Glen Cook - Ceremony

I

Marika's darkship was forty miles from TelleRai's heart when the first sword of fire smote the world.

The flash blinded her briefly. There were more flashes. She did not keep count. The Mistress of the Ship had been blinded, too, and had lost control. The darkship twisted toward the ground.

Marika reached with the touch. Mistress! Get hold of yourself!

Her vision cleared. A quarter mile to her left Kiljar's darkship fluttered downward, too, but it stabilized soon after she spied it.

Marika felt Kiljar's touch. The Redoriad second sent, What has happened?

I do not know. The strange weapons you mentioned?

Marika looked back to the city so recently and hastily fled. A grisly glow backlighted the snowclouds. The world within, the ghost world of the touch and dark, was filled with terror and pain, unfocused, diffuse, yet centered upon dying TelleRai.

Marika sent, What should we do, Kiljar?

Go on. We must go on to Ruhaack. Already the touch tells me there is nothing we can do back there.

How bad is it?

Worse than you can imagine. How did you know?

I just felt something bad coming. Premonition. Silth set great store by intuition. Not even that much when we started. I just knew we had to get away from the city. Then when Starstalker rose above the horizon I knew something terrible would happen. And it is not over yet. I feel a great hot wind coming.

The Serke will pay for this.

The Serke did not do this, mistress.

They made it possible. It will be impossible to assemble a true convention now, for a while. Perhaps it is best that way. At the moment you could demand and receive anything.

What happened? Marika demanded again.

Kiljar sent a mental picture of what she imagined TelleRai must look like now, with the fires raging and the mushroom clouds rising. Marika pushed it away, unwilling to believe the disaster she had predicted.

Her Mistress of the Ship appealed for her attention. Mistress? Coming up on Ruhaack.

Go carefully. She shifted touch back to Kiljar. What do you think? Do you sense any perils ahead? I do not.

I sense emptiness within the Serke cloister. I sense death. I do not believe what I sense. No Community has committed kalerhag in centuries.

Kalerhag. Ritual suicide. The Ceremony. The ultimate silth ritual. The one that, at one time, had ended most silth lives.

In the packs of the wild, like that of Marika's puphood, the very old were put out of the packstead in hard times, after the less useful males and pups. In the sisterhoods of old the aged had retired themselves through kalerhag. And any sister had done so when she felt honor demanded it.

The two darkships moved in on the Serke cloister, losing altitude, slowing, watching it belch smoke that rolled up into the clouds, reminding Marika of Maksche aflame after the perfidious brethren attack there.

No sisterhood has committed kalerhag here, Kiljar sent, correcting herself, more distressed. They took some with them and left the others poisoned.

Marika instructed her Mistress of the Ship to drop lower still, to approach the Serke Ruhaack cloister below the worst of the heat. Inrushing air tugged at her clothing.

It is safe, Kiljar sent. Set down.

Marika had her darkship taken to ground. She stepped off. Her voctor, Grauel, stepped down beside her and stared at the cloister in awe. "What happened, Marika?"

"Kiljar says they poisoned everyone they could not take with them. I suppose the fires were meant to destroy evidence."

"Evidence? Of what?"

The earth beneath their feet was trembling, groaning, carrying news of the destruction of TelleRai.

"Who knows? Let's see what we can find."

As Marika unslung her rifle the hot wind from TelleRai overtook them. Most of its force had been spent, but still it was enough to stagger them. Marika regained her balance. She looked toward TelleRai. "That they could do such a thing," she snarled into the wind. Then, to her Mistress of the Ship, "Stay here. Remain prepared to lift off."

The Ruhaack Serke cloister stood at the heart of the city Ruhaack, surrounded by a broad belt of green. That belt was filling with meth. Marika considered the creatures, Serke bonds all. She felt no danger there. They were nothing more than bonds.

Kiljar left her own darkship and joined Marika. "You intend to go inside?"

"If I can." The cloister gate stood sealed. She ducked through her loophole, caught a small ghost attracted by the disaster, and used it to demolish the gate.

Grauel went in first, behind a short warning burst from her rifle.

There was no one to resist them, silth, voctor, or bond. They found most of the Serke still in their cells, apparently resting peacefully. The stench of death filled the place. Marika could not long stand the sight of dead novices bloating in the heat. She asked Kiljar, "Do you think they did this at all their cloisters? Or just here?"

"Probably just here. This was the beast's head."

"Why, Kiljar?" she asked as they retreated through the gate. "Why would they do such a thing?"

"I suspect to sever all ties that might allow us to trace them."

"But ... "

"They are running. All the guilty of the Serke and the brethren. Together. I expect to the world where they found their aliens. I doubt that the Serke wanted to do it this way. They are not as wicked as we have painted them. Imagine the pain they will carry with them into exile. It would not surprise me to learn they had turned on the brethren. Bestrei is simple. She has her concepts of honor. She will demand that a price be paid. When we find them ... "

"Find them?" Marika asked.

"You know we will. Someday. I have not seen TelleRai, but I have sensed it. What was done there cannot be forgiven. Ever. The voidpaths will be filled with silth on the hunt."

"And that explains this, I suppose. The brethren strike on TelleRai compelled the guilty Serke to burn their bridges in kalerhag."

"Exactly. There is nothing we can accomplish here. I suggest we return to TelleRai. We must join the bonds in Mourning. There will be time to worry about settling scores later."

Despite her own cold-blooded excesses against the base and rogue males the rebel brethren had used to attack and destroy her cloister in Maksche, Marika was sickened by what she saw in TelleRai. Broad patches of glassy, glowing desert had replaced miles of once proud and beautiful cloisters-including that of her own Community, the Reugge.

Six of the gruesome weapons, whatever they were, had come down upon the great city. One had fallen upon the convention ground where Marika and Kiljar had thought to disarm the villains forever. It had destroyed the highest sisters of scores of Communities. Others had fallen upon the Reugge cloister and the Redoriad. A fourth had fallen upon the Tovand, the headquarters of the brethren. The remaining two weapons seemed to have fallen where they would.

Touch brought the news that the brethren rebel facility in the Cupple Islands had been vaporized too. Another cutting off of backtrails.

Voidships from several dark-faring Communities had lifted in pursuit of the Serke already, but they would not reach orbital altitude in time. Already the great Serke-brethren voidship Starstalker and her convoy of darkships were departing into the great night between the suns.

Kiljar predicted, "We will hear from them again if we do not find and neutralize them first."

Marika did not believe that required any prophetic vision. "I insist on being trained to walk the void. I want to be there when they are found."

"It shall be as you wish."

A cold wind blew out of the north, bringing with it snow that melted as it approached the still hot craters. The winter of the world was a slower enemy, but the fate it bore was as certain. The great glaciers were on the move. Nothing could withstand them.