The times were strange in more than the personal way Marika knew. By staying near Braydic whenever she was free, she had begun to catch snatches of messages drifting in from Maksche. Messages that disturbed the older silth more then ever.
For a long time the Reugge Community had been involved in a sort of low-grade, ongoing conflict with the more powerful Serke sisterhood. Lately there had been some strong provocations from the stronger order. There were some who suspected a connection with strange events in the upper Ponath, though no hard accusations were made even in secret. The Akard sisters were afraid there was truth in that, and that the provocation here would escalate.
As near as Marika could tell, it seemed to be packwar on a grand scale. She had never seen packwar, but she had heard. In the upper Ponath that meant a few isolated skirmishes, harassment of another pack's huntresses, a rather quick peak into a confrontation which settled everything. Often the fighting was ritualized and consisted entirely of counting coup, with the big battle ending the moment of the first death.
Unless there was blood in it. Bloodfeud was different. Bloodfeud might be fought till one side fled or boasted no more survivors. But bloodfeud was exceedingly rare. Only a few of the Wise of the Degnan had been able to recall the last time bloodfeud plagued the upper Ponath.
The louder the north wind howled and the more bitter its bite, the more Marika met it in her place upon the wall, and whispered back of the coldness and darkness that had found their homes within her mind. There were moments when she suspected she was at least half what Gorry accused, so savage were some of her hatreds.
So it was that she was in her place when the messengers came from Critza, with nomad huntresses upon their tails. She saw the males floundering, recognized their outer wear, saw they were on the edge of collapse from exhaustion. She sensed the triumph in the savages closing in behind them, climbing the slope from the river. She went down inside herself, through her loophole, and reached out over a greater distance than ever before. She ripped the hearts out of the chests of the savages, setting the Hainlin canyons echoing with their screams. Then she touched the messengers and guided them to a point where they could clamber up the snowdrifts to the top of the wall.
She went to meet them, gliding along the icy rampart, not entirely certain how she knew what they were or why their visit would be important, but knowing it all the same. She would bring them inside.
Males inside the packfast proper was unprecedented. The older silth would be enraged by the desecration. Yet Marika was absolutely certain she would be doing right by bringing them across the wall.
Their breaths fogged about them and whipped away on the wind. They panted violently, lung-searingly. Marika sensed that they had been forced to travel long and hard, with death ever snapping at their tails. One collapsed into the powder snow before she reached them.
"Welcome to Akard, tradermales. I trust you bear a message of the utmost importance."
They looked at her with awe and fear, as most outsiders did, but the more so because she was young, and because she still radiated the darkness of death. "Yes," said the tallest of the three. "News from Critza ... It is you. The one called Marika ... "
She recognized him then. The male who had sat beside Khronen during last summer's confrontation with males. That unshakable self-certainty and confidence were with him no more. That anger, that defiance, had fled him. He shivered not only from the wind.
"It is I," Marika replied, her voice as chill as the wind. "I hope I have not wasted myself guarding you from the savages."
"No. We believe the sisterhood will be very interested in the tidings we bring." He was resilient. Already he had begun to recover himself.
"Come with me. Stay close. Do not stray. You know that an exception is being made. I alone can shield you once we go inside." She led them down, inside, into the great chamber where so often she had faced Gorry's worst, and where all the convocations of the cloister took place. "You will wait here, within the confines of this symbol." She indicated the floor. "If you stray, you will die." She went in search of Gorry.
Logic told her Gorry was not the one to inform. Gorry ran a bit short on basic sense. But tradition and custom, with virtually the force of law, demanded that she deal with her instructress first. It was up to Gorry to decide whether or not the situation required the attention of Senior Koenic.
Perhaps fate took a hand. For Gorry was not alone when Marika found her. Three sisters were with her, including Khles Gibany, who was her superior. "Mistress," Marika said, after impatiently working her way through all the appropriate ceremonials, "I have just come from the wall, where I watched a band of savages pursue three tradermales across the river. Deeming it unlikely that tradermales would be abroad in this weather and near Akard unless they had some critical communication to impart, I helped them to escape their pursuers and allowed them to scale the snowdrifts to the top of the wall. Upon inquiry, I learned that they did indeed bear a message from their senior addressed to the Akard cloister."
"And what was this message, pup?" Gorry asked. Her tone was only as civil as she deemed needful before witnesses. These days Gorry was civil only when appearances required. The passing of time made her ever more like Pohsit.
"I did not enquire, mistress. The nature of the situation suggested that it was not for me to do so. It suggested that I should turn to sisters wiser than I. So I led them down to the main hall, where they might shed the chill in their bones. I told them to wait there. They did suggest that their senior wished them to relate their message before the assembled cloister. It would seem the news they bring is bad."
Gorry became righteous in the extreme. Outsiders allowed into the packfast! Male outsiders. Her sisters, following the lead of Khles Gibany, proved to be more flexible. They shushed Gorry and began questioning Marika closely.
"I can tell you no more, sisters," she said, "unless you wish to review my feelings while I stood upon the wall, and the consequent reasoning which lent credence to them."
Gibany rose and manipulated herself onto her crutches. "I will be back soon. I agree with your feelings, Marika. There is something afoot. I will speak with the senior." She departed.
While Gorry glared daggers at Marika for further unsettling her life, the other two silth continued questioning her. They were only killing time, though. Already it was in the paws of Senior Koenic.
They saw the implications Marika had seen. The implications Gorry wished to ignore.
Once upon a time, years earlier, Khles Gibany had told Marika, in response to a question about Gorry: "There are those among us, pup, who prefer to live in myth instead of fact." Marika saw that clearly now.
Tradermales liked silth even less than the run of meth. The silth stand on male role assumption was harder than any packstead female's. The message brought by these males would have to be earthshaking, else they would not have come. And these days earthshaking news meant news about the nomads.
The myth-liver was the first to articulate what everyone was thinking. "The damned Critza fester has been overrun. They are trying to get us to take them in. No, say I. No. No. No. Let them stay out there in the wilderness. Let them fill the cookpots of savages. It is their ilk who have armed the grauken."
Grauken. Marika was startled to hear the word roll off a silth tongue.
"I do not believe they bear tidings of the fall of Critza, mistress. They did not look dispossessed. They just look exhausted and distressed." She did not put much force into her statement. She was being extremely careful with Gorry these days. And striving to build goodwill among the other sisters.