Ceremony

Kublin was imprisoned there, compelled to translate brethren cant and coded messages Reugge technicians stole from the satellite network. "He is as isolated as if he had been sent to rejoin the All," Marika said. "And this way his blood is not on my conscience. Not to mention that we get some use out of him."

Grauel and Barlog did not speak to arguments they considered weak excuses. Blood meant little or nothing to a Ponath female dealing with males.

Kublin was at work when Marika arrived. She stood out of the way of the small team on duty, and signaled the supervisor to continue as though she were not there. She watched Kublin.

He did what he was supposed to do, no faster than he had to. He looked much older than he had when she had captured him. When she mentioned that to Grauel the huntress remarked, "You look much older too. And you two look very much alike. Persons who did not know you nevertheless would suspect you were littermates."

The discussion, though whispered, caught Kublin's attention and he noticed Marika for the first time. Their gazes met. He betrayed no expression whatsoever.

Marika did not try to speak to him. There was nothing to say anymore. After a few minutes she left and collected Bagnel, and returned to warmer southern climes and the business of righting a Community decimated by the attack upon TelleRai. III The initial fury of the hunt for the fugitive Serke and brethren faded, but the search never ceased entirely. Nor did it enjoy any success. The villains had vanished as though they had never been, and surviving members of the Serke Community could provide no hints as to where they had gone.

Contrary to her a

In time she did yield first chair, to a silth named Bel-Keneke. Bel-Keneke hailed from a frontier province as remote as the Ponath. Her attitudes were very much like Marika's, though she was nowhere near as strong in the talents.

Marika collected Grauel and Barlog and retreated to the secret darkship factory in the snow wastes, there to continue interrupted studies and to pursue her slightly paranoid watch on signals traffic.

At first Marika came out of hiding regularly, to study with Kiljar, to fly with Bagnel, as had been their custom for years, except when broader events interrupted them. She learned to handle a voidship with the best of the starfaring Mistresses of the Ship, though she never actually pursued her dream and traveled to any of the starworlds. She did not, in fact, go much beyond the orbits of the two larger moons, Biter and Chaser.

Once she had become proficient with the voidships her ventures out of isolation became even more infrequent, then not at all.

She fell out of the public eye for nearly three years.

The permanent snowline crept southward steadily till it reached the remains of TelleRai. The land of Marika's birth lay buried beneath a hundred feet of ice and snow. The ruins of Maksche were little more than lines beneath a cloak of white.

Hunger stalked the world for all the effort of the silth to care for their bonds, for all the abnormal cooperation that developed between disaster-besieged sisterhoods. Too many meth were being compressed into too little territory.

The population of the meth homeworld had never been large, but neither was much of its surface developed agriculturally. Development efforts started after the destruction of TelleRai were too little, too late. Land could not be brought into production quickly enough to support the shifting populace.

Marika watched from isolation. In time she lost patience with the efforts of others.

"Grauel, send word up to have my darkship prepared. Find Barlog. Arm yourselves."

Surprised, Grauel asked, "What are we doing, Marika?"

"We're going out. It is time I stopped waiting for others to do something. No one seems inclined to act."

"Really?" It had been three years since Grauel had been out of the fortress, which Marika had renamed Skiljansrode in honor of her dam, and which she had made over into an independent packfast populated by refugees, fugitives, and malcontents from a dozen sisterhoods. Viewed from a traditional silth perspective, Skiljansrode could be considered the germ of a new Community.

Marika never thought of breaking away from the Reugge.

Other silth contemptuously called those of Skiljansrode the brother-sisters because they worked with their paws. The principal product of the fortress remained darkships, but other, more technical items went out as well, increasingly in competition with the brethren. Most of the meth at Skiljansrode were curiosities like Marika herself, little interested in the fashions and forms of silthdom.

"Really, Grauel. Really. Have Kloreb message the cloister at Ruhaack that we'll be coming. I will want our quarters warmed. I will want a prйcis of the current political climate prepared. And I will want Kiljar of the Redoriad told that I will be in Ruhaack and that I would like an audience."

"Is something afoot, Marika?"

"In a sense. It's time we tried to do something about reversing the winter of the world."

Grauel looked at her long and hard. Finally she said, "Not even you have the witchcraft to make the sun burn hotter."

"No, but there are ways. What do you think I have been working on all this time? It can be done. I think the brethren knew that in the old days. Had they won, they might have taken steps. I suspect many of them know what to do even now, but they allow the long winter to go on because it weakens us."

"I believe you when you say ... It's just ... "

"Just?"

"I haven't been out of here for so long. I find I am very uncomfortable when you talk about going."

"I'm uncomfortable too, Grauel. And that is a sign that we have sat still too long. We have allowed ourselves to become sedentary. We have become like our dams. We have reverted to being the pack meth we once were. I think we're overdue to reenter the active world."

"Shall I have Bagnel messaged as well?"

"That can wait till after we reach Ruhaack."

In the past three years Bagnel had risen high among the brethren. Marika found she was excited about seeing him again. More excited than she was by any other prospect, including the possibility that she would mount a voidship again, and this time maybe actually fly off in pursuit of her dreams. After, of course, she had won the struggle to get a program started to reverse the long winter.

How many more years might that take?

She knew the exact cause of her excitement. She examined it with sardonic self-mockery.

Toghar ceremonies or not, she was female. And she was into a female's prime pupbearing years. Some hormones were produced despite Toghar.

"Not a distraction I need," she murmured to herself. There were silth who assuaged that natural need, who enjoyed a sort of false esterus, using male bonds. Marika refused. She considered that degraded, despicable, even perverted. She forced the need out of mind.

"Go on, Grauel."

She paced after the huntress departed, concerned that she had been gone from the world too long, that it might have passed her by during her three-year sabbatical.