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  III

  The initial fury of the hunt for the fugitive Serke and brethren faded, but the search never ceased entirely. Nor did it enjoy any success. The villains had vanished as though they had never been, and surviving members of the Serke Community could provide no hints as to where they had gone.

  Contrary to her announced intentions, Marika did not immediately step down as most senior of the Reugge Community. She claimed that was because there was no one qualified to replace her. All the Reugge ruling council excepting herself had been in TelleRai when death fell from the sky. So she remained on till she was confident that the order was no longer in disarray, by which she meant till it was made over to her own specifications. She sorted through the ruling councils of the surviving cloisters, identifying and elevating sisters whose philosophies mirrored her own.

  In time she did yield first chair, to a silth named Bel-Keneke. Bel-Keneke hailed from a frontier province as remote as the Ponath. Her attitudes were very much like Marika’s, though she was nowhere near as strong in the talents.

  Marika collected Grauel and Barlog and retreated to the secret darkship factory in the snow wastes, there to continue interrupted studies and to pursue her slightly paranoid watch on signals traffic.

  At first Marika came out of hiding regularly, to study with Kiljar, to fly with Bagnel, as had been their custom for years, except when broader events interrupted them. She learned to handle a voidship with the best of the starfaring Mistresses of the Ship, though she never actually pursued her dream and traveled to any of the starworlds. She did not, in fact, go much beyond the orbits of the two larger moons, Biter and Chaser.

  Once she had become proficient with the voidships her ventures out of isolation became even more infrequent, then not at all.

  She fell out of the public eye for nearly three years.

  The permanent snowline crept southward steadily till it reached the remains of TelleRai. The land of Marika’s birth lay buried beneath a hundred feet of ice and snow. The ruins of Maksche were little more than lines beneath a cloak of white.

  Hunger stalked the world for all the effort of the silth to care for their bonds, for all the abnormal cooperation that developed between disaster-besieged sisterhoods. Too many meth were being compressed into too little territory.

  The population of the meth homeworld had never been large, but neither was much of its surface developed agriculturally. Development efforts started after the destruction of TelleRai were too little, too late. Land could not be brought into production quickly enough to support the shifting populace.

  Marika watched from isolation. In time she lost patience with the efforts of others.

  “Grauel, send word up to have my darkship prepared. Find Barlog. Arm yourselves.”

  Surprised, Grauel asked, “What are we doing, Marika?”

  “We’re going out. It is time I stopped waiting for others to do something. No one seems inclined to act.”

  “Really?” It had been three years since Grauel had been out of the fortress, which Marika had renamed Skiljansrode in honor of her dam, and which she had made over into an independent packfast populated by refugees, fugitives, and malcontents from a dozen sisterhoods. Viewed from a traditional silth perspective, Skiljansrode could be considered the germ of a new Community.

  Marika never thought of breaking away from the Reugge.

  Other silth contemptuously called those of Skiljansrode the brother-sisters because they worked with their paws. The principal product of the fortress remained darkships, but other, more technical items went out as well, increasingly in competition with the brethren. Most of the meth at Skiljansrode were curiosities like Marika herself, little interested in the fashions and forms of silthdom.

  “Really, Grauel. Really. Have Kloreb message the cloister at Ruhaack that we’ll be coming. I will want our quarters warmed. I will want a précis of the current political climate prepared. And I will want Kiljar of the Redoriad told that I will be in Ruhaack and that I would like an audience.”

  “Is something afoot, Marika?”

  “In a sense. It’s time we tried to do something about reversing the winter of the world.”

  Grauel looked at her long and hard. Finally she said, “Not even you have the witchcraft to make the sun burn hotter.”

  “No, but there are ways. What do you think I have been working on all this time? It can be done. I think the brethren knew that in the old days. Had they won, they might have taken steps. I suspect many of them know what to do even now, but they allow the long winter to go on because it weakens us.”

  “I believe you when you say... It’s just... “

  “Just?”

  “I haven’t been out of here for so long. I find I am very uncomfortable when you talk about going.”

  “I’m uncomfortable too, Grauel. And that is a sign that we have sat still too long. We have allowed ourselves to become sedentary. We have become like our dams. We have reverted to being the pack meth we once were. I think we’re overdue to reenter the active world.”

  “Shall I have Bagnel messaged as well?”

  “That can wait till after we reach Ruhaack.”

  In the past three years Bagnel had risen high among the brethren. Marika found she was excited about seeing him again. More excited than she was by any other prospect, including the possibility that she would mount a voidship again, and this time maybe actually fly off in pursuit of her dreams. After, of course, she had won the struggle to get a program started to reverse the long winter.

  How many more years might that take?

  She knew the exact cause of her excitement. She examined it with sardonic self-mockery.

  Toghar ceremonies or not, she was female. And she was into a female’s prime pupbearing years. Some hormones were produced despite Toghar.

  “Not a distraction I need,” she murmured to herself. There were silth who assuaged that natural need, who enjoyed a sort of false esterus, using male bonds. Marika refused. She considered that degraded, despicable, even perverted. She forced the need out of mind.

  “Go on, Grauel.”

  She paced after the huntress departed, concerned that she had been gone from the world too long, that it might have passed her by during her three-year sabbatical.

  Chapter Thirty

  I

  Ruhaack had become the site of the new dam cloisters of several Communities bombed out of TelleRai. The city was a welter of construction. TelleRai itself had been abandoned. It was no longer healthy.

  The Reugge had been awarded possession of the former Serke cloister. The reconstruction and refurbishing begun during Marika’s administration were finished. The Reugge Community was back to business as usual--as much as it could be.

  The Redoriad were building their new main cloister in one of Ruhaack’s satellites. Construction was far advanced from what it had been at the time of Marika’s last visit.

  Though Marika had departed the immediate equation, the two orders remained closely allied. For a time, soon after the bombs, there had been talk of a merger. The main talkers had been Marika’s enemies, who wished to keep her from taking control. Nothing had come of it. Marika’s supporters and other conservatives within both Communities had scuttled the proposal.

  The same conservatives supported the alliance, though. It had proved of great benefit to both orders. The Reugge, particularly, were now considered a force to be reckoned with in everything.

  Marika nervously stalked around a hastily prepared apartment. Kiljar, now most senior of the Redoriad, was coming to see her. She felt like a pup again, as unsure of herself as she had been when first she had arrived at Akard.

  “I shouldn’t have locked myself up in Skiljansrode,” she told Barlog. “Not so thoroughly. I’ve lost something.”

  Grauel entered. She looked sour. “Bagnel the tradermale is here, Marika.” Which explained that. Grauel never had approved of Bagnel. “And the Redoriad say that mistress Kiljar has departed the Redoriad cloist
er.”

  “Good. Good. What of Bel-Keneke?”

  “She will be here soon, I think more out of curiosity than because you implied that you were about to call in her debt to you.”

  “Fine.”

  Both huntresses considered her. She continued to pace.

  “I spent too long in the safety and nonpressure of Skiljansrode,” she explained again. “I have lost my edge. I am not comfortable being Marika. The weapons... I feel almost silly carrying them. But they were our sigil. Going around armed, making dramatic gestures. We are too old. I’m almost ready to become one of the Wise.”

  Grauel snorted. “Maybe in another twenty years. You’re still hardly more than a pup.” She spoke thus in defense of herself. She was much older than Marika, but she was not ready to lay down her huntress’s role.

  Barlog said, “I think I understand, Marika. When I am out in the cloister I too get the feeling that the world has left me behind.”

  Grauel agreed. “I encountered young voctors who didn’t know who we are. Or were, perhaps I should say. Not that we were ever that famous. But there was a time when our being Marika’s bodyguards meant a lot more than it does now.”

  “It slips away,” Marika said.

  “It hasn’t been that long, Marika.”

  Bagnel arrived first. A group of baffled novices delivered him to Marika’s door. A male in the cloister? Impossible. They were scandalized. They had heard stories about the bizarre doings of this silth called Marika, but had not believed them before this.

  Marika was amused.

  “Well,” Bagnel said as the door closed behind him. “The living legend herself. Where have you been, Marika? We agreed to fly together at least once a month. One day there wasn’t any more Marika. No message. No excuse. No apology. Nothing for years. Then out of nowhere a typically peremptory summons. And here I am, though I should have requited indifference with indifference.”

  It took Marika a moment to realize he was teasing, that he was glad to see her. “You’re looking a little gray around the fringes, Bagnel.”

  “I have not had the privilege of taking an extended sabbatical. My brethren would gray the fur of a statue.” He looked troubled.

  “What is it?”

  He glanced at Grauel and Barlog, as always disturbed by their presence. “Are they immortal?”

  “They are as safe as ever, my friend. The Redoriad will join us presently, though I do not expect her immediately. Most Senior Bel-Keneke will wait till Kiljar has arrived before she makes her own entrance.” She did not add that the room itself was safe, for she, Grauel, and Barlog had made independent sweeps in search of the sort of listening devices Marika herself had once used habitually.

  “Nothing really remarkable. Just the persistent element that wishes the sisterhoods ill. It has been growing stronger recently. Nothing to be concerned about, mind you. Just aggravation enough to keep me on edge.”

  Marika considered him closely. “There’s more than that, isn’t there?”

  “You read me better than ever. Yes. I have found evidence that those who fled have not broken entirely their ties to their homeworld. Evidence that they are in contact with those who are driving me gray.”

  “What?” A tendril of fright touched Marika. “How can that be?”

  “It is easy enough. It is not difficult at all to slip a darkship through to the surface, to some remote rendezvous. Especially when I have no advance warning.”

  “Then it isn’t over.”

  “It never was. You knew that. The Serke just fled to a safe place. I suspect their overall goals had to change somewhat once they were driven off the homeworld, simply by force of circumstance, but there was no reason for them to give up trying to seize control of everything.”

  Marika paced, mused, wondered that the Serke had gotten so entangled in a brethren scheme that they had allowed themselves to become the tools of their own destruction.

  Bagnel added, “Unfortunately, nobody takes the threat seriously anymore. They have been quiet, so are forgotten. Nobody even hunts them now, except as a convenient side flight on a trip to the starworlds. But if they were hiding anywhere convenient they would have been found already.”

  “They aren’t strong enough to try a comeback,” Marika said. “Even with help from their supposed aliens.”

  “You think not?”

  “If they were, they would have tried. Right? They have not. Therefore they are not.”

  “Irrefutable logic.”

  “Smart, Bagnel. I suspect they have no support from any alien--if one even exists. If one does, that relationship must be less intimate than we once thought. In my reflections I have begun to suspect that they may have no direct contact at all.”

  Bagnel looked startled.

  “Yes?” Marika asked.

  “You continue to amaze me.”

  “How have I managed that now?”

  “You just struck close to the picture we have developed by questioning prisoners and others who may be in the know one way or another. What seems to have happened is that they did make a contact, but they could not deal with the alien because the alien was alien--though from other things we have learned they don’t seem that alien. If you are following this.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Apparently being unable to deal with the alien, they stole, possibly by killing the alien and appropriating everything that belonged to them. So it’s possible they’re hiding from the alien race too.”

  “If you are going to go rogue, why do it halfway?” Grauel asked. “Marika, mistress Kiljar is about to arrive. I hear the novices shuffling in the hallway.”

  “We’ll talk more later, Bagnel. I’m happy to see you have become so important among the brethren. I cannot think of anyone more deserving.”

  Bagnel snorted derisively.

  II

  Kiljar, too, had aged, but she had been old when Marika had seen her last. She was shocked by what time had done to the Redoriad. Kiljar had lost large patches of fur, and what remained was mostly gray or white. She had lost a lot of weight, too, and begun to stoop, but her eyes remained brightly intelligent.

  More than age, long-term ill health had diminished the Redoriad most senior. She had to walk with the aid of a cane. One side of her body was partially paralyzed. She responded to Marika’s horrified glance with a lopsided expression of amusement. “A stroke,” she explained, slurring her words. “Weakened the flesh but did nothing to the mind. I am recovering slowly.”

  “Could the healer sisters not...?”

  “They assure me there is nothing more they can do without killing me. That seems too heroic a measure to effect a cure.”

  “At least you have been able to take it in good part.”

  “The hell I have. I resent it. It angers me so much I go into howling rages against the All. They think me quite mad at the Redoriad cloister. But none have yet found the courage to try ousting me from first chair. They think I am dying anyway. They spend their time trying to outmaneuver one another so as to stand at the head of the pack when I go. But I am going to disappoint them. I am going to outlive them all. You look good, Marika. I suspect that a few years beyond the edge of the world were just what you needed. You seem less driven, less saddled by doom.”

  Marika looked at her sharply, surprised that Kiljar read her so easily.

  She suspected one unconscious reason she had isolated herself was because of self-doubt, an inclination, following the destruction of TelleRai, to credit those sisters who called her Jiana and doomstalker. Four sequential destructions of the place she called home, with those who dwelt there, was enough to make anyone ask questions.

  “The most senior is approaching, Marika,” Barlog said from the doorway.

  “Leave it open. Sit somewhere.” Barlog still had difficulty getting around, all these years after recovering from the wounds she had suffered at Maksche.

  We have all been injured and left crippled, Marika thought. In the heart if no
t in the flesh.

  Bel-Keneke arrived. Marika reached back in time to find greetings appropriate to a most senior of the Reugge. There had been no formalities, no ceremonials, no obsequies, observed at Skiljansrode. Marika held them in contempt because she considered most of them unearned.

  Bel-Keneke, too, had changed, though now she seemed more secure in her role than when last Marika had seen her. “You can dispense with the ceremonials, Marika. I know they do not come from the heart. You are looking well.” She ignored Bagnel and merely nodded to Kiljar. “You should be seen here more, Marika. There are times when we could use your slant on the world.”

  “I will be seen more,” Marika said. “That is why I have come back.”

  “Direct as always. So. We are all here. Let us get to it. Tell us about the grand project you want to attempt.”

  Marika prowled while Bel-Keneke seated herself. Barlog, in the background, in her customary array of weapons, looked increasingly uncomfortable. Marika gestured for her to sit, as she had directed earlier.

  She did not sit herself. She could not. She was about to broach the result of many years of thought and felt shy about doing so. It was not the usual sort of Marika idea, full of fire and blood and doom for enemies of the Reugge. She was afraid for its reception.

  She moved to the center of the room and stood there with her guests watching from three directions. She ordered her thoughts, ran through calming mental exercises. Finally she attacked it. “I have an idea for stemming the snow and cold.”

  “What?” That was Bel-Keneke, who was least accustomed to Marika’s ways. But the others looked at her askance.

  “A major engineering project that might allow us to turn back the ice.”

  “Major?” Bagnel murmured. “You have a gift for understatement, Marika.”

  Kiljar said, “If you managed that you would be immortalized with... “

  “It is not possible,” Bel-Keneke said. “You are talking about halting a process of such a magnitude that... “

  Bagnel added, “Perhaps we ought to hear her idea before we tell her it is impossible.”