Book 3 - Ceremony Read Free Page A

Grauel asked, “What are we doing,
Marika?”
    “We’re going out. It is time I stopped waiting for
others to do something. No one seems inclined to act.”
    “Really?” It had been three years since Grauel had
been out of the fortress, which Marika had renamed Skiljansrode in
honor of her dam, and which she had made over into an independent
packfast populated by refugees, fugitives, and malcontents from a
dozen sisterhoods. Viewed from a traditional silth perspective,
Skiljansrode could be considered the germ of a new Community.
    Marika never thought of breaking away from the Reugge.
    Other silth contemptuously called those of Skiljansrode the
brother-sisters because they worked with their paws. The principal
product of the fortress remained darkships, but other, more
technical items went out as well, increasingly in competition with
the brethren. Most of the meth at Skiljansrode were curiosities
like Marika herself, little interested in the fashions and forms of
silthdom.
    “Really, Grauel. Really. Have Kloreb message the cloister
at Ruhaack that we’ll be coming. I will want our quarters
warmed. I will want a précis of the current political climate
prepared. And I will want Kiljar of the Redoriad told that I will
be in Ruhaack and that I would like an audience.”
    “Is something afoot, Marika?”
    “In a sense. It’s time we tried to do something
about reversing the winter of the world.”
    Grauel looked at her long and hard. Finally she said, “Not
even you have the witchcraft to make the sun burn
hotter.”
    “No, but there are ways. What do you think I have been
working on all this time? It can be done. I think the brethren knew
that in the old days. Had they won, they might have taken steps. I
suspect many of them know what to do even now, but they allow the
long winter to go on because it weakens us.”
    “I believe you when you
say . . . It’s
just . . . ”
    “Just?”
    “I haven’t been out of here for so long. I find I am
very uncomfortable when you talk about going.”
    “I’m uncomfortable too, Grauel. And that is a sign
that we have sat still too long. We have allowed ourselves to
become sedentary. We have become like our dams. We have reverted to
being the pack meth we once were. I think we’re overdue to
reenter the active world.”
    “Shall I have Bagnel messaged as well?”
    “That can wait till after we reach Ruhaack.”
    In the past three years Bagnel had risen high among the
brethren. Marika found she was excited about seeing him again. More
excited than she was by any other prospect, including the
possibility that she would mount a voidship again, and this time
maybe actually fly off in pursuit of her dreams. After, of course,
she had won the struggle to get a program started to reverse the
long winter.
    How many more years might that take?
    She knew the exact cause of her excitement. She examined it with
sardonic self-mockery.
    Toghar ceremonies or not, she was female. And she was into a
female’s prime pupbearing years. Some hormones were produced
despite Toghar.
    “Not a distraction I need,” she murmured to herself.
There were silth who assuaged that natural need, who enjoyed a sort
of false esterus, using male bonds. Marika refused. She considered
that degraded, despicable, even perverted. She forced the need out
of mind.
    “Go on, Grauel.”
    She paced after the huntress departed, concerned that she had
been gone from the world too long, that it might have passed her
by during her three-year sabbatical.
     
----

Chapter Thirty

I
    Ruhaack had become the site of the new dam cloisters of several
Communities bombed out of TelleRai. The city was a welter of
construction. TelleRai itself had been abandoned. It was no longer
healthy.
    The Reugge had been awarded possession of the former Serke
cloister. The reconstruction and refurbishing begun during
Marika’s administration were finished. The Reugge Community
was back to business as usual—as much as it could