Doomstalker

Chapter Seven

I

There was nothing to compare with it in Marika's brief experience of life. Never had she been so totally, utterly miserable, so cold, so punished. And the first night of travel was only hours old.

She knew how Kublin must feel-must have felt, she reminded herself with a wince of emotion-when trying to keep up with Zambi and his friends.

The new, wet snow was a quicksand that dragged at her boots every step, though they had placed her next to last in the file, with only Barlog behind her to guard their backs. Her pack was an immense dead weight that, she was sure, would crush her right down into the earth's white shroud and leave her unable, ever, to rise to the surface again. The wind off the Zhotak had risen, flinging tatters of gray cloud across the faces of the moons, gnawing at her right cheek till she was sure she would lose half her face to frostbite. The temperature dropped steadily.

That was a positive sign only in that if it fell enough they could be reasonably sure they would not face another blizzard soon.

All that backbreaking labor, trying to clear the packstead of bodies, came back to haunt her. She ached everywhere. Her muscles never quite loosened up.

Grauel was breaking trail. She tried to keep the pace down. But the silth pressed, and it was hard for the huntress to slack off when the older of the two could keep a more rigorous pace.

Once, during the first brief rest halt, Grauel and the taller silth fell into whispered argument. Grauel wanted to go more slowly. She said, "We are in enemy territory, sister. It would be wiser to move cautiously, staying alert. We do not want to stumble into nomads in our haste."

"It is the night. The night is ours, huntress. And we can watch where you cannot."

Grauel admitted that possibility. But she said, "They have their witchcrafts, too. As they have demonstrated. It would not be smart to put all our trust into a single-"

"Enough. We will not argue. We are not accustomed to argument. That is a lesson you will learn hard if you do not learn it in the course of this journey."

Marika stared at the snow between her feet and tried to imagine how far they had yet to travel. As she recalled her geography, the packfast lay sixty miles west of the packstead. They had come, at most, five miles so far. At this pace they would be three or four nights making the journey. In summer it could be done in two days.

Grauel did not argue further. Even so, her posture made it obvious she was in internal revolt, that she was awed by and frightened of the silth, yet held them in a certain contempt. Her body language was not overlooked by the silth either. Sometime after the journey resumed Marika caught snatches of an exchange between the two. They were not pleased with Grauel.

The elder said, "But what can you expect of a savage? She was not raised with a proper respect."

A hint of a snarl stretched Marika's lips. A proper respect? Where was the proper respect of the silth for a huntress of Grauel's ability? Where was a proper respect for Grauel's experience and knowledge? Grauel had not been arguing for the sake of argument, like some bored Wise meth with time to kill.

It did not look that promising a future, this going into exile at the packfast. No one would be pleased with anyone else's ways.

She was not some male to bend the neck, Marika thought. If the silth thought so, they would find they had more trouble than they bargained for.

But defiance was soon forgotten in the pain and weariness of the trek. One boot in front of the other and, worse, the mind always free to remember. Always open to invasion from the past.

The real pain, the heart pain, began then.

More than once Barlog nearly trampled her, coming forward in her own foggy plod to find Marika stopped, lost within herself.

The exasperation of the silth grew by the hour.

They were weary of the wilderness. They were anxious to return home. They had very little patience left for indulging Degnan survivors.

That being the case, Marika wondered why they did not just go on at their own pace. They had no obligation to the Degnan, it would seem, in their own minds from the way they talked. As though the infeudation to which Skiljan and Gerrien had appealed for protection was at best a story with which the silth of the packfast justified their robberies to packs supposedly beholden to them. As though the rights and obligations were all one-sided, no matter what was promised.

Marika began to develop her own keen contempt for the silth. In her agony and aching, it nurtured well. Before the silth ordered a day camp set in a windbreak in the lee of a monstrous fallen tree, Marika's feeling had grown so strong the silth could read it. And they were baffled, for they had found her more open and unprejudiced than the older Degnan. They squattted together and spoke about it while Grauel and Barlog dug a better shelter into the snow drifted beneath the tree.

The taller silth beckoned Marika. For all her exhaustion, the pup had been trying to help the huntresses, mainly by gathering firewood. They had reached a stretch where tall trees flanked the river, climbing the sides of steep hills. Oddly, the land became more rugged as the river ran west, though from the plateau where the Degnan packstead lay it did not seem so, for the general tendency of the land was slowly downward.

"Pup," the taller silth said, "there has been a change in you. We would try to understand why overnight you have come to dislike us so."

"This," Marika said curtly.

"This? What does 'this' mean?"

Marika was not possessed of a fear the way the huntresses were. She did not know silth, because no one had told her about them. She said, "You sit there and watch while Grauel and Barlog work not only for their own benefit but yours. At the packstead you contributed. Some. In things that were not entirely of the pack to do." Meaning remove bodies.

The elder silth did not understand. The younger did, but was irked. "We did when there was none else to do. We are silth. Silth do not work with their paws. That is the province of-"

"You have two feet and two paws and are in good health. Better health than we, for you walk us into the earth. You are capable. In our pack you would starve if you did not do your share."

Fire flashed in the older silth's eyes. The taller, after another moment of irritation, seemed amused. "You have much to learn, little one. If we did these things you speak of, we would not be seen as silth anymore."

"Is being silth, then, all arrogance? We had arrogant huntresses in our pack. But they worked like everyone else. Or they went hungry."

"We do our share in other ways, pup."

"Like by protecting the packs who pay tribute? That is the excuse I have always heard for the senior huntresses traveling to the packfast every spring. To pay the tribute which guarantees protection. This winter makes me suspect the protection bought may be from the packfast silth, not from killers from outside the upper Ponath. Your protection certainly has done the packs no good. You have saved three lives. Maybe. While packs all over the upper Ponath have been exterminated. So do not brag to me of the wonderful share you do unless you show me much more than you have."

"Feisty little bitch," the taller silth said, aside to the elder.

The older was at the brink of rage, an inch from explosion. But Marika had stoked her own anger to the point where she did not care, was not afraid. She noted that Grauel and Barlog had stopped pushing snow around and were watching, poised, uncertain, but with paws near weapons.

This was not good. She had best get her temper cooled or there would be difficulties none of them could handle.

Marika turned her back on the silth. She said, "As strength goes." Though this seemed a perversion of that old saw.

She won a point, though. The tall silth began pitching in after, just long enough to make it appear she was not yielding to a mere pup.

"Be careful, Marika," Grauel snapped when they were a distance away, collecting wood. "Silth are not known for patience or understanding."

"Well, they made me mad."

"They make everyone mad, pup. Because they can get away with doing any damned thing they want. They have the power."

"I will watch my tongue."

"I doubt that. You have grown overbold with no one to slap your ears. Come. This is enough wood."

Marika returned to their little encampment wondering at Grauel. And at Barlog. The agony of the Degnan did not, truly, seem to have touched them deeply.

II

Neither Grauel nor Barlog said a word, but the covert looks they cast at the fire made it clear they did not consider it a wise comfort. Smoke, even when not seen, could be smelled for miles.

The silth saw and understood their discomfort. The taller might have agreed with them, once the cooking was finished, but the elder was in a stubborn mood, not about to take advice from anyone.

The fire burned on.

The huntresses had dug a hollow beneath the fallen tree large enough for the five of them, and deep enough to shelter them from the wind entirely. As the sun rose, the silth crept into the shelter and bundled against one another for warmth. Marika was not far behind. Only in sleep would she find surcease from aches both physical and spiritual. Grauel followed her. But Barlog did not.

"Where is Barlog?" Marika asked, half asleep already. It was a morning in which the world was still. There was no sound except the whine of the wind and the crackle of frozen tree branches. When the wind died momentarily, there was, too, a distinct rushing sound, water surging through rapids in the river. Most places, as Marika had seen, the river was entirely frozen over and indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape.

"She will watch," Grauel replied.

The silth had said nothing about setting a watch. Had, in fact, implied that even asleep they could sense the approach of strangers long before the huntresses might.

Marika just nodded and let sleep take her.

She half wakened when Barlog came to trade places with Grauel, and again when Grauel changed with Barlog once more. But she remained completely unaware of anything the next time Barlog came inside. She did not waken because that was when she was ensnarled in the first of the dreams.

A dark place. Stuffy. Fear. Weakness and pain. Fever and thirst and hunger. A musty smell and cold dampness. But most of all pain and hunger and the terror of death.

It was like no dream Marika had ever had, and there was no escaping it.

It was a dream in which nothing ever happened. It was a static state of being, almost the worst she could imagine. Nightmares were supposed to revolve around flight, pursuit, the inexorable approach of something dread, tireless, and without mercy. But this was like being in the mind of someone dying slowly inside a cave. Inside the mind of someone insane, barely aware of continued life.

She wakened to smoke and smells and silence. The wind had ceased blowing. For a while she lay there shuddering, trying to make sense of the dream. The Wise insisted dreams were true, though seldom literal.

But it slipped away too quickly, too soon became nothing more than a state of malaise.

Grauel had a fresh fire blazing and food cooking when Marika finally crawled out of the shelter. The sun was well on its way down. Night would be along soon after they ate, packed, and took care of personal essentials. She settled beside Grauel, took over tending the fire. Barlog joined them a moment later, while the silth were still stretching and grumbling inside the shelter.

"They are out there," Barlog said. Grauel nodded. "Just watching right now. But we will hear from them before we reach the packfast."

Grauel nodded again. She said, "Do not bother our superior witches with it. They know most all there is to know. They must know this, too."

Barlog grunted. "Walk warily tonight. And stay close. Marika, stay alert. If something happens, just get down into the snow. Dive right in and let it bury you if you can."

Marika put another piece of wood onto the fire. She said nothing, and did nothing, till the taller silth came from the shelter, stretched, and surveyed the surrounding land. She came to the fire and checked the cook pot. Her nose wrinkled momentarily. Travel rations were not tasty, even to huntresses accustomed to eating them.

She said, "We will pass the rapids soon after nightfall. We will walk atop the river after that. The going will be easiest there."

Aside, Barlog told Marika, "So we traveled coming east. The river is much easier than the forest, where you never know what lies beneath the snow."

"Will the ice hold?"

"The ice is several feet thick. It will hold anything."

As though the silth were not there, Grauel said, "There are several wide places in the river where we will be very exposed visually. And several narrow places ideal for an ambush." She described what lay ahead in detail, for Marika's benefit.

The silth was irked but said nothing. The older came out of the shelter and asked, "Is that pot ready?"

"Almost," Grauel replied.

Rested, even the older silth was more cooperative. She began moving snow about so that their pause here would be less noticeable after their departure.

Grauel and Barlog exchanged looks, but did not tell her she was wasting her time. "Let them believe what they want to believe," Barlog said.

The taller silth caught that and responded with a puzzled expression. None of the three Degnan told her they thought the effort pointless because the nomads knew where they were already.

Biter rose early that night, full and in headlong flight from Chaser, which was not far behind. The travelers reached the river as that second major moon rose, setting their shadows aspin. Once again the silth wanted to push hard. This time Grauel and Barlog refused to be pushed. They moved at their own pace, weapons in paw, seeming to study every step before they took it. Marika sensed that they were very tense.

The silth sensed it too, and for that reason, perhaps, they did not press, though clearly they thought all the caution wasted.

And wasted it seemed, for as the sun returned to the world it found them unscathed, having made no contact whatsoever with the enemies Grauel and Barlog believed were stalking them.

But the huntresses were not prepared to admit error. They trusted their instincts. Again they set a watch during the day.

Again nothing happened during the day. Except that Marika dreamed.

It was the same, and different. All the closeness, pain, terror, darkness, hunger were there. The smells and damp and cold were there. But this time she was a little more conscious and aware. She was trying to claw her way up something, climbing somewhere, and the mountain in the dark was the tallest mountain in the world. She kept passing out, and crying out, but no one answered, and she seemed to be making no real ground. She had a blazing fever that came and went, and when it was at its pitch she saw things that could not possibly be there. Things like glowing balls, like worms of light, like diaphanous moths the size of loghouses that flew through earth and air with equal ease.

Death's breath was winter on the back of her neck.

If she could just get to the top, to food, to water, to help.

One of her soft cries alerted Grauel, who wakened her gently and scratched her ears till shuddering and panting went away.

The temperature rose a little that day and stayed up during the following night. With the temperature rise came more snow and bitter winds that snarled along the valley of the east fork, flinging pellets of snow into faces. The travelers fashioned themselves masks. Grauel suggested they hole up till the worst was past. The silth refused. The only reason they would halt, storm or no, was to avoid getting lost: There was no chance of that here. If they strayed from the river they would begin climbing uphill. They would run into trees.

Marika wished she could come through by day instead of by night in snow. What little she could see suggested this was impressive country, far grander than any nearer home.

There was no trouble with nomads that night either, nor during the following day. Grauel and Barlog insisted the northerners were still out there, though, tracking the party.

Marika had no dreams. She hoped the horror was over.

The weather persisted foul. The taller silth said, as they huddled in a shelter where they had gone to ground early, "We will be in trouble if this persists. We have food for only one more day. We are yet two from Akard. If we are delayed much more we will get very hungry before we reach home." She glanced at the older silth. The old one had begun showing the strain of the journey.

Neither huntress said a word, though each had suggested pushing too hard meant wasting energy that might be needed later.

Marika asked, "Akard? What is that?"

"It is the name of what you call the packfast, pup."

She was puzzled. Was Akard the name of the silth pack there?

The storm slackened around noon. The travelers clung to their shelter only till shadows began gathering in the river canyon. The sun fell behind the high hills while there were yet hours of daylight left.

The silth wanted to make up lost time. "We go now," the taller said. And the older hoisted herself up, though it was obvious that standing was now an effort for her.

Marika and the huntresses were compelled to admire the old silth's spirit. She did not complain once, did not yield to the infirmity of her flesh.

Again Grauel and Barlog would not be rushed. Both went to the fore, and advanced with arrows across their bows, studying every shadow along the banks. Their noses wriggled as they sniffed the wind. The silth were amused. They said there were no nomads anywhere near. But they humored the huntresses. The old one could not move much faster anyway. The taller one covered the rear.

Marika carried her short steel knife bared. She was not that impressed with silth skills, for all she knew them more intimately than did Grauel or Barlog.

It happened at twilight.

The snow on one bank erupted. Four buried savages charged. The silth were so startled they just stood there.

Grauel and Barlog released their arrows. Two nomads staggered, began flopping as poison spread through their bodies. There was no time for second arrows. Barlog ducked under a javelin thrust and used her bow to tangle a nomad's legs. Grauel smacked another across the back of the neck with her bow.

Marika flung herself onto the back of the huntress Barlog tripped, driving her knife with all her weight. It was a good piece of iron taken from her dead dam's belt. It slid into flesh easily and true.

Barlog saw that nomad down, whirled to help Grauel, dropping her bow to draw her sword.

Javelins rained down. One struck the older silth but did not penetrate her heavy travel apparel. Another wobbled past Marika's nose and she remembered what she had been told to do if they were attacked. She threw herself into the snow and tried to burrow.

A half dozen huntresses streaked toward the stunned silth. Grauel and Barlog floundered toward them. Grauel still held her bow. She managed to get off two killing shafts.

The other four piled onto the silth, not even trying to kill them, just trying to rip their packs off their backs, trying to wrest the iron club away from the taller. Barlog hacked at one with her sword. The blade would not slice through all the layers of clothing the nomad wore.

Marika got herself up again. She started toward the fray.

Javelins intercepted her, drove her back.

There were more nomads on the bank now. At least another half dozen. The cast was long for them, so they seemed intent on keeping her from helping.

Then she heard sounds from the other bank. She looked, saw more nomads.

For the first time since the fighting started she was afraid.

One of the nomads got the iron club away from the tall silth and started toward the south bank, howling triumph.

Marika reeled. There was an instant of touch, wrenchingly violent. Screams echoed down the canyon, to be muted quickly by sound-absorbent snow. In moments the nomads were all down, clawing their chests. Marika's own heart fluttered painfully. She scrambled nearer Grauel and Barlog to see if the touch had affected them, too.

For all the violence, only the older silth was badly injured. She made no complaint, but her face was grim with pain.

Curses in dialect rolled off the slopes.

"There are more of them," Marika told the taller silth. "Do something."

"I have no strength left, pup. I cannot reach that far."

There was a rattling pop-pop-pop from way up on the southern side of the canyon. Some things like insects buzzed around them. Some things thumped into the snow. The taller silth cursed softly and dragged Marika down.

The older gritted out, "You had better find some strength, Khles."

The tall silth snarled at Grauel and Barlog, "Get the old one to the bank. Get her behind something. All of you, get behind something." She closed her eyes, concentrated intently.

The popping went on and on.

"What is that?" Marika asked as she and the huntresses neared the north bank with their burden.

A new sound had entered the twilight, a grumble that started softly and slowly and built with the seconds, till it overpowered the popping noise.

"Up there!" Grauel snarled, pointing to the steepest part of the southern slope.

That entire slope was in motion, trees, rocks, and snow.

"Move!" the tall silth snapped. "Get as far as you can. The edge of it may reach us."

Her tone did more to encourage obedience than did her words.

The popping stopped.

The snow rolled down. Its roar sounded like the end of the world to a pup who had never heard anything so loud. She crouched behind a boulder and shivered, awed by the majesty of nature's fury.

She looked at the silth. Both seemed to be in a state of shock. The old one, ignoring her injuries, kept looking at the nearest dead nomads in disbelief. Finally, she asked, "How did they do that, Khles? There was not a hint that they were there before they attacked."

Without looking her way, Grauel said, "They have been with us since the first night, haunting the ridges and trails, waiting for an opportunity. Waiting for us to get careless. We almost did." She poked a nearby corpse. "These are the best-fed nomads I ever saw. Best dressed, too. And most inept. They should have killed us all three times over." She eyed the silth.

They did not respond. The tall one continued to stare up the slope whence the avalanche had come. There were a few calls in dialect still, but from ever farther away.

Barlog was shaking still. She brushed snow off her coat. A dying finger of the avalanche had caught her and taken her down.

The tall silth asked Grauel, "Were any of you hurt?"

"Minor cuts and bruises," Grauel said. "Nothing important. Thank you."

That startled the tall one. She nodded. "We will have to carry the old one. I am no healer, but I believe she has broken ribs and a broken leg."

Barlog made her own examination. "She does."

She and Grauel used their swords to cut poles from which they made a travois. They placed the old silth and their packs upon it, then took turns pulling. The tall silth took her turn, too. It was no time for insisting upon prerogatives. Marika helped later, when the going became more difficult and the travois had to be carried around obstacles.

Grauel and Barlog believed there were no nomads watching anymore.

"How did they sneak up on you?" Marika asked, trudging in the tracks of the tall silth.

"I do not know, pup." She searched the darkness more diligently than ever the huntresses had. Marika realized suddenly that the silth was afraid.

III

Nomads were no further problem. Enemies were not needed. Weather, hunger, increasing weakness due to exposure and short rations, those were enough to make the trek a misery. Marika took the travel better than her companions. She was young and resilient and not spending much energy pulling the travois.

Thus, when it came time to take shelter, the duty fell upon her. Grauel and Barlog were so exhausted they could do little but tend the fire and stir the pot-the pot that had so little to fill it. They snarled at one another for not having had sense enough to loot the nomads. The tall silth's pointing out that the nomads had carried nothing but weapons did not soften the dispute.

Meth did not withstand hunger well. Already Marika felt the grauken stirring within her. She looked at the others. If it came to that desperate moment, upon whom would they turn? Her or the old silth?

They had been five days making a two-day journey. Marika asked the tall silth, "How far must we travel yet? Surely we must be very close."

"Fifteen miles more," the silth said. "A quarter of the way yet. The worst quarter. Five miles down we have to leave the river for the trails. There are many rapids where the river will not be frozen over."

Fifteen miles. At the rate they had been progressing since the old one got hurt, that might mean three more days.

"Do not despair, pup," the silth said. "I have put aside my pride and touched those who watch for us in Akard. They are coming to meet us."

"How soon?" Grauel asked, her only contribution to the conversation.

"They are young and healthy and well fed. Not long."

Not long proved to be a day and a half. Every possible thing that could go wrong did, including an avalanche which destroyed the trail and compelled a detour. The grauken looked out of every eye, needing only a nudge to tear free. But meet those other silth they did, eight miles from the packfast, and they celebrated with what for Marika was the feast of her young life.

After that the cold and snow should have been mere nuisances. A meth with a full belly was ready to challenge anything. But not so. They had been too long hungry and exposed. The slide toward extinction continued.

Marika did not see Akard from outside on arriving, for they approached the stone packfast under a heavily clouded sky at a time when no moons were up. The only hints of size and shape came from lights glimpsed only momentarily. But by then she was not interested in the place except as journey's end. She half believed she would never make it there.

The journey from the Degnan packstead took ten nights, most spent covering the last twenty miles. For all she had food in her belly, Marika was exhausted, being half carried by the silth who had come to the rescue. And she was in better shape than any of her companions. She hoped that never again would she have to travel in winter.

They carried her into a place of stone and she collapsed. She did not think how much more terrible it had become for her companions, all of them having been carried the past few days, lingering on the frontiers of death. She thought of nothing but the all-enveloping warmth of her cell, and of sleep.

Sleep was not without its unpleasantness, though. She dreamed of Kublin. Of Kublin alone and terrified and injured and abandoned, surrounded by strange and unfriendly faces. It was not a dream that made sense. She began to whimper in her sleep and did not rest at all well.

For days no one paid Marika any heed. She was a problem the silth preferred to ignore. She ate. She slept. When she recovered enough to feel curious, she began roaming the endless halls of stone, by turns amazed, baffled, awed, frightened, disgusted, lost. The place was a monster loghouse-of stone, of course-surrounded by a high palisade of stone. Its architecture was alien, and there was no one to tell her why things were the way they were. The few meth her own age she encountered all were hurrying somewhere, were busy, or were just plain contemptuous of the savage among them.

The packfast was a tall edifice built upon limestone headland overlooking the confluence of the forks of the Hainlin. The bluffs fell sixty feet from the packstead's base. Its walls rose sixty feet above their foundations. They were sheer and smooth and in perfect repair, but did have a look of extreme age. There was a wide walkway around their top, screened by a stone curtain which looked like a lower jaw with every other tooth missing. The whole packfast was shaped like a big square box with an arrowhead appended, pointing downriver. There were huntresses upon the walls always, though when Marika asked them why, they did admit that Akard had seen no trouble within living memory.

"Still," one with more patience than most said, "it has been a hard winter, and the northerners are not known for their brains. They may yet come here."

"They are not completely stupid," Marika said. "They may come, indeed. They will look, and then they will go away. Packsteads are easier prey."

"No doubt. There have been rumors that nomads have been seen in the upper Ponath already."

Marika took a step back. She cocked her head in incredulity. "Rumors? Rumors? Do you not know why the huntresses and I came here?"

"You were brought because you have the silth talent."

"I came because I had nowhere else to go. The nomads destroyed all my pack but the two huntresses who came with me. As they destroyed several other packs and packsteads before ours. Within walking distance of ours. There are tens of hundreds of them in the upper Ponath. Ten tens of tens died at out packstead."

The huntress's disbelief was plain. "The sisters would not permit that."

"No? They did not do anything positive that I saw. Oh, they did finish the wehrlen leading the nomads, and they killed those who were plundering our packstead when they got there, but they did not go on to free the rest of the upper Ponath of invaders."

"Wehrlen," the huntress murmured. "You said wehrlen?"

"Yes. A very strong one. The silth said he was as powerful and well trained as they." Warmed to her story, Marika added, "And there were silth with the nomad horde. My dam slew one. The tall sister, that the other called Khles sometimes, brought back her robe and weapon."

Marika suddenly turned to stare up the valley of the east fork. She had been baffled as to why the nomads had pursued them toward the packfast when they carried so little that was worth taking. Unless ... The tall silth had acted as though that club and robe were great treasures.

Perhaps they were. For reasons she did not understand. The nomads had directed their attention toward the club and the taller silth's pack.

Already she knew life among the silth would be more complicated than it had been at the packstead. Here everyone seemed to be moved by motives as shadowed as Pohsit's.

The huntresses who patrolled the walls and watched the snows called themselves sentries. It was a word new to Marika.

She learned many new words, hearing them almost too fast to assimilate them. "Fortress" was another. Akard was what its meth called a fortress, a bastion which maintained the claim of a silth order called the Reugge, which had its heart in a far southern city called Maksche.

Marika was inundated with more new words when she discovered the communications center.

At the downstream tip of the fortress, at the point of the arrowhead, there was a great tall tree of metal. Marika discovered that her second day of roving. It looked like something drawn by a disastrously twisted artist trying to represent a dead tree. It had a dozen major branches. Upon those sat wire dishes with bowls facing south, each backed be a larger dish of solid metal. There were many smaller branches, seedling size, growing straight up from the main branches. Every inch of metal gleamed in the sunshine. Snow did not stick on the metal branches the way it did on the trees of the forest.

Below and in front of that mad tree there was one huge dish which faced the heavens above the southern horizon. Sometimes that dish moved the way a head did when the eye was following fast game.

What in the world? Very baffling for a pup from the upper Ponath, who found so much metal put to such inexplicable use criminal at the least. She wondered if Grauel or Barlog knew what was going on here. They had been to the packfast before. Surely they had unraveled some of its mysteries. She would have to become more insistent about being shown where they were recuperating.

Grauel and Barlog were sequestered apparently. She had not seen them since entering the packfast. No one would tell her where they were being treated. When she tried to use her own remarkable senses to locate them, something blocked her.

She did not think she was going to like the packfast Akard.

She knew she did not like the way the fortress's huntresses cringed and cowered around the silth. She knew there would be a confrontation of epic proportion the day the silth demanded that of her.

She went down to where the metal tree was and roamed around. But she could find nothing that explained what she saw. Or what she felt. While she was there she became dizzy and disoriented. It took all her concentration to overcome the giddiness and confusion long enough to find her way to a distance sufficient to reduce both.

Her secret senses seemed all scrambled. What had happened? Had she stumbled into some of the great magic for which the silth were so feared?