Gradwohl had plans for her, shrouded though they were. But Marika had plans of her own.
II The summer of Marika's fourth return to the Ponath marked a watershed.
It was her last summer as a novice. On her return to Maksche she was to be inducted full silth, with all the privileges that implied. So she began the summer looking beyond it, trying to justify the ceremonies in her own mind, never seeing the summer as more than a bridge of time. The months in the north would be a slow vacation. The nomads were weak and almost never seen in the Ponath anymore. The snows up there were not expected to melt. There was no reason to anticipate anything but several months of boredom and Dorteka's complaints.
Gradwohl assigned her the entire upper Ponath. She would be answerable only to Senior Educan at Akard. She made her headquarters in a log fortress just miles from the site of the Degnan packstead. In the boring times she would walk down to the site and remember, or venture over hill and valley, through dead forest, to Machen Cave, where first she became aware that she had talents different from those of ordinary packmates.
A great shadow still lurked in that cave. She did not probe it. Because it had wakened her, she invested it with almost holy significance and would not desecrate the memory by bringing it out into the light for a look.
She was responsible for a network of watchtowers and blockhouses shielding the Ponath from the Zhotak. It seemed a pointless shield. The Zhotak was devoid of meth life. Only a few far arctic beasts lingered there. They were no threat to the Reugge.
That Gradwohl considered the northernmost marches safe was indicated by Marika's command. She had twenty-three novices to perform the duties of silth, and Dorteka to advise her. Her huntresses and workers-commanded by Grauel and Barlog, who had risen by being pulled along in the wake of her own rise-were ragtag, of little use in areas more active. Except inasmuch as the command gave her some experience directing others, Marika thought the whole show a farce.
The summer began with a month of nonevents in noncountry. The Ponath was naked of meth except for its Reugge garrisons. There was nothing to do. Even those forests that were not dead were dying. The few animals seen were arctic creatures migrating south. Summer was a joke name, really. Despite the season, it snowed almost every day.
There was a momentary break in the boredom during the third week. One of the watchtowers reported sighting an unfamiliar darkship sliding down the valley of the east fork of the Hainlin, traveling so low its undercarriage almost dragged the snow. Marika dived through her loophole, caught a strong ghost, and went questing.
"Well?" Dorteka demanded when she returned.
"There may have been something. I could not make contact, but I felt something. It was moving downstream."
"Shall I inform Akard?"
"I do not think it is necessary. If it is an alien darkship, and is following the east fork down, they will spot it soon enough."
"It could have been an unscheduled patrol."
"Probably was."
A darkship out of Akard patrolled Marika's province each third day. Invariably, it reported a complete absence of nomad activity. What skirmishing there was was taking place far to the south. And the few nomads seen down there were now doing as Gradwohl wished. They were migrating westward, toward Serke country.
There were rumors that Serke installations had been attacked.
"Looks like the Serke have lost their loyalty," Marika told Dorteka after having examined several such reports.
"They have used them up. They will be little more than a nuisance to our cousins."
"I wonder what the Serke bought them with. To have held them so long on the bounds of death and starvation."
Dorteka said, "I think they expected to roll over us the year they took Akard. The intelligence says they expected to take Akard cheaply and follow that victory with a run that would take them all the way to Maksche. Maksche certainly could not have repelled them at the time. The glitch in their strategy was you. You slew their leading silth and decimated their best huntresses. They had nothing left with which to complete the sweep."
"But why did they keep on after they had failed?"
"Psychological momentum. Whoever was pulling the strings on the thing would have been high in the Serke council. Someone very old. Old silth do not admit defeat or failure. To me the evidence suggests that there is a good chance the same old silth is still in charge over there."
"By now she must realize she has to try something else. Or must give up."
"She cannot give up. She can only get more desperate as the most senior thwarts her every stratagem."
"Why?"
"The whole world knows what is happening, Marika. Even if no one admits seeing it. Our hypothetical Serke councillor cannot risk losing face by conceding defeat. We are a much weaker Community. Theoretically, it is impossible for us to best the Serke."
"What do you feel about that?"
"I feel scared, Marika." It was a rare moment of honesty on Dorteka's part. "This has been going on for eight years. The Serke councillors were all old when it started. They must be senile now. Senile meth do things without regard for consequences because they will not have to live with them. I am frightened by Gradwohl, too. She has a disregard for form and consequence herself, without the excuse of being senile. The way she has forced you onto the Community ... "
"Have I failed her expectations, Dorteka?"
"That is not the point."
"It is the only point. Gradwohl is not concerned about egos. The Reugge face the greatest challenge of their history. Survival itself may be the stake. Gradwohl believes I can play a critical role if she can delay the final crisis till I am ready."
"There are those who are convinced that your critical role will be to preside over the sisterhood's destruction."
"That doomstalker superstition haunts my backtrail still?"
"Forget legend and superstition-though they are valid as ways of interpreting that which we know but do not understand. Consider personality. You are the least selfless silth I have ever encountered. I have yet to discern a genuine shred of devotion in you, to the Community or to the silth ideal. You fake. You pretend. You put on masks. But you walk among those who see through shadows and mists, Marika. You cannot convince anyone that you are some sweet lost pup from the Ponath."
Marika began to pace. She wanted to issue some argument to refute Dorteka and could not think of a one she could wield with conviction.
"You are using the Reugge, Marika."
"The Reugge are using me."
"That is the way of-"
"I do not accept that, Dorteka. Take that back to Gradwohl if you want. Though I am sure she knows."
Grauel witnessed this argument. She grew very tense as it proceeded, fearing it would pass beyond the verbal. Dorteka had been having increasing difficulty maintaining her self-restraint.
Marika had worked hard to bind Grauel and Barlog more closely to her. Again and again she tested them in pinches between loyalties to herself and loyalties to the greater community. They had stuck with her every time. She hoped she was laying the foundations of unshakable habit. A day might come when she would want them to stick with her through extreme circumstances.
For all she had known these two huntresses her entire life, Marika did not know them very well. Had she known them well, she would have realized no doubt of their loyalties ever existed.
Barlog entered the room. "A new report from Akard, Marika."
"It's early, isn't it?
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"Another sighting."
"Another ghost darkship?"
"No. This time it's a possible nomad force coming east on the Morthra Trail. Based on two unconfirmed sightings."
"Well, that is no problem for us."
The Morthra Trail was little more than a game track these days, lost beneath ten feet of snow. At one time it had connected Critza with a tradermale outpost on the Neybhor River, seventy miles to the west. The Neybhor marked the western frontier of Reugge claims in that part of the Ponath.
"Sounds like wishful thinking," Marika said. "Or a drill being sprung on us by the most senior. But I suppose we do have to pass the word. Dorteka, you take the eastern arc. I will take the western." Marika sealed her eyes, went inside, extended a thread of touch till she reached an underling in an outlying blockhouse. She relayed the information.
Two days later touch-word brought the news that Akard had lost contact with several western outposts. Darkships sent to investigate had found the garrisons dead. An aerial search for the culprits had begun.
One of the darkships fell out of touch.
Senior Educan sent out everything she had.
When found, the missing darkship was a tangle of titanium ruin. It had buried itself in the face of a mountain, evidently at high speed. The Mistress of the Ship and her bath appeared to have suffered no wounds before the crash.