“If you want it, the job is yours. But it could be dangerous. I have declared that the vessel is going to be mine, held in trust for all meth. As you suggested yourself, some Communities do not feel it should be that way. They feel they should have it for themselves, and I have been warned that more than one might try to seize it.”
“Of course. No might about it. There will be efforts to grab it. Even with the lesson of the project before them, silth are unable to comprehend the notion of working together for the good of the species. They have trouble enough working together for the good of their orders.”
“It may be a difficult thing, Bagnel. I am strong, but I stand alone out there. I will have to have support. Any team I put into the starship will be dependent upon my remaining on friendly terms with the Reugge and Redoriad. They will have to supply us. I cannot carry that load alone.”
“Even them I would not count on completely were I you, Marika. But consider: How did the Serke and rogues support themselves without supplies from the homeworld? Theirs may be the path you’ll want to follow yourself. Sever the ties entirely. Go ahead and be what they have called you, a Community unto yourself.”
“It may come to that, though I still refuse to believe that the silth can remain so narrow.”
“Refuse if you like. I will refuse to believe that you have become so naive during your absence. Are you acting? To me? You know that the unity forged for the mirror project is a harbinger of nothing. That was and remains desperation, the only answer in a struggle for survival. It has come so far even the rogues would not dream of destroying them. But their very nature makes them vulnerable in other ways, to those who seek power and profit. Among all the other accusations thrown your way over the years the secret dreams of some have been betrayed by their canards about your intentions in regard to the mirrors.”
“I have no intentions. My intentions were satisfied when I convinced everyone to build them.”
“True. But still some whisper that you intend to seize them when they are complete and use them to hold the race hostage.”
“That’s stupid. If I wanted to hold the race hostage I could do so right now, without mirrors. I am the greatest walker of the dark side this race has ever produced. If it was in me to extort something, I could scourge the population till everyone surrendered and there would not be a thing anyone could do.”
Marika bit her lip, forcing herself to shut up. This was not something that needed to be said even to Bagnel.
“I know. You don’t have to convince me. And I suspect that there is no point trying to convince others. They will believe what they want to believe, or, even knowing the truth, will say what they want to say to serve their own ends. Do what you have to do here, Marika, guarding yourself every second, then get out. Resign yourself to a life far from the homeworld. You may indeed be the strongest darksider ever to have lived, but you are not strong enough to survive here. I am not Degnan, nor even of the upper Ponath, but I would feel compelled to give you rituals of Mourning if you fell. And I don’t know how.”
“Enough. I appreciate your concern, as always. Will you go back with me once I finish my business here? Will you break all precedents and traditions and be second chair of my new star-roving Community?”
“I will.”
“Then examine your brethren and pick out those you think will be most useful. Prepare to travel. I won’t be long here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I
Marika surveyed Grauel, Barlog, and her bath as the wooden darkship tumbled over the edge of the world and plunged into atmosphere. They were as ragged a bunch of meth as ever she had seen. Worse-looking than any randomly assembled band of bonds. Worse-looking even than those desperate nomads who had driven her from the Ponath, all hide, bones, and tatters. This time she had to spend long enough down for them to flesh out, to acquire decent apparel, and to prove up their health. They were next to useless in their present state.
Touches reached for her. Some she recognized as those of skilled far-touchers with whom she had communicated before, from her own Reugge and the Redoriad Communities. She ignored them all. Let them wonder.
How was it that they could find her so easily, yet when a Serke courier came in they could see nothing? Did she cast so great a shadow? Or was it that they were just looking for her more seriously?
They stopped trying to communicate as she dropped below one hundred thousand feet. She supposed they would be scurrying around at Ruhaack, getting ready for her. She could imagine Bel-Keneke’s consternation when she did not appear as expected.
The world was an expanse of white that changed not at all as she descended. For all Bagnel’s assurances, she found it difficult emotionally to believe the mirrors were doing any good. He said it was like trying to reheat a loghouse with one cooking fire. It was easier to maintain a temperature than it was to raise it once the loghouse had cooled off. You had to do more than warm just the air. The snows of the world and all that lay beneath were great reservoirs of cold that would take years to thaw. The cooling had not happened overnight. Neither could the warming. Unless she was unnaturally lucky she would not live long enough to see the ghost of normalcy restored.
Below fifty thousand feet Marika began pushing the darkship northward, toward Skiljansrode. She flung a touch ahead, to Edzeka, for she did not feel up to one of the fortress’s welcomes.
Edzeka was in the landing court waiting, though Skiljansrode was besieged by a blizzard. voctors ran to hold the darkship down and secure it, for the wind was fierce. Marika dismounted, strode toward Edzeka, and shouted against the wind, “Let us go somewhere where it is warm. I am not up to this weather.”
“Is it not cold in the void?”
Grauel, Barlog, and the bath practically shoved them into the underground installation. They were starved for a decent meal. Bagnel had tried on the Hammer, but what the brethren served was no better than meals aboard the voidship.
“Yes. But it does not touch you. There is no wind out there. Not much of anything at all. I would appreciate it beyond measure if you would see that my meth are given the best food possible. We have gone and come a long way, and have barely set foot upon a world since our visit here before. They are starved for something hot and real. Their bellies are shrunken smaller than fists. They need to be reminded that they are live meth, not some ghostly denizens of the void.”
Edzeka seemed mildly amused. “Indeed? Then you have come to the wrong side of the world. We survive on plain, spare rations here. As you and they know.”
“As we know. But those rations are feast stuff compared to what we eat out there.”
Edzeka led them directly to the cafeteria. She joined Marika at table. When the grauken in Marika’s belly had been soothed, she asked, “Why did you come here first? The impression I got was that you wanted to arrive before the news of your victory. Which you have done, more or less, though speculation will disarm the value of your effort since you have chosen not to appear among the courts of the mighty.”
“When I go among those courts I want to do so armed with the knowledge you have gleaned in my absence. About the rogue problem. I have a fixed public policy I wave like a banner, but I have no real strategy. That will be the great issue before us after I announce my success. I must have something to offer.”
“If you were counting on me to arm you I fear I am going to send you off on the hunt naked. The sisters you recruited were quite imaginative in their search for information, but the warlock is obsessive in his quest for security. I wonder that his organization grows, he is so fearful of spies.”
“I will examine what has been gathered.”
Edzeka was right. There was nothing useful in the filed reports. Marika contacted those she had recruited in hopes they had learned things they had been reluctant to impart to anyone but herself. They had very little to say that was useful. Unanimously, they did warn her that the rogue apparently had wicked designs on her life. She told them to intensi
fy their efforts, to keep a closer watch on anything or anyone even remotely suspect. Her return should instigate movement by the warlock. Something would happen, and that something might betray him.
In discussion with Edzeka later, Marika said, “I almost fear I have wasted my time. I could have gone directly to Ruhaack and been no more ignorant. Still, there was a chance. I had to know. I suppose the absence of information is information in itself. I know him. Something is moving beneath the dark waters. I would suggest you concentrate on producing darkships. There will be a demand for replacements if things go as I suspect they will.”
Edzeka nodded curtly. “There are those that have not returned…. I wonder, Marika, how popular you will be when the extent of the disaster out there is known. An entire generation of dark-faring silth gone, to all practical purposes. Whatever the gain, there will be those who will not forgive you the price you paid.” She strained to phrase herself politely. It was clear she preferred having Marika elsewhere.
“I will pluck myself out of your fur after one more good sleep, Edzeka. My rogue hunters will move their center of operations to Ruhaack. Your Community will be yours once more.”
Edzeka neither thanked her nor acknowledged the implicit rebuke.
It was impossible to slip into the Reugge cloister unnoticed aboard a voidfaring darkship. Marika cursed that state of affairs. She would have preferred having the cloister rise one morning to find her reestablished in her quarters, come like a haunt or breath of conscience out of the darkness. But she had to arrive amid all the ceremony Bel-Keneke could lay on, with representatives of all the Ruhaack cloisters watching.
Practically before her feet left the tip of the dagger there were demands for her time and news. She made one general statement announcing the defeat of the Serke fugitives, the extermination of their rogue allies, and the taking of the alien starship on behalf of all meth. Then she retreated to her apartment, allowing only Bel-Keneke to accompany her. And her bath, at their request. She had given them permission to go to bath’s quarters this time, but after considering the pressures and attentions they might face, they elected to remain with her, hiding within her fortress within the cloister.
Marika closed the door. “I have said it in public. Now it is known and sure. Now the excitement of the aftermath begins. I suggest you be more alert than ever before.”
“How bad was it out there, Marika?”
“There are no words. Edzeka, perhaps, said it best. A generation of dark-faring silth spent to end the Serke terror. And possibly with very little actually gained. The starship, though, is impressive. I wish every meth alive could be taken to see it. It is going to change our lives as much as the age of ice has.”
“And you intend keeping your pledge to hold it in trust for all meth?”
“I do. We may part somewhat on this. I do not know your exact attitude. But yes, I mean it. You will recall that I come of a region where my pack was held in primitive straits for the advantage of other meth. I resented that greatly when I learned it, and I do still, though now I am one of the other meth. I cannot allow one small group to seize this starship. It is too important to us all. How it is exploited may shape the entire race for ages to come. I do not want it to become the grauken of the age, dam of a tyranny to beggar that of the most vicious sisterhood. In the past we have allowed the land and oceans and even the stars to be seized for the advantage of the strongest few, but with this we cannot keep on in the same old way.”
Bel-Keneke seated herself before the fireplace. She said, “I read in you a deep undercurrent of fear. Never before have I known you to be frightened of the future. Not in the way I sense it now.”
“You are probably right. I would not call it that, but even the wisest of us sometimes lie to ourselves. Do we not?”
“Yes.”
“These days I am often confused about who and what I am in the grand picture painted by the All. Sometimes it seems I am the only silth alive willing to battle to preserve our traditions. And at other times I feel I am exactly what they accused me of being when I was younger, the new Jiana who will preside over the collapse of silthdom.
“And still I do not feel stronger or different. I just feel as if I am on the outside…. I talk too much. We face ever more interesting and exciting times. But maybe we are over the summit now, with the mirrors in place and the Serke defeated. Perhaps a semblance of normalcy will reassert itself after we dispose of the warlock.”
“You might reflect on the fact that for most meth now living, silth included, this is normalcy. They are not old enough to recall anything else.”
“I suppose you are right. Let me rest awhile. Let me become attuned to where and when I am. Then I can get on with trying to reshape my world in the image of its past. Amusing, no? Me, trying to back into the future.”
Bel-Keneke did not understand her words or mood. Marika suspected that she did not understand them herself, though she pretended otherwise. Maybe it was all just age sneaking up on her.
II
Marika brought the darkship southward over the tops of dead trees, barely high enough to clear the reaching branches. She cleared the edge of the woods, then dropped till the wooden cross hurtled along inches above the snow. The landing struts sometimes dragged. The wind of her passage whipped up and scattered loose powder snow behind her.
She brought the darkship to a violent halt and dropped it into the snow. She and Grauel and Barlog piled off, ran low to the edge of a ravine, flopped.
Below, a dozen rogues were reloading a rocket launcher. The females opened fire with their rifles. Bodies jerked and spun. Two of the males got off shots of their own before they were hit, but did no damage. Some tried to flee. Marika seized a ghost and overtook them. Then she led the huntresses in a wild scramble down into the ravine, snow flying, to finish the wounded.
“This one is faking, Marika,” Barlog said, yanking a youngster upright.
“Hold him. We’ll take him with us.” She examined the others. All dead or soon to die. She kicked the nearest rocket launcher. “A fine piece of machinery.”
The first rocket had hit the Reugge cloister only moments before, wrecking the tower Marika customarily occupied. There had been no warning. Marika and her huntresses had been out almost by chance, down with the bath mapping a search sweep of rogue territory northeast of Ruhaack.
She had been airborne before the second rocket arrived.
“They look like the machines made by those aliens,” Grauel said.
“Don’t they, though? I wonder how much knowledge they spirited out over the years?”
“What shall I do with this pup?” She had the captive cringing at her feet.
“We’ll truthsay him. For what that’s worth.” Marika did not expect to learn much.
She had been back to Ruhaack five days. This was the third attempt upon her life. One she had been unable to trace. She believed silth might have been behind it. The other had been brethren in inspiration, but her search for those behind it had dead-ended. Her enemies were careful to cover their trails these days.
“Here? Now?”
“Here is fine. We can leave him with his friends.”
Truthsaying the youngster was easy. He had no resistance. And was almost an empty vessel where knowledge was concerned, though Marika nursed his entire rogue history from him.
“They are pulling them in young, now,” she said. “He was barely more than a pup when they enlisted him. That damned Kublin is insane.”
Grauel looked at her expectantly.
“We’ll backtrack him. At least he knew where he’d been. Somewhere there’ll be a rogue who hasn’t moved on. We’ll grab him and hope he gives us another lead.”
“The slow, hard way,” Barlog said. “One villain at a time.”
“That may be the only way.”
“Kill him?” Grauel asked.
“Yes.”
Grauel broke his neck. “I’m old,” she said. “But the strength remains.”
>
Marika replied, “Yes, you’re still strong. But you are old. It’s decision time.”
“Marika?”
“I will be going back to the alien ship soon. Chances are that it will be many years before I return to the homeworld again. You have often expressed a desire to spend your last days as near the Ponath as can be.”
Neither Grauel nor Barlog responded. Marika waited till the gawking bath had returned to the darkship to ask, “Have you nothing to say?”
“Is that what you wish? That we remain behind?”
“You know it isn’t. We have been together for a lifetime. I don’t know what I would do without you. You’re my pack. But I don’t want to stand in your way if you are ready to assume the mantle of the Wise. If I had any conscience I would, in fact, urge you to do so. The young voctors at the cloister are in desperate need of firm and intelligent guidance. By staying with me you’ll only see more of the same, and probably come to no good end. Half the race wishes me dead, and half that half might try doing something about it.”
“We will do as you command, Marika,” Barlog said.
“No. No. No. You will do what you want to do. It’s your future. Don’t you understand?”
“Yes, mistress,” Grauel said.
Marika favored her with a scowl. “You are baiting me. You are not as dense as you pretend. Come. We will discuss this later.” She stalked toward the darkship.
She took the darkship up and turned out across the snowy wastes, toward the ruins of TelleRai. The rogues had come from there in a ground-effect vehicle still hidden among the dead trees of the woods.
The rogues who had sent them had moved out of their hiding place, but had not moved fast or far enough. Marika overtook them. She captured two, truthsaid them, and continued her hunt.
Before day’s end the trail had taken her most of the way to the eastern seaboard. A dozen scatters of defeated rogues lay behind her. She found herself wondering why her sister silth had so much trouble suppressing them. They needed only to invest vigor and determination.