Ceremony

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 fartouchers 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 intensify 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.

She took the darkship up and let her far touch roam the wilderness. Somewhere in those icy badlands there was a major rogue hiding place, one they had believed could not be traced back through the levels of their organization.

She sensed a place where many meth were gathered, deep beneath the surface. She captured a strong ghost, rode it through a long, twisting tunnel, and found herself inside a weapons manufactory. More than two hundred meth were at work there, including bond females ...

Females!

Marika considered them closely. They were not prisoners. Some even seemed to be supervisors.

Anger seized her. She set the ghost ravening.

The massacre lasted fifteen seconds. A screaming electromagnetic surge severed her connection with the ghost. She suffered a moment of disorientation. The darkship plunged fifty feet before she regained her equilibrium and control.

So. They had adapted a suppressor field so it would shield an entire installation. It was to be anticipated. They had adapted it so it would protect individuals upon the alien starship.

No matter. These meth were dead. Voctors would come to cleanse the place once she reported it.

She took her darkship up high and sent a general far touch roaming that face of the continent. Kublin. The game is about to end. I am coming for you this time.

She expected no response and received none, but was certain Kublin would receive the message if there were as many wehrlen among the rogues as some silth suspected.

She drifted away westward, to continue the hunt elsewhere.

III "How long do you plan to stay this time?" Bel-Keneke asked from what had become her customary seat before the fireplace in Marika's quarters, though now those quarters had been shifted.

"Until I find the rogue I seek," Marika said. "A day or a decade." It had been a month since her return to Ruhaack. A dozen attempts on her life had failed. The cloister had suffered damage on several occasions. "Do not be distressed. Do not be frightened. I wish there were some way I could stem your fear that I intend to wrest the Reugge away from you."

Bel-Keneke was startled. "I do not ... "

"Of course you do. Because your one weakness is insufficient imagination. If I have such wicked intentions, why have I not displaced you already? Do you doubt that I could in a test of strength? Entertain, for the sake of argument, the remote chance that I would not want to endure the responsibilities of being a most senior. Assume that I have a task to complete here and then I shall depart for the Serke starworld. I really would rather spend my time nursing secrets from the alien starship."

Bel-Keneke seemed mildly embarrassed.

"Shall we drop the matter and turn our attention to the rogue problem?"

That problem had become one silth dared not ignore. In the past month the rogues had become violently active, betraying a level of strength and organization unsuspected even by those few silth who had taken them seriously. Their weaponry was a shock, and they had made excellent tactical use of their talent suppressors. A lot of damage had been done and many silth had died.

It was, of course, all Marika's fault. So the word ran among those who refused to see their own failures.

"All right," Bel-Keneke said. "The rogues."

"They can be beaten. They can be wiped out. If the Communities would cease blinding themselves, pretending they are only a nuisance. The problem must be recognized for what it is and approached in the same cooperative spirit as the mirror project."

"That is a matter of survival, Marika."

"Stubborn folly. Stubborn folly. Things are not so because we wish them so. They have to be made so. This is a matter of survival, Bel-Keneke. Those rogues are determined to obliterate all silthdom. And they are going to manage it if someone does not wake up."

"They are but males."

"True. Absolutely true. Are you any less dead when a male puts a bullet through your brain?"

"Marika, you credit them too much ... "

"Ask yourself who unleashed the fire that consumed TelleRai. Mere males. They will not go away because we wish them away. They will not go away because we turn our backs and refuse to see them. Those are the very reasons they come back again and again. I smash them, then the rest of you pretend they do not exist after I have gone on to something else, and the disease reestablishes itself. It was not imagination that destroyed my tower."

Bel-Keneke looked like one patiently suffering the ravings of one touched by the All.

Irked, Marika continued, "They now have an unknown number of hidden bases and manufactories. I have revealed several of those already. You have seen the things they were stockpiling. And you will still insist that they are just a nuisance? Must they kill you in order to gain your attention?"

Bel-Keneke shook her head.

"Try to imagine what they may be preparing in more remote places, safer from searchers."

Bel-Keneke showed no enthusiasm, even so. Marika was disturbed. Was all silthdom paralyzed by some mad suicidal urge? She feared she would have to call on the terror of her name to mobilize a real effort to overcome the rogues.

She was convinced that Kublin had built a movement so strong it no longer needed the support of the defeated Serke. It would attain its goals without it if silth continued to blind themselves to the threat.

Kublin, she was convinced, was not just the warlock; he was the driving force behind the rogue movement. She knew Kublin because she knew herself. Kublin might be cowardly at times, but he was very much like her. He was every bit as determined, if for reasons she could not fathom. In a way battling him, she battled her mirror image. She had acted, thus far, as though she was dueling herself, guessing what she would have done in Kublin's place before she made a move. And that had allowed her to deal this new crop of rogues numerous and frequent disasters.

The difference between Kublin and herself was that he was less willing to risk his person. In his place she would have come out to kill herself instead of sending assassins.

As a test she had tried an offer of rich rewards for information. She had had few takers. As she had expected. That revealed the real strength of the rogues. They were so strong and so feared that few ordinary meth would dare betray them.

"It is time to put the fear of silth back into the populace," Marika said.

Bel-Keneke looked startled.

"I do not want to press anyone, but I will if I must. I do not tolerate willful blindness in myself and I will not tolerate it in anyone else. We will destroy the rogue if I have to compel the Communities to join in the hunt."

Bel-Keneke sighed. "There is a great deal of confusion yet, Marika. You know very well that many of the strongest Communities lost their most seniors during your adventure against the Serke. They have not yet stabilized into any fixed hierarchy. You cannot expect them to have formed policies."

"The lack of a certain meth in control should not rob a Community of direction at mundane levels. You ... Never mind. Argument accomplishes nothing. As strength goes. I would appreciate it if you would contact those Communities that do have most seniors and tell them that I plan a major rogue hunt directed to the northeast. Tell them I want all the darkships that can be mustered. My intention is to mount a sweep that will cripple the rogue's offensive capacity. If in the course of the sweep I find the one rogue I am hunting myself, his loss will set his movement back so far the rogues will present no threat for years. You all will be rid of me, for I will disappear into the void once more. And you can all go back to your somnolent pretense."

Bel-Keneke refused to be angered. "Very well. As you wish. I will see that your fleet is assembled." Bel-Keneke's tone recalled that of Marika's dam Skiljan when she was discussing tribute that had to be paid to the silth at Akard. A little something yielded grudgingly so a greater power would leave one alone.

Damned blind fool. They were all damned blind fools. Maybe they deserved ... "Thank you, mistress. I appreciate your efforts. I must go now. I have to visit the comm center." She left Bel-Keneke there, served and observed by Grauel and Barlog.

She stalked the hallways of the cloister, irked with herself. She was growing too intolerant and impatient, she feared. In younger days she would have tried to maneuver, to manipulate, to get what she wanted more slyly. These days the impulse was to turn to power at the first impediment.

From the comm center she contacted the Hammer, ostensibly to see how Bagnel's preparations were coming, actually to turn off her thoughts for a while while talking with someone who wanted nothing from her and from whom she wanted nothing. She left the conversation pleased. Bagnel had assembled a scientific team that, he assured her, was more than respectable in knowledge, ability, and reliability.

She began to feel anxious to move into deep space once again.

The homeworld was not home anymore.

If anywhere ever had been.