Glen Cook - Ceremony

Electronic communications. How things had changed during her lifetime. In her young years, at Akard, telecommunications had been a rarity, a carefully kept secret. There had been little of anything technical or mechanical in silth life. The whole world had been, in a way, a restricted technological zone. Roaming the world now, she found new technology everywhere, affecting every life, brought on by the demands of the long winter and the mirror project.

Electrical, petroleum, or gas heating had replaced coal and wood in the homes of many meth. Agriculture and mining had become mechanized. Once even the vast cloister farms had been worked by methods little different than those the Degnan had used in the Ponath. Only wealthy orders had possessed draft animals. Industry did not at all resemble what she recalled. She had to look long and hard to find a true dirigible airship. The great sausages had been retired from all but the most remote enterprises.

She should have paid more heed during her rare visits home. A drop to Ruhaack, on the borders of civilization, and a monomaniacal hunt for rogues beyond those borders had not been enough to show her the broader picture.

All that. All her fault, in a way.

The past was gone. And the past was silth.

Kublin might be right. Unless in her madness she had destabilized the new civilization so far that it would collapse.

She returned to her self, surveyed the control center briefly, stared at Kublin's still, mutilated form. That, at least, she had accomplished. The future would not be his. Down on the homeworld the rogues were on the run. This time the silth would show little mercy. They had learned. They would finish the job before returning to their feuds and their fear of her.

She no longer cared. Let them go on. Let them hunt her. It did not matter now, and once she was gone it would not matter ever.

She reached down to the world with the touch and announced that she was returning to the starship.

She sabotaged the brethren ship so it could not use its weapons and left the males alive as promised. She took to her darkship and the stars. But her heart kept swinging back to Kublin and she knew that dead he would haunt her more virulently than ever he had alive.

I

Years came and went and were lonely. Marika grew older, and was all too conscious of aging. Contrary to her expectations, darkships continued visiting the alien. Few had permission from home.

In the quiet following the horror on the homeworld all voidfaring silth turned outward, away from yesterday. A new era of exploration began. Silth soon probed far beyond limits reached in older times. Marika herself occasionally ventured out, guiding favored Mistresses through the cloud to see the shoals of stars beyond.

She undertook no new explorations. She did not stray far. Starstalker remained unconquered. But she listened to others avidly, and insisted explorers maintain meticulous records.

Many who visited came to learn. She taught, if less than eagerly. These were young silth, of a new generation, less shaped by ancient thinking, more flexible and less afraid.

They wanted to pick her brain for what she had discovered about those-who-dwell, about the dark side, about undertaking extended journies through the void. Many wanted to serve her as bath, for she continued growing stronger as she aged. Those who served with her could expect to grow stronger themselves. Somehow she opened new paths in their minds.

She was alone seldom, yet always lonely, like some legendary hermit of old tales, seated on her mountain, tutoring all who came seeking knowledge. She had no joy of it, but taught all comers, hoping to shape the new generation. They paid for their education by helping to recover, rebuild, and unravel the mysteries of the alien starship.

"We must cease to be narrow," she preached. "Narrowness nearly brought us to destruction. We must know the tradermale mentality as we know our own. We must eschew contempt, for others have skills of their own that are as wonderful and mysterious as our own." Her use of old-fashioned backcountry words like tradermale amused the new silth. Such language was an anachronism. The ice had devoured those who had used it.

Marika had become a bridge to a vanished culture, last of her kind. The far frontiers of civilization, the low-tech zones, were gone forever.

She had peace, but there was no Bagnel, no Grauel, no Barlog with whom to share it. There was no friend to help cushion the future.

She retreated increasingly into ritualistic patterns set by her foresisters. The young silth were baffled by the paradox: Marika proselytized new ways while devoting herself privately to rituals and mysteries already old at the beginning of history. There were whole days she spent open to the All, alone in celebrating traditional mysteries.

Old ways banished the troubles of the spirit haunting her. She now understood the old sisters who had tried to force her into certain shapes when she was young.

There were times, too, when she took the wooden darkship out alone and drifted through the system contemplating the void. She could not believe that, had it not been for the endless winter and the fury of the nomad, she would now be among the oldest of the Degnan Wise. The Marika within did not feel old. Only the flesh did.

She was waiting too. Marking time. She knew the All had not finished with her yet.

II A Mistress named Henahpla, a footloose explorer such as Marika once had hoped to become, brought the word. Aliens in the cloud. Far down the heartstream of the dust and gas, where it was densest, giving birth to new stars.

The cloud was Henahpla's stalking ground. She knew it better than did Marika. Marika closeted herself with the Mistress. "Where?"

Henahpla sorted charts for which she was primarily responsible, indicated a particular star. "Here. One ship, like this one."

Marika knew the star. Hers had been the first voidship to visit it. It had one planet in its life zone. "A resting place. I will post it off limits till we see what they are doing."

"They are looking for something, mistress. They are searching, not exploring."

"How do you know?"

"I am an explorer, mistress. There are ways things are done. If you do not fall into one pattern you fall into another. I know searching. I search before I explore, lest I stumble upon Starstalker."

"Uhm." Marika had a theory about Starstalker's disappearance. Would this encounter confirm it? "I want you to do a reconstruction of that ship. Some of the sisters who were with me when I visited the rogue aliens are still here. We will see ... But I should go see for myself, should I not?"

"Mistress?"

"There are aliens we do not wish to meet again. And there are those who built this ship. The enemies of the others. Did you get any feel for their plans?"

"None. I stayed only long enough to see what was happening. I think I departed undetected."

"I had better eliminate any information pointing toward the homeworld. Just in case. Then we will go see these aliens."

Marika passed the word. Silth began examining mountains of records. No questions were asked-in Marika's realm orders were carried out without them.

When she rejoined Henahpla she found half a dozen darkship crews assembled, eager to share the adventure. Marika could not in good conscience deny them.

They would venture out anyway, under pretext of going somewhere else.

She followed Henahpla into the Up-and-Over, nervous, yet feeling refreshingly alive. Was this the mission for which the All had saved her?

The voidships plunged into a system naked of an alien. There was no evidence that any had visited.

Searchers for sure. How long before they located her derelict? Home, she sent. Let them come to us.