Ceremony Read Free Page A

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 be.
    The Redoriad were building their new main cloister in