Ceremony

by Glen Cook

  Ready?

  Her crew responded affirmatively. Some even seemed eager to fling themselves into the jaws of the All. There were no doubts in their minds. They would die here, heroically, or later, if vanquished but unslain, in some grand and foolish ceremony.

  Marika hurled ghosts wherever aircraft were approaching, scattering wreckage over land and sea. Then she climbed rapidly, calling on her backup to assume the Mistress’s duties again.

  She stretched herself to the system’s bounds, searching for her old dark ally. The great black fought her angrily. She refused to acknowledge its desire to be left alone. She dragged it toward her.

  Then she opened to the battle.

  It was even no longer. Henahpla had been slain. Cherish had but two bath remaining and could not manage her black while struggling to control her voidship. Several fainthearts had fled for the derelict.

  The outcome was no longer in doubt if one were silth enough to read it.

  Starstalker began guiding alien warships to intercept Marika.

  She whipped the great black in on the Serke voidship. They shrieked and jumped away, but not without having smelled the rotton breath of death. Not distracted by having to manage the darkship, Marika kept watch. She hurled the black the instant she sensed Starstalker returning from the Up-and-Over. Again she got her blow in. Then again, and again, and the fifth time Starstalker did not gather ghosts fast enough to escape.

  Marika brushed the Serke voidship once more to make sure it would not recover, then let be. Let them think, and worry, and wonder if their allies would save them or let them die, adrift a few thousand miles from the homeworld they had come so close to recapturing.

  The warships above were sniping at the wooden darkship, though Cherish valiantly strove to distract them. Rather than assume control of the darkship, Marika began flinging the great black among those who awaited her. Her hammer blows caught them off guard. In minutes they began to scatter.

  Despite the evidence that the struggle would end in their favor, alien ships began leaving the inner orbits. A quick scan told Marika they were removing their jump ships from danger. The riderships would have to carry the brunt.

  She might die here. She might be defeated. But already she had won a great victory for Commander Jackson’s people. If they took advantage.

  She reached orbital altitude despite all that could be thrown her way, though she lost two bath and had to resume control of the voidship before she wanted. She clawed her way into the shadow of one of the smaller moons, dodged from it to another farther out, part of her mind wielding the great black, part seeking ghosts with which to take the Up-and-Over. She wanted to get into open space now, to steal maneuvering room.

  Ghosts were scarce. Most of the surviving Mistresses had fled, stripping the surrounding void. She would have to wait till more drifted in.

  She pranced around the little moons, among the wrecks of alien ships, at times pretending to be debris. She sent a dozen ridership crews to whatever those creatures recognized as their maker. Always she inched away from the homeworld. Always the All stalked with her, though she was so weary she thought she would collapse any moment.

  Cherish died, her soul parting from her flesh with a last scream of touch encouraging Marika to fly away, to regain the derelict and thence mount another offensive. There were a few Mistresses among the stars, wandering. She could bring them in, train them to the great blacks, and finish the massacre begun here.

  Marika returned a gentle, thankful touch as Cherish melded into the All. There was one silth who, like herself, never yielded.

  She gathered ghosts.

  She was alone in the home system, the only darkship still in action. The aliens were closing in. Even those vessels that had withdrawn were returning to taste the kill.

  She threw the great black one last time, then jumped, dragging the monster with her a hundred million miles outward.

  She waited.

  They did not come. They had lost touch.

  She had the senior bath pass the golden liquid again. And then she jumped inward again, dropping not four miles from Starstalker and a bevy of small alien attendants.

  Good-bye, old witches. Old enemies. You lose again. She loosed the great black and took pleasure in the screams of the dying till enemy fire came so near one of her bath complained of scorched fur.

  She skipped into the Up-and-Over, reversing the route she had used to approach the homeworld.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  I

  For all good news there must be bad, for all good fortune balancing evil. That which Marika garnered a week after fighting her way free of the homeworld was the worst.

  Alien warships had beaten her to the derelict. A Main Battle was there, with riderships deployed, and it was evident that several Mistresses had stumbled in to their deaths already.

  Tired of fighting, of killing, of struggling on when there seemed no end to the struggle, Marika nevertheless jumped in, leaving the Up-and-Over so near the derelict the aliens remained ignorant of her advent.

  The starship had been pounded into scrap, as had the starships belonging to Jackson’s expedition. Nothing lived except on the planet below. Marika reached with the touch and found a few silth, but no starfarers. All those had been driven away.

  She drew the system’s great black, disposed of the crew of the Main Battle, then took the Up-and-Over while the riderships bustled about in panic. She jumped to another world and found another alien waiting there, fully alert. She departed rather than fight. She needed rest.

  A second and third world proved equally perilous. The supply of golden liquid was getting low. And her bath had been exposed to space too long. She had to get down.

  There was but one place left to flee, a world Henahpla had discovered, hidden on the far side of the cloud. She had designated it as a last hiding place if ever she were ousted from the derelict.

  Could she survive so long a passage?

  She made it, barely, but had to be aided down to the surface by the few silth who had reached the world already. She collapsed once she was down, was only vaguely aware of the chatter of silth afraid she would be lost to them.

  She wakened occasionally, took a bit of broth. She suffered spates of delirium in which she believed she was arguing with Grauel, Barlog, Bagnel, Gradwohl, Kiljar, or even Kublin. She believed she was delirious when she overheard the ongoing argument polarizing the makeshift encampment.

  Once she staggered from her shelter and tongue-lashed the Mistresses and bath, damning them for yielding to despair, but they did not understand her tangled Ponath dialect. She collapsed before she could make them understand. They restored her to her pallet and resumed their defeatist chatter.

  Later, a Mistress came to inform her that another two darkships had come in. She observed, “I think you are suffering from more than exhaustion, mistress. A pity we have no healer sister.”

  Marika tried to rise. “I cannot be sick. I do not have time.”

  The Mistress pushed her back down. “A tired body is fertile for disease, mistress. Rest.”

  “I have never been sick. Not a day.”

  “Good. You have a strong soul. You will recover more quickly.”

  Perhaps. And perhaps her malaise was all of the soul, she thought. Lying there, she had too much time to reflect. Jiana. How she had bristled at that label in younger years. But how right they had been. They had smelled the stench of death in her fur. She could deny it no longer. Doom had come irrespective of her conviction.

  Even now she fought confession. But how could she deny truth? She had been the heart of it all along, and her backtrail was strewn with bones and ruined cities. Yea, with ruined planets.

  She should have perished in the Ponath with the rest of the Degnan pack. Grauel and Barlog should have abandoned her when first she had offended them with her wickedness. She should not have been born. She or Kublin.

  The debate among the sisters continued without respite, swinging s
ometimes this way, sometimes that, toward resumption of the struggle against the alien invaders, or away. Marika charged into the lists in a rare lucid moment, after days of introspection.

  “It is too late for our kind. We are obsolete. The doom of silthdom was sealed when first the Serke encountered the alien. We can struggle on but gain nothing, like the Serke themselves after they were found out. We are what? Eight darkships? Nine? Can so few turn the tide? Of course not. Why even try? We are not wanted at home. Time has passed us by. The race have turned their backs upon us. We are orphaned and exiled.”

  They heard her without interrupting, as befitted a most senior. Their deference irked her. She was not deserving. “Do you understand? We are silth. Silth have no tomorrows. If we live, we leave no legacy. The homeworld and colonies are lost to us. We cannot breed. We cannot recruit. We are the last of our kind. Understand that. The last. Representatives of the end of an age. If we continue the struggle we will serve no one well, silth or the race. In the broader view of the race, we can do nothing but harm. We must let the race go. Let them learn the new ways of rogue and alien. We must not torture them further, for they will need every hope to survive.”

  Marika settled to the barren, rocky earth of the campsite, her energy expended.

  Not one sister spoke in opposition, though in a strictly silth context her remarks amounted to heresy. She took a series of deep, relaxing breaths.

  “Good, then. Let us examine our position. I doubt we will find we have supplies enough to last long. Decisions will have to be made around that fact. I have a task for a volunteer. A darkship will have to sneak back to the homeworld, to the edge of touch, to carry the news that Jiana will lead till the end.”

  Still no sister spoke.

  “We have all been doomstalkers,” Marika suggested. “Making tomorrow by fighting it. Come, sisters. Let us see what supplies we have and can recover.”

  They began to murmur as they worked, questioning her sanity. Those who had argued against going on had, perhaps, counted on her to overrule them. Now they wondered what had become of Marika the tireless, the unyielding, the savage, feral silth who had grown up to become the very symbol of conservative silthdom.

  II

  The date Marika chose was an anniversary of that on which the nomads had stormed the palisade of the Degnan packstead for the final time. So many years ago. Her silth life had been hard, but life would have been much harder even in a peaceful Ponath. She would not have lived this long had she not been driven forth.

  The place Marika chose lay on the far side of the dust cloud, facing the banks of stars she had hoped one day to explore. She viewed those silvery reefs and shivered with lonely sorrow. So much missed because she was Marika. Talent was more curse than gift. Only lesser Mistresses had won free and had gone thither in stalk of wonder.

  That vast starscape recalled Bagnel and shared dreams, and things that never were, and thoughts of Bagnel stirred other sorrows. She did not want to face those now. Not at a time like this. She would face Bagnel soon enough.

  Come together.

  One by one, nineteen voidships drifted together, till each dagger tip floated just feet from Marika. A thistle head of darkships. Their refurbished and polished witch signs glittered in the light of massed stars. And not a one present but by choice.

  Nineteen voidships. Certainly all that still existed. Marika had gathered them for months. Not one voidship remained unaccounted for. But for a scatter of ground-bound silth in hiding among the turbulent underclasses, these constituted all surviving silthdom.

  Jiana. Jiana indeed.

  A short distance away a silvery speck glistened as it shifted slightly. It was a captured messenger drone, reprogrammed. It was observing. Recording, for the posterity of a race about to enter upon an entirely new age. Marika wanted this hour remembered.

  The drone would carry its tale to the homeworld. Marika supposed the few surviving rogues would cheer when they deciphered its message.

  Thistledown adrift among the stars. She was afraid. All the sisters were. But it was too late to turn back. It had been designed that way. There could be no changes of heart. The golden fluid was gone.

  Let she who knows the song begin to sing. Let the All harken. The final ritual is begun.

  For all the talk, for so long, not one of the sisters had known the Ceremony entire. It had been that long since its formal usage. But snippets gathered from the memories of nineteen crews had been enough to restore it.

  Marika made her responses abstractedly, contributing to a growing envelope of touch that softened the fear. In a way it reminded her of her Toghar, the ceremony by which she had achieved her official entry into adult silthhood.

  Kalerhag. The Ceremony. The most ancient rite, dating back to prehistory. It could be and could mean so many things. This time, stepping aside to make way for the new and the young, the oldest of its functions.

  Not the end she had foreseen. But now, surely, the best thing for the race, sending the old ways out in honor rather than hanging on and hanging on the way the Serke had done, working only evil. Let the new way have the full use of its energies. It would need them to deal with these rogue aliens, and with Commander Jackson’s people, who were sure to come hunting their enemies.

  As peace enveloped her, Marika found she could wish her successors the best of luck. Anger and hatred went with the fear, and she found she could forgive them most of their wickedness.

  Momentarily, she wondered if Kublin had settled into the same frame of mind in his final minutes.

  The golden glow surrounding the sisters began to fray. Their fur stirred in the breath of the All. The darkness closed in. Marika, whelped of Skiljan, a savage huntress of the upper Ponath, possibly the strongest and greatest silth ever to have lived, faded quietly into the All, her battles finally done. Her last thought was a curiosity as to whether or not she would find Bagnel waiting on the other side.

  III

  Courier departs.

  Nineteen darkships drift on the edge of the cloud, very, very slowly separating. They are lost, but they will not be forgotten. They will become legend. And the legend says that Marika did not die at all, that she is only sleeping, and that when the race of meth have fallen into their darkest hour she will come out of the great void with her witch signs shining, her bloodfeud dyes fresh, and her old rifle newly oiled. And the enemies of the meth will be swept away before her.

  So ends an ancient age.