Free Ceremony by Glen Cook Page B

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.
     
    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 can no longer be here to peer over your shoulder and be the whisper of your conscience. We have made a sound peace with the brethren. A peace that can last if it is given a chance. An accommodation with which the majority of silth and brethren both are content. To take up old grievances now would... “
    “I