Glen Cook - Doomstalker

"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."

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.