Warlock by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

rogue males to the slaughter.
    The cloister was ahum with an anticipation Marika hardly noticed. She did not expect to become involved in Gradwohl’s campaign.
    How long before Dorteka allowed her to explore Maksche? She was eager to be away from the cloister, to break for a few hours from this relentless business of becoming silth.
    Maksche was odd, a city of marked contrasts. Here sat the cloister, all but its ceremonial heart electrically lighted and heated. One could get water simply by lifting a lever. Wastes were carried away in a system of sewage pipes. But outside the cloister’s walls few lights existed, and those only candles or tallow lamps. Meth out there drew their water from wells or the river. Their sewers consisted of channels in the alleyways, washed clean when it rained.
    It had not rained all winter.
    Meth out there walked, unless they were the rare, rich, favored few who could rent dray beasts, a driver, and a carriage from the tradermales of the Brown Paw Bond. Silth sisters going abroad in the town usually rode in elegant steam coaches faster than any carriage. If Dorteka allowed her out, would she be permitted the use of such a vehicle? Not likely. They were guarded jealously, for they were very expensive. They were handcrafted by one of the tradermale underbrotherhoods not part of the local Brown Paw Bond, and imported. They were not silth property.
    The traders sold no vehicle outright, but leased them instead. Lease contracts demanded huge penalty payments for damages done. Marika suspected that was motivated by a desire to keep lessees from dismantling the machines to see how they worked.
    A tradermale operator came with every vehicle. Outsiders were not allowed to learn how to drive. Those males obligated to the vehicles of the cloister lived in a small barracks across the street from the cloister’s main gate, whence they could be summoned on a moment’s notice.
    When her hour was up, Marika went to Dorteka and asked, “How many more points do I have to accumulate before I can go into the city?”
    “It is not a point system, Marika. You can go whenever I decide you deserve the reward.”
    “Well? Do I?” She had held back nothing. Having been used as a counter in a contest she did not understand, for reasons she could not comprehend, she had gone all out to arm herself for her own survival. Dorteka could not have demanded more. There was no more she could give.
    “Perhaps. Perhaps. But why go out into that fester at all?”
    “To explore it. To see what is out there. To get out of this oppressive prison for a while.”
    “Oppressive? Prison? The cloister?”
    “It is unbearable. But you grew up here. Maybe you cannot imagine freedom of movement.”
    “No. I cannot. At least not out there. My duties have taken me into the city, Marika. It is disgusting. I would rather not traipse around after you while you crawl through the muck.”
    “Why should you, mistress?”
    “What?”
    “There is no reason for you to go.”
    “If you go, I have to go.”
    “Why, mistress?”
    “To keep you out of trouble.”
    “I can take care of myself, mistress.”
    “Maksche is not the Ponath, pup.”
    “I doubt that the city has dangers to compare with the nomad.”
    “It is not danger to your flesh I fear, Marika. It is your mind that concerns me.”
    “Mistress?”
    “You do not fool me. You are not yet silth. And you are no harmless, eager student. A shadow lives behind your eyes.”
    Marika did not respond till she carefully stifled her anger. “I do not understand you, mistress. Others have said the same of me. Some have called me doomstalker. Yet I do not feel unusual. How could the city harm my mind? By exposing me to dangerous ideas? I have enough of those myself. I will create my own beliefs here or there, regardless of what you would have me believe. Or could it harm me by showing me how cruelly Reugge bonds live so we silth can be comfortable here? That much I have seen from the