Glen Cook - Doomstalker

"It separates the weak from the strong. When you came here you understood-"

One more spark of defiance. "When I came I understood nothing, Senior. I did not even ask to be brought. I was brought blind, thinking I would become a huntress for the packfast, willing to come only because of circumstance. I never heard of silth before my dam sent messengers to ask you for help. All I know about silth I have learned since I have been here. And I do not like what I have learned."

The senior's teeth gleamed angrily in the lamplight. Her patience was about exhausted. But Marika did not back down, though now her courage was entirely bravado.

What would she do if she made them angry enough to push her out the gate?

The senior controlled herself. She said, "I will grant you that Gorry is not the best of teachers. However, self-control must be the first lesson we learn as sisters. Without discipline we are nothing. Field-workers, technicians, and guardians behave as you have. Silth do not. I think you had better learn to control your temper. You are going to continue in Gorry's tutelage. With this between you."

"Is that all?"

"That is all."

Marika made parting obsequies, as taught. But as she reached the heavy wooden door to the senior's quarters, the silth called, "Wait."

Marika turned, suddenly terrified. She wanted to get away.

"You must appreciate your obligation to your sisterhood, Marika. Your sisterhood is all. Everything your pack was, and your reason for living, too."

"I cannot appreciate something I do not understand, Senior. Nothing I see here makes sense. Forgive a poor country pup her ignorance. Everything I see implies this sisterhood exists solely to exploit those who do not belong. That it takes and takes, but almost never gives."

She was thinking of the feeble effort to combat the invasion of the nomads.

"You see beyond the first veil. You are on the threshold of becoming silth, Marika. With all that that implies. It is a rare opportunity. Do not close the door on yourself by clinging stubbornly to the values of savages."

Marika responded with a raised lip, slipped out, dashed downstairs to her cell. She lighted a candle, thinking she would lose herself in one of the books they had given her to study. "What?"

The Degnan Chronicle was stacked upon her little writing desk.

The next miracle occurred not ten minutes later.

Marika responded to a tentative scratching at her door. "Grauel!" She stared at the huntress, whom she had not seen since the trek to Akard.

"Hello, pup. May I?"

"Of course." Marika made way for her to enter. There was not much room in her cell. She returned to the chair at her writing desk. Grauel looked around, finally settled on Marika's cot.

"I cannot become accustomed to furniture," Grauel said. "I always look for furs on the floor first."

"So do I." And Marika began to realize that, for all she had been desperate to see either Grauel or Barlog for weeks, she really did not have much to say. "Have they treated you well?"

Grauel shrugged. "No worse than I expected."

"And Barlog? She is well?"

"Yes. I see they brought you the Chronicle. You will keep it up?"

"Yes."

For half a minute there did not seem to be anything else to say. Then Grauel remarked, "I hear you are in trouble." And, "We try to keep track of you through rumor."

"Yes. I did a foolish thing. I could not even get them to tell me if you were alive."

"Alive and fit. And blessing the All for this wondrous gift of snow. You really tried to kill your instructress? With witchcraft?"

"If that is what you call it. Not kill, though. Just hurt back. She asked for it, Grauel." Then, suddenly she broke down and poured out all her feelings, though she suspected the senior had sent Grauel round to scold her. "I do not like it here, Grauel." For a moment she was so stressed she slipped into the informal, personal mode, which among the Degnan was rarely used except with littermates. "They aren't nice. Can't you make them stop?"

Then Grauel held her and comforted her clumsily, and she abandoned the false adulthood she had been wearing as a mask since her assault on Gorry. "I don't understand, Grauel."

In a voice unnaturally weak for a grown female, Grauel told her, "Try again, Marika. And be patient. You are the only reason any of the Degnan-if only we-survive."

Marika understood that well enough, though Grauel was indirect. Grauel and Barlog were in Akard on sufferance. For the present their welcome depended upon hers.

She was not old enough to have such responsibility thrust upon her.

She could not get out of the more intimate speech mode, though she knew it made Grauel uncomfortable. "What are the silth, Grauel? Tell me about them. Don't just make warding signs and duck the question the way everybody did at home. Tell me what you know. I have to know."

Grauel became more uncomfortable. She looked around as though expecting to find someone lurking in the little cell's shadows.

"Tell me, Grauel. Please? Why do they want me?"

Grauel found her courage. She was one of the bravest of the Degnan, a huntress Skiljan had wanted by her when hunting game like kagbeast. She so conquered herself she managed to slip into the informal mode, too.

"They're witches, Marika. Dark witches, like in the stories. They command the spirit world. They're strong, and they're more ruthless than the grauken. They're the mistresses of the world. We were lucky in the upper Ponath. We had almost no contact with them, except at the annual assizes. They say we're too backward for the usual close supervision up here. This is just a remote outpost maintained so the Reugge sisterhood can retain its fief right to the Ponath. Tales tradermales bring up the Hainlin say they are much stronger in the south, where they hold whole cities as possessions and rule them with the terror of their witchcraft, so that normal meth dare not speak of them even as we do now. Tradermales say that in some cities meth dare not admit they exist even though every move and decision must be made with an eye to propitiating them. As though they were the All in Render's avatar. Those who displease them die horribly, slain by spirits."

"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."