Glen Cook - Ceremony

"I freely admit that some of us would have permitted that to happen had our own orders not treated us like bearers of pestilence. We suffered that for a few days only. Your voctor Barlog was enraged. She was also very determined to rectify the situation and to do something to recover our companions from the rogues-or at the very least to have vengeance. But as matters stood we were powerless. When even your own Community would do nothing ... We argued long hours and decided we had to come for you. Still, we were short of crew. And still we could recruit no aid of any sort. Finally our anger and disgust grew so boundless we decided to attempt the passage, feeble though we thought our chances were. The voctor Barlog, with no talent at all, volunteered to risk herself completely by standing bath.

"But before we departed, she insisted we had to recover Bagnel's reports from the Reugge cloister. At that point, I think, she was in full command, though she was not silth. We bowed to her age, wisdom, and, most of all, her determination, which is not unlike your own when your mind is set."

Marika was mildly amused. It had been a long time since any junior had dared speak so frankly. She found she approved.

The Mistress continued, "We slipped in by darkship, hovered outside the window of our quarters there, and Barlog broke in. It took her several trips to bring all the reports aboard. During the last of those several Reugge sisters tried to compel us to return them. Barlog was out of patience with silth political nonsense. Her words. She gunned them down. Their voctors fired back before she finished them, too, and she was wounded. I then took the darkship up and headed here. There was no pursuit, probably because they expected us to perish. It was a difficult passage, but we made it."

"It was an heroic passage," Marika said. "If it does not spawn a legend it will be because of the fool nature of silth." Secretly, she was amazed that the Mistress had made it through-with almost no practical experience, only two bath, and a talent that was marginal at best. Her chances should have been nil. "There is a lesson in it that should not be lost. Determination counts for as much as any other factor. Where are Bagnel's reports?"

"Still aboard the darkship. In the carrier baskets."

"Thank you. This will not be forgotten. There will be great rewards and terrible reprisals because of what you have suffered. It has destroyed the last of my patience and mercy. You rest. You treat yourself well. I appoint you my deputy in my absence, with full powers to speak as I would speak."

"You are going back?"

"There are debts to be collected. There are friends in durance. This I will not tolerate." Within the hour Marika had conscripted a darkship crew and had had them ferry her out to her wooden voidship. III The homeworld of the meth swam before her. She drifted past the mirror in the leading trojan, noting that it was complete and in full operation. Afar, the second was so near completion it would be finished within a month.

Bagnel's report declared the long winter beaten. It was in retreat, though it would be a long time yet before it could be declared fully conquered.

The project was winding down. Briefly Marika wondered what impact that would have upon meth society. Perhaps the unity could be kept alive in projects designed to recover lands and resources the winter had given up.

She wondered for a moment about her place in history. It did mean something to her, despite her protests to the contrary. It concerned her a little because she had no friends among those who would do the remembering. She feared the silth would recall her for things that seemed to her of little real consequence, and others not for her accomplishments but her tyrannies.

She did not worry about it long. She was silth enough to have little attention to devote to far futures.

She drifted past Biter, past Chaser and the lesser moons, past the Hammer and all the stations and satellites that had been orbited during the erection of the mirrors. She moved into position above the New Continent, well inside geocentric orbit, but remaining stationary with respect to the planetary surface, a fraction of her mind devoted to controlling those-who-dwell, who maintained her position.

They did not know she had come, down there. They did not know out there on the edge of the void. She had come with the stealth of a huntress intent on counting coup upon a rival packstead. They were not watching, anyway. They did not expect her. How could they believe that one novice Mistress with only two bath and a wounded voctor in support could run the long reach out to the alien starship?

She sent ghosts to explore the world below, carefully, carefully, lest their passage be detected. She found very little beside disappointment.

Skiljansrode-that Gradwohl had created, and she had shaped into an engine of silth-managed technology, and that Edzeka had developed into her personal technical Community-was no more. A gutted ruin, the surrounding snows littered with the corpses and machines and airships of those who had brought it low. Edzeka had been overconfident of her fortress, it seemed. But as she had promised, the warlock had paid a high price for his vengeance.

He had survived the quirky engine she had created in hopes of controlling him. Had outlived it and had prospered. As Bagnel had reported.

Bagnel's pessimistic reports were not pessimistic enough. Exploring the rogue areas, she found them stronger and more numerous than he had suspected. They had installations everywhere. But, she was pleased to note, not all were protected by suppressor systems.

She found no trace of Grauel, Bagnel, or the missing bath. That did not surprise or dismay her. She had not expected to find them easily.

She pinpointed the rogue installations upon a mental map, then went on to explore everything the meth had in orbit. She was quite surprised to discover that no weapons had been orbited since the defeat of the Serke. Perhaps silth disunity was of some value after all. Maybe they had not been able to agree on the best ways to shut her out.

She sent stealthy ghosts out to cripple what few systems did exist in tiny sabotages that would not become apparent till the weapons were actually used. She sent more down to the world to do the same to the rogues' suppressor systems. She pursued her quiet, undetected guerrilla campaign till she neared collapse from exhaustion. Then she rested. And when she could do so, she went on.

She was not discovered during her preparations. It was what she wanted, and yet she was not entirely pleased. What she could do so could the pawful of Serke exiles hidden with Starstalker.

It was time to begin the scourging, the scouring, the cleansing. Time to let the fire fall, though it was no wind she sent down upon the world of her birth and hatred.

She did what no other silth had ever imagined or tried. She summoned the system's great black and sent it down against her enemies.

The death screams of rogue minds reached her there in the void, so numerous were they and so terrible were their deaths. So great was the horror that it reached that deeply hidden place where her compassion lay. She called out her hatred, hardened the shell around it, and continued the killing till she had cleansed every installation she had been able to locate.

At the desert base of the brethren, after their destruction of Maksche, her rage had led her to a slaughter of thousands. A slaughter so great it had shaken the world almost as much as the bombing of TelleRai. Against this kill that was but a fleck in the eye of a murdered beast.

The rogue world went mad. The airwaves went insane with confused messages, frequently cut short. And because Skiljansrode was dead and there was no one else to intercept their messages, the silth remained ignorant of the terror that had been loosed.