Ceremony

Chapter Thirty-Three

I

Marika worked out her grief aboard her saddleship. She flew north, into the wilds below Skiljansrode, and spent three days in the hunt for Kublin. Three days during which few traces of the fugitive were found. He had planned well, her crafty little littermate. He traveled by night, in the dark of the moons, in snow storms, in high winds, seldom leaving a trail that could be seen from aloft the next day. Those who hunted him always knew where he had to be within a hundred square miles, but they could not pin him down more closely.

After three days Marika left the hunt, resigned. The All would will Kublin caught or not, according to its grand design. She had more pressing matters to attend.

She made daily pilgrimages into the void, studying the progress of the mirrors, learning the neighbor stars of her sun. Each of those, she discovered, had its unique flavor that she could identify instantly if she simply abandoned thought and opened to the All. Once she found the key the learning process accelerated till she could know a star in seconds.

All was well with the mirrors. Bagnel kept a firm paw on the project. She was not needed there looking over everyone's shoulder every moment.

She went out to Kim again and experimented there, and found she was able to learn the new, strange stars visible only from there in just a matter of hours.

Home again, after having intentionally stretched herself by not pausing to rest upon the planet. She returned to Ruhaack to catch up on the situation upon the homeworld.

Kublin had not been taken, though Bagnel had sent a squadron of dirigibles to help with the search. Their technological advantages had been of no value.

Marika began to suspect that her littermate had used the fartouch to call in help after all.

She learned that the new most senior of the Redoriad was a silth named Balbrach, who had been nominated by Kiljar before her passing. Balbrach had pledged to pursue her predecessor's policies, particularly in operating in concert with the Reugge. The alliance represented a concentration of power unseen for generations.

There had been a Serke courier incursion. The patrols hoping to jump the messenger had been insufficiently alert. The darkship had gotten past them and gotten down without betraying its landing site.

"We're still hunting for them," Bagnel told her. "We have traces picked up by satellite, but the optics just aren't what they should be. If our resources weren't so totally committed to the mirror project, we might develop an observation network ... "

"It isn't really that critical. What we have will do the job. It's just a matter of forging better communications between your radar operators and our huntresses."

Bagnel was amused. "Of course. Just plant a qualified fartoucher in each of our installations. Or put one of our radio operators aboard each of your darkships. Nothing to it. Assuming you can get around however many millennia of tradition."

"Of course," Marika said, with sarcasm equaling his. "Nothing to it. There are times when I wonder how we meth have managed to survive."

Bagnel had come down from the Hammer soon after learning of her return. He had called her from the brethren legation at Ruhaack and they had flown together into the wastes to that remote base from which the Reugge cloister at Maksche had been attacked. The brethren still maintained a small establishment there, rebuilt after Marika destroyed the base, as a way station at the intersection of dirigible lines. Marika had gone out upon her saddleship, flying off the wing of Bagnel's increasingly venerable Sting fighter. Now they were aloft in the Sting, putting it through its paces.

"I hear you've been promoted again," Marika said.

"Yes. As always, the factors reward incompetence. The leading mirror is now all mine to demolish."

Marika was amused. He was so persistently negative about his own abilities. "I will be going away soon, Bagnel. As soon as modifications to my darkship are completed and I have trained a group of new bath." She had asked for the four strongest upcoming bath the Reugge and Redoriad could provide. The extra would be a reserve, would allow rest and rotation during extended interstellar passages. And she had a further experiment in mind that would require the presence of an extra silth. "I have the darkship at the dome on Biter being fitted to carry a detachable pod in which we can haul stores."

"Then you plan to be gone a long time."

"I'll be back in plenty of time to celebrate the triumphant completion of the first mirror."

"I see little enough of you now. If you disappear for years again ... "

"I seriously doubt I will be gone that long. I was teasing."

"You're going after the Serke, aren't you?"

"That's the main reason. But also to see what's out there. Just to see it."

"Then the Serke are as much excuse as they are reason."

"Of course they are. I'm really going because that is what I've wanted to do from the moment we pups first heard stories of meth who went to the stars."

"I wish I could see ... "

"You could. One more wouldn't make much difference. You might decrease our range, but not enough to concern me."

"I wish ... I have too many responsibilities, Marika. We have reached a point where the mirrors definitely look practical. No, I couldn't. Yes, I would like to see the stars. Maybe later. After this is done and the warm is falling. After you have done what you have to do. And that frightens me."

"Why?"

"I am frightened by what you may find. What you have been doing cannot remain a secret. Those here who are still in contact with your enemies will hear about what you are doing. And they will relay the news. It will find the Serke before you do. And because you are Marika, and can do what other silth cannot, they will be afraid. They will prepare for you. They'll be waiting."

Marika had thought of that, and it was of concern to her. She did not know how to prevent it. "You'll just have to do better preventing contact. That's all I can say."

"You know I'll try. But do not forget that that is not my specific responsibility. I can only nudge and urge and appeal and beg and suggest. Others, perhaps with less concern for your welfare, will be in control."

"I have faith in you, Bagnel. Fear not. We will fly together again, in this same box of rusty bolts, over this same barren landscape. Let's hope it's on a day when fewer dooms shadow the world."

"That can't help but be, I think. Though the dooms breed."

Marika's eyes narrowed. "You are trying to tell me something."

"Perhaps ... Being out at the mirror or the Hammer most of the time, I have little opportunity to keep track of what those who look for rogues are doing. But before I joined you a friend came to me with the latest rumor they had tapped."

"Yes?"

"The warlock is back."

Marika took a minute to get herself under control. Then she took another. "That is impossible. He perished when I destroyed those who had ravaged Maksche."

"I report only hearsay."

"The warlock?"

"The same one. The one who was the rogues' great hope a few years ago."

"I suppose it had to be," Marika murmured. "And I blinded myself."

"What?"

"I have done the unforgivable, Bagnel. I have made the same mistake twice. That is never forgiven."

But who could believe Kublin in the role of the warlock? A whimpering coward?

"What is it, Marika?"

"Nothing crucial. Let's fly a bit more, in silence, then take our leave."

There was something Marika had to do before departing, before pursuing her stalk among the stars, and she was afraid.

II Marika brought the darkship out of the Up-and-Over virtually on top of the darkness that lurked at the edge of her home system. That blackness reeked to the touch, stinking of wickedness and death, of gnawed bones and ripped flesh and corrupt corpses and hatred unconstrained. If the void had a heart of evil, this ghost was its animate form.

This ghost was like no other she had encountered, and she had identified hundreds of different kinds. This ghost was, in a way, an absence. Most others seemed bright, flighty, sometimes curious, sometimes afraid, but always colorful and seldom inimical unless under silth direction.

This was an absence of color moved by its own grand malice. It was a thing that did not need direction to be inimical. It would strike out at the unwary. Only because it could not move as swiftly as lesser voidghosts, and because the silth had learned to appease and baffle and, rarely, to control it, did it not strike every darkship that tried to leave the system.

Control. That was Marika's goal. The highest or darkest of dark-sider sorceries, managed only by a dozen silth before her ...

It moved toward her, almost as swiftly as thought. She squeezed the ghosts that carried her darkship, fleeing, pulling it along after her, staying out of its reach while she explored it with her touch.

She let it catch up.

Three times she recoiled from its cold, malignant vibration before she found sufficient courage to reach farther, to strive to control it.

Control came far more easily than she had expected. In some way she could not fathom her dark side spoke to its, and meshed with it, and, in moments, the great monster became an extension of her will, a force she could hurl as simply as tossing a pebble with a flick of her wrist. She threw it at a piece of cometary debris. It struck savagely, compressed, caused gases to boil, to explode. A short-lived flare illuminated space.

Marika turned loose and backed away, awed. So much power! No wonder Bestrei was feared.

She reached again, lightly, and found the darkness possessed of a fearful respect for her, a vague, almost thoughtless admiration for her dark power. It acknowledged her its mistress after those few moments.

She backed away again. And now, at last, she began to see and understand what it was so many silth had seen in her, and had feared.

She reviewed the strongest silth she knew, and knew none of them could have done what she had. Few could have taken control of the ghost at all, let alone so swiftly, so easily, so thoroughly.

And she knew, then, what it was she had sensed about Bestrei that time when their trails had crossed. Bestrei could take a great dark ghost easily too-though hopefully without imagination, or cunning, or any especial ability to direct it with her intellect. Bestrei, too, was slanted far toward the dark side.

Marika turned and drove toward the homeworld, toward the dome upon Biter where her venture was being prepared, but she watched over her shoulder, considering a region about thirty degrees to one side of the Manestar. Bestrei, she sent, in a hopeless long touch. I am coming, The long wait of the meth is nearly done. Soon we will meet.

It was from that region that the Serke had come each time they had struck at the mirrors. Somewhere in that area she would cross their trail.

"Marika, you look terrible," Grauel said when she returned. "What did you do?"

And Barlog said, "She has that look of doom about her again."

"That is it. Isn't it? It's been absent for years. What did you do out there, Marika?"

Marika refused to explain. They would learn soon enough.

Grauel kept after her, but Barlog said little more. She looked terrified of what was to come, for she and Grauel, as always, would walk Marika's path with her.

Marika spent a busy few days contacting silth all across the world, silth with whom she had worked in her rogue-hunting days. She left suggestions and instructions, for there had been no further trace of Kublin. He had escaped for certain, though. The warlock rumor had begun to grow.

How could she have been so blind? The thought that he might be the one had never occurred to her.

Everyone who had investigated the destruction of Maksche, silth or brethren, agreed that that whole city had died because of the warlock's determination to kill her. And she had spared him twice.

Why did he hate her so? She had given him no cause, ever, that she knew.

He would not escape again. If he persisted, she would destroy him as surely as she would anyone else who rebelled against silth power.

The waiting was not a happy time.

III Marika's first venture through the Up-and-Over was the most ambitious she had yet tried, three times the length of the journey to Kim. The magnitude of it overcame her.

She lost her nerve and turned loose before she should have, not maintaining the courage to follow what her talent told her was right. The star she sought still lay ahead, brighter now, but still far away. She searched the broad night, locating her home star and all the stars she already knew, then noted all those that she had not seen before. There in the heart of the dust cloud those were few, and she was able to inventory them in her mind with no trouble at all.

She dithered awhile, reveling in the glory of the void, till Grauel and Barlog began to disturb her with their increasing nervousness. Then she went down through her loophole again, gathered ghosts-which were scarce in the deep-and went on, pulling the darkship in close to the target sun.

It was not an inhabited or even habitable system. Marika had known before she jumped that it could be little more than a landmark on the trail the Serke walked, both because the system had been investigated often and because all logic said the Serke would have taken up residence in a system capable of sustaining life. Perhaps they shared it with the aliens or had taken control of the aliens' homeworld, as they wished to do with the homeworld of the meth.

In any case it did not seem plausible that two races of apparently similar needs would stumble into one another in the neighborhood of a giant or dwarf. Each would be seeking worlds of potential value, and those circled only certain types of stars. Only a small percentage of stars fit. Marika meant to concentrate upon those and use other types only as stellar landmarks.

Of course, all that had been reasoned and done before, in the hot, furious days after the bombing of TelleRai, when the might of all the dark-faring sisterhoods had been flung into the hunt. But Marika meant to carry the search far afield, avoiding stars already claimed or visited. The surviving Serke documents suggested that that sisterhood had been much more daring than any other, and that they had visited scores of starworlds to which they had laid no formal claim. That, unlike the other orders, they had kept exploring long after it had come to be deemed counterproductive.

It would be among those unnamed and unclaimed worlds that she would find her enemies.

She drifted near that first target star, a red giant, devouring its vast glory, extending her touch through its space in search of watchers, feeling for new or unusual ghosts or one of the great blacks, and found nothing of interest but the giant star itself. She scanned the night, learning the new stars she saw, then looked for and found her next target. This was another star on an almost straight line out from her homeworld. This one lay at the edge of explored space and would place her outside the dust cloud when she reached it. She would see the universe as she never had from home.

She faced that with trepidation, for the few silth who had been that far out had been unable to relate the marvel they had felt when they had been able to see the cloud and the galaxy from beyond the mask of dust.

Too, she was frightened because once she reached that star she would no longer be able to see her home sun. She would be cut off. The way home would rely upon memories impressed upon a few chemicals within her fragile brain.

She almost abandoned the quest then.

But she went on, defying fear, and those-who-dwell bore her well and quickly, and this time she did not allow her self-confidence to flag during the course of the jump.

She returned to the natural universe close to a white dwarf so brilliant she dared not look in its direction. It radiated so powerfully in the electromagnetic range that it threatened to disrupt her grip upon her talent. She did not stay long, though she did take in one awe-inspiring glimpse of a cloud of stars upon one paw and a vast darkness upon the other, only lightly speckled with points of light.

Grauel and Barlog practically whined with fear. The bath were unafraid, but stricken with awe.

Onward. And this time with care, for the next target was a wobbling star that, even from so far away, could be heard screaming as it died. A sister who had been there had told Marika that that star had an invisible companion that had to be treated with great respect, for it was a cannibal star, devouring the stuff of its visible sister the way some insects devoured the stuff of others.

The electromagnetic fog around that third target was more furious than anything Marika could have imagined. For minutes she remained disoriented, unable to select her next target, her last. It was hard to find. It was a normal little star much like her own sun, and it defined the outer known limits of exploration in this direction. It lay against the flank of the dust cloud.

Marika battled the numbness creeping over her. She recalled the most furious thunderstorms of her puphood in the Ponath. This was a hundred times more terrible.

She clung to her ghosts mostly by instinct and urged the darkship away, gaining velocity as the impact of the star lessened. In time she was able to think clearly enough to locate her target star. With head aching, she commanded her ghosts and pulled into the Up-and-Over.

The headache passed. Soon she found herself letting go almost automatically, almost without conscious calculation. The darkship fell into normal space, drifting toward her target.

This star boasted a world that could be used as a way station. It was a friendly world, the record said, but it was nothing like home. It was uninhabited. It would be a fair place to rest. A place where Grauel and Barlog could get solid ground beneath their boots once more.

She located the world and guided the darkship into orbit, released the massive stores pod after Grauel and Barlog and the extra bath had removed what might be needed below, then descended.

It was a hot, humid world with an atmospheric pressure much higher than that at home. Having descended to the level of discomfort, Marika cast about till she found a tall mountain. There she made her landing.

She had gone to the very bounds.

Soon the hunt would begin.