Marika looked it over. "Not much time left for sleep."
"You wish to fly darkships, you must learn to endure sleeplessness. You wish to see your friend Braydic, you will remain stubbornly devoted to your studies." Dorteka pushed a scrap of paper across the table. The notes on it were in a paw almost mechanically perfect. "Suggested motivators for the feral subject Marika."
"The most senior?"
"Yes."
The interest shown by the most senior was a bit intimidating.
The sheet was filled with a complicated diagram for earning the right to visit Braydic or the city.
"As you see, a visit to your friend requires you to accumulate one hundred performance points. Those are mapped out for you there. Leave to go outside the cloister will be more difficult to obtain. It is subject to my being satisfied with your progress. You will never get out if I feel you are giving less than one hundred percent."
Crafty old Gradwohl. She had speared to the heart of her and tapped forces which could make her learn. The thought of seeing Braydic sparked an immediate urge to begin. The opportunity to get into the city, too, stirred her, but less concretely.
"I doubt that I will permit a city visit anytime soon. Perhaps we will accumulate several opportunities for later."
"Why, mistress?"
"The streets could be dangerous for an untrained silth. We have been having a problem with rogue males. I expect the Serke are behind that, too. Whatever, silth have been assaulted. Last summer ringleaders were rounded up and sentenced to the mines, but that did little good. The brethren-those you call tradermales-may have a paw in the movement."
"The world is not so complicated on an upper Ponath packstead," Marika observed.
"No. You see the schedule and rewards. Are they acceptable?"
"Yes, mistress."
"You will become a full-time student, with no other duties. You will accept the discipline of the Community?"
"Yes, mistress." Marika was surprised to find herself so eager. Till this morning she had cared about nothing. "I am ready to begin."
"Then begin we shall."
II Marika's education commenced before the next dawn. Dorteka wakened her and took her to a gymnasium for an hour's workout. A bath followed.
Marika's determination almost broke. She nearly broke her vow to obey and conform.
A bath! Meth-of the upper Ponath, at least-hated water. They never entered it voluntarily. Only when the populations of insects in one's fur became too great to stand ...
The bath was followed by a hurried meal prior to the first class of the day, which was an introduction to being silth. Rites and ceremonies, dogma and duties, and instruction in the secret languages of the sisterhood, which she hardly needed. She discovered that there were circles of sisterhood mysteries silth were supposed to penetrate as they became older and more skilled. Till Dorteka, she had no idea how much she had been shut out.
She ripped through those studies swiftly. They required rote learning. Her memory was excellent. Seldom did she need to be shown anything more than once.
She excelled in the gymnasium. She was her dam's pup. Skiljan had been fast, strong, hard, and tough.
The second class lay across the cloister from the first. Dorteka made her run all the way. Dorteka made her run everywhere, and ran with her. The second class was not as susceptible to rote learning, for it was mathematics. It required the use of reason. Silth naturally tended to favor intuition.
After mathematics came the history of the sisterhood, a class which Marika devoured in days. The Reugge were a minor Community with a short, uneventful past, an offshoot of the Serke that had established independence only seven centuries earlier. Sustenance of that independence was the outstanding Reugge achievement.
Silth had a history that stretched into prehistory, countless millennia back, when all meth lived in nomadic packs. The earliest sisterhoods existed long before the keeping of records began. Most silth had little interest in those days. They lived in an eternal now.
Marika's pack had maintained a record of its achievements called the Degnan Chronicle. That it had been kept in her dam's loghouse had been a source of pride to the pup. Barlog still kept it up, for she and Grauel believed that as long as it survived and remained current, the Degnan pack survived. As a historical instrument, the Degnan Chronicle was superior to any kept by the Reugge even now. For the Reugge Community, history was an oral tradition mainly of self-justification.
Broader historical studies proved no more informative. They raised more questions than they answered, as far as Marika could see. What were the origins of the meth? In olden times-as now among the nomads of the north-they were pack hunters. Physically, they resembled a carnivore called a kagbeast. But kagbeasts were not intelligent, nor did their females rule their packs. In fact, female meth did not rule the primitive packs of the southern hemisphere, where silth births were rare. There the males hunted on equal footing.
When Marika asked, Dorteka theorized, "Female rule developed because of the high incidence of silth births in northern litters. So I have heard.
"Primitive packs such as your own are structured around the strong. When the strong become weakened by time or disease, they are pushed aside. But a silth could stave off challengers even though she was weak physically, and once in command would tend to be partial to those who shared her talent. In primitive packs where breeding rights are reserved for the dominant females, silth dominance would mean especial favor to the spread of the silth strain."
Marika observed, "Then an old female like my instructress Gorry, at Akard, could stay in control till she died, yet could not lead or make rational decisions, really."
Dorteka snorted. "Which indicts the silth structure, yes. For all the most senior said about trust and whatnot in your interview-yes, I have heard all about that-we live under rule by terror, pup. The most capable do not run the Communities. The most terrible do. Thus you have a Bestrei among the Serke without a brain at all but in high station because she is invincible in darkwar. She is one of many who would not survive long if stripped of her talent."
After general history came another meal, followed by a long afternoon spent trying to harness and expand Marika's talents.
Dorteka went through everything with her, side by side. She graded herself, making herself the standard against which Marika should perform.
Marika almost enjoyed herself. For the first time since the fall of the Degnan packstead, she felt like her life was going somewhere.
The exercises, the entire program, were nothing like what she had had to suffer through with Gorry. There were no monsters, no terrors, no threats, no abuses. For silth class Marika seated herself upon a mat, closed her eyes, led herself into a trance where her mind floated free, unsupported by ghosts. Dorteka adamantly insisted she shun those-who-dwell.
"They are treacherous, Marika. Like chaphe is treacherous. You can turn to them too often, till you become dependent upon them and turn to them every time you are under pressure. They become an escape. Go inside and see how many other paths lie open."
Marika was amazed to discover that most silth could not reach or manipulate the deadly ghosts. That was a rare talent, dark-walking. The rarest and most dread talent of them all was being able to control the giants that moved the darkships-the very giants she had summoned at Akard for more lethal employment against nomads.
Her heart leapt when she learned that. She would fly!
Flight had become a goal bordering upon obsession.
"When can I begin learning the darkships, mistress?" she asked. "That is what interests me."
"Not soon. Only after you have a sound grounding in everything it takes to become true silth. The most senior would like you to become a flying sister, yes, but I feel she wants you to be much more. I suspect she plans a great future for you."