"What?" Why had that not been in the education tapes? "I was not aware of that. Brethren have visited the starworlds?"

"There are two ships. One is Serke, one is Redoriad. The silth move them across the void. The brethren deal on the other end."

"How is that possible? I thought only specially trained silth could stay the bite of the dark."

"Special ships. Darkships surrounded with a metal shell to keep the air in. Designed by brethren. They put in machines to keep the air fresh. Don't ask me questions because that's all I know. That is another bond entirely, and one we have no contact with."

"And the other sisterhoods are jealous?"

"So I gather. I don't know all that much. The Brown Paw Bond is an old-fashioned bond involved in trade and light manufacturing. Traditional pursuits. The only place you could get the kind of answers you want would be at the Tovand in TelleRai. I tell you, the one time I saw that place it seemed more alien than the Reugge cloister here. Those are strange males down there. Anyway, I was telling about the Serke and the Redoriad. Rumor says they asked the brethren to help them with their star ventures. That could be why the Reugge have become so disenchanted with the Serke."

"Don't fool yourself. The disenchantment did not begin with us. The Serke are solely responsible. There's something in the Ponath that they want." She studied Bagnel closely. He gave nothing away.

"The brethren won't go back to Critza, Bagnel. I thought you said trade was lucrative up there."

"When there was someone to trade with. There isn't anymore."

"Nomads?"

"What?"

"They're getting their weapons somewhere. They were better armed than ever this summer. They shot down two darkships. There is only one source for firearms."

"No. We haven't sold them weapons. Of that I'm certain. That would be a self-destructive act."

"Who did?"

"I don't know."

"They had to get them from you. No one else is allowed to manufacture such things."

"I thought you said the Serke were behind everything."

"Undoubtedly. But I wonder if someone isn't behind the Serke. No. Let's not argue anymore. It's getting late. I'd better get home or they won't let me come again."

"How soon can I expect you?"

"Next month maybe. I get a day a month off now. A reward for service in the Ponath. As long as I'm welcome, I'll keep coming here."

"You'll be welcome as long as I'm security chief."

"Yes. You owe me, don't you?"

Startled, Bagnel said, "That, too. But mostly because you break the tedium."

"You're not happy here?"

"I would have been happier had the weather never changed and the nomads never come out of the Zhotak. Life was simpler at Critza."

Marika agreed. "As it was at my packstead."

III "Well?" the most senior demanded.

Marika was not sure what to say. Was it in her interest to admit that she suspected Bagnel had been given an assignment identical to her own?

She repeated only what she thought Barlog and Grauel might have overheard. "Mostly we just looked at aircraft and talked about how we would have been happier if we had not had to leave the Ponath. I tried to avoid pressing. Oh. He did tell me about some ships the dark-faring Serke and Redoriad had built special so the brethren could-"

"Yes. Well. Not much. But I did not expect much. It was a first time. A trial, You did not press? Good. You have a talent for the insidious. You will make a great leader someday. I am sure you will have him in your thrall before long."

"I will try, mistress."

"Please do, Marika. It may become critical down the path."

"May I ask what exactly we are doing, mistress? What plans you have for me? Dorteka keeps telling me-"

"You may not. Not at this point. What you do not know you cannot tell anyone else. When it becomes tighter tactically ... When you and I and the Reugge would all be better served by having you know the goal and able to act to achieve it, you will be told everything. For the present, have faith that your reward will be worth your trouble."

"As you wish, mistress."

I

It was the quietest time of Marika's brief life, at least since the years before the nomads had come to the upper Ponath and destroyed. The struggle continued, and she participated, but life became so effortless and routine it fell into numbing cycles of repetition. There were few high points, few lows, and each of the latter she marked by the return of her nightmares about her littermate Kublin.

She could count on at least one bout with dark dreams each year, though never at any time predictable by season, weather, or her own mental state. They concerned her increasingly. The passing of time, and their never being weaker when they came, convinced her that they had little to do with the fact that the Degnan remained unMourned.

What else, then? That was what Grauel, Barlog, and even Braydic asked when she did at last break down and share her distress.

She did not know what else. Dreams and reason did not mix.

She did see Braydic occasionally now. The comm technician was less standoffish now it was certain Marika enjoyed the most senior's enduring favor.

Studies. Always there were studies. Always there were exercises to help her expand and increase her silth talents.

Always there were frightened silth distressed by her grasp of those talents.

Years came and went. The winters worsened appreciably each seasonal cycle. The summers grew shorter. Photographs taken from tradermale satellites showed a swift accumulation of ice in the far north. Glaciers were worming across the Zhotak already. For a time they would be blocked by the barrier of the Rift, but sisters who believed themselves experts said that, even so, it would be but a few years before that barrier was surmounted and the ice would slide on southward, grinding the land.

It never ceased to boggle Marika, the Serke being so desperate to possess a land soon to be lost to nature.

The predictions regarding the age of ice became ever more grim. There were times when Marika wished she were not in the know-as much as she was. The world faced truly terrible times, and those would come within her own life span. Assuming she lived as long as most silth.

Grauel and Barlog were inclined to suggest that she would not, for she never quite managed to control her fractious nature.

The predictions of social upheaval and displacement, most of which she reasoned out for herself, were quite terrifying.

Each summer Marika served her stint in the north, from the time of the last snowfall till the time of the first. Each summer she exercised her ability to walk the dark side, as much as the nomads would permit. Each summer poor Dorteka had to endure the rustification with her, complaining bitterly. Each summer Marika helped establish a new outpost somewhere, and each summer the nomads tried to avoid her outpost, though every summer saw its great centers of conflict. She sometimes managed to participate by smuggling herself into the strife aboard a darkship commanded by a pliable Mistress.

Gradwohl's strategy of driving the nomads west into Serke territories seemed slow in paying off. The savages clung to Reugge lands stubbornly, despite paying a terrible price.

The Reugge thus settled into a never-ending and costly bloodfeud with the savages. The horde, after continuous decimation through attack and starvation, no longer posed quite so serious a threat. But it remained troublesome because of the rise of a warrior caste. The crucible of struggle created grim fighters among the fastest, strongest, and smartest nomads. Composed of both male and female fighters, and supported by ever more skillful wild silth and wehrlen, it made up in ferocity and cunning what the horde had lost in numbers.