Ceremony by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
     
    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 didn’t know how to do and almost did myself in. Is that what you want me to say? I’ve said it. But I’ll also say I didn’t have any choice. It was the Up-and-Over or die. The Serke were closing in.”
    “I understand.”
    “How bad