That answer would come soon enough.
Marika stationed her tame ghost near the installation and held it there with a thread of touch while she returned herself to flesh and the grand convention she had summoned.
They were conversing, some in soft tones or whispers, most with the touch. Snatches quickly patched together in one grand consensus. Doomfarer. Jiana. That look is upon her, stronger than ever before. Something dire is about to happen.
The reek of fear in that great hall was ten times what it had been upon her entry.
From her place Bel-Keneke made a sign, sped a feeble, frightened touch that told her that the last of the most seniors had arrived. Marika rose. She chose to speak instead of touch, and to speak in the tongue of common meth instead of any silth language. "Pups in gray mange, with your fur falling out, why are you so afraid? What is one savage from the wilds of the upper Ponath? Look. See how amusing, in her country clothing, her savage bloodfeud paints, carrying her weapons like some common fur trapper. Is this an object of fright?"
Her voice hardened. "I am reality, who has been baying along your backtrail so long. I am that which you fear, and I have overtaken you. I am not pleased with you. You have been in command. You are responsible. Your Communities have done foolish, stupid things, over and over and over, and then you have insisted on compounding them with more follies and stupidities. The story is always the same. Always the story of silth greed. Always the story of silth manipulation and maneuvering and treachery, never the story of meth thinking of tomorrow, never of meth facing reality and the future and seeing what lies there. I have preserved you and preserved you, and for what? Why? You will not learn. Perhaps you cannot learn.
"This is a new age, sisters. Can you not understand that? We are alone in this universe no more. We must sculpt a single outward face.
"I sent you a messenger, to apprise you of that, and you saw in him only one more opportunity to vent the greed and treachery that lies coiled about your hearts. You saw nothing else, and you heard nothing at all."
She glared down at the packed, silent, frightened silth. She sensed that some were considering attacking her. If they dared, as a group, they might end their terror forever. But not one among them had the courage to be the first to move.
"I read your hearts. As you are afraid of me now, so you stand convicted of the crime of cowardice in the face of the rogues who would have wrested your world from you. Had wrested it from you, save for small regions where they allowed you to abide till they chose to eliminate you. Again and again I gave you the chance to destroy those who would devour you, and always you squandered it. Again and again you allowed them to regain their strength, and each time become stronger, while you snapped at one another's backs and tried to steal starships or lands or whatever it was that for the moment seemed more important than the survival of your Communities. You will not save yourselves."
She stared, dared. No one responded.
"You do not protest the indictment. Not one of you, though some are less guilty than the rest." She reached into the void, pulled. "You would not learn, would not live together, would not defend yourselves. If you have no other value, then you might at least serve as examples of the cost of stupidity to those who will come after you." She yanked viciously. The great black struggled, but it came. "We cannot rebuild the world with you, that is obvious. We will see if it can be done without you."
They did not understand for a while. Then they understood only too well. The otherworld filled with outraged, terrified touch. And they remained true to what they were. They panicked rather than do what they needed to save themselves. They would not join even then.
Marika hammered another layer of armor around her heart. She told herself they were poor silth, that they truly deserved what was to come. But she hurt. She could no longer love herself.
She drew Barlog and her bath close to her, to envelop them in her own protection, then unleashed the fury of the great black.
You experience true darkwar, she flung into the horror of screaming mouths and twisting bodies and flying blood. I bring it down upon you, for the race.
It lasted far longer than she expected. When it was over she felt hollow, wasted, as though the massacre had been a futile and pointless gesture, little more than a pup's destructive tantrum.
Her companions did not speak to her. The bath eased away, overcome with horror. Barlog seemed more disgusted than horrified. Marika did not think much of herself at that moment, but she refused to turn inward, to scrutinize her feelings and motives.
"They wanted a doomstalker. A Jiana. They insisted. I have given them one. Come, you. We have business with the rogue."
As she walked to the courtyard and darkship, stepping over and around still forms, Barlog finally said, "Marika, they will not suffer this. You have sealed your doom. You have cried bloodfeud upon all silthdom."
"I know, Barlog. I know. But they'll have to work together if they're going to finish it, won't they? They'll have to eliminate the rogue at their backs before they dare turn upon me, won't they? In order to destroy me they will have to become what I want them to be, won't they?"
A wild awe filled Barlog's eyes as she realized that Marika had walked into this knowing exactly what she did.
"I have them by their cropped tails, Barlog. And I am not going to let go till they have remade themselves in the image I want. I have more surprises waiting for them ... But you need not be any part of this. You can retire to the packsteads on our world out there. It's not the Ponath, but it's ... "
"No. We have lived together-so many trouble-filled years. So much blood. We will die together. I insist. I have nothing else."
"If that is what you wish. Come. Let's go find our friends. And lay my family to rest."
Barlog shuddered. II Kublin had not exhausted his arsenal, nor would he surrender. He was as stubborn, was as much Jiana, as Marika was. He had his own dream of the shape of the future and was as determined to give it form.
But he did yield. A little.
Marika hammered at him a week, reducing his final strongholds one by one, slaughtering his followers. Then she laid siege to his final redoubt, a place far beneath the earth shielded by suppressors so powerful even the great black could not penetrate them. Marika brought in laborers and voctors by the thousand, began digging.
A deputation of terrified rogues came out. They brought Grauel, Bagnel, and the bath Silba.
Only Silba was alive.
She then understood why the coward had been so stubbornly determined. He had had little with which to trade.
Grauel and Bagnel had died before her return to the homeworld. Kublin had had no counters with which to play a trading game.
He had feared her fury would be inflamed all the more.
It was. But it became a directionless fury, a rage against circumstance, which burned bright swiftly and soon guttered into despair.
Marika took up Silba and the bodies of her loved ones and withdrew into the void. Bagnel she set sailing among the stars.
"Go, old friend," she whispered, and fought a sorrow greater than she dared admit. They might have been wonders. One death, among all the thousands she had engineered and witnessed, had stolen away all purpose, all caring. "Sail among your dreams. Among our dreams. And may the All reward you with more than all you lost for my sake."
A small part of her urged her to go back and ravage the world as she had ravaged the rogues and most seniors and her own Community, to take a vengeance that would not be forgotten while eternity lasted. But Bagnel's ghost visited her and whispered to her in sorrow, in the gentle way he had learned in his later years. He was never tilted to the dark side, for all he had shared her life. He would not have himself avenged. He could forgive even stupidity.