Glen Cook - Ceremony

"I hear you've been promoted again," Marika said.

"Yes. As always, the factors reward incompetence. The leading mirror is now all mine to demolish."

Marika was amused. He was so persistently negative about his own abilities. "I will be going away soon, Bagnel. As soon as modifications to my darkship are completed and I have trained a group of new bath." She had asked for the four strongest upcoming bath the Reugge and Redoriad could provide. The extra would be a reserve, would allow rest and rotation during extended interstellar passages. And she had a further experiment in mind that would require the presence of an extra silth. "I have the darkship at the dome on Biter being fitted to carry a detachable pod in which we can haul stores."

"Then you plan to be gone a long time."

"I'll be back in plenty of time to celebrate the triumphant completion of the first mirror."

"I see little enough of you now. If you disappear for years again ... "

"I seriously doubt I will be gone that long. I was teasing."

"You're going after the Serke, aren't you?"

"That's the main reason. But also to see what's out there. Just to see it."

"Then the Serke are as much excuse as they are reason."

"Of course they are. I'm really going because that is what I've wanted to do from the moment we pups first heard stories of meth who went to the stars."

"I wish I could see ... "

"You could. One more wouldn't make much difference. You might decrease our range, but not enough to concern me."

"I wish ... I have too many responsibilities, Marika. We have reached a point where the mirrors definitely look practical. No, I couldn't. Yes, I would like to see the stars. Maybe later. After this is done and the warm is falling. After you have done what you have to do. And that frightens me."

"Why?"

"I am frightened by what you may find. What you have been doing cannot remain a secret. Those here who are still in contact with your enemies will hear about what you are doing. And they will relay the news. It will find the Serke before you do. And because you are Marika, and can do what other silth cannot, they will be afraid. They will prepare for you. They'll be waiting."

Marika had thought of that, and it was of concern to her. She did not know how to prevent it. "You'll just have to do better preventing contact. That's all I can say."

"You know I'll try. But do not forget that that is not my specific responsibility. I can only nudge and urge and appeal and beg and suggest. Others, perhaps with less concern for your welfare, will be in control."

"I have faith in you, Bagnel. Fear not. We will fly together again, in this same box of rusty bolts, over this same barren landscape. Let's hope it's on a day when fewer dooms shadow the world."

"That can't help but be, I think. Though the dooms breed."

Marika's eyes narrowed. "You are trying to tell me something."

"Perhaps ... Being out at the mirror or the Hammer most of the time, I have little opportunity to keep track of what those who look for rogues are doing. But before I joined you a friend came to me with the latest rumor they had tapped."

"Yes?"

"The warlock is back."

Marika took a minute to get herself under control. Then she took another. "That is impossible. He perished when I destroyed those who had ravaged Maksche."

"I report only hearsay."

"The warlock?"

"The same one. The one who was the rogues' great hope a few years ago."

"I suppose it had to be," Marika murmured. "And I blinded myself."

"What?"

"I have done the unforgivable, Bagnel. I have made the same mistake twice. That is never forgiven."

But who could believe Kublin in the role of the warlock? A whimpering coward?

"What is it, Marika?"

"Nothing crucial. Let's fly a bit more, in silence, then take our leave."

There was something Marika had to do before departing, before pursuing her stalk among the stars, and she was afraid.

II Marika brought the darkship out of the Up-and-Over virtually on top of the darkness that lurked at the edge of her home system. That blackness reeked to the touch, stinking of wickedness and death, of gnawed bones and ripped flesh and corrupt corpses and hatred unconstrained. If the void had a heart of evil, this ghost was its animate form.

This ghost was like no other she had encountered, and she had identified hundreds of different kinds. This ghost was, in a way, an absence. Most others seemed bright, flighty, sometimes curious, sometimes afraid, but always colorful and seldom inimical unless under silth direction.

This was an absence of color moved by its own grand malice. It was a thing that did not need direction to be inimical. It would strike out at the unwary. Only because it could not move as swiftly as lesser voidghosts, and because the silth had learned to appease and baffle and, rarely, to control it, did it not strike every darkship that tried to leave the system.

Control. That was Marika's goal. The highest or darkest of dark-sider sorceries, managed only by a dozen silth before her ...

It moved toward her, almost as swiftly as thought. She squeezed the ghosts that carried her darkship, fleeing, pulling it along after her, staying out of its reach while she explored it with her touch.

She let it catch up.

Three times she recoiled from its cold, malignant vibration before she found sufficient courage to reach farther, to strive to control it.

Control came far more easily than she had expected. In some way she could not fathom her dark side spoke to its, and meshed with it, and, in moments, the great monster became an extension of her will, a force she could hurl as simply as tossing a pebble with a flick of her wrist. She threw it at a piece of cometary debris. It struck savagely, compressed, caused gases to boil, to explode. A short-lived flare illuminated space.

Marika turned loose and backed away, awed. So much power! No wonder Bestrei was feared.

She reached again, lightly, and found the darkness possessed of a fearful respect for her, a vague, almost thoughtless admiration for her dark power. It acknowledged her its mistress after those few moments.

She backed away again. And now, at last, she began to see and understand what it was so many silth had seen in her, and had feared.

She reviewed the strongest silth she knew, and knew none of them could have done what she had. Few could have taken control of the ghost at all, let alone so swiftly, so easily, so thoroughly.

And she knew, then, what it was she had sensed about Bestrei that time when their trails had crossed. Bestrei could take a great dark ghost easily too-though hopefully without imagination, or cunning, or any especial ability to direct it with her intellect. Bestrei, too, was slanted far toward the dark side.

Marika turned and drove toward the homeworld, toward the dome upon Biter where her venture was being prepared, but she watched over her shoulder, considering a region about thirty degrees to one side of the Manestar. Bestrei, she sent, in a hopeless long touch. I am coming, The long wait of the meth is nearly done. Soon we will meet.

It was from that region that the Serke had come each time they had struck at the mirrors. Somewhere in that area she would cross their trail.

"Marika, you look terrible," Grauel said when she returned. "What did you do?"

And Barlog said, "She has that look of doom about her again."

"That is it. Isn't it? It's been absent for years. What did you do out there, Marika?"

Marika refused to explain. They would learn soon enough.

Grauel kept after her, but Barlog said little more. She looked terrified of what was to come, for she and Grauel, as always, would walk Marika's path with her.

Marika spent a busy few days contacting silth all across the world, silth with whom she had worked in her rogue-hunting days. She left suggestions and instructions, for there had been no further trace of Kublin. He had escaped for certain, though. The warlock rumor had begun to grow.