Book 3 - Ceremony by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

going better than she had expected. She was as strong as
ever she had been, as quick, as deadly, as finely tuned in her
instincts. She had won the victory already, even if she were
destroyed. The raiders could no longer damage the project.
    The surviving Serke were gathering at extreme range. She
suspected they would jump at her together. She could not see
herself and one sadly weakened Mistress fending off all three.
    She had to shatter the fear barriers and hazard the Up-and-Over
herself. There was no other exit. They would make no more
mistakes.
    How long before help arrived? Surely there had been time for
darkships to complete the long, slow climb from the planet’s
surface. Surely someone could have arrived from the moons or have
wended her way out of the jungle of metal at the trojan point.
    But a quick fling of the fartouch brought no response.
    It was the Up-and-Over or death.
    She knew what she was supposed to do. Technically. She had
reached out and collected the appropriate ghosts occasionally, but
had come up short on nerve. And never had she allowed herself to be
taken through by someone else, though that was the customary way of
learning.
    There was no option. The Serke were poised.
    She gathered ghosts.
    The Serke darkships vanished.
    Marika sealed her eyes and opened to the All, twisted her
ghosts, and bid fear be gone. She reached for the Up-and-Over,
twisted again.
    The stars vanished. Everything vanished. For several seconds
nothing surrounded her but a chaotic sense of ghosts and screaming.
She had penetrated a vacancy that made the void seem warm and
homey.
    Stars reappeared, spinning. The darkship was tumbling. Marika
looked for landmarks, and nearly panicked when she could spy
nothing familiar. The world! Where was it? Where were the Serke
darkships, the brethren ships, the mirror,
Starstalker
,
the moons? She saw nothing at all. Only stars, distant stars. Had
she hurled herself into the gulf between?
    Something huge and dark stirred nearby, aware of her presence,
so powerful she could feel it without reaching into the plane of
ghosts. It was the great grim dark thing she had so often sensed
waiting at the lip of the system. Her skip through the Up-and-Over
had thrown her almost into its grasp!
    Still battling panic, she steadied the darkship, polled her
companions, found them frightened but safe. Her Mistress had no
experience of the Up-and-Over either.
What do we do now?
she sent.
    Find the direction home.
    Marika scanned the void opposite the crawling darkness, and
found a star that seemed brighter than any other.
That
one?
    The Mistress knew where they were too.
Must be. Only the sun
would be so bright from here. Hurry. It knows we are here and it is
coming to see . . . 
    The darkness had begun to move.
    Marika turned the darkship toward the sun and began moving
inward, accelerating.
Can we make it?
She did not have the
courage to hazard the Up-and-Over again.
    We must try. We cannot go through again. Another time
,
not knowing what we are doing, and we could be too far away to
find our way.
In the face of a problem less savage than the
Serke the Mistress was perfectly calm. More rational than she,
Marika thought.
    The homeward passage took three days, despite the incredible
velocities Marika attained. She reached lunar orbit at the edge of
exhaustion, with her bath and Mistress all but burned out, and had
to be rescued by brethren ships working the mirror, for she and her
meth did not have enough left to take the darkship down.
     
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III
    Bagnel came to Marika where she lay in a bed aboard the
workstation the brethren called the Hammer because of its shape,
two pods upon the end of a long arm rotating to create an illusion
of gravity. He said, “I heard you cut it pretty close this
time.”
    She had not been awake long and he was her first visitor.
“Very close. I wasn’t sure I would make it this
time.”
    He eyed her intently while shaking his head.
    “I tried something I