Ceremony

Chapter Forty-Two

I

There were darkships everywhere around the Reugge cloister, and scattered about the fields outside the town. Fields, she noted, that showed signs of beginning to thaw. Maybe the mirrors were working. The air did not have its customary toothy bite.

She saw witch signs of orders of which she had never heard, of Communities great and small, gathered from the ends of the world. She sensed more darkships in the air, hastening to the gathering, coming from afar. Her command had been unrealistic. It was physically impossible for some to reach Ruhaack in so short a time.

She drifted into the landing court, noting that the cloister itself was free of snow. The court had been cleared for her arrival. Silth were arrayed in accordance with the demands of ceremony for the arrival of a great most senior. She was grimly amused because they accorded her that honor.

She sent ghosts scurrying through the cloister, detected no signs of treachery or foolishness. For all the talent amassed, not a whiff of a trap. "As strength goes," she murmured. When the wooden voidship grounded she told her bath, "All of you stay close to me. For your own protection." She glanced skyward. Both mirrors were visible. Each seemed as brilliant as the sun itself. A world with three suns. Nowhere in her far travels had she encountered anything as strange as that.

Purely for the drama of the moment she pulled down ghosts from the upper air and made them shimmer about her. She stepped down from the darkship.

Bel-Keneke came to meet her, a silth grown old in a very short time, fur ragged, gray, body quaking as she approached alone. Marika glared, unable to restrain her feelings completely. She stood with ghosts glimmering around her, crawling through her fur, motionless, speechless, waiting.

Bel-Keneke croaked, "The convention has begun assembling in the great hall, Marika. Not all have arrived yet, some being impossibly far to begin. But all have promised to come, and I am told that all who have not yet arrived are in fact hurrying here as fast ... "

"I am aware of that. Hear this. Henceforth you will address me as mistress of mistresses. That which you feared has befallen you, and that which you fled has overtaken you. Lonely, lonely, the stars come down, and the fire washes away the sins upon the earth ... " What in the name of the All was she saying? Marika controlled herself. "You stirred the darkness and wakened its wrath. You have brought it upon yourselves. You would not let be. You have forced me. From this moment I am most senior of most seniors. And I intend to proclaim a new order. Those who find they have no desire to embrace it will soon be reunited with the All. I am out of patience, out of tolerance, out of understanding. Lead on to the great hall, Bel-Keneke. My old friend, upon whom I bestowed all blessings."

Bel-Keneke turned. She walked, bowed as though by the weight of time, her shoulders drawn as though she expected to be struck. Fear trailed her like an evil perfume.

The most seniors were gathered in the great hall, indeed. As Marika stepped in she recalled it as it had been after the kalerhag of the Serke and the fire set by those who had taken themselves into exile. Half ruined, choked with burned corpses. Alive with the stench of death.

Death lurked there now, slithering around behind the smell of meth fear.

She examined the silent silth in their shivering scores. So many. And so many of them so very old. And all of them so very frightened.

She stalked to the high seat that Bel-Keneke occupied in ordinary meetings of the Reugge council and seated herself. Her bath and Barlog moved in behind her, their weapons held ready. Barlog, she sensed, moved back behind everyone, not really trusting the bath to stick. She waited silently, her touch roaming the cloister. She could find no Grauel. No Bagnel. No Silba.

So.

Some shaking, deputized silth moved toward her. She raised a paw, freezing them where they stood. They dropped their gazes and waited.

She grasped a powerful ghost from high above, drew it down, tamed it, and sent it wandering rogue territory, into the installations she had not yet destroyed, amid the enduring terror and confusion. And she found an old gray male who could be none other than Kublin.

So old ... But she, too, was aging, for all silth had their ways of staying the teeth of time. How many years did she have to tame this mad civilization and prepare it for what would come upon it from the stars? Maybe not enough.

That was the task left her, after she had fulfilled her duty to her own. To sculpt this world a single face. For the alien was coming. Sooner or later. The meth were known, now, through her own doing. Seekers would find, as she had found the Serke, given determination and time.

Kublin. Littermate. I see you there. You are running out of time. Where are my meth?

He started, amazed that she had found him. He shouted panicky orders. Rogues ran hither and yon.

There is no mercy in me this time, Kublin. Littermate. This time, if I must, I will make you die a death that will balance my past foolish mercies. Unless you surrender Grauel, Bagnel, and Silba, you are doomed and damned. Do not persist in your stupidity. You are strong, but I am stronger. I cannot be stopped. I am the successor to Bestrei, and I am ten times stronger than ever she was. I am not constrained by her ancient codes of honor. I have a hunger in me, littermate. It is a hunger for your soul, like the hunger of the grauken, and I am barely able to restrain it. Bring them to me, Kublin. Bring me my meth. Or I surrender to the grauken within me.

Immensely powerful suppressor fields rose around the installation, forcing her out. But she was strong, and went more slowly than they hoped. Before she lost touch she saw females, silth, moving near Kublin. They were all very old, very ragged. Their apparel was Serke.

So. As she had suspected, that struggle was not at an end either. Only a pawful remained, but they went on, trapped in the destiny they had woven for themselves.

What better place to hide than upon the world that had spawned them, far from the deadly hunter of stars? Was Starstalker concealed right here in the system? In the shadow of a distant asteroid, somewhere where no voidfaring silth bothered to go?

That answer would come soon enough.

Marika stationed her tame ghost near the installation and held it there with a thread of touch while she returned herself to flesh and the grand convention she had summoned.

They were conversing, some in soft tones or whispers, most with the touch. Snatches quickly patched together in one grand consensus. Doomfarer. Jiana. That look is upon her, stronger than ever before. Something dire is about to happen.

The reek of fear in that great hall was ten times what it had been upon her entry.

From her place Bel-Keneke made a sign, sped a feeble, frightened touch that told her that the last of the most seniors had arrived. Marika rose. She chose to speak instead of touch, and to speak in the tongue of common meth instead of any silth language. "Pups in gray mange, with your fur falling out, why are you so afraid? What is one savage from the wilds of the upper Ponath? Look. See how amusing, in her country clothing, her savage bloodfeud paints, carrying her weapons like some common fur trapper. Is this an object of fright?"

Her voice hardened. "I am reality, who has been baying along your backtrail so long. I am that which you fear, and I have overtaken you. I am not pleased with you. You have been in command. You are responsible. Your Communities have done foolish, stupid things, over and over and over, and then you have insisted on compounding them with more follies and stupidities. The story is always the same. Always the story of silth greed. Always the story of silth manipulation and maneuvering and treachery, never the story of meth thinking of tomorrow, never of meth facing reality and the future and seeing what lies there. I have preserved you and preserved you, and for what? Why? You will not learn. Perhaps you cannot learn.

"This is a new age, sisters. Can you not understand that? We are alone in this universe no more. We must sculpt a single outward face.

"I sent you a messenger, to apprise you of that, and you saw in him only one more opportunity to vent the greed and treachery that lies coiled about your hearts. You saw nothing else, and you heard nothing at all."

She glared down at the packed, silent, frightened silth. She sensed that some were considering attacking her. If they dared, as a group, they might end their terror forever. But not one among them had the courage to be the first to move.

"I read your hearts. As you are afraid of me now, so you stand convicted of the crime of cowardice in the face of the rogues who would have wrested your world from you. Had wrested it from you, save for small regions where they allowed you to abide till they chose to eliminate you. Again and again I gave you the chance to destroy those who would devour you, and always you squandered it. Again and again you allowed them to regain their strength, and each time become stronger, while you snapped at one another's backs and tried to steal starships or lands or whatever it was that for the moment seemed more important than the survival of your Communities. You will not save yourselves."

She stared, dared. No one responded.

"You do not protest the indictment. Not one of you, though some are less guilty than the rest." She reached into the void, pulled. "You would not learn, would not live together, would not defend yourselves. If you have no other value, then you might at least serve as examples of the cost of stupidity to those who will come after you." She yanked viciously. The great black struggled, but it came. "We cannot rebuild the world with you, that is obvious. We will see if it can be done without you."

They did not understand for a while. Then they understood only too well. The otherworld filled with outraged, terrified touch. And they remained true to what they were. They panicked rather than do what they needed to save themselves. They would not join even then.

Marika hammered another layer of armor around her heart. She told herself they were poor silth, that they truly deserved what was to come. But she hurt. She could no longer love herself.

She drew Barlog and her bath close to her, to envelop them in her own protection, then unleashed the fury of the great black.

You experience true darkwar, she flung into the horror of screaming mouths and twisting bodies and flying blood. I bring it down upon you, for the race.

It lasted far longer than she expected. When it was over she felt hollow, wasted, as though the massacre had been a futile and pointless gesture, little more than a pup's destructive tantrum.

Her companions did not speak to her. The bath eased away, overcome with horror. Barlog seemed more disgusted than horrified. Marika did not think much of herself at that moment, but she refused to turn inward, to scrutinize her feelings and motives.

"They wanted a doomstalker. A Jiana. They insisted. I have given them one. Come, you. We have business with the rogue."

As she walked to the courtyard and darkship, stepping over and around still forms, Barlog finally said, "Marika, they will not suffer this. You have sealed your doom. You have cried bloodfeud upon all silthdom."

"I know, Barlog. I know. But they'll have to work together if they're going to finish it, won't they? They'll have to eliminate the rogue at their backs before they dare turn upon me, won't they? In order to destroy me they will have to become what I want them to be, won't they?"

A wild awe filled Barlog's eyes as she realized that Marika had walked into this knowing exactly what she did.

"I have them by their cropped tails, Barlog. And I am not going to let go till they have remade themselves in the image I want. I have more surprises waiting for them ... But you need not be any part of this. You can retire to the packsteads on our world out there. It's not the Ponath, but it's ... "

"No. We have lived together-so many trouble-filled years. So much blood. We will die together. I insist. I have nothing else."

"If that is what you wish. Come. Let's go find our friends. And lay my family to rest."

Barlog shuddered. II Kublin had not exhausted his arsenal, nor would he surrender. He was as stubborn, was as much Jiana, as Marika was. He had his own dream of the shape of the future and was as determined to give it form.

But he did yield. A little.

Marika hammered at him a week, reducing his final strongholds one by one, slaughtering his followers. Then she laid siege to his final redoubt, a place far beneath the earth shielded by suppressors so powerful even the great black could not penetrate them. Marika brought in laborers and voctors by the thousand, began digging.

A deputation of terrified rogues came out. They brought Grauel, Bagnel, and the bath Silba.

Only Silba was alive.

She then understood why the coward had been so stubbornly determined. He had had little with which to trade.

Grauel and Bagnel had died before her return to the homeworld. Kublin had had no counters with which to play a trading game.

He had feared her fury would be inflamed all the more.

It was. But it became a directionless fury, a rage against circumstance, which burned bright swiftly and soon guttered into despair.

Marika took up Silba and the bodies of her loved ones and withdrew into the void. Bagnel she set sailing among the stars.

"Go, old friend," she whispered, and fought a sorrow greater than she dared admit. They might have been wonders. One death, among all the thousands she had engineered and witnessed, had stolen away all purpose, all caring. "Sail among your dreams. Among our dreams. And may the All reward you with more than all you lost for my sake."

A small part of her urged her to go back and ravage the world as she had ravaged the rogues and most seniors and her own Community, to take a vengeance that would not be forgotten while eternity lasted. But Bagnel's ghost visited her and whispered to her in sorrow, in the gentle way he had learned in his later years. He was never tilted to the dark side, for all he had shared her life. He would not have himself avenged. He could forgive even stupidity.

She battled her hatred for her world, her past, and all that had been denied her because she was what she was. She thought often of pups never born, and wondered what they might have become.

She watched Bagnel's body drift till she could no longer find it with the touch, then climbed into the Up-and-Over and fled toward her far stronghold, her alien starship fortress that orbited a foreign world and star.

"Let them deal with Kublin," she said. "I have no home and no race. I will go back there only one more time."

She would keep Grauel there, preserved in the void. And when the time came for Barlog to become one with the All she would go back, and the two old huntresses would go down to the Ponath, to the Degnan packstead. They would receive a proper Mourning, with all the Degnan unMourned, and their ashes would be scattered as was fitting for the most respected of the Wise. That she would do, though it cost her everything. They had kept their faith. She would keep hers.

On the resting worlds Marika questioned the bath Silba, and learned that the rogue had subjected her, and Grauel, and Bagnel, to every torment and indignity in an effort to learn about the aliens and about her. Bagnel and Grauel had died by Kublin's paw, as he had used his wehrlen's talent to force a crude truthsaying. Silba had been immune, being silth-trained. She believed that Kublin had learned everything known by the other two, and much from her as well, for he had been a crafty interrogator.

Marika worried, for she did not know how much Grauel and Bagnel had known, nor could she predict what Kublin might make of it. She should have gone ahead and destroyed him.

Already her most ferocious oaths were sliding from her mind. She was thinking that, one day, she would venture back with some of those weapons the rogues had dropped upon TelleRai. A few of those would dig Kublin out of his last fastness. If the silth themselves did not complete what she had started, to free themselves of one half the family so they could devote their attention to the other.

III A nasty surprise awaited Marika.

She might have made a heat of the moment vow to retreat from the universe. The universe had made no such promise to her.

The starship was not alone in orbit.

It took her a minute to comprehend what she was seeing.

Starstalker. The long-missing Serke voidship. Here! But that could not be. It had to be hidden in-system back ... Maybe. And maybe it had been waiting for her to show, and had pulled out while she was preoccupied.

She sent ghosts skipping across the void, felt them rebound. Starstalker was bound by suppressor fields as powerful as those shielding Kublin's headquarters. The voidship bristled with technological armaments.

She did not waste a second. She summoned the system's great black and hurled it. Starstalker's suppressor fields bowed, but held. A trickle of silth distress leaked into the otherworld.

Marika overcame the great black's reluctance and slammed it in again, harder. Starstalker's fields creaked. Panic radiated from the voidship, from the orbiting alien derelict. Marika pressed harder still, and kept the entire Serke compliment preoccupied with resisting the great black while she pushed her darkship to one of the alien's locks. She touched Barlog. Go inside and kill Serke. They will be too preoccupied to defend themselves.

Barlog went. She stalked passages, firing short bursts at Serke sisters, and exchanged shots with a pawful of unskilled rogues not directly involved in resisting Marika's assault.

Each silth slain weakened Serke resistance to the great black. It was now clear that the suppressors would hold only while the Serke supported them by pushing at the black themselves.

The Mistress aboard Starstalker panicked. She broke away, abandoning her sisters aboard the alien. Marika touched Barlog. Take care. Starstalker is running. I must pursue. But once Starstalker pulled away it no longer lent suppressor protection to those aboard the alien. Marika flung a pawful of lesser ghosts into the starship's passageways.

But then Starstalker, under lessened pressure from the great black, opened fire with its brethren-type weapons and forced Marika to dodge while it ducked into the Up-and-Over on a line she could not calculate. In parting, the voidship dispatched a covey of rockets toward the alien.

Marika could not stop them all.

She threw her darkship toward the alien, flinging a touch ahead. Barlog! Are you there?

Barlog could not respond. She was not silth.

Marika snatched a ghost and sent it inside. She found Barlog trapped in a damaged sector, still alive, but unlikely to remain so for long if not helped. She sped an enraged promise of damnation after Starstalker, a promise to end its tale.

She took the voidship in hard, quickly, and sought a lock through which she could enter. The first few she examined were damaged beyond use.

Inside. She raced along metal corridors, climbed ladders that rang beneath her boots, skipped past dead meth, flung ghosts this way and that, searching out safe pathways ...

She arrived too late.

Barlog lay sandwiched between buckled plates of steel. She screamed when Marika tried to shift the weight. Marika screamed with her, cursing the All. There was nothing she could do. She did not have a healer sister's skills. She had not taken time to learn them. None of her bath had the talent.

She settled down and gripped Barlog's paw. Over and over she apologized. "I'm sorry, Barlog, that I brought you to this end."

Barlog replied, "Do not blame yourself, Marika. I chose. Grauel and I both chose. You gave us a chance to return home. We chose not to go. It has been a long life filled with wonders no Degnan ever dreamed of. By rights none of us should have survived the invasion of the Ponath. So we cannot complain. We had many borrowed years. Our deaths have been honorable, and we will be recalled as long as Marika is recalled, for were we not her right and left paws, her shadows in the lights of Biter and Chaser?"

Barlog gathered her strength. Marika gripped her paw more tightly. She said, "I do not want you to die, Barlog. I do not want you to leave me here alone."

Finally Barlog replied, "You were always alone, Marika. We but followed you down the pathway of your destiny. We leave one request. Take us back to the Ponath. Not now, but someday."

"That will be. You know it will be. If it is the only thing I accomplish in what life is left me."

"Thank you, Marika."

Neither said anything more. Marika did not want to speak for fear grief would betray her, and she lose the concentration she lent to watching for a return of Starstalker.

In time Barlog shuddered, whimpered, clutched her paw tightly, and went to join the All.

Marika could maintain control no longer.