Warlock

Chapter Twenty-one

I

For a year the Reugge were free from outside pressures. The Serke Community assumed a posture of retrenchment that baffled the silth world. They seemed to be digging in quietly in anticipation of some great fury while overtly shifting more of their energies into offworld ventures. But nothing happened.

Some who watched the brethren closely noted that they, too, sought a lower profile. Some of the constituent bonds, especially those strongest politically within the brotherhood, also seemed to anticipate some great terror. But nothing happened.

Except that Most Senior Gradwohl of the Reugge gathered legates of the Communities at the Reugge complex in TelleRai to formally announce a major victory over the savages plaguing the Reugge northern provinces. She declared those territories officially pacified.

The savages had come to concern several other Communities whose lands bounded the Reugge and would have been threatened had the Reugge campaign been unsuccessful. Those Communities were pleased by Gradwohl's declaration.

Gradwohl publicly announced that a young Reugge sister named Marika had engineered the end of the savages' tale.

Privately, Marika did not believe the threat to be extinct. She thought it only dormant, a weapon the Serke would unsheathe again if that seemed profitable.

TelleRai, where many silth Communities maintained their senior cloisters, simmered with speculations. What was the truth behind this bland bit of Reugge folkloring? Who was this deadly Marika, of whom there had been rumors before? Why was Gradwohl taking so little genuine note of what in fact amounted to a withering defeat for Serke intrigues? What was the Reugge game?

Already Gradwohl was a shadowy, almost sinister figure to the silth of TelleRai, known by reputation rather than by person. Her intensity and determination on behalf of a relatively minor, splinter Community, while she herself remained an enigma, were making of her an intimidating legend, large beyond her actual strength. Her spending most of her time away from TelleRai only strengthened the aura of mystery surrounding her.

Was the legend striving toward some goal greater than plain Reugge survival? Her plots were intricate, complex, though always woven within the law ... She made more than the Serke ruling council uncomfortable.

Once a month, on no set day, Marika left the Maksche cloister and walked to the brethren enclave. The only escort she accepted consisted of Grauel and Barlog.

"I will not be loaded down with a mob of useless meth," she insisted the first time after her return from the north. "The more I drag along, the more I have to worry about protecting."

It had become customary for a silth sister daring the streets to surround herself with a score of armed guards. Invariably there would be at least one sniping incident.

Marika wanted to get the measure of the rogue infestation. In the back of her mind something had begun to see them as potentially useful, though she had as yet formulated nothing consciously.

Silth learned to listen to their subconscious even when not hearing it clearly.

The rogues did not bother her once, though she presented an inviting target.

Grauel and Barlog invariably chided her. "Why are you doing this? It's foolish." They said it a dozen ways, one or the other, every time.

"I'm proving something."

"Such as?"

"That there is a connection between the rogue problem and the nomad problem."

"That has been the suspicion for years."

"Yes. But the Serke always get blamed for all our troubles. This is more in the nature of a practical experiment. If they feel I really burned their paws in the Ponath, maybe they'll be afraid to risk troubling me here. I want to be satisfied that the same strategists are behind both troubles."

She had other suspicions that she did not voice.

More than once Barlog admonished, "Do not become too self-important, Marika. The fact that we do not draw fire in the street may have nothing to do with it being you that is out there."

"I know. But I think if we are ignored often enough, it would be safe to say it's purposeful. Especially if everybody else still gets shot at. Right?"

Reluctantly, both huntresses admitted that that might be true. But Grauel added, "The Serke will now think that they have a blood debt to balance. They will want your life."

"I might stoop to murder to achieve my ends," Marika admitted. "But the Serke will not. That's more a male way of doing things, don't you think?"

Grauel and Barlog looked thoughtful.

Marika continued, "The Serke are too tradition-bound to eliminate an important enemy that way." She did not add that others with, perhaps, an equal interest in her death would not be bound by silth customs. Let the huntresses figure that out for themselves.

Those untraditional meth might be the ones who controlled the rogues tactically.

"You're in charge, Marika," Grauel said. "You know what you are doing, and you know the ways of those witches. But that city out there is wild country, for all its pretense to civilization. The wise huntress remains always alert when she is on the stalk."

"I will keep that in mind."

She did not need the admonition. She made each trip by a different route, carefully keeping near cover, with more wariness than even Grauel demanded. She probed every foot of the way with ghosts before she traversed it.

Not once did she divine the presence of would-be assassins.

Did that mean the Serke in fact controlled their unholy alliance with the brethren-or only that all her enemies were equally intimidated?

During that, the year of silence, Marika and Bagnel sparred carefully and subtly, each gently mining the other for flecks of information. Marika often wondered if he was as conscious of her probable mission as she was of his. She suspected he was. He was quite intelligent and perceptive. For a male.

Halfway through the year Bagnel began teaching her to fly one of the brethren's simplest trainers. His associates and hers alike were scandalized.

The visits to Bagnel relieved a growing but as yet unspoken pressure upon Marika. On returning from the Ponath she had been eligible for the final rites of silth adulthood, the passage that would admit her into full sisterhood among the Reugge. But she had not asked to be passed through the ritual. She evaded the subject however obliquely it arose, hinting that she was too busy with her duties, too involved with learning the darkship, to take out the months needed for preparation.

She did spend most of her waking time studying and practicing the methods of the silth Mistresses of the Ship, driving herself to exhaustion, trying to become in months what others achieved only after years.

II It was not her darkship, of course, but she fell into the habit of thinking of it that way. It was the cloister's oldest and smallest, its courier and trainer. There were no other trainees and few messages to be flown. Its bath were old and drained, no longer fit for prolonged flights. They were survivors of other crews broken up by time or misfortune during the struggle with the savages. They did not mesh perfectly, the way bath did after they had been together a long time, but they did so well enough to give a young Mistress-trainee a feel for what she had to learn.

Marika had the most senior's permission to avail herself of the darkship anytime it was not employed upon cloister business. It almost never was. She had it to herself most of the time. So much so that when an occasion for a courier flight did arise, she resented having it taken from her.

She spent as much time aloft as the bath would tolerate.

They did have the right to refuse her if they felt she was using them or herself too hard. But they never did. They understood.

One day, drifting on chill winds a thousand feet above Maksche, Marika noticed a dirigible approaching. She streaked toward it, to the dismay of Grauel and Barlog, and drifted alongside, waving at the freighter's master. He kept swinging away, disturbed by silth attention.

She thought of Bagnel, realized she had not seen him in nearly two months. She had been too engrossed in the darkship.

She followed the frieghter in to the enclave.

She dropped the darkship onto the concrete just yards from Bagnel's office building. Tradermales surrounded her immediately, most of them astonished, many of them armed, but all of them recognizing her as their security chief's strange silth friend.

Bagnel appeared momentarily. "Marika, I swear you'll get yourself shot yet." He ignored the scowls his familiarity won from Grauel and Barlog.

"What's the matter, Bagnel? Another big secret brethren scheme afoot out here?" She taunted him so because she was convinced such schemes did exist. She hoped to garner something from his reactions.

"Marika, what am I going to do with you?"

"Take me up in a Sting. You've been promising for months. Do you have time? Are you too busy?"

"I'm always busy." He scratched his head, eyed her and her huntresses and bath, all hung about with an outrageous assortment of weapons. Marika refused to leave the cloister unarmed, and even there usually carried her rifle. It was her trademark. "But, then, I've always got time for you. Gives me an excuse to get away from my work."

Right, Marika thought. She grew ever more certain that she was his primary occupation. "I've got a better idea than the Sting. You're always taking me up in your ships. Let me take you up on mine."

Grauel and Barlog snapped, "Marika!"

The eldest of the bath protested, "Mistress, you forget yourself. You are speaking to a male." She was scandalized by Marika's use of the familiar even more than by her invitation.

"This male is my friend. This male has ridden a darkship before. He did not defile it then. He will not now. Come on, Bagnel. Do you have the courage?"

Bagnel eyed the darkship. He examined the small platform at the axis, usually shared by Grauel and Barlog. He licked his lips, frightened.

Marika said, "Grauel, Barlog, you stay here. That will give him more room."

The huntresses surveyed the unfriendly male crowd with narrowed eyes. Unconsciously, Barlog unslung her rifle. Grauel asked, "Is that wise, Marika?"

"You'll be all right. Bagnel will be my hostage for your safety. Come on, tradermale. You claim to be the equal of any female. Can you fly with no cushion under your tail and no canopy to keep the wind out of your whiskers?"

Bagnel licked his lips and approached the darkship.

Grauel and Barlog stepped down. Marika suggested, "Use the harness, Bagnel. Don't try to show off the first time. First-timers have been known to get dizzy and fall if they aren't harnessed."

Bagnel was not too proud to harness himself. He did so carefully, under the grim gaze of the leading bath.

They were angry, those old silth. Marika expected them to resist when she tried to take the darkship up, so she lifted off before they were ready, violently, shocking them into assuming their roles for their own safety's sake.

She made a brief flight of it, stretching her capabilities, then brought the darkship down within inches of where it had settled before.

Bagnel unfastened his harness with trembling fingers. He expelled a great breath as he stepped down to the concrete.

"You look a little frayed," Marika teased.

"Do I, now? Ground crew! Prepare the number-two Sting. Come with me, Marika. It's my turn."

Grauel, Barlog, and the bath watched, perplexed, as Bagnel seated Marika in the Sting's rear seat and strapped her in.

"What's this?" Marika asked. She had worn no harness when they had flown in trainers.

"Parachute. In case we have to jump."

Bagnel wriggled into the forward seat, strapped himself in. One of the ground crew spun the ship's airscrew. The engine coughed, caught, belched smoke that stung Marika's eyes and watered her nose. The ground crew jerked the blocks away from the ship's wheels.

The aircraft bucked and roared with a power unlike any Marika had seen in the trainers. Its deep-throated growl swelled, swelled. When Bagnel let off the brakes, the ship raced down the airstrip, jumped into the air, climbed faster than was possible for any darkship.

Bagnel leveled off at one thousand feet. "All right, smart pup. Let's see about your courage."

The Sting tilted, dove. The airstrip swelled, spun. Buildings whirled dizzyingly. "You're getting too close," Marika said.

The ground kept coming up. Slam! It stopped spinning. Slam! Marika's seat pressed into her back hard. Her guts sagged inside her. The ground slid away ahead. The horizon appeared momentarily, then whipped upward as Bagnel dumped another fifty feet of altitude. It reappeared and rotated as Bagnel rolled the aircraft. It seemed she could pluck the frightened growls from the lips of Grauel and Barlog as the ship roared past them.

The great engine grumbled more deeply as Bagnel demanded more of it. Clouds appeared ahead-and slid away as Bagnel took the ship over onto its back. He completed the loop, resumed the climb, reached five thousand feet, and went into a stall. The ship spun and fluttered.

Bagnel turned, said, "I've been meaning to ask you about that business in the Ponath last summer. What happened anyway? I've heard so many different stories ... "

Marika could make no sense of what was happening outside. She clung to her courage by a thread. "Shouldn't you be paying attention to what you're doing?"

"No problem. I thought this would be a chance to talk without those two arfts hanging over your shoulder."

"I ambushed a mob of nomads. It was a tough fight. Hardly anybody got out on either side. That's all there was to it." Her eyes grew wider as the surface drew closer.

"Really? There are so many rumors. I suppose they're exaggerated."

"No doubt." He was digging. Carrying out an inquiry on instructions from his masters, she supposed. The brethren seniors would be getting nervous. They would want to know the Reugge game. That amused her mildly. She did not know the game herself. The most senior kept its strings held close to her heart.

"Looks like time to do something here," Bagnel said. "Unless you'd like to land the hard way?"

"I'd rather not."

"You're a cool one, Marika."

"I'm scared silly. But silth aren't allowed to show fear."

He glanced back, amused, then faced forward intently. He took control. The world stopped rocking and spinning. Then Bagnel went into a hard roll.

Something popped in the right wing. Marika watched a strut tear away, dragging fabric and wire. The ship staggered. The fragment spun behind, whipping at the end of a wire, threatening to pull more wing with it. "I think we might have trouble, Bagnel."

"I think you might be right. Hang on. I'll take us down."

His landing was as stately and smooth as any he had made in a trainer. He brought the wounded ship to a halt just yards from his ground crew, killed the engine. "What did you think, Marika?"

The roar in her ears began to fade. "I think you got even. Let's don't do that to each other anymore."

"Right." He unbuckled, climbed out, and dropped from the lower wing to the concrete. Marika followed. When he finished briefing the ground crew about the strut, he told Marika, "You'd better leave now. My masters won't be happy as it is."

"Why not?"

"You dropped in unannounced. Better give warning from now on. Every time."

Marika glanced at the freighter. She wondered if it really had brought in something the tradermales did not want seen by silth eyes. "All right. Whatever you say. Oh. I wanted to tell you. The most senior says it's all right if you want to visit me at the cloister. If you have time off and have nothing better to do. My time isn't as tight as it once was. I spend most of it learning the darkship. Maybe we could try another flight on one."

News of that permission had scandalized the older sisters. Already they considered her friendship with Bagnel a filthy reflection upon the cloister, a degradation, though there was nothing even a little scandalous in the relationship. When her periodic estrus threatened, Marika was scrupulous about sinter, the self-isolation of silth who had not yet completed the Toghar ceremonies leading to full sisterhood. The pressure remained silent, but it was mounting. Her resistance was becoming more conscious.

III Marika learned to manipulate a darkship as well as any Mistress of the Ship assigned to the Maksche cloister. And she did so in months instead of years.

She was not accepted within the select group of Mistresses, in their separate and sumptuous cloister within a cloister, though they did condescend to speak with her and give her advice when she asked it. No more was she accepted by the bath, who, in their way, formed a subCommunity even more exclusive than that of the Mistresses. They, like everyone else, had become frightened of the talent she showed.

There was nothing more she could learn from them anyway. She told herself she did not hurt for lack of their society. She had become the best again.

She received a summons to Gradwohl's presence. She believed her accomplishments were the reason for it, and felt vindicated in her belief when, after the amenities and obeisances, Gradwohl said, "If you belonged to a major Community, Marika, you would be destined for the big darkships. For the stars. There are moments when I hurt because the Reugge are too small for you. Yet, there is tomorrow."

In private Gradwohl seemed partial to such cryptic remarks. "Tomorrow, mistress?"

"You once asked why we do not build our own darkships anymore. When the brethren announced that they would no longer replace darkships lost by the Reugge, I started looking into that. I located sisters willing to soil their paws on the Community's behalf. I found more of them than I expected. We are not as far gone in sloth and self-importance as one like yourself might think. I have them hidden away now, with a good crew of workers to help them. They have begun to report modest successes. Extracting the titanium is more difficult than we expected.

"But there are several golden-fleet groves within the Reugge territories. Those most immediately threatened by the advancing ice I have ordered harvested. Old shipwrights with the ancient skills promise me that we do not need to be fancy, and that wood can be substituted many places even in the brethren designs.

"So we will no longer be dependent. May a curse fall upon all male houses. If this works out the way I expect, we may even be able to build our own void darkships."

Marika arrayed her face in a carefully neutral expression. Now she understood the additional, intensified silth exercises she had been assigned on her return from the Ponath.

There was little more she could learn from teachers available at Maksche. Indeed, she seemed to have exhausted the Reugge educational resources. Her responsibilities as a councillor took up very little time. She was free to pursue private studies and to expand her silth capacities. Gradwohl insisted she do the latter, feeling she was especially weak in her grasp of the far touch.

The far touch was a talent increasingly rare because the use of telecommunications was so much easier. One side of Marika was lazy enough to want to ignore the talent-just as that lazy side throughout the Reugge Community was responsible for the talent's diminution. She rebelled against that laziness, hammered away at learning. And at times was very amused at herself. She, the outsider, the cynic about silthdom's traditional values, seemed to be the Community's most determined conservator of old ways and skills.

Often she wrestled the question of why Gradwohl wanted her to become the complete silth when what she really wanted was to create a Mistress of the Ship able to darkwar for the Reugge.

In one of her more daring moods, Marika asked the most senior, "Is Bestrei getting old, mistress?"

"You cannot be fooled, can you? Yes. But we all age. And the Serke, knowing how much their power depends upon their capacity for darkwar, have other strong darksiders coming up behind Bestrei."

"Yet you believe I will be able to conquer them."

"In time, pup. In time. Not now. I have never encountered anyone with your ability to walk the dark side. Not even Bestrei herself. And I have met her. But you are far from ready for such a confrontation. The Reugge must survive till you have been tempered, and hardened in your heart, and till we have built ourselves a true voidfaring darkship, and assembled bath who can fare the dark with you."

"So that is why you have been avoiding confrontation when you knew you could force it and probably win the backing of the other Communities."

"Yes. I am playing this game for the biggest stakes imaginable."

Marika put that aside. She said, "I have had an idea for a device I think would be useful. To test it I would need someone from communications to modify one of the receivers for taking signals off the satellite network."

"You are zigging when I am zagging, Marika." Gradwohl appeared mildly baffled.

"I want to try to steal the signals of other sisterhoods, mistress. From what Bagnel has said, doing so should not be difficult. Just a matter of altering one of the receivers so it will accept signals other than our own."

Gradwohl reflected for a moment. "Perhaps. The males would be most incensed if ever they discovered the fact." Like mechanized transport, communications equipment came from the brethren on lease. Only minor repairs were permitted the lessees.

"They will not find out. I will use receivers we took away from the nomads."

"All right. You have my permission. But I suspect you will find it more trouble than it is worth. Any messages of importance will be couched in the secret languages of the Communities sending them. And in code besides, if they are critical. Still, much could be learned from the daily chatter between Serke cloisters."

Marika was more interested in intercepting data returned from tradermale research satellites, but she could not have interested the most senior in that. Gradwohl was an obsessive, interested only in defeating the Serke and augmenting Reugge power. "We might even find out what is so important about the Ponath," Marika said. "If we knew that we might become a more powerful Community simply by possessing the knowledge."

"That is true." Gradwohl did not seem much interested in pursuing the thought, though. Something else was on her mind. Marika had a glum suspicion. Gradwohl said, "Let us get to the point, Marika. To the reason I called you here."

"Yes, mistress?"

"Utiel is about to retire."

"Mistress?" Marika knew what was coming. Utiel was fourth on the Maksche council. Only first chair, or senior, held more real power.

"I want to move you to fourth chair, Marika."

"Thank you, mistress. Though there will be protests from-"

"I can quiet the egos of those passed over, Marika. Or I could if I did in fact move you up. I said I want to move you. I cannot. Not the way things stand."

Marika slipped into her cautious role. "Mistress?" She controlled her emotions rigidly. Fourth chair she wanted badly. It could become her springboard into the future.

"Fourth chair is understudy for third as well as being responsible for cloister security, Marika."

She knew that well. In the security responsibility she saw opportunities that seemed to have evaded those who had held the chair before.

Gradwohl continued, "Third chair is liaison with other cloisters, Marika. A coordinating position. A visible, public position. As fourth, understudying, you would be expected to begin making contacts outside the Maksche cloister. As fourth you would become known to the entire sisterhood as my favorite. As fourth you would be seen to have ambitions beyond Maksche.

"For all those reasons your behavior and record would be subjected to the closest scrutiny by those who hope to place obstacles in your path.

"From fourth chair, Marika, it is only a step to an auditor's seat at conventions of the Reugge seven at TelleRai."

"I understand, mistress."

"I do not think so, Marika."

"Mistress?"

"Never has one so young sat upon the Maksche council. Or any other cloister council, except in legend. But the sisters here accept your age, if grudgingly, because of your demonstrated talent, because of all you have done for the Community, and especially because you have my favor. They can brag about you before sisters from other cloisters. You have helped put a remote cloister upon the map, so to speak. But there are limits to what their pride and my power can force them to swallow."

"Mistress?"

"They would revolt before they permitted you to assume a position in which you would represent this cloister elsewhere, pup."

"You have lost me, mistress."

"I doubt that. I doubt that very much. You know exactly what I am talking about. Don't you? I am talking about Toghar, Marika. You have been eligible for the ceremony since you returned from the Ponath. You have put it off repeatedly, calling upon every excuse you can muster."

"Mistress ... "

"Listen, Marika. I am speaking of roads to the future opened and closed. If you continue to evade the ceremony you will not only not rise any higher than you are now, you will begin to slide. And there will be nothing I can do. Tradition must be observed."

"Mistress, I-"

"Marika, you have many dreams. Some I know, some I infer, and some must be entirely hidden. You are one moved by dreams." The most senior stared at her intently. "Listen, pup. Marika. Your dreams all live or die with that ceremony. No Toghar, no stars. And the darkship will go. We cannot invest so much of the Reugge in one who will not invest of herself in the Community."

She awaited an answer. None came.

"Pay the price, Marika. Demonstrate your dedication. So many smaller, weaker, less dedicated silth have done so before you."

Still Marika did not respond.

She had witnessed the Toghar ceremonies. They were not terrible, just long. But the cost ... The price of acceptance as an adult silth, with full privileges ...

She had no plans to birth pups, ever. She did not wish to be burdened with trivial, homey responsibilities. Yet to surrender the ability to dam them ... it seemed too great a price.

She shook her head. "Mistress, do you have any idea what Grauel would give to possess the ability you are asking me to surrender? What she would do? We came out of the Ponath, mistress. I carry the burden of ten years of living with and accepting those frontier values that-"

"I know that, pup. The entire cloister knows. That is why I am being pressed to push your ceremonies. There are those who hope you will stumble upon that early training."

She had already. When she had released her littermate Kublin. Where was he now? There had been none of the terrible nighmares since that day on the Hainlin. Had she laid some ghosts?

"Make up your mind, Marika. Will you be silth? Or will you be a Ponath huntress?"

"How long do I have, mistress?"

"Not long. There are pressures I cannot resist forever. So make it soon. Very soon."

Smug bitch, Marika thought. She was sure what the decision would be. She thought she had Marika's every emotional end tied to a puppet string.

"But enough of that now, Marika. I also want your thoughts on the rogue situation. Did you hear that there was another factory explosion last night?"

"At another place belonging to someone friendly to us?"

"It was at the tool plant. That pushes the brethren down the list of suspects, does it not?" When she spoke in council, Marika always insisted the brethren were connected with the rogues.

"No."

There had been a series of explosions lately, all of which had damaged meth bonded to the Maksche cloister. One bomb had gone off in a farm barracks during sleeping hours, killing twenty-three male field workers. Rumor blamed disaffected males. As yet there had been no captures of those responsible.

Marika, like everyone else in the cloister, believed the Serke were responsible. But unlike everyone else, she believed the rogues were drawing support from within the tradermale enclave. Were, perhaps, striking from there, and thus remaining unseen.

"There is no such evidence, Marika," the most senior argued. "Males are naturally foolish, I admit, but there are few fools among the Brown Paw Bond-with whom we have had an understanding for centuries."

"There is no evidence because no one is trying to collect it, mistress. Why is it that Utiel cannot catch the males responsible for these explosions? Is she not trying? Or is she just inept? Or could it be that she still does not believe the rogues to present a threat worth taking seriously? Do they have to start throwing bombs over the cloister wall before we take direct action? I have heard that several of the Communities have begun watching us here."

"Do not lecture me, pup. Utiel has tried. She is old and has her faults, I admit, but she has tried. She has been unable to detect them. It is almost as if the rogues have found a way to hide from the touch."

"So must we be so dependent upon our talents? Must we be wholly committed to one method of looking? We cannot assume a reactionary stance and expect to handle this sort of threat."

"You have a better idea?"

"Several. Again, does Utiel take all this seriously enough? I do not believe she does. Old silth grumble about rogues but just go on about their business. They say there are always a few rogues. It is a pestilence that will not quite go away. But this is a disaffection that has been growing for years. As you know. And it is clear that there is organization behind it. Organization and widespread communication. It is worst here in Maksche, but the same shadow falls upon a dozen other Reugge cloisters. I think we would be fools to just try waiting it out. Before long we would be watching the Educans run away when reality closes in."

"You will not forgive her, will you?"

"I lost a lot of meth because of her. If she had not lost her nerve, we could have devoured the nomads and Serke before they knew what hit them."

The most senior looked at her hard. Marika was sure Gradwohl had not swallowed her whole story about what had happened at Critza. But she was equally certain that the most senior did not suspect the truth.

She hoped Kublin had had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

"I would have had her shot, mistress. Before the assembled cloister."

"Perhaps. You think you can do better with the rogues? You think you can handle the security function of fourth chair? Then take charge."

"Mistress?"

"It is fourth chair's responsibility."

"Will you assign me the powers I will need to get the job done?"

"Will you take the Toghar rites?"

"Afterward."

Gradwohl eyed her coldly. "This is your watershed, pup. You had better. There will be no more bargaining. Be silth, or be gone. You can have whatever you need. Try not to walk on too many toes."