This was the chamber where the most important Reugge rites were observed. Marika had been there before only as a dark-walker. Other than in its symbolic value, the place was nothing special.
Two dozen ranking silth waited, perched silently upon tall stools. Only the occasional flick of an inadvertently exposed tail betrayed the fact that anything was happening behind their cold obsidian-flake eyes. Every one of those eyes was fixed upon Marika.
She was less intimidated than she expected.
Several worker-servants moved among the silth, managing wants and refreshments. One with a tray approached Marika. She was an ancient whose fur had fallen in patches, leaving only ugly bare spots. She dragged her right leg in a stiff limp. As Marika waved her away, she was startled by the meth's scent. Something familiar ...
In a low voice the servant said, "Mind your manners, pup." She hitch-stepped off to the sideboard that seemed to be her station.
Barlog!
Barlog. With a limp. And Grauel's treasure was missing.
With that rifle Barlog could cut down half the silth in the room before any even thought of employing their witchery.
Marika was pleased by the resourcefulness of Grauel and Barlog. But she felt no more confident of her ability to handle the subtleties of the coming interview.
Of the silth in that room, Marika recognized only two. Zertan and Moragan. Marika faced the senior and performed the appropriate ceremonial greeting to perfection. She would show Barlog who could mind her manners.
"This is the one from Akard?" a gravelly voice asked.
"Yes, mistress."
The most senior, Marika assumed. Younger than she had expected. She was a hard, chunky, grizzled female with slightly wild eyes. Like a Gorry still sane. A sister who was as much huntress as silth, and a hungry huntress at that.
"I thought she would be older. And bigger," the most senior said, echoing Marika's own thoughts.
"She is young," Moragan said, and Marika noted that she was completely awake and vibrant and alive. Moragan's stool stood between those of Zertan and the most senior, an inch nearer that of the latter, subtly proclaiming her most important tie.
Senior Zertan said, "We do not know what to do with her. Her history is repellent at best. She is an astoundingly strong feral detected accidentally four years ago. Akard took her in. That was soon after the first nomadic incursions into the upper Ponath. Her hamlet was one of the first overrun. It seems that, with no training whatsoever, purely instinctively she drew to the dark and slew several savages. Her latent ability in that respect so disturbed some of our sisters that they labeled her Jiana, after the mythological and archetypal doomstalker Jiana. A sister, Gorry, who had a Community-wide reputation before the necessity for her rustification arose-"
A revenant shrieked in Marika's mind. Jiana! Doomstalker!
"Zertan." Most Senior Gradwohl's voice was coldly cautionary.
Zertan shifted her emphasis slightly. "Gorry had very strong, very negative feelings about the pup. In one way of seeing, Gorry was correct. She has twice been almost the only survivor of monstrous disasters that befell those who nurtured her. Gorry was very much afraid of her, but was her teacher. Thus her training there was haphazard at best. Reliable reports do indicate that she achieved a commanding ability to reach and command the darkest of those-who-dwell."
The object of discussion was growing more irate by the moment. Barlog's cold stare helped her control her tongue.
"Zertan," Gradwohl said again. "Enough. I have seen all the reports you have, and more." For a moment the Maksche senior seemed startled. "Can you tell me anything new? Anything I do not know? How does she feel about the sisterhood?"
After a silence that began to stretch painfully, Zertan admitted, "I have no idea how she feels. But it does not matter. A pup's attitudes are the clay that the teacher-"
Gradwohl did not seize upon Zertan's clumsiness. Instead, she shifted approach. "Senior Koenic reported to me shortly before Akard fell. Among other things, we discussed a feral silth pup named Marika. This Marika, though only fourteen years old, was directly responsible for the deaths of several hundred meth. Senior Koenic was as scared of her as Gorry was. Because, as she put it, this Marika was an embryonic Bestrei or Zhorek-without the intellectual handicaps of those two dark-walkers. Senior Koenic knew Bestrei and Zhorek before her rustification. She watched Marika for four years. She was in a position to form an intelligent estimate of the pup."
Gradwohl eased down off her stool, surveyed the assembly. "What does it matter what a pup thinks of the Community? Consider two ideas. Trust, and personal loyalty.
"For all the backbiting that goes on, trust cements the Reugge Community. We know we are in no physical danger from one another. We know none of our sisters will willfully work to the detriment of the order. Our subordinates know we will protect and nurture them. But Marika believes none of that.
"Why? Because her hamlet and hundreds of others were overrun by savages the Reugge were pledged to repel. Because genuine attempts have been made upon her life. Because she has not been educated to see the good of the Community as paramount."
Gradwohl sounded like some windy Wise meth giving the convocation on a day of high obligation. The longer Gradwohl talked, the less closely Marika listened and the more she became wary. There was some silth game running and she was just a counter.
"About personal loyalty, few of you know a thing," the most senior continued in a hard voice. "Let us experiment. Moragan. Proceed."
Moragan got off her stool. She drew a long, wicked knife from inside her robe, presented it to Senior Zertan.
Gradwohl said, "Carry out your instructions, Zertan."
Zertan left her stool with obvious reluctance. She looked at Marika for a moment.
She flung herself forward.
Marika's response was instantaneous and instinctive. She ducked through her loophole into the ghost realm. A thought captured a ghost. A mental shout scattered the few others before any other silth could come through and seize them. She hurled her ghost at the vaguely perceived form plunging toward her.
She returned to reality while the bark of a rifle still reverberated through the chamber. Zertan was pitching forward, dropped knife not yet to the floor. Gradwohl was turning, spun by Barlog's bullet. Marika flung up a paw, restraining Barlog before she commenced a massacre.
The chamber door exploded inward. The guards posted outside tumbled through. Grauel leaped through with a Degnan ululation, shield on one arm, javelin poised for the cast. Behind her, a quivering Braydic menaced the guards with a sword she had no idea how to use.
Not one of the silth on the stools moved more than the tip of a tail.
Some silth game.
Most Senior Gradwohl recovered. The bullet had but clipped her shoulder. She met Marika's cold stare. "I seldom miscalculate. But when I do, I do it big." Her paw went to her shoulder, where moisture seeped into the fabric of her robe. "I did not anticipate firearms. Halechk! See to Zertan before she dies on us."
A silth with healer's decorations left her stool and hastened to Zertan.
Gradwohl said, "Personal loyalty. Even in the face of certain disaster." Her teeth ground together. Her wound had begun to hurt.
Zertan's knife had come to rest only inches from the tip of Marika's right boot. She kicked it across the floor to the most senior's feet.
Gradwohl's cheek began to twitch. She whispered, "Have a care, pup. Had it been real, you might have gotten through it by having surprise on your right paw."
"Had it been real, there would be only three meth alive in this room right now." Marika spoke with conviction. She broke eye contact long enough to glance at the knife. "We had a saying in the Ponath. 'As strength goes.' " She had to say it in dialect. Gradwohl did not react. Perhaps it went past her.