I

Marika wakened suddenly, completely, as though by alarm, two hours before sunset. The flight into the void returned. She shuddered. So close. And that Bestrei! The sheer malignant power of the witch!

Something called her from the north. An impulse to be gone, to head home? Now? Why so intense? That was not like her.

The urge grew stronger, almost compulsive.

She completed a rapid toilet and went to her saddleship. She was eager to get back to Braydic. There would have been a great many signals today. Braydic was bound to have intercepted something that would illuminate the behavior of the Serke and brethren. There had to be some outstanding reason for their having been so touchy about having their voidship observed.

She was supposed to wait for darkness, but she could not. The compulsion had grown overwhelming. She told herself that no one would notice one tiny saddleship ripping through the dusk.

As she flitted out the window, she sent a touch seeking Kiljar. Something came back, anxious, but by then Marika had attained full speed and was rushing away north too fast for Kiljar to catch the moving target.

The region of lakes appeared and fell behind. The Topol Cordillera passed below, speckled golden and orange in the fading light. She reached the Hainlin and turned upstream. Seventy miles south of Maksche she passed over a squadron of brethren dirigibles plowing along on a westward course. Seven? Eight? What in the world? The setting sun made great orange fingers of them. Some were as big as the first airship she had ever seen. What did that mean?

Minutes later she began to suspect.

The light of the setting sun painted the westward face of a pillar of smoke that rose in a great tower far ahead, leaning slightly with the breeze, vanishing into high cloud cover. The reverse face of the pillar was almost black, so dense was the smoke. As she drew nearer, she began to pick out the fires feeding it.

Maksche. All Maksche was aflame. That could not be. How? ...

She forced her ghosts to stretch themselves, plowed down through thicker air so swiftly it howled around her.

She roared right through the smoke, so shocked she barely maintained sense enough to stay above the taller towers. The cloister was the heart of it. The Reugge bastion had been gutted. The main fires now burned among the factories and tinderbox homes of Reugge bonds.

Meth still scampered around down there, valiantly fighting the flames. They fought in a losing cause. Back over the cloister Marika passed, and saw scores upon scores of bodies scattered in the sooty courts, upon the blackened ramparts. She dropped lower, though the heat remained intense. The stone walls radiated like those of a kiln. She let her touch roam the remains, found nothing living.

She had not expected to find anything. Nothing could have lived through the inferno that raged down there.

Up she went, and across the city, touch-trolling, pain filling her. She hurt as she had not hurt since the day the nomads had crossed the packstead wall and left none but herself and Kublin living. And Grauel and Barlog.

Grauel! Barlog! No! She could not be alone now!

Touch could not find one silth mind.

She heard shooting as she rocketed over the tradermale enclave, certain it had had something to do with the disaster.

She went down, saw tradermales behind boxes and bales and corners of buildings firing at the gatehouse. Rifles barked back at them. Outside the gatehouse lay two dead meth in Reugge livery. Voctors. They had attacked the enclave.

She read the situation instantly. The huntresses were survivors of the holocaust. They had decided to die with honor, storming the source of their grief.

Tradermales in great numbers were closing a circle around the gatehouse. Machine guns yammered away, slowly gnawing at the structure. None of the brethren looked up.

They might not have seen her in the treacherous firelight anyway.

Marika lifted her saddleship a hundred feet, detached one large ghost, and sent it ravening while her conveyance settled toward the runway. By the time the carved legs of the wooden beast touched concrete, the male survivors were in full flight, headed for the one small dirigible cradled across the field.

Marika dismounted, sent the ghost after them. They died swiftly.

The firing from the gatehouse had ceased. Because the huntresses there were dead? Or because they had recognized her? She started that way.

A badly mauled Grauel slipped out a doorway, stood propped against the building. There was blood all over her.

Marika ran to her, threw her arms around her. "Grauel. By the All, what happened? This is insane."

Weakly, Grauel gasped into her ear, "Last night. During the night. The warlock came. With his rogues. Hundreds of them. He had a machine that neutralized the silth. He attacked the cloister. Some of us decided to break out and circle around. One of the sisters thought they had come in on tradermale dirigibles because a whole flight of airships dropped into the enclave after sunset."

"Where's Barlog?"

"Inside. She's hurt. You'll have to help her, Marika."

"Go on. Tell me the rest." She thought of that westbound squadron she had seen during her passage north. The same? Almost certainly. She had been within a few thousand feet of the warlock, that she had thought an imaginary beast.

"They destroyed the cloister. Surely you saw."

"I saw."

"Then they destroyed everything that belonged to the Reugge and Brown Paw Bond. The fires got out of control. I think they would have killed everyone in the city just so there would be no witnesses, but the fires drove them off. They left a couple of hours ago, just leaving the one airship load to finish up. I think they may have wanted to search the ruins after the fires died down, too."

"Come inside. You have to rest." Marika supported Grauel's weight. Inside she found most of a dozen huntresses. The majority were dead. Barlog was lying on her side, a froth of blood upon her muzzle. Only one very young voctor was uninjured. She was in a state bordering on hysteria.

Bagnel lay among the casualties. He had been bound and gagged. Marika leapt toward him.

He was not dead either, though he had several bullets in him. He regained consciousness briefly as she pulled the gag from his mouth. He croaked, " I am sorry, Marika. I did not know what was happening."

She recalled Grauel saying the raiders had destroyed Brown Paw Bond as well as Reugge properties. "For once I believe you. You are an honorable meth, for a male. We will talk later. I have things to do." She turned. "Grauel. You're in charge. Get this pup settled down and have her do what she can. And, Grauel? When I get back I want to find Bagnel healthy. Do you understand?"

"Yes. What are you doing, Marika?"

"I have a score to balance. This is going to become painfully costly for those responsible."

"You're going after them?"

"I am."

"Marika, there were hundreds of them. They had every sort of weapon you can imagine. And they had a machine that can keep silth from walking the dark side."

"That is of no import, Grauel. I will destroy them anyway. Or they will destroy me. This marks the end of my patience with them. And with anyone who defends them. You tell me the one called the warlock was with them. Did you see him?"

"He was. I saw him from very far away. He did not move far from the airships. We tried very hard to shoot him, but the range was too great. He was very strong, Marika. Stronger than most silth."

"Not stronger than I am, I am sure. He will pay. The brethren will pay. Though I be declared an outlaw, though I stand alone, this is the first day of bloodfeud between myself and them. Stay here. I'll be back."

"And if you're not?"

"You do what you have to do. Sooner or later someone will come."

"And maybe not, Marika. Before we lost the signals section, we heard that they were attacking several other cloisters as well."

"That figures." Where did they gather their strength? She had been killing and imprisoning them for years.

"Braydic did have some advance warning, Marika. She tried to tell us. But you flew off to TelleRai too fast."

Marika recalled Barlog rushing into her quarters as she went out the window.

This was her fault, then. If she had waited a moment ... Too late for regrets. It was time to give pain for pain received.

"Good-bye, Grauel." She stalked out of the gatehouse, and shut everything behind her out of mind, out of her life. Bloodfeud. There was nothing but the bloodfeud. From this moment till death. A short time, perhaps.

An entire squadron of dirigibles. How did one go about destroying them? Especially when they had some device capable of rendering a silth's talent impotent?

Worry about that in its time. First she had to find them again. She strapped herself on to her saddleship and rose into the night, raced to the southwest, cutting a course that would cross that last seen being made by the dirigibles.

IIMarika did not spare herself. In less than an hour she found the squadron, still doggedly flying westward, chasing the vanished sun. The ships were down low, hugging a barren landscape. They did not want to be seen.

She hung above them a few minutes, way up in the rare air. She was tempted to strike then, but desisted. She even refrained from probing, certain the wehrlen would detect her. Then she found her appropriate idea.

They had attacked silth using a device that stole the silth talent. She would requite them in similar coin.

Maps slipped through her mind. Yes. A major, remote brethren enclave lay nearly two hundred miles ahead. Their destination? Probably. There were no neighbors to witness what villainy was being launched from the enclave. She headed there as swiftly as she could, dropping to treetop level as she approached, flying slower because of the denser air and reduced visibility.

She hedgehopped because she was not sure her saddleship would be invisible to tradermale radar. What she had learned from Bagnel suggested she would not be seen, but now was no time to make such bets. Now she wanted to play the longer odds her own way.

She supposed she was an hour ahead of the dirigibles when she reached the edge of the enclave. There were hundreds of lights burning there, lots of activity. Yes. The base expected the raiders. Doubtless it had been the staging ground for all the attacks. The sheer number of males suggested something of vast proportion being managed from there. There were thousands of males. And the enclave bristled with weaponry. Whole squadrons of fighting aircraft sat upon the runway. Half a dozen dirigibles rested in the enclave's cradles, and there were cradles enough to take another score.