“There’s always a choice, Grauel. But the second option is usually the darker. Today the choice is Toghar or die.”
“That’s why I say there really isn’t any choice.”
“I’m glad you understand.” She turned, let Barlog pull the next layer of white over her head. There would be another half-dozen layers before the elaborate outer vestments went into place. “I hope you’ll understand in future. There will be more evil choices. Once I fulfill Toghar, my feet will settle onto a path from which there will be no turning aside. It is a path into darkness, belike. A headlong rush, and the Reugge dragged right along with us, into a future not even the most senior foresees.”
Grauel asked, “Do you really believe the tradermales want to destroy the silth? Or is that just an argument you’re using to accumulate extraordinary powers?”
“It’s an argument, Grauel, and I’m using it that way. But it also happens to be true. An obvious truth to which the sisters have blinded themselves. They refuse to believe that their grasp is slipping. But that’s of no moment now. Let’s move faster. Before they come to find out why I’m taking so long.”
“We’re right on time,” Barlog said, arranging the outer vestments.
Grauel slipped the belt of arft skulls around her waist. Barlog placed the red candidate’s cap upon her head. Grauel passed her the gold-inlaid staff surmounted by a shrunken kagbeast head indistinguishable from a meth head in that state. In the old days it would have been the head of a meth she had killed.
Grauel brought the dye pots. Marika began staining her exposed fur in the patterns she had chosen. They were not traditional silth or Reugge. They were Degnan patterns meant for a huntress about to go into single, deadly combat. She had learned them as a pup, but never had seen them worn. Neither had Grauel or Barlog, nor anyone of the pack that they could recall. Marika was confident none of today’s witnesses would understand her statement.
She stared at herself in a mirror. “We are the silth. The pinnacle of meth civilization.”
“Marika?”
“I feel as barbaric as any nomad huntress. Look at me. Skulls. Shrunken head. Bloodfeud dyes.” For weeks she had done nothing but prepare for the ceremonies. She had gone into the wild to hunt arfts and kagbeasts, wondering how other candidates managed because the hunting skills were no longer taught young silth.
The hunt had not been easy. Both arfts and kagbeasts were rare in this winter of the world. She had had to slay them, to bring the heads in, and to boil the flesh off the arft skulls and to shrink the head of the kagbeast. Grauel and Barlog had assisted only to the limits allowed by custom. Which was very little.
They had helped more preparing the dyes and sewing the raiments. They were better seamstresses than she, and the sewing had been done in private.
“Do you want to go over your responses again?” Grauel asked. Barlog dug the papers out of the mess on Marika’s desk.
“No. Any more and it’ll be too much. I’ll just turn off my mind and let it happen.”
“You won’t have any problems,” Barlog prophesied.
“Yes,” said Grauel. “Overstudy…. I studied too hard when they made me take the voctor exams.” “Voctor” was the silth word that approximated the Degnan “huntress,” though it also meant “guard” and “one who is trusted in the silth presence bearing weapons.” “There were questions where I just went blank.”
Barlog said, “At least you got a second chance at the ones you missed. Marika won’t.”
It did not matter terribly, insofar as the outcome of the ceremonies proper, if Marika stumbled occasionally. But to be less than perfect today would lend her enemies ammunition. They would use any faltering as a sign that she was less than wholly committed to the silth ideal.
Appearances, as always, were more important than substance.
“Barlog. Are you still keeping the Chronicle?”
“Yes.”
“Someday when I have the free time I’d like to see what you have said about what has happened to us. What would Skiljan and the others have thought if they could read what you’ve written, only fifteen years ago? If they’d had that window into the future.”
“They would have stoned me.”
Marika applied the last daub of vegetable dye. Gathering the dyes had been as difficult as collecting the animal heads. There had been no choice but to purchase some, for the appropriate plants were extinct around Maksche, destroyed by the ongoing cold.
Marika went to the window again, stared north, toward her roots. The sky was clear, which was increasingly rare. The horizon glimmered with the intensity of sunlight reflected off far snowfields. The permanent frostline lay only seventy miles from Maksche now. It was expected to reach the city within the year. She glanced at the heavens. The answer lay up there, she believed. An answer being withheld by enemies of the silth. But there would be nothing she could do for years. There would be nothing she could do, ever, unless she completed today’s rites.
“Am I ready?”
“On the outside,” Grauel said.
“We haven’t forgotten a thing,” Barlog said, referring to a checklist Marika had prepared.
“Let’s go.”
Turmoil twisted into hurricane ferocity inside her.
The huntresses accompanied Marika only as far as the doorway to the building where the ceremonies would be held. The interest was such that Gradwohl had set the thing for the great meeting chamber. Novices turned the huntresses back. Ordinarily the Toghar rites were open to everyone in the cloister. Only those involved and their friends turned out. But Marika’s ceremonies had drawn the entire silth body. She was no ordinary novice.
Her enemies were there in hopes she would fail, though novices almost never did so. They were there in hopes their presence would intimidate her into botching her responses, her proper obeisances. They were there in hopes of witnessing a stumble so huge that it could not be forgiven, ever.
Those who were close to Gradwohl, and thus to the most senior’s favorite, were there to balance the grim aura of Marika’s enemies.
The enemies made sure no nonsilth were present. Marika was more popular among the voctors, whom she had given victories, whom she treated as equals, and who liked the promise of activity she presented.
Marika stepped through the doorway and felt a hundred eyes turn upon her, felt the disappointment in enemies who had hoped she would not show. She took two steps forward and froze, waiting for the sisters not yet seated to enter the hall and take their places.
Fear closed in.
It was not a proper time. Gradwohl and Dorteka both repeatedly had tried to tell her not to place all her trust in those-who-dwell. Even knowing she should not, she slipped down through her loophole, into that otherworld that overlapped her own, and sought the solace of a strong dark ghost.
She found one, brought it in, and used it to ride through the chamber ahead, reassuring herself that the ceremonies would proceed in the usual way. It was a cold world out there, with the ghosts. Emotion drained away. Fear dribbled into the ether, or whatever it was through which the ghosts swam. The coldness of that plane drained into her.
She was ready. She had control. She could do it now. She could forget what it would cost her, could forget all her nurture as a huntress-to-be, dam-to-be, of the Degnan pack. She released the ghost with a stroke of gratitude, pulled back to the world of everyday, of continuous struggle and fear. She scanned the hall ahead with cold eyes. All the sisters had taken their places.
Coolly, she stepped forward, standing straight, elegant in her finery. She paused while two novices closed the door behind her. She faced right and bent to kiss the rim of an ancient pot that looked like a crucible used till it had had to be discarded. She dipped a finger in, brought thick, sweet daram to her lips and tongue.
That pot was older than the Reugge. Older, even, than the dam Community, the Serke. Its origins had been lost in the shadows of time. Its rim had been worn by the touch of countless lips,
its interior crusted by residue from the tons of daram that had filled it over the ages. It was the oldest thing in the Reugge world, an icon-link that connected the Community with the protosilth of prehistory, the symbolic vessel of the All from which silth were granted a taste of infinity, a taste of greater power. It had been the kissing bowl of seven gods and goddesses before the self-creation of the All.
The glow of the daram spread through Marika, numbing her as chaphe would, yet expanding her till she seemed to envelope everyone else in the hall. They, too, had tasted daram. Their mind guards were down a fraction. Touch leaked from everyone, pulling her into a pool of greater consciousness. Her will and personality became less sharply defined and singular. It was said that in the ancient lodges, before civilization, silth had melded into a single powerful mind by taking massive doses of daram.
That part of her, the majority, which remained wholly Marika, marveled that hidden beyond this welcoming glow there could be so much fear, spite, enmity, and outright irrational hatred.
Her sponsor Gradwohl and the chief celebrants waited at the far end of the hall. She spoke her first canticle, the novice requesting permission to approach and present her petition for recognition. A silth somewhere to her right asked a question. She replied automatically, with the proper response, noting in passing that her primary interrogator would be Utiel, the old female she would replace in fourth chair. All the Maksche councillors seemed to have assumed roles in the ceremonies, even the senior, who had been all but invisible since falling out of favor with Gradwohl.
Before she realized what was happening, the initial interrogatory ended. She approached the celebrants. Again there were questions. She did not become involved on a conscious level. She responded crisply, automatically, made her gestures at the exact appropriate instant. She felt like a dancer perfectly inserted into her dance, one with the music, leaping, twisting, turning with absolute grace, the thing itself instead of an actor, the ultimate and ideal product of a perfect sorcery. Her precision, her artistry, fed back to the celebrants so that they, too, fell into her matchless rhythm.
The slight tension brought on by the presence of enemies faded from the shared touch of the daram, expunged by the experience of which she was heart. That experience began to swell, to grow, to drown everything.
And yet, deep within her, Marika never wholly surrendered to the commitment the rite was supposed to represent.
The celebrants completed the final interrogatory. One by one, Marika surrendered her staff, her belt of skulls, her cap, her ceremonial raiments to the kettle of fire around which the celebrants stood. Noisome smoke rose, filled the hall. In moments she stood before the assembly wearing nothing but her dyes.
Now the crux. The stumbling stone. The last hope of those who wished her ill. The truly physical part, when they would stretch her on the altar and a healer sister would reach into the ghost realm and summon those-who-dwell, lead a ghost into her recumbent form, and destroy forever her ability to bear young.
Marika met Gradwohl’s eye and nodded. The most senior stepped around the smoking kettle, presented the wafer. Marika took it between her teeth.
And added her bit of style, her own fillip to the ceremony. She faced the assembly before biting down, chewing, swallowing. She felt the stir in the entwined touch, the slight, unwilling swell of admiration.
The wave of well-being came over her as concentrated chaphe spread through her flesh. The celebrants stepped around the kettle and allowed her to settle into their arms. They lifted her to the altar. The healer sister loomed over her.
That reluctant something tried to wriggle forth, tried to scream, tried to will her to move, break away, flee. She stifled it.
She felt the ghost move inside her. Felt her ovaries and tubes being destroyed. There was no pain, except of the heart. There would be little discomfort later, she had been promised.
She turned inward, felt for the ghost world, fled there for several moments.
It was all over when she returned. The observers were filing out. The celebrants and their assistants were cleaning up. Gradwohl stood over her, looking down. She seemed pleased. “That was not so bad, was it, Marika?”
Marika wanted to say the hurt was all in her mind, but she could not. The daram and chaphe held her. She reflected momentarily upon a pack still unMourned and wondered if their spirits would forgive her. Wondered if she could ever forgive Gradwohl for forcing her into this crime against herself.
It would fade. The heart’s pains all faded.
“You did very well, Marika. It was a most impressive Toghar. Even those who dislike you had to admit that you are extraordinary.”
She wanted to protest that they never had denied that, that that was the reason they feared her, but she could not.
Gradwohl patted her shoulder. “You are fourth chair now. Utiel officially announced her retirement the moment the ceremony was complete. Please use your power wisely. Your two voctors will be in to help you shortly. I will tell them to remind you that I want to see you after you have recovered.” Gradwohl touched her gently, almost lovingly, in a fashion her own dam never had managed. For a moment Marika suspected there might be more to her patronage than simple interest in the fate of the Reugge.
She forced that out of mind. It was not difficult with the chaphe in her blood.
“Be well,” Gradwohl murmured, and departed.
Grauel and Barlog appeared only several minutes after the last of the silth departed. Marika was vaguely amused as she watched them prowl the chamber, peering into every shadow. They, who believed silth could render themselves invisible with their witchcraft. Finally, they came to her, helped her down off the altar.
“How did it go?” Barlog asked. She seemed under a strain.
“Perfectly,” Marika croaked through a throat parched by drugs.
“Are you all right?”
“Physically, I’m fine. But in my soul I feel filthy.”
Again both huntresses scanned the shadows. “Can you speak business? Are you too disoriented?” Grauel asked.
“I can. Yes. But take me away from here first.”
“Storeth found those workers,” Grauel told Marika, after they had taken her to her quarters. “She reported while you were in that place. They were reluctant to talk, but she convinced them she came from you. They acknowledged their debt. They knew very little, but they did say there is a persistent rumor that the rogues have found themselves a powerful wehrlen. One who will be able to defeat silth at their witchcraft when he is ready. So the thing is not done. As you thought.”
In the questioning of all the rogues taken, there had been that thread of belief in something great about to befall the criminal movement. Marika had not been able to identify it clearly. In the end she had decided to seek out two Maksche workers who had served her in the Ponath years ago, workers who had vowed they would repay an imagined debt.
“Warlock,” she murmured. “And a great one, of course. Or he would not be able to inspire this mad hope.”
She had not mentioned anything of this to the most senior. Intuition told her this was a thing best kept to herself. For the present, at least.
“We must find him. And kill him, if he cannot be used.”
For once Grauel and Barlog concurred in a prospective savagery.
They remembered the wehrlen who first brought the nomads out of the Zhotak.
BOOK FOUR:
TELLERAI
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I
Barlog relayed the message that had been left at the cloister gate. “A communication from Bagnel, Marika. And I wish you would do as the most senior suggests and move to quarters more suitable to one of your status. I am growing too old to be scampering up and down stairs like this.”
“Poo. You’re only as old as you think, Barlog. You’re still in your prime. You have a good many years ahead of you. What is it?”
“But are they all years of up stairs? I don’t know what it is. It’s sea
led.”
“So it is.” Marika opened the envelope. It was a large one, but contained only a brief note.
“Well?”
“He wants a meeting. Not a visit. A meeting.” She pondered that. It implied something official. Which further implied that the tradermales were aware of her official elevation to fourth chair and her brief for dealing with rogue males. She had not wanted the news to get out of the cloister so quickly. But outside laborers would talk. “I guess a month of secrecy is enough to ask. Barlog. I want to talk to Braydic. In person. Here. Don’t let her give you any of the usual excuses.”
Ever since the confrontation in the main ceremonial hall, Braydic had bent every effort to avoid compromising herself further by avoiding Marika.
“Yes, mistress.”
Braydic’s evasions had done her no good. Marika had made her head of a communications-intercept team. Like it or not. And Braydic did not.
Marika did not quite understand the communications technician. From the first a large part of her friendship for the refugee pup had been based upon her belief that Marika would one day become powerful and then be in a position to do her return favors. But now she was afraid to harvest what she had sown.
Braydic was too conservative. She was not excited by new opportunities and new ideas. But she carried out her orders and did so well. In the nine days since she had gotten the intercept system working, she had stolen several interesting signals.
Marika paced while waiting. She was not sure where she was going now. There had been a time when she thought to displace Gradwohl and head the Reugge Community in her own direction. But Gradwohl seemed to be steering a course close to her own ideal, if sometimes a little cautiously and convolutedly, and not seizing control of the sisterhood meant not having to deal with the flood of minutiae which swamped the most senior.
She lamented having so few trustworthy allies. She could not do everything she wanted herself, yet there was no one she could count on to help move the sisterhood in directions she preferred.