The darkship turned till its long arm indicated a piece of sky ahead of the swelling voidship. It began to move, though Marika could tell only because the voidship skewed against the fixed stars. As they approached the shining object, she detected lesser brightnesses moving around it. Closer still. The voidship resolved into something more than a bright glow. Looking over her shoulder, Marika saw that the sun had risen above the edge of the world. The world itself, where it was daytime, was extremely bright—especially at the upper and lower ends of the arc of illumination. The snowfields, she supposed. The cloud cover looked heavier than in any photograph she had seen. A quick query to Kiljar, though, told her that it was a phenomenon of the moment.
It was impossible to discern the shapes of continents and islands. This world looked like no globe she had seen.
Turning to Starstalker, she found that the voidship had swollen into an egg shape. The surrounding sparks had become smaller ships. They looked like none she had seen before. Two were moving away, one of them well ahead of the other. Two were moving in. Another waited idly, matching orbit. Several were nosed up to the voidship like bloodsucking insects. Marika asked no questions for fear her touch would leak over and be detected.
But Kiljar looked as puzzled as was she. Marika felt a leak-over as she touched the Mistress of the Ship. Their approach slowed. Then the Redoriad darkship began to turn away. Marika looked at the Redoriad with her question plain upon her face.
Something is happening here that should not be, Kiljar sent. Those little ships are like nothing I have ever seen, and I have been in space for three decades. They may be in violation of the conventions. Oh-oh. They have noticed us.
Marika felt the questioning touch, felt it recoil in surprise, alarmed because the darkship was not Serke.
The touch returned. Stop. Come here immediately.
Kiljar waved at the Mistress of the Ship. Starstalker began to dwindle.
A spear of fire ripped through the great night, coming from one of the small ships. It touched nothing. Marika had no idea what it was, but felt the deadliness of it. So did the Mistress. She commenced a turn to her left and dove toward the planet.
What is happening? Marika asked.
I do not know. Do not distract me. I am trying to touch the cloister. They must know about this in case we do not survive.
Fright stole into Marika’s throat. She stared back at the dwindling voidship. Another spear of light reached for the Redoriad darkship, came no closer than the last. The Mistress skewed around and took the darkship another direction, like a huntress dodging rifle fire.
Flames bloomed around one end of one of the small ships attendant upon Starstalker. It came after the darkship, its lance of light probing the darkness repeatedly. Behind it another such ship blossomed flame and joined the chase.
Marika nearly panicked. She hadn’t the slightest notion of what was happening, except that it was obvious someone wanted to kill them. For no apparent reason.
Another spear of fire. And this one grazed the pommel end of the dagger that was the darkship. A silent scream filled Marika’s head. The rear bath drifted away, tumbling. She disappeared in the great night, her glow gone.
Kiljar ran along the titanium beam to the spot where the bath had stood. And in her mind, Marika felt, Use that vaunted talent for the dark side, Reugge. Use it!
Marika had begun to get a grip on herself. Down through her loophole she went—and froze, awed.
They were huge out here! Not nearly so numerous as down below, but more vast even than the monsters she sometimes detected above while flying high in the chill upon her saddleship. Bigger than imagination.
Another beam snapped through the dark. The Mistress of the Ship was in the shadow of the planet now, trying to hide as she would from another darkship. But her maneuver proved more liability than asset. The pursuers had vanished into the darkness, too, but seemed able to locate the darkship, and had the muscle to keep after it.
A thousand questions plagued Marika. She shoved them aside. They had to wait. She had to survive before she dared ask them.
She grabbed the nearest ghost. She felt a definite, startled response to her seizure. Then she had it under control and began searching for a target.
A flare from one of the pursuing ships gave her that. She hurled the ghost, marveled at the swift cold way it dispatched the tradermales inside the ship.
Tradermales. That ship was crewed entirely by brethren. It was wholly a machine. Rage filled Marika. She clung to its fire and hurled her ghost toward another flare. Again brethren died.
All the ships around Starstalker were in the chase now, strung out in a long arc back around the planet’s horizon. Only one more seemed to be close enough to reach the darkship with its deadly spear of light. Marika hurled her ghost again.
This time, after she finished its crew, she lingered over the ship’s interior. Within minutes she understood its principles.
She explored its drive system. Brute force supplied by what Bagnel called rocket engines. She used her ghost, compressed to a point, to drill holes in a liquid-oxygen tank, then into another that carried a liquid she did not recognize, but which seemed to be a petroleum derivative.
The rear of the ship exploded.
She did the same to the other two vessels, though the last was difficult, for it was far away. She might die here in the realm of her dreams tonight, but she would make of it an expensive victory for the brethren.
She ducked back into reality to find the planet expanding below and the darkship headed back in a direction opposite that it had been flying when she went down. High above there were flares as brethren ships changed course. Was that good enough, mistress? she asked Kiljar.
More than adequate. A terrible awe informed the Redoriad’s thought. Now let us get down and start raising a stink.
IV
It was not that easy. The tradermales came down after them. They plunged into atmosphere far faster than the Mistress of the Ship dared do. Spears of light ripped past the falling cross. But it fluttered and swayed in the wisps of air, making a difficult target.
Marika went back through her loophole and destroyed another two brethren ships. These proved more difficult. The tradermales were prepared for silth attack, and were very good flyers.
Nevertheless, she took them, blew them, and fragments of them raced past the darkship, beginning to glow.
Then she sensed something coming up from below. Several somethings, in fact, but one something far stronger than the others, rising on a fury like that of something elemental.
She slipped back into reality, saw that the darkship was over TelleRai now, at perhaps 250,000 feet. Kiljar. Darkships are coming up. At least five of them.
I know. I completed touch. The cloister is sending everyone able to come.
But it was not a Redoriad voidship that appeared moments later, shoved past, dropped like a stone, and matched fall. It bore Serke witch signs.
Marika tried to make herself small. She did not have to be told who was riding the tip of that dagger. The power of the silth reeked through the night.
Bestrei.
Bestrei, who was the destiny Gradwohl had determined for her. Bestrei, who could eat her alive right now. Bestrei, who made her feel tiny, vulnerable, without significance.
The darkship continued to fall.
Marika felt a leak of touch as something passed between Kiljar and the champion of the Serke. She was unable to read it. The ship fell, and she unslung her rifle, feeling foolish, doubting she could hit anything in her unsettled state, aware recoil might throw her off the darkship.
Another darkship materialized, coming out of the night below, not so much rising as not falling as fast till Bestrei and the Redoriad darkship caught up. It slid beneath the other darkships and took station on Bestrei’s far side. Marika could not make out its witch signs, but felt it was friendly. Then another slid out of the deeps of night and fell in behind Bestrei.
Marika sen
sed the tension slipping away. Below, the clouds began to have a touch of glow as the lights of TelleRai illuminated them from beneath. She guessed they were below one hundred thousand feet now, falling fast, but not as fast as before. The witch signs aboard her ship had begun to wobble as though in the passage of a high wind. At that altitude the air had be extremely rare, so the ship had to have a great deal of velocity left.
She leaned back to stare at the night above. Starstalker had passed beyond the horizon. The surviving brethren ships had gone with it. No more danger there.
Another Redoriad darkship had appeared, was on station below Bestrei. And now Marika could sense at least a score more darkships in the sky, all closing slowly, trying to match their rapid fall. They had to have come from half a dozen Communities, for none of the dark-faring sisterhoods had so many unoccupied.
Bestrei’s voidship surged forward, out of the pocket formed by the Redoriad, tilted, went down like a comet, outpacing everyone.
We are safe, Kiljar sent.
She did not do anything, Marika responded. Why?
Bestrei may be stupid and vain, but she has a sense of honor, Kiljar returned. She is very old-fashioned. There was nothing in what we did deserving of challenge. She was angry with those who wakened her and sent her up. I think she will cause a stir among her sisters today. They will talk her out of it, of course. They always do. But by then it will not matter. We will be long safe, and you will be on your way back to Maksche.
Puzzled, Marika made a mental note to investigate Bestrei more closely. Did she recognize me?
I think not. I did my best to distract her. It was not wise of you to start waving a rifle. There is no known silth but Marika the Reugge who flies around armed like a voctor.
What now?
Now we return to the cloister. You rest till nightfall, then hasten home. Meanwhile, the Communities will get into a great fuss about what happened. You lie low till you hear from me. There can be no more lessons till less attention is turned toward the void. I think, after this, that the Serke will have great difficulty blocking the convening of a convention. And the brethren themselves will have some long explaining to do once that happens.
We must find out why they are so anxious.
Of course.
The darkship plunged into the clouds, slipped through. Another layer of clouds lay below, lighted more brightly by the city. The Mistress plunged down through it and into the night a few thousand feet above TelleRai.
The entire city was in a state of ferment. Touch scalded the air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I
Marika wakened suddenly, completely, as though by alarm, two hours before sunset. The flight into the void returned. She shuddered. So close. And that Bestrei! The sheer malignant power of the witch!
Something called her from the north. An impulse to be gone, to head home? Now? Why so intense? That was not like her.
The urge grew stronger, almost compulsive.
She completed a rapid toilet and went to her saddleship. She was eager to get back to Braydic. There would have been a great many signals today. Braydic was bound to have intercepted something that would illuminate the behavior of the Serke and brethren. There had to be some outstanding reason for their having been so touchy about having their voidship observed.
She was supposed to wait for darkness, but she could not. The compulsion had grown overwhelming. She told herself that no one would notice one tiny saddleship ripping through the dusk.
As she flitted out the window, she sent a touch seeking Kiljar. Something came back, anxious, but by then Marika had attained full speed and was rushing away north too fast for Kiljar to catch the moving target.
The region of lakes appeared and fell behind. The Topol Cordillera passed below, speckled golden and orange in the fading light. She reached the Hainlin and turned upstream. Seventy miles south of Maksche she passed over a squadron of brethren dirigibles plowing along on a westward course. Seven? Eight? What in the world? The setting sun made great orange fingers of them. Some were as big as the first airship she had ever seen. What did that mean?
Minutes later she began to suspect.
The light of the setting sun painted the westward face of a pillar of smoke that rose in a great tower far ahead, leaning slightly with the breeze, vanishing into high cloud cover. The reverse face of the pillar was almost black, so dense was the smoke. As she drew nearer, she began to pick out the fires feeding it.
Maksche. All Maksche was aflame. That could not be. How?…
She forced her ghosts to stretch themselves, plowed down through thicker air so swiftly it howled around her.
She roared right through the smoke, so shocked she barely maintained sense enough to stay above the taller towers. The cloister was the heart of it. The Reugge bastion had been gutted. The main fires now burned among the factories and tinderbox homes of Reugge bonds.
Meth still scampered around down there, valiantly fighting the flames. They fought in a losing cause. Back over the cloister Marika passed, and saw scores upon scores of bodies scattered in the sooty courts, upon the blackened ramparts. She dropped lower, though the heat remained intense. The stone walls radiated like those of a kiln. She let her touch roam the remains, found nothing living.
She had not expected to find anything. Nothing could have lived through the inferno that raged down there.
Up she went, and across the city, touch-trolling, pain filling her. She hurt as she had not hurt since the day the nomads had crossed the packstead wall and left none but herself and Kublin living. And Grauel and Barlog.
Grauel! Barlog! No! She could not be alone now!
Touch could not find one silth mind.
She heard shooting as she rocketed over the tradermale enclave, certain it had had something to do with the disaster.
She went down, saw tradermales behind boxes and bales and corners of buildings firing at the gatehouse. Rifles barked back at them. Outside the gatehouse lay two dead meth in Reugge livery. Voctors. They had attacked the enclave.
She read the situation instantly. The huntresses were survivors of the holocaust. They had decided to die with honor, storming the source of their grief.
Tradermales in great numbers were closing a circle around the gatehouse. Machine guns yammered away, slowly gnawing at the structure. None of the brethren looked up.
They might not have seen her in the treacherous firelight anyway.
Marika lifted her saddleship a hundred feet, detached one large ghost, and sent it ravening while her conveyance settled toward the runway. By the time the carved legs of the wooden beast touched concrete, the male survivors were in full flight, headed for the one small dirigible cradled across the field.
Marika dismounted, sent the ghost after them. They died swiftly.
The firing from the gatehouse had ceased. Because the huntresses there were dead? Or because they had recognized her? She started that way.
A badly mauled Grauel slipped out a doorway, stood propped against the building. There was blood all over her.
Marika ran to her, threw her arms around her. “Grauel. By the All, what happened? This is insane.”
Weakly, Grauel gasped into her ear, “Last night. During the night. The warlock came. With his rogues. Hundreds of them. He had a machine that neutralized the silth. He attacked the cloister. Some of us decided to break out and circle around. One of the sisters thought they had come in on tradermale dirigibles because a whole flight of airships dropped into the enclave after sunset.”
“Where’s Barlog?”
“Inside. She’s hurt. You’ll have to help her, Marika.”
“Go on. Tell me the rest.” She thought of that westbound squadron she had seen during her passage north. The same? Almost certainly. She had been within a few thousand feet of the warlock, that she had thought an imaginary beast.
“They destroyed the cloister. Surely you saw.”
“I saw.”
“Then they destr
oyed everything that belonged to the Reugge and Brown Paw Bond. The fires got out of control. I think they would have killed everyone in the city just so there would be no witnesses, but the fires drove them off. They left a couple of hours ago, just leaving the one airship load to finish up. I think they may have wanted to search the ruins after the fires died down, too.”
“Come inside. You have to rest.” Marika supported Grauel’s weight. Inside she found most of a dozen huntresses. The majority were dead. Barlog was lying on her side, a froth of blood upon her muzzle. Only one very young voctor was uninjured. She was in a state bordering on hysteria.
Bagnel lay among the casualties. He had been bound and gagged. Marika leapt toward him.
He was not dead either, though he had several bullets in him. He regained consciousness briefly as she pulled the gag from his mouth. He croaked, “ I am sorry, Marika. I did not know what was happening.”
She recalled Grauel saying the raiders had destroyed Brown Paw Bond as well as Reugge properties. “For once I believe you. You are an honorable meth, for a male. We will talk later. I have things to do.” She turned. “Grauel. You’re in charge. Get this pup settled down and have her do what she can. And, Grauel? When I get back I want to find Bagnel healthy. Do you understand?”
“Yes. What are you doing, Marika?”
“I have a score to balance. This is going to become painfully costly for those responsible.”
“You’re going after them?”
“I am.”
“Marika, there were hundreds of them. They had every sort of weapon you can imagine. And they had a machine that can keep silth from walking the dark side.”
“That is of no import, Grauel. I will destroy them anyway. Or they will destroy me. This marks the end of my patience with them. And with anyone who defends them. You tell me the one called the warlock was with them. Did you see him?”
“He was. I saw him from very far away. He did not move far from the airships. We tried very hard to shoot him, but the range was too great. He was very strong, Marika. Stronger than most silth.”