"I will not, mistress. Though my stomach sours and my heart still fears their power, I will do nothing to alter the balance. I have reoriented my future toward the stars, as I had aimed during my novitiate. I have done what I can here. I will take my anger into the void in my search for the rogue Serke and their brethren masters. I will do nothing here unless others force me."

"Yes. That is well. Go stalk the stars. Find the criminals. That is where the true danger lies-though it must be growing weaker. They have not been back, except to sneak messengers in, since you drove Starstalker into the void. But do not allow that hunt to rule you entirely, Marika. The All has given you talents most silth would commit the thousand crimes to possess. You have learned to evade the consequences of the Jiana complex. I hope. Its aura does not hang so strongly upon you now. You have resurrected the Reugge from the ashes and have given them the potential to become one of the great sisterhoods of the future."

Kiljar coughed again, not so terribly. Marika waited in silence, knowing Kiljar was working hard to get said what she had to say.

"I suspect you now face an opportunity to do for the meth race what you have done for the Reugge. If you walk the stars in the proper frame of mind."

"Mistress?"

"I see three frames. Three great portraits sketched upon a canvas of time, perhaps overlapping one another, all forming a complete new life. The first is that of a pup. I forsee you dark-faring for the wonder, for the thrill of venturing where none have gone before. That is a thrill I knew well when I was young and first faring the void.

"A second frame surrounds your quest for revenge upon those who did you, the Reugge, and all silth so much evil. It is in your character to become fixed within that frame, and to lose the wonder and the grand potential of what could come of a successful stalk. You must carry with you always the knowledge that a successful hunt could define the entire future of our race. Have you thought at all about what might come of open intercourse between our world and that of these aliens the Serke discovered?"

"Only a little, mistress," Marika admitted. "My entire concentration has been devoted to the mirrors. But great evils or great benefits, surely."

"Indeed. One or the other, but nothing trivial. They will be very different, pup. Very different, indeed, from what I have been able to learn. You must realize that they will not all be magnificent and terrible weapons and technologies and whatnot that not even the brethren have begun to suspect. They will be modes of thought and slants of eye and ways of hearing that have not occurred even to our greatest thinkers. They will be the product of a distinct evolution, with all that implies in the way of millions of years of shaping minds as well as forms. They will infect us with ten thousand new ideas, new hopes, new fears-as, I am sure, we will infect them. Imagine the impact of the silth ideal upon a species that has no concept of that sort."

"I have seen the edges of such things, mistress, and I find them frightening."

"Indeed. And how much more frightening to silth who are narrower of mind? Who have known but one way since first rising to walk upon their legs alone? How threatening to them? There is great potential in this meeting of races, and its shaping for good or evil will lie strongly in the paws of the successor to Bestrei, for that successor will have the strength to determine anything she wishes in the void. You recall the frontier maxim you quoted to me so often. As strength goes."

"I understand, mistress."

"I hope you do, Marika. I pray you do. Truly. Like it or not, the future lies in your paws. You are the shaper. The eyes of all silth will be upon you after my passing. Your defeat of Starstalker's raid and your mirrors have made of you the best known of silth, though you sought no notoriety. The world over, meth will look to you first. It is a heavy responsibility. Can you be a Dra-Legit? A Charhein? A Singer Harden for our times?"

Had Kiljar not been so close to dying, Marika might have become impatient. At the moment she could say only, "I will not disappoint you, mistress."

"Good. Good, pup. And do not disappoint yourself. Sit with me now. In silence. I believe I am ready. I have done all that I must do."

Kiljar closed her eyes. Marika felt her composing herself through the mental rituals. She continued to hold the old silth's paw.

The All was not long in claiming Kiljar, then. And for hours afterward Marika did not think of anything else, did not once calculate what Kiljar's passing might mean on the mundane level of what direction the Redoriad would now take. Even the importance of Kublin's escape did not penetrate her awareness till she had come to an accommodation of her loss.

In her grief she was reminded that even now, when she had acquired the power, she had not discharged a debt placed upon her when she was but ten years old. She had not seen to the Mourning of the Degnan pack. That was a thing that would have to be done. She would discuss it with Grauel and Barlog.

Kiljar gone. The world would not be the same.

I

Marika worked out her grief aboard her saddleship. She flew north, into the wilds below Skiljansrode, and spent three days in the hunt for Kublin. Three days during which few traces of the fugitive were found. He had planned well, her crafty little littermate. He traveled by night, in the dark of the moons, in snow storms, in high winds, seldom leaving a trail that could be seen from aloft the next day. Those who hunted him always knew where he had to be within a hundred square miles, but they could not pin him down more closely.

After three days Marika left the hunt, resigned. The All would will Kublin caught or not, according to its grand design. She had more pressing matters to attend.

She made daily pilgrimages into the void, studying the progress of the mirrors, learning the neighbor stars of her sun. Each of those, she discovered, had its unique flavor that she could identify instantly if she simply abandoned thought and opened to the All. Once she found the key the learning process accelerated till she could know a star in seconds.

All was well with the mirrors. Bagnel kept a firm paw on the project. She was not needed there looking over everyone's shoulder every moment.

She went out to Kim again and experimented there, and found she was able to learn the new, strange stars visible only from there in just a matter of hours.

Home again, after having intentionally stretched herself by not pausing to rest upon the planet. She returned to Ruhaack to catch up on the situation upon the homeworld.

Kublin had not been taken, though Bagnel had sent a squadron of dirigibles to help with the search. Their technological advantages had been of no value.

Marika began to suspect that her littermate had used the fartouch to call in help after all.

She learned that the new most senior of the Redoriad was a silth named Balbrach, who had been nominated by Kiljar before her passing. Balbrach had pledged to pursue her predecessor's policies, particularly in operating in concert with the Reugge. The alliance represented a concentration of power unseen for generations.

There had been a Serke courier incursion. The patrols hoping to jump the messenger had been insufficiently alert. The darkship had gotten past them and gotten down without betraying its landing site.

"We're still hunting for them," Bagnel told her. "We have traces picked up by satellite, but the optics just aren't what they should be. If our resources weren't so totally committed to the mirror project, we might develop an observation network ... "