Ceremony

by Glen Cook

  It was traditional not to enter the Up-and-Over before passing the orbit of Biter, the outer of the major moons. Seldom were the appropriate ghosts numerous enough closer to the planet. Impatient as she was, Marika began seeking those-who-dwell long before the proper time. Her guide refused to allow her to gather them. She pushed the darkship hard till she reached a point where her tutor found the ghost population acceptably dense.

  Marika felt she could have called them to her much earlier, but she did not argue. She had not come to argue. She had come to get a final test over so she could walk the stars alone.

  Sight on the star, the Mistress sent, and Marika fixed her gaze upon the Redoriad star she had chosen as her destination. Gather those-who-dwell. Keep that star firmly fixed in your mind. Do you have them? Star and those-who-dwell?

  I do.

  Make the star grow slowly larger in your mind’s eye. Squeeze those-who-dwell with all the will you have. Let them know that you will not release them till that star has become a sun.

  The horde of ghosts Marika gathered was larger than any she had seen any void-faring Mistress gather before. She did as she was instructed, squeezing down with a mind strong on the dark side.

  The stars around her went out like electric lights suddenly extinguished. For an instant she almost lost the spark that was her destination. She resurrected it in imagination, pounded it into those-who-dwell, who boiled around the darkship, frenzied by the effort she exerted, furious in their effort to escape.

  The spark swelled swiftly in sudden jerks, as though she and the darkship were skipping vast tracts of intermediate void. That star became the size of a new coin.

  Let go! the Mistress sent. Let go now! Marika had become so fixed upon driving toward her destination that she had not thought to release her bearers.

  What did I do wrong?

  You almost hurled us into that star. The Mistress was in a state approaching shock.

  I apologize, Mistress. I was concentrating upon controlling those-who-dwell.

  You did so. You definitely did. Never have I seen a passage made so swiftly, so suddenly. We will see how you manage the return journey. If you are more aware of your destination. If so, I will tell the most senior you are ready to fare on your own.

  You seem distressed, Mistress.

  I have experienced nothing like this. I have encountered no such overwhelming demonstration of power. You hardly needed the bath. She then let it drop, and refused to be drawn forth on the matter again. Feel for the world. You are on the sunward side of its orbit.

  Marika found it, to the left of and slightly beyond the sun. Up-and-Over?

  Carefully. You do not need to set records getting there.

  Marika repeated her performance, though with a gentler touch. How was that, Mistress!

  Less unsettling. But you need to develop a subtler touch. Take the darkship down. The Mistress presented a mind picture of their destination.

  From orbit the planet looked little different from Marika’s homeworld. Less icy, perhaps, but even here, according to her tutor, the interstellar cloud had begun to have its effect. In a few hundred years this world, too, would be gripped by an age of ice.

  As stellar distances go, Marika, we are still very close to home. We see very few stars in our home sky. If we go out in the right direction, so that we pass beyond the cloud, we can see stars by the tens of thousands.

  As Marika watched the world expand and become down, she realized, with a chilly feeling of déjà vu, that she had fulfilled her dream. She had walked among the stars. As a dream it had lost meaning and impact in the pressure of more immediate concerns.

  “Stars beneath my feet,” she whispered.

  The darkship dropped through feeble clouds and turned out over a desert, an environment familiar to Marika only from photographs and tapes. There were no deserts in those parts of her own world that she knew. She realized that she had no broad, eyewitness familiarity with her native planet. She knew only a long, narrow band running from the Rift through the Ponath, Maksche, TelleRai, and on south to Ruhaack. She had seen perhaps a thousandth of her world. And now she was stalking the universe!

  Toward the sun, Marika. Two points to your right. Can you feel it?

  Yes.

  This world felt nothing like her own. It felt incredibly empty, lonely. Her touch rang hollow here, except in one very well-defined direction, sharp as a knife stroke. She pushed the darkship forward, through a wind she found unnaturally warm even at that high altitude.

  Barren mountains rose above the horizon. They were bizarre mountains, naked of vegetation, worn by the wind, each standing free in a forest of stone pillars. Some reached five hundred feet into the air, striated in shades of red and ocher, and each wore a skirt of detritus that climbed halfway up its thighs.

  She found the cloister without further aid from her tutor. It lay atop one of the pillars. It was a rusty brown color, built of blocks of dried mud made on the banks of a trickle of a river running far below.

  Sisters came into the central courtyard as the darkship slowed, hovered. They peered upward. Marika let the darkship settle.

  “Welcome to Kim,” her tutor said once the darkship had grounded. “We will rest for a day before we start back.”

  Marika stepped down onto alien rock, hot rock, under a sun too large and bright, and shuddered. She was here. There. Upon a starworld. The pup who had shivered in the chill wind licking the watchtower at the Degnan packstead and had stared at the nighttime sky, had achieved the impossible dream she had dreamed then.

  She watched Grauel and Barlog dismount, their fur on end, their weapons gripped tightly, their eyes in unceasing flickering motion. They felt the strangeness too. They felt the absence of the background of unconscious touch that existed everywhere at home.

  Marika met Redoriad silth whom she did not remember five minutes later. They asked questions about the homeworld, for their cloister was off the main starpaths and they had little news. She and the Mistress answered, but she paid little heed to them or what she said. She was unable to get over the fact that she had done what she had done.

  Marika did not sleep much during the time set aside for resting. Her curiosity was too strong once the impact of achievement began to lessen. She spent hours learning everything she could about the world.

  That was not much. The silth had little commerce with the natives, who were very primitive and had nothing to offer in trade. The Redoriad maintained the cloister on Kim only as a means of enforcing their claim upon the planet and as an intermediate base from which further starworlds could be explored and exploited.

  II

  The homeworld flashed into. being. Very good, Marika’s tutor sent. Almost perfect this time. You will do, Marika. You will do. You need to study your stars now, so that you can recognize them from any distance and angle. Then you will be ready to roam on your own.

  Do darkships get lost?

  Sometimes. Not so much anymore. The sisterhoods do not do much exploring these days.

  Why not?

  In the early days the voidfarers visited more than ten thousand stars and found little worth finding. There is little out there. Certainly little that can be profitably exploited. Nevertheless, in ten thousand stars there has been enough found that the few silth with the star-faring skill are kept quite busy. It has been a generation since anyone has had time for exploration.

  Except for the Serke.

  Perhaps. They found something, certainly.

  Did they not, though.

  Marika had her next step already planned. A thorough search of everything salvaged from the Serke before their disbandment. Somewhere in the records there might be a clue--though no one had yet found it.

  The homeworld swelled, and with it a feeling of welcome, of returning to where she properly belonged, as the unconscious touch-world of all meth gradually enfolded her. She looked back at Grauel and Barlog, but could not see their faces. She sent a tendril of touch drifting over th
em, found them relaxed, pleased, almost comfortable. Out on the world called Kim they had been nervous and irritable all the time.

  The darkship settled into the court of the new Redoriad cloister. There Marika’s tutor immediately took her leave, heading for Mistress’s quarters without a backward glance. As she rose to go on to her own cloister Marika wondered what new rumors would be spread about her now.

  Hardly had she settled into the Reugge landing court, dismounted, formally thanked her bath, and begun soothing Grauel and Barlong, when Edzeka of Skiljansrode appeared. She hastened toward Marika with a portentious step.

  “Something is wrong,” Grauel said. “Bad wrong. Else she would not have come out of her den.”

  The joy had gone out of Barlog too. “I have an awful feeling, Marika. I do not think I want to hear this. Whatever it may be.”

  “Then go. It is time you took a ceremonial meal with the voctors anyway. Isn’t it?”

  Both huntresses gave her looks that suggested she was mad for saying they should leave her.

  “Edzeka. What are you doing here? You look grim.”

  “A nasty problem, mistress. Very nasty.”

  Marika dismissed everyone else who had gathered around, who took it as a slight. She did not care. Never would she let herself fall into the manners and stylized forms of silth relationships. “Trouble at Skiljansrode?”

  “Major, perhaps, mistress. The prisoner Kublin has escaped.”

  Marika did not permit her feelings to show. “How did this happen? And how long ago?”

  “Shortly after you departed for the stars. Or maybe just before. It is not absolutely certain yet. There is some evidence he chose that moment to move specifically because you would be out of touch. There were copies of intercepts at his workstation mentioning you going out. We have not pinned down his time of escape because it came during his off-hours. When not at his workstation he remained in his cell, even if offered an opportunity to move around.”

  “I see. How did he manage it? Who was lax?”

  “No one was lax, insofar as I could determine. He did it with the talent. There is no other explanation that will accommodate the facts, though not all of them are clear yet. Several voctors were injured or slain, and their injuries are all of the sort caused by one who wields the talent. It was the failure of those voctors to report that alerted us to the fact that something unusual was happening. We first thought someone had gotten in from outside, it making no sense for a prisoner to attempt escape. It was a while before someone noticed he was absent--by which time we did at least know that no one had come in from outside.”

  “A search is being made, of course?”

  “Every darkship we could lift. I myself came here aboard a saddleship so no bath would be wasted on the carrying of a message. I thought you would want this reported directly, without it passing through the paws of anyone else.”

  “Thank you. That was thoughtful. How is the search progressing?”

  “I do not know. I have been here awaiting you. Not well, though, I fear, else someone would have followed to tell me he has been recaptured.”

  “He will be difficult to take if he has been honing wehrlen’s skills all this time.” Already Marika had begun consulting a mental map. These days Skiljansrode lay far up in frozen country. It would be a long walk for anyone, getting from that packfast to country where one could live off the land. Almost impossible even for a skilled nomad huntress accustomed to the ways of the frozen wastes. Due south would be both the shortest and easiest route.

  Edzeka would know that. No point telling her what she knew, or upbraiding her for what could not have been her fault. “How much food did he take out with him? What sort of clothing and equipment? Has that been determined yet?”

  “It had not at the time I left, mistress.”

  “I know him. He would have prepared extensively. He would have made sure he knew all the risks and all the needs he would face. He would have prepared to the limit allowed by his situation. And he would not have moved unless he was convinced his chances were excellent, even with silth hunting him. He is a coward. But he doesn’t make desperate moves. Knowing the fickleness of the All, we would be utter fools to hope the winter would take him for us. What is your method of search?”

  “I positioned three of my darkships twenty miles farther south than I believed he could possibly have traveled, even with the best of luck. The middle darkship I stationed right on top of the base course he is going to have to make. The other two I placed to either paw, at the limits of sight, within strong touch. All three darkships are at one thousand feet. That places a barrier forty miles wide directly across his path. He cannot avoid being seen or sensed without going at least twenty miles out of his way. In that country, in that ice and snow, that would mean at least three days of extra work. That should give winter’s paw a little extra edge.”

  “I like that. Go on.”

  “The other darkships are searching for him or physical evidence of his passage. The wind is blowing hard and there is fresh powder snow, but even so he cannot help leaving a trail.”

  “Very good. Very good indeed. Logically, that should do for him, one way or another. Keep pressing so that he has to keep going out of his way. He will not dare light a fire. His food supply will dwindle. When he becomes weakened and tired he will have more difficulty hiding from the touch.”

  Marika was not confident of that. She ought to claim a favor from Bagnel. His tradermales had tools more useful than silth talents. A few dirigibles prowling the wastes searching with heat detectors might locate Kublin more quickly than any hundred silth.

  “Edzeka. The hard question. What chance that he had help? From inside or out?”

  “From inside, none whatsoever. Any helper would have fled with him, knowing we would truthsay every prisoner left behind. Which we did, without result. And there never have been any friends of the brethren or Serke among the sisters. Help from outside? Maybe. If someone knew he was there and had a means of getting messages to and from him.”

  “A thought only.” Another thought: the means of communication might have existed right inside Kublin’s head. In all the years of isolation he would have had ample time to practice his fartouching. “Nothing came of the truthsaying?”

  “Nothing had as of my departure. Final results will be available upon my return. Had they amounted to anything I am sure I would have heard.”

  “Yes, Well. You may break radio silence if anything critical develops. If you do not have the necessary equipment, requisition it before you leave.”

  “Thank you, mistress.”

  “Have you enjoyed Ruhaack? You ought to get out more.”

  “I have my work, mistress.”

  “Yes, as we all do. Thank you for the report. This bears thought.” Marika extricated herself and hurried toward her apartment, lost in contemplation of what Kublin’s escape might portend.

  If he did make it out, he could become especially troublesome if he did know what had happened to Gradwohl. She could not be certain he had been unconscious throughout their confrontation.

  She had to consult Bagnel. Bagnel knew a little about Kublin. He could judge what Kublin’s escape could mean within the brethren.

  Silth and huntresses who had survived the destruction of Maksche controlled that wing of the Ruhaack cloister where Marika dwelt. They were few, but intensely loyal to Marika, for they knew that she had tried to avenge their injury and knew she had not given up hope of further vengeance. They guarded her interests well. It was something of an amusing paradox. Marika had not been popular at all before the attack on Maksche.

  A sister named Jancatch, who had been but a novice at the time of the Maksche disaster, awaited Marika at the entrance to her cloister within the cloister. Her face was taut. Her ears were down.

  “Trouble?” Marika asked, thinking, what else?

  “Perhaps, mistress. There was an urgent appeal for your presence from Most Senior Kiljar of the Redoriad s
ome hours ago. An almost desperate call. We replied that you could not come because you had not returned from your travels. We were asked to inform you immediately you did arrive, and to ask you to waste no time. No reason was stated, but there are rumors that she is dying.”

  “Kiljar has been dying for most of the time that I have known her. With one breath she predicts that she will not live to see the sun rise again, and with the next vows to outlive all the carrion eaters waiting to grab the Redoriad first chair.”

  “This time I believe that the crisis is genuine, mistress. The Redoriad have called in all their cloister councils and all their high ones who are inside the system. They have closed their gates to ordinary traffic.”

  “Call them back. Speak to Kiljar herself if that is possible. Tell her or them that I have returned. That I am available immediately if necessary. Grauel, Barlog, assemble my saddleship. I will go over right now if that is what she desires.”

  It was. Marika departed within minutes.

  She was not welcomed at the Redoriad cloister. The halls were thick with important silth. One and all, they eyed her with hostility. She ignored them and the growls that came when she was granted immediate entry to Kiljar’s apartment. Even the most powerful of them had not been permitted that.

  III

  Kiljar appeared very near the edge. Her voice was little more than a whisper. She could not lift her head, nor more than slightly stretch her lips in greeting. But she did manage to issue strong orders to her attendants to leave them alone.

  Marika felt a sadness rise within her, a rare sadness, a rare sorrow. Few meth meant much to her, but Kiljar had become one of those few. She took the old silth’s paw. “Mistress?”

  Kiljar called upon her final reserves. “The All calls me, pup. This time there will be no deafening my ears to the summons.”

  “Yes.” One did not hide such a truth from a Kiljar. “My heart is torn.” One should not hide that truth either.

  “It has been good to me, Marika. It gave me more years that I expected or had the right to hope. I hope I have used them as well as I believe I have.”