The older silth came around the fire, arrayed the books before Marika after the manner of terrac fortune plaques, which the sagans so often consulted. "Close your eyes, Marika. Empty your mind. Let the All come in and touch you. Then you reach out and touch books. Those shall be the ones you take."
Grauel grumbled, "That is sheer chance."
Barlog added, "Witch's ways," and looked very upset. Just the way the Wise did whenever talk turned to the silth.
They were afraid. Finally, Marika began to realize what lay at the root of all their attitudes toward the silth. Sheer terror.
She did exactly as she was told. Moments later her paw seemed to move of its own accord. She felt leather under her fingers, could not recall which book lay where.
"No," said the older silth. "Keep your eyes closed."
Grauel grumbled something to Barlog.
"You two," the old silth said. "Pack the books as she chooses them. Place the others in the place where books are stored."
Marika's paw jerked to another book. For a moment it seemed something had hold of her wrist. And on the level of the touch, she sensed something with that darkshadow presence she associated with the things she called ghosts.
Again, and done.
The old silth spoke. "Open your eyes, pup. Get your coat. It is time to travel."
Unquestioning, Marika did as she was told. Coat on, she raised her pack and snugged it upon her shoulders the way Pobuda had shown her, finally, coming back from the hunt in Plenthzo Valley. She felt uncomfortable under the unaccustomed weight. Recalling the march to and from the hunt, and the deep, wet snow, she knew she would become far more uncomfortable before she reached the silth packfast.
Maybe she would end up discarding the books.
Maybe the silth had been trying to do her a favor, trying to talk her out of taking the books.
There were no farewells from or for the Laspe, who watched preparations for departure with increasing relief. As they stepped to the windskins, though, Marika heard the Laspe Wise begin a prayer to the All. It wished them a safe journey.
It was something.
As she trudged around the spiral of the stockade, the new snow dragging at her boots, Marika asked the silth ahead, "Why are we leaving now? Could we not travel just as safely in the daytime?"
"We are silth, pup. We travel at night."
The other, from behind Marika, said, "The night is our own. We are the daughters of the night and come and go as we will."
Marika shivered in a cold that had nothing to do with the wind off the Zhotak.
And around her, in the light of many moons, all the world glimmered black and bone.
Chapter Seven
I
There was nothing to compare with it in Marika's brief experience of life. Never had she been so totally, utterly miserable, so cold, so punished. And the first night of travel was only hours old.
She knew how Kublin must feel-must have felt, she reminded herself with a wince of emotion-when trying to keep up with Zambi and his friends.
The new, wet snow was a quicksand that dragged at her boots every step, though they had placed her next to last in the file, with only Barlog behind her to guard their backs. Her pack was an immense dead weight that, she was sure, would crush her right down into the earth's white shroud and leave her unable, ever, to rise to the surface again. The wind off the Zhotak had risen, flinging tatters of gray cloud across the faces of the moons, gnawing at her right cheek till she was sure she would lose half her face to frostbite. The temperature dropped steadily.
That was a positive sign only in that if it fell enough they could be reasonably sure they would not face another blizzard soon.
All that backbreaking labor, trying to clear the packstead of bodies, came back to haunt her. She ached everywhere. Her muscles never quite loosened up.
Grauel was breaking trail. She tried to keep the pace down. But the silth pressed, and it was hard for the huntress to slack off when the older of the two could keep a more rigorous pace.
Once, during the first brief rest halt, Grauel and the taller silth fell into whispered argument. Grauel wanted to go more slowly. She said, "We are in enemy territory, sister. It would be wiser to move cautiously, staying alert. We do not want to stumble into nomads in our haste."
"It is the night. The night is ours, huntress. And we can watch where you cannot."
Grauel admitted that possibility. But she said, "They have their witchcrafts, too. As they have demonstrated. It would not be smart to put all our trust into a single-"
"Enough. We will not argue. We are not accustomed to argument. That is a lesson you will learn hard if you do not learn it in the course of this journey."
Marika stared at the snow between her feet and tried to imagine how far they had yet to travel. As she recalled her geography, the packfast lay sixty miles west of the packstead. They had come, at most, five miles so far. At this pace they would be three or four nights making the journey. In summer it could be done in two days.
Grauel did not argue further. Even so, her posture made it obvious she was in internal revolt, that she was awed by and frightened of the silth, yet held them in a certain contempt. Her body language was not overlooked by the silth either. Sometime after the journey resumed Marika caught snatches of an exchange between the two. They were not pleased with Grauel.
The elder said, "But what can you expect of a savage? She was not raised with a proper respect."
A hint of a snarl stretched Marika's lips. A proper respect? Where was the proper respect of the silth for a huntress of Grauel's ability? Where was a proper respect for Grauel's experience and knowledge? Grauel had not been arguing for the sake of argument, like some bored Wise meth with time to kill.
It did not look that promising a future, this going into exile at the packfast. No one would be pleased with anyone else's ways.
She was not some male to bend the neck, Marika thought. If the silth thought so, they would find they had more trouble than they bargained for.
But defiance was soon forgotten in the pain and weariness of the trek. One boot in front of the other and, worse, the mind always free to remember. Always open to invasion from the past.
The real pain, the heart pain, began then.
More than once Barlog nearly trampled her, coming forward in her own foggy plod to find Marika stopped, lost within herself.
The exasperation of the silth grew by the hour.
They were weary of the wilderness. They were anxious to return home. They had very little patience left for indulging Degnan survivors.
That being the case, Marika wondered why they did not just go on at their own pace. They had no obligation to the Degnan, it would seem, in their own minds from the way they talked. As though the infeudation to which Skiljan and Gerrien had appealed for protection was at best a story with which the silth of the packfast justified their robberies to packs supposedly beholden to them. As though the rights and obligations were all one-sided, no matter what was promised.
Marika began to develop her own keen contempt for the silth. In her agony and aching, it nurtured well. Before the silth ordered a day camp set in a windbreak in the lee of a monstrous fallen tree, Marika's feeling had grown so strong the silth could read it. And they were baffled, for they had found her more open and unprejudiced than the older Degnan. They squattted together and spoke about it while Grauel and Barlog dug a better shelter into the snow drifted beneath the tree.
The taller silth beckoned Marika. For all her exhaustion, the pup had been trying to help the huntresses, mainly by gathering firewood. They had reached a stretch where tall trees flanked the river, climbing the sides of steep hills. Oddly, the land became more rugged as the river ran west, though from the plateau where the Degnan packstead lay it did not seem so, for the general tendency of the land was slowly downward.