Glen Cook - Doomstalker

Columns of numeral squiggles slithered up the screen. "Is it warmer in the north than it is here, Braydic?" She had sensed no weakening of winter's grasp.

"No. Just warmer everywhere." The communicator made a minor adjustment command to what she called an outflow valve. "I am worried. We had so much snow this winter. A sudden rise in temperature might cause a meltoff the system cannot handle."

"Open the valves all the way. Now."

"That would drain the reservoirs. I cannot do that. I need to maintain a certain level to have a flow sufficient to turn the generators. Else we are without power. I cannot do my work without power."

Marika started to ask a question. A tendril of something brushed her. She jumped in a pup's sudden startle reaction. Braydic responded with bared teeth and a snarl, an instinctual reaction when a pup was threatened. "What is it, Marika?" She seemed embarrassed by her response.

"Someone is coming. Someone silth. I have to leave." She was not supposed to be in the communications center, exposed to its aura.

There were many things she was not supposed to do. She did them anyway. Like make sneak visits to Grauel and Barlog. The silth could not keep watch all the time. She slept so little. And the fortress's huntresses seemed disinclined to watch her at all, or to report observed behavior that was not approved.

She suspected Grauel and Barlog were responsible, for allthey admonished her incessantly in their brief meetings. She caught occasional hints that her packmates had developed fierce reputations among Akard's untalented population.

Marika slipped away through a passage which led to the roof and the metal tree. Up there the aura still disoriented her, though not so she was unable to slide away in the moonlight and take a place upon the northern wall, staring out at the bitter snowscape.

To her, winter did not appear to be loosening its grip.

From the edges of her eyes she seemed to see things moving. She did not turn, knowing they would not be there if she looked. Not unless she forced her talent with hammer-blow intensity.

She did not look up at the great cold sky either, though she felt it beating down upon her, calling.

Someday, she thought. Someday. If Braydic was right. Someday she would go.

I

It was a winter like the one preceding, when the doom had come to the upper Ponath. Harsh. But it began with a lie, hinting that it would be milder. After it lulled everyone, it bared its claws and slashed at the upper Ponath with storm after storm, dumping snow till drifts threatened to overtop Akard's northern wall. Its chill breath howled without respite, and left everything encrusted with ice. For a time the Akard silth lost touch with their Reugge sisters in the south.

It was a winter like the one preceding. The nomads again came down out of the north in numbers greater than before. Many of the packs that survived the first invasion succumbed to this one-though much of the bad news did not reach Akard till after winter's departure. Still, scores of refugees appealed for protection, and the silth took them in, though grudgingly.

Twice small bands of nomads appeared on the snowfields beyond the north wall, fields where during summer meth raised the fortress's food crops. They examined the grim pile of stone, then moved on, not tempted. Marika chanced to be atop the wall, alone and contemplating, the second time a group appeared. She studied them as closely as she could from several hundred yards.

"They are not yet suicidal in their desperation," she told Braydic afterward.

"The key phrase is 'not yet,' " Braydic replied. "It will come." The communicator was a little distracted, less inclined to be entertaining and instructive than was her custom. The ice and cold kept her in a constant battle with her equipment, and in some cases she did not possses the expertise to make repairs. "This cannot go on. There is no reason to expect the winters to get better. They had best send me a technician. Of course, they do not care if they never hear from us. They would be pleased if the ice just swallowed us."

Marika did not believe that. Neither did Braydic, really. It was frustration talking.

"No. They will not try it yet, Marika. But they will one day. Perhaps next winter. The next at the latest. This summer will see a stronger effort to stay in the upper Ponath. We have given them little difficulty. They will be less inclined to run away. And they are becoming accustomed to being one gigantic pack. This battle for survival has eclipsed all their old bitternesses and feuds. Or so I hear when my truesister and the others gather to discuss the matter. They foresee no turns for the better. We will get no help from Maksche. And without help we will not stem the flood. There are too many tens of thousands of nomads. Even silth have limitations."

What little news filtered in with the fugitives was uniformly grim and invariably supported Braydic's pessimism. There was one report of nomads being spotted a hundred miles south of Akard, down the Hainlin. Braydic received some very bitter, accusing messages because of that. Akard was supposed to bestride and block the way to the south.

The communicator told Marika, "My truesister will not send anyone-not even you-hunting nomads in these storms. We are not strong. We do not have lives to waste. Come summer. Then. When there is only the enemy to beware."

Enemy. As a group. The concept had only the vaguest possibility of expression in the common speech of the upper Ponath. Marika had had to learn the silth tongue to find it. She was not pleased with it.

Indeed, the senior and silth of Akard did nothing whatsoever to arrest the predations of the nomads. Which left Marika with severely mixed feelings.

Packs were being exterminated. Her kind of meth were being murdered daily. And though she understood why, she was upset because their guardians were doing nothing to aid them. When some pawful of refugees came in, bleeding through the snow, frostbitten, having left their pups and Wise frozen in the icy forests, she wanted to go howling through the wilderness herself, riding the black, killing ghosts, cleansing the upper Ponath of this nomad scourge.

It was in such moods that she made her best progress toward mastery of the silth magic. She had a very strong dark side.

That winter was a lonely one for her, and a time of growing self-doubt. A time when she lost purpose. Her one dream involved the stars ever obscured by the clouded skies. It seemed ever more pointless and remote in that outland under siege. When she reflected upon it seriously, she had to admit she had no slightest idea what fulfilling that dream would cost or entail.

She did not see Grauel or Barlog for months, even on the sly-which was just as well, probably, for they would have recognized her dilemma and have taken the side which stood against dreams. They were not dreamers. For wilderness huntresses maturation meant the slaying of foolish dreams.

Braydic encouraged the dreamer side, for whatever reasons she might have, but the communicator's influence was less than she believed. Coming to terms with reality was something Marika had to accomplish almost entirely for herself.

The lessons went on. The teaching continued throughout long hours. Marika continued to learn, though her all-devouring enthusiasm began to grow blunted.

There were times when she feared she was a little mad. Like when she wondered if the absence of her nightmares of the previous year might not be the cause of her present mental disaffection.

The Degnan remained unMourned. And there were times now when she felt guilty about no longer feeling guilty about not having seen the appropriate rites performed.

It was not a good year for the wild silth pup from the upper Ponath.