An accusation that would be hard to deny, Marika realized. Anyone who had been trying to help Gibany weather the agony of burning would have realized a tradermale projectile had ended her trial.
Senior Koenic came down soon after Grauel returned with the teas. It seemed an age since she had come back to flesh, but it could not have been more than fifteen minutes. “You did very well this time, pup.” There was a light in the senior’s eyes that baffled Marika. Mixed fear and respect, she supposed.
“Senior… Senior, I think I touched a true silth that time. She was beyond the nomads, hiding, but I am sure she was fully trained and exceptionally strong. And there was an alien flavor about her.”
“Ah! Good news and dark. We may not die in vain. I must relay this to Maksche immediately, before Braydic’s reserve power fails. It is not proof, but it is one more hint that the Serke are moving against us.” She vanished in a swish of dark clothing.
Marika allowed the goyin free run and lay back to sleep. Many hours passed while her body recovered from the drain she had placed upon it. When she finally awakened, she was instantly aware that there was fighting inside the packfast proper. Panicky, she dove through her loophole and explored.
Nomad huntresses had gotten inside, coming around the end of the wall where it had collapsed. More were coming all the time, despite the arrows of Akard’s huntresses and the rifles of the tradermales. Two thousand nomads lay dead upon the snowfields, but still they came, and still they died. They were a force as unstoppable as winter itself.
It was insanity. It was nothing any meth of the upper Ponath could have imagined in her worst nightmare. It was blood-soaked reality.
Most of the day had passed. It was late. If she could turn the attack once more, Akard would have the night to recuperate, to counterattack, to something. Night was the world of the silth….
Grauel and Barlog heard her stirring. They looked in. “Finally coming around?” Barlog asked.
“Yes. You look awful. You need some rest.”
“No. We have to guard this door.” And there was that in Barlog’s stance which said that the guardianship had been tested, though the huntress appeared unwilling to say how.
Grauel said, “There are those now willing to appease the All with the sacrifice of a doomstalker.”
“Oh.”
Just the slightest hint of fear edged Barlog’s voice as she asked, “Is there anything you can do to stop the nomads, Marika? They are inside the packfast now.”
“I was about to do what I can. Try to have me some tea and food here when I come back.”
“It will be here,” Grauel promised.
Marika slipped through her loophole. Desperately, she hunted for an appropriate ghost. And the thing she finally found was a monster, discovered hovering high above the packfast. It never had occurred to her to seek upward before. A set of mind she realized was shared by all the silth she knew. All were surface oriented.
Once she bestrode the monster, she immediately became aware of others, higher still, even more monstrous, but the sensing of them was dim, and they were too strong to control. She stayed with the ghost she had, and rushed it toward the nomad silth.
This time she sensed the control of the silth clearly as she approached. Marika was stronger than she had ever been. She located the strange sister and stole toward her, and took her entirely by surprise.
She pounced. There was an instant of startled “Who are you?” before she ripped the female’s flesh, scattering her heart and blood across an acre of snow.
Marika was appalled. The silth had, almost literally, exploded.
It was a strong ghost.
She savaged the nomad silth as well, slaying several score before she became so body-loose she had to withdraw. She fled to Akard, where her sisters were again slaughtering nomads by the hundreds.
But there were hundreds inside the fortress, unable to flee, and they continued fighting, as cornered huntresses would.
Too many silth sisters had been slain during the attack. Those who survived were hard pressed, even with their powers restored. And, one by one, they were succumbing to exhaustion.
Marika grabbed her flesh before she lost her grip entirely.
Grauel recognized her arrival in flesh, had her sitting up with a cup of sweet tea to her muzzle almost before she recognized her surroundings. “Drink. Did you do well? Is there hope?”
Marika drank. Almost immediately she felt the sugar spreading through her body, giving her a near high. “I did very well. But maybe not enough. Maybe too late. More of that. And chaphe. I will have to go back right away. The others haven’t the strength to hold.”
“Marika….”
“You want a hope? The only hope I saw was for me to strike again. Soon. Closer to the fortress. The way it stands now, silth or no silth, we are destroyed.”
Grauel nodded reluctantly.
“What of Gorry?”
“As vicious as ever. But lately she has been too busy to stir trouble. I think most of those who supported her have been killed in the fighting. So she may be no problem after all.”
Marika downed another long draft. Her limbs were trembling. She knew risking the ghost realm in her state was not wise. But it was necessary. It seemed to be the choice between grave risk and certain death. Also, there was something she had to do….
“Stay with me this time, Grauel. I don’t know you could, but if something seems bad wrong, try to bring me back.”
“All right.”
Marika lay back and closed her eyes. She slipped through her loophole. A glance upward showed her the giant ghost she had used before still hovering over the packfast. She snatched at it, seized it, brought it down amid the ruins of the broken wall.
She spied Gorry almost immediately, surrounded by scores of nomad bodies, exulting in her killing. Gorry, whom she hated above all else in her world. Gorry, who was totally engrossed in her work. Gorry, who was wounded and likely to be struck down by some nomad missile at any moment.
That could not be. No nomad would steal the pleasure of that death.
It was time.
Marika reached, found the point at the base of Gorry’s brain, struck quickly but lightly, paralyzing not only the old silth’s body but her talent. She held Gorry there for a long moment, letting the terror build.
It is time, Gorry. And, Good-bye, Gorry.
She left the paralyzed silth for the nomads. Their imaginations were far more gruesome than hers. She hoped Gorry suffered a long wait in impotent terror.
She hacked, slashed, battered, left a hundred nomads twisted and torn. Then she could stay out no longer. Blackness hovered at the edges of her perception. If she did not get out of the ghost realm soon, she never would.
She slipped into her own present and fell into a sleep of total exhaustion. Her final thought was that she needed food if she were to recover. She had pressed too hard, taken herself too far.
Self-mockery echoed through her fading consciousness. This was the last sleep from which she would never return.
She tried to beg the All to spare her awhile longer. She had one mission yet to perform before she departed the world. The Degnan dead remained unMourned.
III
To Marika’s amazement, she wakened. The hammer of tradermale weapons wakened her. She opened her eyes. She was lying on a pallet in Braydic’s comm room. Grauel sat beside her, a bowl of soup in her paw. Relief flooded her features.
Marika turned her head slowly. It ached terribly. She needed more goyin tea. She saw Bagnel and one of his comrades firing through narrow windows. Huntresses with bows waited behind them, occasionally stepped forward to loose an arrow while the males reloaded. Bombs were falling outside. They did little damage. Occasionally a metal pellet whined through one of the windows. Most of Braydic’s beautiful equipment had been wrecked. All of it was dead. Marika could not feel a specter of the electromagnetic fog.
Barlog knelt beside Grauel. “Are you all right, Marika??
??
“My head aches. I need a double draft of goyin tea.” She then realized it was daylight out. She had slept a long time. “How bad is it? How did I get here?”
“It is very bad, pup.” She presented the tea, which had been prepared. “We are the last.” She gestured. The two tradermales. A dozen huntresses, counting herself and Grauel. Braydic. A dozen worker pups cowering in the nether reaches of the room. “We carried you up when it became clear the nomads would take the underparts of the packstead. Take as little of that tea as you can. You have been drinking too much.”
“The sisters. Where are the sisters?”
“All fallen. All but you. A valiant struggle, I am sure. One the savages will recall for a thousand generations. We will be sung into their legends.”
Grauel exchanged glances with Barlog. “Are you too weak, Marika? You are the last silth. And we need to hold them off awhile longer. Just awhile.”
“Why? What is the point? Akard is fallen.”
Braydic replied, “Because help is coming, pup. From the Maksche cloister. Because of what you discovered about the Serke sister. They want to see the body for themselves. You see? Never abandon hope. You may then be too late to profit from what the All has in store.”
“I killed her,” Marika said. “Gruesomely. They will not find enough left of her to identify.”
“They did not need to know that down there,” Braydic countered. “Shall we turn them away?”
A burst of explosions sounded outside. Marika turned to Grauel and Barlog. “Help is too late once again, eh?”
Barlog looked at her oddly, with a hint of awe. “Perhaps. And perhaps the All is moving through the world.”
Puzzled, Marika glanced at Grauel and surprised the same look there. What were they thinking?
She said, “More food. I am starving. Famished.” When no one moved, she pouted. “Find me something to eat. I can do nothing till I have eaten.” Her body did feel as though she had fasted for days. “Those pups are beginning to look tasty.”
They brought her food. It was dried trail rations of the sort prepared for the summer nomad hunts. Tough as hide. And right then very tasty.
Outside, the racket of the siege continued to rise. Bagnel and his comrade looked ready to collapse. But those two were, for the moment, the only line of defense.
Marika went among the ghosts again, for the last time at Akard. They were few, but not so few as when the nomad silth had been more numerous. And the big dark killer still hovered on high, as though waiting to be used and fed. She called it down.
She ravened among the besiegers, fueling herself with fear and anger and an unquenchable lust for requiting what had been done to the Degnan. She allowed all the hidden shadows, so long repressed, to the fore, and gave them free rein. But she was one silth alone, and the nomads were growing skilled at evading silth attack, at hiding under a mantle of protection extended by their own wild silth, who were in the packfast themselves. Blood ran deep, but Marika feared not deep enough. The savages continued to hammer at the last bastion.
The day proceeded, and despite Marika’s efforts the siege turned worse. One after another, her companions were hit by fire coming through the two windows. There was no place to hide from ricochets. The nomads tried to throw explosives inside, and that she forestalled each time, but each time it distracted her from her effort to destroy the wild silth.
Collapse was moments away. She knew she could hold no longer, that her will did have its limits. And as she faced the absolute, resolute, and unyielding herself, she found that she had only the old regret. There would be no Mourning for the Degnan. And a new. There would be no journey to Maksche, which might have been the next step on her road leading toward the stars.
The hammer of weaponry rose toward the insane. Bagnel dared not return fire, for a swarming buzz of metal now came through the windows. The pellets were chewing Braydic’s machines into chopped metal and glass.
The firing ceased. Bagnel bounced up for a look. Braydic whimpered. “Now they will come.”
Marika nodded. And did something she never did before. She hugged Grauel and Barlog in turn.
Pups of the upper Ponath packs hugged no one but their dams, and that seldom after their first few years.
The two huntresses were touched.
Stray nomad weapons resumed a sporadic fire apparently meant to keep Bagnel away from his window.
Grauel rejoined the tradermale. She was trying to learn to use a rifle. Bagnel’s companion could no longer lift his.
A slumping Marika suddenly went rigid. Her jaw dropped. “Wait! Something….”
Something mighty, something terrible in its power, was roaring toward her up the valley of the Hainlin. For a moment she was paralyzed by her terror of that raging shadow. Then she hurled herself to the one window facing down the river.
She saw three great daggerlike crosses hurtling up the river’s course, above the devastation left by the flood released with the collapse of the dams. They charged into the teeth of the wind, flying like great raptors fifty feet above the surface in an absolutely rigid V formation.
“What are they?” Grauel whispered from Marika’s side.
“I do not know.”
“Looks like meth on them,” Barlog murmured from Marika’s other side.
“I do not know,” Marika said again. She had begun shaking all over. A fierce and dreadful shadow-of-touch rolled ahead of the crosses, boiling with a mindless terror.
A tremendous explosion thundered out behind them. Its force threw the three of them together, against the stone of the wall. Marika gasped for breath. Grauel turned, pointed her rifle. It began to bark counterpoint to Bagnel’s, which was speaking already.
Nomad shapes appeared in the dust boiling around the gap in the wall blown by the charge.
Marika clung to the window and stared out.
The three rushing crosses rose, screaming into the sky, parting.
WARLOCK
BOOK THREE:
MAKSCHE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I
The universe of the touch, the ghost plane into which silth like Marika ducked to work their witchery, had gone mad. Some mighty shadow, terrible in its power, was raging up the valley of the Hainlin River, which this last bastion of the fortress Akard overlooked. For a moment Marika was paralyzed by the power of that shadow. Then she flung herself to a south-facing window.
Three great daggerlike crosses stormed up the frozen river. They drove into the fangs of the wind in a rigid V. That fierce and dreadful shadow-of-touch preceded them, flaying the mind with terror. Upon each cross stood five black-clad silth, one at each tip of each arm, the fifth at the axis. The incessant north wind howled around them and tore at their dark robes. They seemed to notice it not at all.
“They are coming,” Marika shouted to Grauel and Barlog, who crowded her against the windowsill.
An explosion thundered out behind them. It threw them together. Marika gasped for breath. Grauel turned, pointed her rifle. It barked in unison with that of the tradermale Bagnel as savages appeared in the dust swirling in the gap created by the explosion.
Marika clung to the windowsill, looking out, waiting for death.
The rushing crosses rose as they neared Akard, screaming into lightly falling snow, parting. Marika slipped through her loophole into the realm of ghosts and followed them as they plunged toward the attacking nomads, spreading death and terror.
Grauel and Bagnel stopped firing. The nomads had fled the breach. In minutes the entire besieging horde was in full flight. Two of the flying crosses harried the savages northward. The third returned and hovered over the confluence of the forks of the Hainlin, above which Akard brooded on a high headland.
Akard’s pawful of survivors crowded the window, staring in disbelief. Help had come. After so long a wait. In the penultimate moment, help had come.
The cross drifted closer till the tip of its longest arm touched the fortress on the le
vel above the communications center. Marika pushed weariness aside and went to meet her rescuers. She was only fourteen, as yet far from being a full silth sister, but was the senior silth surviving. The only silth surviving. Through eyes hazed with fatigue and reaction, she vaguely recognized the dark figure which came to meet her. It was Zertan, senior of the Reugge Community’s cloister at Maksche.
It looked like she would get to see the great city in the south after all.
A moment after she had fulfilled the necessary ceremonial obsequiences, exhaustion overtook her. She collapsed into the arms of Grauel and Barlog.
Marika wakened after the fading of the light. She found herself perched precariously upon the flying cross. In one hasty glance she saw that she shared the strange craft with the other survivors of Akard. Grauel and Barlog were as near her as they could get—as they always were. Bagnel was next nearest. He rewarded her with a cheerful snarl as her gaze passed over him. Communicator Braydic seemed to be in shock.
The wind seemed almost still as the cross ran with it. To the left and below, the ruins of Bagnel’s home, Critza, appeared. “No bodies anymore,” Marika observed.
In a hard, low voice, Bagnel said, “The nomads feed upon their dead. The grauken rules the Ponath.” The grauken, the monster lying so close beneath the surface of every meth. The archetypal terror of self with which every meth was intimately familiar.
The Maksche senior eyed Bagnel, then Marika from her standing place upon the axis of the cross. She pointed skyward. “It will get worse before it gets better. The grauken may rule the entire world. It comes on us with the age of ice.”
Marika looked skyward, trying to forget the dust cloud that was absorbing her sun’s power and cooling her world. She tried to concentrate on the wonder of the moment, to take joy in being alive, to forget the horror of the past, of losing first the pack with which she had lived her first ten years, then the silth packfast where she had lived and trained the past four. She tried to banish the terror lurking in her future.