Doomstalker (20 page)

“What spirits?”

Grauel looked at her oddly. “Surely you know that much? Else how did you hurt your instructress?”

“I just got angry and wished her heart would stop,” Marika said, editing the truth. Her voice trailed off toward the end. She realized what she was doing. She recalled all those instances when she thought she was seeing ghosts. Were those the spirits the silth commanded? “Why are they interested in me?”

“They say you have the silth’s secret eye. They say you can reach into the spirit world and shape it.”

“Why would they take me even if that were true?”

“Surely by now you know that sisterhoods are not packs, Marika. Have you seen any males in the packfast? No. They must find their young outside. In the Ponath the packsteads are supposed to bring their young of five or six to the assizes, where the silth examine them and claim any touched by the silth talent. The females are raised as silth. The males are destroyed. Males with the talent are much rarer than females. Though it is whispered that if such sports ever die out completely, then there will be no more females of talent born either.” One frantic glance around, and in a barely audible, breathy whisper, “Come the day.”

“The wehrlen.”

“Yes. Exactly so. They turn up in the wilds. Few of the Ponath packs and none of the nomads go along with the system. Akard is not strong enough to enforce its will throughout the Ponath. There are no silth on the Zhotak. Though there have been few talents found in the Ponath anyway.”

“Dam suspected,” Marika mused. “That is why none of my litter ever went to the assizes.”

“Perhaps. There have been other pups like you, capable of becoming silth, but who did not. It is said that if the talent is not harnessed early, and shaped, it soon fades. Had this winter not been what it was, and brought what it did, in a few years you would have seen whatever you have as a pup’s imagination.” There was a hint, almost, that Grauel spoke with sure knowledge.

“I’m not sure its isn’t imagination,” Marika said, more to herself than to Grauel.

“Just so. Now, in the cities, they say, they do it differently. Tradermales say the local cloisters screen every pup carefully and take those with the talent soon after birth. Most sisters, including those here, never know any life but that of silth. They question the ways of silth no more than you questioned the ways of the Degnan. But our ways were not graven by the All. Tradermales bring tales of others, some so alien as to be incomprehensible.”

Marika reflected for half a minute. “I still don’t understand, Grauel.”

Grauel bared her teeth in an expression of strained amusement. “You were always one with more questions than there are answers, Marika. I have told you all I know. The rest you will have to learn. Remember always that they are very dangerous, these witches, and very unforgiving. And that these exiled to the borderlands are far less rigid than are their sisters in the great cities. Be very careful, and very patient.”

In a small voice, Marika managed to say, “I will, Grauel. I will.”

Chapter Nine

I

In unofficial confinement, Marika did not leave her cell for three days. Then one of Akard’s few novice silth brought a summons from Gorry.

Marika put aside her flute, which she had been playing almost continuously, to the consternation of her neighbors, and closed the second volume of the Chronicle. Already that seemed removed from her, like a history of another pack.

The messenger, whose name Marika did not recall and did not care about, looked at the flute oddly. As if Marika might look at a poisonous grass lizard appearing unexpectedly while she was loafing on a hillside, painting portraits in the clouds. “You have a problem?” Marika asked.

As strength goes. The other youngsters were afraid of her even before the Gorry incident. She was a savage, and clearly a little mad. And tough, even if smaller and younger than most.

“No. I never saw a female play music before.”

“There are more wonders in the world than we know.” She quoted a natural science instructress who was more than a little dotty and the target of the malicious humor of half the younger silth. “How fierce is her mood?”

“I am not supposed to talk to you at all. None of us are till you develop proper attitudes.”

“The All has heard my prayers after all.” She looked up and sped a uniquely Degnan Thanks be heavenward. And inside wondered why she was so determined to irk everyone around her. She had always been a quiet pup, given to getting in trouble for daydreaming, not for her mouth.

“You will make no friends if you do not stop that kind of talk.”

“My friends are all ghosts.” She was proud of being able to put a double meaning into a sentence in the silth low speech, which she had been learning so short a time.

The novice did not speak again, in the common speech or either of the silth dialects. She led Marika to Gorry’s door, then marched off to tell everyone about the savage’s bad manners.

Marika knocked. A weak voice bid her enter. She did so, and found herself in a world she did not know existed.

The senior did not live so well.

There was more comfort, and more wealth, in that one chamber than Marika had seen in her entire life at the Degnan packstead.

Gorry was recuperating upon a bed of otec furs stuffed with rare pothast down. The extremities of the room boasted whole ranks of candles supplementing the light cast by the old silth’s private fire. Fire and candles were tended by a nonsilth pup of Marika’s own age.

Marika saw many things of rich cloth such as tradermales brought north in their wagons, to trade for furs and the green gemstones sometimes found in the beds of streams running out of the Zhotak. There were metals in dazzling abundance, most not in the form of tools or weapons at all. Marika’s head spun. It was a sin, that power should be so abused and flaunted.

“Come here, pup.” The candle tender helped prop Gorry up in her bed. The old silth indicated a wooden stool placed nearby. “Sit.”

Marika went. She sat. She was as deferential as she knew how to be. When the rage began to bubble she reminded herself that Grauel and Barlog depended upon her remaining in good odor.

“Pup, I have been reviewing our attempts to provide you with an education. I believe we have approached it from the wrong direction. This is my fault principally. I have refused to acknowledge the fact that you have grown up outside the Community. I have not faced the fact that you have many habits of thought to unlearn. Until you have done that, and have acquired an appropriate way of thinking, we cannot reasonably expect you to respond as silth in an unfamiliar situation. Which, I now grant, all of this is. Therefore, we will set a different course. But be warned. You will be expected to adhere to sisterhood discipline once it has been made clear to you. I shall be totally unforgiving. Do you understand?”

Marika sensed the tightly controlled rage and hatred seething within the silth. The senior must have spoken to her. “No, Mistress Gorry.”

The silth shuddered all over. The candle tender wrung her paws and looked at Marika in silent pleading. For a moment Marika was frightened for the old meth’s health. But then Gorry asked, “What is it that you do not understand, pup? Begin with the simplest question.”

“Why are you doing this to me? I did not ask —”

“Did your dam and the females of your pack ask if you wanted to become a huntress?”

“No, mistress,” Marika admitted. “But —”

“But you are female and healthy. In the upper Ponath a healthy female becomes a huntress in the natural course. Now, however, it develops that you have the silth talent. So it is the natural course that you become silth.”

Marika was unable to challenge that sort of reasoning. She did not agree with Gorry, but she did not possess the intellectual tools with which to refute her argument.

“There is no choice, pup. It is not the custom of the sisterhood to permit untrained talents liberty within the Community demesne.”

Oblique as that was, Marika had no trouble understanding. She could become silth or die.

“You are what you are, Marika. You must be what you are. That is the law.”

Marika controlled her temper. “I understand, Mistress Gorry.”

“Good. And you will pursue your training with appropriate self-discipline?”

“Yes, Mistress Gorry.” With all sorts of secret reservations.

“Good. You will resume your education tomorrow. I will inform your other instructresses. Henceforth you will spend extra time learning the ways of the Community, till you reach a level of knowledge of those ways appropriate to a candidate of your age.”

“Yes, Mistress Gorry.”

“You may go.”

“Yes, Mistress Gorry.” But before Marika departed she paused for a final look around. She was especially intrigued by the books shelved upon the one wall beside the fireplace. Of all the wealth in that place, they impressed her most.

Sleep became a stranger. But just as well. There was so much to do and learn. And that way there were fewer of the unhappy dreams.

She was sure her haunt was Kublin’s ghost, punishing her for not having seen the Degnan Mourned. She wondered if she ought not to discuss her dreams with the silth. In the end, she did not. As always was, what was between her and Kublin — even Kublin passed — was between her and Kublin.

II

The dreams continued. Spotted, random dreams unrelated to any phenomenon or natural cycle that Braydic could identify. They occurred unpredictably, as though at the behest of another, which convinced Marika that she was the focus of the anger of her dead. Ever more of her nights were haunted — though she now spent less time than ever asleep. There was too much to learn, too much to do, for her to waste time sleeping.

Braydic told her, “I think your dreams have nothing to do with your dead. Except within your own mind. You are just rationalizing them to yourself. I believe they are your talent venting the pressure of growth. You were too long without guidance or training. Many strange things befall pups who reach your age without receiving guidance or instruction. And that among the normally talented.”

“Normally talented?” Marika suspected Braydic was brushing the edge of the shadow that had pursued her since she had noticed that something had passed among Akard’s meth. All treated her oddly. The pawful of pups inhabiting the fortress not only, as expected, disdained her for her rude origins; they were afraid of her. She saw fear blaze up behind evasive eyes whenever she cornered one long enough to make her talk.

Only Braydic seemed unafraid.

Marika spent a lot of time with the communicator now. Braydic helped her with her language lessons, and let her pretend that she was not alone in her exile. Seldom did she see Grauel or Barlog, and when she did it was by sneakery and there was no time to exchange more than a few hasty words.

“Gorry has much to say about you to my truesister, Marika. And little of it good. Some reaches my humble ears.” Nervously, Braydic set fingers dancing upon a keyboard, calling up data she had scanned only minutes before. Her shoulders straightened. She turned. “You have a glorious future, pup. If you live to see it.”

“What?”

“Gorry knows pups and talents. She was once important among those who teach at Maksche. She calls you the greatest talent-potential Akard has yet unearthed. Maybe as remarkable a talent as any discovered by the Reugge this generation.”

Marika scoffed. “Why do you say that? I do not feel remarkable.”

“How would you know? At your age you have only yourself as comparison. Whatever her faults, Gorry is not given to fanciful speaking. Were I in your boots I would guard my tail carefully. Figuratively and even literally. A talent like yours, so bright it shines in the eyes of the blind, can become more curse than gift of the All.”

“Curse? Danger? What are you saying?”

“As strength goes, pup. I am warning you. Those threatened by a talent are not shy about squashing one — though they will act subtly.”

Again Braydic tapped at a keyboard. Marika waited, and wondered what the communicator meant. And wondered that she no longer felt so uncomfortable around the communications center. Perhaps that was another manifestation of the talent that so impressed Braydic. The communicator did say she was dealing instinctively with the electromagnetic handicap that others never overcame.

Braydic yanked her attention back to what she was saying. “It is no accident that most of the more important posts in most of the sisterhoods are held by the very old. Those silth were only a little smarter and a little stronger when they were pups. They did not attract attention. As they aged and advanced, they looked back for those who might overtake them and began throwing snares into the paths of the swifter runners.”

What Pohsit would have done had she had the chance.

“They did not press those older than they.”

Marika responded with what she thought would be received as a fetchingly adult observation. She was a little calculator often. “That is no way to improve the breed.”

“There is no breed to improve, pup. The continued existence of all silthdom relies entirely upon a rare but stubbornly persistent genetic recessive floating in the broader population.”

Marika gaped, not understanding a word.

“When a silth is accepted as a full sister, her order passes her through a ritual in which she must surrender her ability to bear pups.”

Marika was aghast. That went against all survival imperatives.

In the packs of the upper Ponath, reproductive rights were rigorously controlled by, and often limited to, the dominant females. Such as Skiljan. Mating freely, meth could swamp the local environment in a very few years.

The right to reproduce might be denied, but never the ability. The pack might need to produce pups quickly after a wild disaster.

“A true silth sister must not be distracted by the demands of her flesh, nor must she be possessed of any obligation beyond that to her order. A female in heat has no mind. A female with newly whelped pups is neither mobile nor capable of placing the Community before her offspring. Nature has programmed her.”