Ceremony

CEREMONY

Book Three of The Darkwar Trilogy

by Glen Cook

A Popular Library Edition published by Warner Books, Inc.

Published: February 1986

Cover Art by Barclay Shaw

ISBN: 0-445-20031-6

This 
ePub edition v1.0 by Dead^Man Jan, 2011

Was She Their Savior--Or A Deadly Menace?

Now grown to her full psychic powers as Most Senior of the witchlike silth, Marika made a daring plan: to set solar mirrors in space that would end the Winter of the World, heralding a new age for all.

Then her old enemies, the rogue tradermales, raised up a champion against her, an alien power that threatened to destroy all that she had worked for.

It was to lead Marika to her final battle--one against the forces of nature and the will of her own people. Before its end, she would have to pilot her darkship to touch another world, as she herself faced the final...
Ceremony
.

BOOK FIVE: METAL SUNS

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I

Marika’s darkship was forty miles from TelleRai’s heart when the first sword of fire smote the world.

The flash blinded her briefly. There were more flashes. She did not keep count. The Mistress of the Ship had been blinded, too, and had lost control. The darkship twisted toward the ground.

Marika reached with the touch. Mistress! Get hold of yourself!

Her vision cleared. A quarter mile to her left Kiljar’s darkship fluttered downward, too, but it stabilized soon after she spied it.

Marika felt Kiljar’s touch. The Redoriad second sent, What has happened?

I do not know. The strange weapons you mentioned?

Marika looked back to the city so recently and hastily fled. A grisly glow backlighted the snowclouds. The world within, the ghost world of the touch and dark, was filled with terror and pain, unfocused, diffuse, yet centered upon dying TelleRai.

Marika sent, What should we do, Kiljar?

Go on. We must go on to Ruhaack. Already the touch tells me there is nothing we can do back there.

How bad is it?

Worse than you can imagine. How did you know?

I just felt something bad coming. Premonition. Silth set great store by intuition. Not even that much when we started. I just knew we had to get away from the city. Then when Starstalker rose above the horizon I knew something terrible would happen. And it is not over yet. I feel a great hot wind coming.

The Serke will pay for this.

The Serke did not do this, mistress.

They made it possible. It will be impossible to assemble a true convention now, for a while. Perhaps it is best that way. At the moment you could demand and receive anything.

What happened? Marika demanded again.

Kiljar sent a mental picture of what she imagined TelleRai must look like now, with the fires raging and the mushroom clouds rising. Marika pushed it away, unwilling to believe the disaster she had predicted.

Her Mistress of the Ship appealed for her attention. Mistress? Coming up on Ruhaack.

Go carefully. She shifted touch back to Kiljar. What do you think? Do you sense any perils ahead? I do not.

I sense emptiness within the Serke cloister. I sense death. I do not believe what I sense. No Community has committed kalerhag in centuries.

Kalerhag. Ritual suicide. The Ceremony. The ultimate silth ritual. The one that, at one time, had ended most silth lives.

In the packs of the wild, like that of Marika’s puphood, the very old were put out of the packstead in hard times, after the less useful males and pups. In the sisterhoods of old the aged had retired themselves through kalerhag. And any sister had done so when she felt honor demanded it.

The two darkships moved in on the Serke cloister, losing altitude, slowing, watching it belch smoke that rolled up into the clouds, reminding Marika of Maksche aflame after the perfidious brethren attack there.

No sisterhood has committed kalerhag here, Kiljar sent, correcting herself, more distressed. They took some with them and left the others poisoned.

Marika instructed her Mistress of the Ship to drop lower still, to approach the Serke Ruhaack cloister below the worst of the heat. Inrushing air tugged at her clothing.

It is safe, Kiljar sent. Set down.

Marika had her darkship taken to ground. She stepped off. Her voctor, Grauel, stepped down beside her and stared at the cloister in awe. “What happened, Marika?”

“Kiljar says they poisoned everyone they could not take with them. I suppose the fires were meant to destroy evidence.”

“Evidence? Of what?”

The earth beneath their feet was trembling, groaning, carrying news of the destruction of TelleRai.

“Who knows? Let’s see what we can find.”

As Marika unslung her rifle the hot wind from TelleRai overtook them. Most of its force had been spent, but still it was enough to stagger them. Marika regained her balance. She looked toward TelleRai. “That they could do such a thing,” she snarled into the wind. Then, to her Mistress of the Ship, “Stay here. Remain prepared to lift off.”

The Ruhaack Serke cloister stood at the heart of the city Ruhaack, surrounded by a broad belt of green. That belt was filling with meth. Marika considered the creatures, Serke bonds all. She felt no danger there. They were nothing more than bonds.

Kiljar left her own darkship and joined Marika. “You intend to go inside?”

“If I can.” The cloister gate stood sealed. She ducked through her loophole, caught a small ghost attracted by the disaster, and used it to demolish the gate.

Grauel went in first, behind a short warning burst from her rifle.

There was no one to resist them, silth, voctor, or bond. They found most of the Serke still in their cells, apparently resting peacefully. The stench of death filled the place. Marika could not long stand the sight of dead novices bloating in the heat. She asked Kiljar, “Do you think they did this at all their cloisters? Or just here?”

“Probably just here. This was the beast’s head.”

“Why, Kiljar?” she asked as they retreated through the gate. “Why would they do such a thing?”

“I suspect to sever all ties that might allow us to trace them.”

“But... “

“They are running. All the guilty of the Serke and the brethren. Together. I expect to the world where they found their aliens. I doubt that the Serke wanted to do it this way. They are not as wicked as we have painted them. Imagine the pain they will carry with them into exile. It would not surprise me to learn they had turned on the brethren. Bestrei is simple. She has her concepts of honor. She will demand that a price be paid. When we find them... “

“Find them?” Marika asked.

“You know we will. Someday. I have not seen TelleRai, but I have sensed it. What was done there cannot be forgiven. Ever. The voidpaths will be filled with silth on the hunt.”

“And that explains this, I suppose. The brethren strike on TelleRai compelled the guilty Serke to burn their bridges in kalerhag.”

“Exactly. There is nothing we can accomplish here. I suggest we return to TelleRai. We must join the bonds in Mourning. There will be time to worry about settling scores later.”

Despite her own cold-blooded excesses against the base and rogue males the rebel brethren had used to attack and destroy her cloister in Maksche, Marika was sickened by what she saw in TelleRai. Broad patches of glassy, glowing desert had replaced miles of once proud and beautiful cloisters--including that of her own Community, the Reugge.

Six of the gruesome weapons, whatever they were, had come down upon the great city. One had fallen upon the convention ground where Marika and Kiljar had thought to disarm the villains forever. It had destroyed the highest sisters of scores of Communities. Others had fallen upon the Reugge cloister and the Redoriad. A fourth had fallen upon the Tovand, the headquarters of the brethren. The remaining two weapons seemed to have fallen where they would.

Touch brought the news that the brethren rebel facility in the CuppleIslands had been vaporized too. Another cutting off of backtrails.

Voidships from several dark-faring Communities had lifted in pursuit of the Serke already, but they would not reach orbital altitude in time. Already the great Serke-brethren voidship Starstalker and her convoy of darkships were departing into the great night between the suns.

Kiljar predicted, “We will hear from them again if we do not find and neutralize them first.”

Marika did not believe that required any prophetic vision. “I insist on being trained to walk the void. I want to be there when they are found.”

“It shall be as you wish.”

A cold wind blew out of the north, bringing with it snow that melted as it approached the still hot craters. The winter of the world was a slower enemy, but the fate it bore was as certain. The great glaciers were on the move. Nothing could withstand them.

Nothing? Marika reflected. That was not true. Now she was in a position to do something about the ice age. At last.

II

As years trickled into the well of time it seemed to Marika that her homeworld, and the meth who populated it, drifted backward into their own history, into an era of peace unlike any known since the system had entered the interstellar dust cloud responsible for the cooling cycle. The bonds of brethren who survived the terror after the destruction of TelleRai became extremely conservative and accommodating. They surrendered much of the power they had gained in recent generations and hunted out the heretics among themselves. The vestiges of the Serke Community were absorbed by sisterhoods with claims or were allowed kalerhag. Serke properties became reparations paid to Communities hurt at TelleRai.

The Reugge, with a prior and stronger claim, took the biggest bites. Marika successfully argued her right to claim Serke starworlds for the Reugge, though few of the established dark-faring orders were pleased. Only a tiny fraction of what the Serke had held off-planet, a mere token, those holdings nevertheless legitimized the Reugge as starfarers.

In the early going, while she was trying to take possession of the new holdings, Marika had to borrow voidships and crews from friendly sisterhoods. She had to borrow again in order to properly exploit the new far territories.

“Grauel, alert the darkship crew,” Marika said.

The huntress asked, “Where to now, Marika? How much longer must we live paw to mouth, upon the charity of other sisterhoods?”

“Not long. Not long at all. Where is Barlog? Is she recovered enough to make a journey with us?”

“Try to leave her behind. Where are we going, anyway?”

“To visit Bagnel.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t take that tone. I am indifferent to Kublin.”

“I do not want to call you a liar, Marika. I do understand. Somewhat. I would have difficulty dealing with a littermate myself. Yet he was at the very root of the crimes, one of the chief criminals.”

“He will remain where he is. The rest of his natural life.”

Grauel held her tongue, but it was obvious she did not find the risk of leaving him alive acceptable. Marika let the argument alone. As strength goes. She was most senior of the Reugge. Her word was law. That was enough.

The three bath reported immediately. The Mistress of the Ship delayed a few minutes. Marika was irked by the delay, but said nothing. Mistresses of the Ship were that way, even when they served a most senior. They felt compelled to assert themselves.

She was tempted, briefly, to take the command position herself. She did not get to fly as much as she liked now that she was trying to drag an entire Community out of the despair brought on by the destruction of TelleRai.

The darkship dropped into the landing court of a packfast hidden far to the north, in territories all other meth believed had been abandoned to the ice. Senior Edzeka came out to meet Marika. She did not have much to say. Just another example of the widespread emotional paralysis Marika encountered everywhere.