentment when Gradwohl appointed Marika junior censor when one of the old silth died and her place among the cloister’s seven councillors was taken by the senior censor. Zertan was extremely distressed. It was a cloister senior’s right to make such appointments, without interference even from superiors. But Zertan had to put up with Gradwohl’s interference or follow Paustch into exile.
Marika questioned her good fortune less than did Grauel or Barlog, who looked forward to a dizzying fall. Those two could see no bright side in anything.
The spring before Marika’s fourth Maksche summer, shortly before she set out for her fourth season of counterattack, death rested its paw heavily upon the cloister leadership. Two judges fell in as many days. Before Marika finished being invested as senior censor, Gradwohl ordered her elevated to the seventh seat on the council.
Tempers flared. Rebellion burned throughout the halls of the ancient cloister. Marika herself tried to refuse the promotion. She had much more confidence in herself than did any of the Maksche sisters, but did not think she was ready for the duties of a councillor—even though seventh chair was mainly understudy for the other six.
Gradwohl remained adamant in the face of unanimous opposition. “What will be is what I will,” she declared. “And time only will declare me right or wrong. I have decreed it. Marika will become one of the seven judges of this house.”
As strength goes. There was no denying the strong, for they had the power to enforce their will.
But Gradwohl’s will put Marika into an unpleasant position.
The sisters of Maksche had not loved her before. Now they hated her.
All this before she was old enough to complete her silth novitiate. Officially. But age was not everything. She had pursued her studies so obsessively that she was the equal or superior of most of the sisters who resented her unnaturally fast advancement. And that was half their reason for hating her. They feared that which possessed inexplicable strength and power.
The strengthened resentment caused her to turn more inward, to concentrate even more upon studies which were her only escape from the misery of daily cloister life. Once a month, there was Bagnel.
And always there was a touch of dread. She suspected doom lurking in the shadows always, at bay only because Gradwohl was omnipresent, guarding her while she directed the northern conflict. While she let the sisterhood beyond Maksche run itself.
Marika was sure there would be a price for continued favor of such magnitude. She believed she was prepared to pay it.
Gradwohl had plans for her, shrouded though they were. But Marika had plans of her own.
II
The summer of Marika’s fourth return to the Ponath marked a watershed.
It was her last summer as a novice. On her return to Maksche she was to be inducted full silth, with all the privileges that implied. So she began the summer looking beyond it, trying to justify the ceremonies in her own mind, never seeing the summer as more than a bridge of time. The months in the north would be a slow vacation. The nomads were weak and almost never seen in the Ponath anymore. The snows up there were not expected to melt. There was no reason to anticipate anything but several months of boredom and Dorteka’s complaints.
Gradwohl assigned her the entire upper Ponath. She would be answerable only to Senior Educan at Akard. She made her headquarters in a log fortress just miles from the site of the Degnan packstead. In the boring times she would walk down to the site and remember, or venture over hill and valley, through dead forest, to Machen Cave, where first she became aware that she had talents different from those of ordinary packmates.
A great shadow still lurked in that cave. She did not probe it. Because it had wakened her, she invested it with almost holy significance and would not desecrate the memory by bringing it out into the light for a look.
She was responsible for a network of watchtowers and blockhouses shielding the Ponath from the Zhotak. It seemed a pointless shield. The Zhotak was devoid of meth life. Only a few far arctic beasts lingered there. They were no threat to the Reugge.
That Gradwohl considered the northernmost marches safe was indicated by Marika’s command. She had twenty-three novices to perform the duties of silth, and Dorteka to advise her. Her huntresses and workers—commanded by Grauel and Barlog, who had risen by being pulled along in the wake of her own rise—were ragtag, of little use in areas more active. Except inasmuch as the command gave her some experience directing others, Marika thought the whole show a farce.
The summer began with a month of nonevents in noncountry. The Ponath was naked of meth except for its Reugge garrisons. There was nothing to do. Even those forests that were not dead were dying. The few animals seen were arctic creatures migrating south. Summer was a joke name, really. Despite the season, it snowed almost every day.
There was a momentary break in the boredom during the third week. One of the watchtowers reported sighting an unfamiliar darkship sliding down the valley of the east fork of the Hainlin, traveling so low its undercarriage almost dragged the snow. Marika dived through her loophole, caught a strong gho
st, and went questing.
“Well?” Dorteka demanded when she returned.
“There may have been something. I could not make contact, but I felt something. It was moving downstream.”
“Shall I inform Akard?”
“I do not think it is necessary. If it is an alien darkship, and is following the east fork down, they will spot it soon enough.”
“It could have been an unscheduled patrol.”
“Probably was.”
A darkship out of Akard patrolled Marika’s province each third day. Invariably, it reported a complete absence of nomad activity. What skirmishing there was was taking place far to the south. And the few nomads seen down there were now doing as Gradwohl wished. They were migrating westward, toward Serke country.
There were rumors that Serke installations had been attacked.
“Looks like the Serke have lost their loyalty,” Marika told Dorteka after having examined several such reports.
“They have used them up. They will be little more than a nuisance to our cousins.”
“I wonder what the Serke bought them with. To have held them so long on the bounds of death and starvation.”
Dorteka said, “I think they expected to roll over us the year they took Akard. The intelligence says they expected to take Akard cheaply and follow that victory with a run that would take them all the way to Maksche. Maksche certainly could not have repelled them at the time. The glitch in their strategy was you. You slew their leading silth and decimated their best huntresses. They had nothing left with which to complete the sweep.”
“But why did they keep on after they had failed?”
“Psychological momentum. Whoever was pulling the strings on the thing would have been high in the Serke council. Someone very old. Old silth do not admit defeat or failure. To me the evidence suggests that there is a good chance the same old silth is still in charge over there.”
“By now she must realize she has to try something else. Or must give up.”
“She cannot give up. She can only get more desperate as the most senior thwarts her every stratagem.”