Free Book 3 - Ceremony by Glen Cook Page B

No
reason was stated, but there are rumors that she is
dying.”
    “Kiljar has been dying for most of the time that I have
known her. With one breath she predicts that she will not live to
see the sun rise again, and with the next vows to outlive all the
carrion eaters waiting to grab the Redoriad first chair.”
    “This time I believe that the crisis is genuine, mistress.
The Redoriad have called in all their cloister councils and all
their high ones who are inside the system. They have closed their
gates to ordinary traffic.”
    “Call them back. Speak to Kiljar herself if that is
possible. Tell her or them that I have returned. That I am
available immediately if necessary. Grauel, Barlog, assemble my
saddleship. I will go over right now if that is what she
desires.”
    It was. Marika departed within minutes.
    She was not welcomed at the Redoriad cloister. The halls were
thick with important silth. One and all, they eyed her with
hostility. She ignored them and the growls that came when she was
granted immediate entry to Kiljar’s apartment. Even the most
powerful of them had not been permitted that.
     
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III
    Kiljar appeared very near the edge. Her voice was little more
than a whisper. She could not lift her head, nor more than slightly
stretch her lips in greeting. But she did manage to issue strong
orders to her attendants to leave them alone.
    Marika felt a sadness rise within her, a rare sadness, a rare
sorrow. Few meth meant much to her, but Kiljar had become one of
those few. She took the old silth’s paw.
“Mistress?”
    Kiljar called upon her final reserves. “The All calls me,
pup. This time there will be no deafening my ears to the
summons.”
    “Yes.” One did not hide such a truth from a Kiljar.
“My heart is torn.” One should not hide that truth
either.
    “It has been good to me, Marika. It gave me more years
that I expected or had the right to hope. I hope I have used them
as well as I believe I have.”
    “I think you have, mistress. I think you may have
accomplished more than you suspect. I think you will be recalled as
one of the great Redoriad.”
    “I am not sure I wish to be recalled that way, pup. I
think I want to be one of the remembered names in your legend. I
think I want to be remembered as your teacher, as the one who
brought you to see your responsibilities, your importance, as she
who taught you to harness your inclination to
excess . . . ” Kiljar succumbed to a
racking cough. Unable to help, Marika clung to her paw and fought
back the sorrow bringing the water to her eyes.
    Kiljar’s paw tightened upon hers. “I do not want to
go into the darkness riding the fear that I have failed, Marika.
You are not of my sisterhood. You are not of my blood. Yet I have
made of you the favored pup of my pack. I have done much for you
that you know, and much more that you do not. I have watched you
grow, and have clung to life desperately in hopes that your growth
would become complete and you would mature into a silth fit to
stand beside Dra-Legit, Chahein, and Singer Harden. You are in the
position, and these are the times. You have the power and the
talent to shape the entire world. You are doing so, with your great
metal suns. They are the one regret I know I will be carrying into
the darkness. I would have lived to have seen them shedding their
warmth.”
    Marika’s throat had tightened till she could scarcely
speak. She had to struggle to croak, “Mistress, you have been
a true friend. I have found few of those. It is not a world for
making friends.”
    “The great never have many friends, pup. Perhaps I have
been less a friend than you think, for I have had the temerity to
try to shape your destiny. One friend does not try to force a role
upon another.”
    “You are a friend.”
    “As you will. You know what I want, do you not?”
    “I think I do.”
    “You would, yes. You always know. But I will say it
anyway. I do not want you to return to old hatreds once I