Ceremony by Glen Cook Page A

here. And it shouldn’t be. But it did seem that this ledge would be a good place to ground a darkship.”
    “How far afield did you go?”
    “Not far.”
    “Let’s snoop around, see what we can find.”
    Careful visual search turned up nothing more.
    “If they were here, they must have had a latrine and some place to dump their garbage,” Grauel said.
    “They may have had huntresses with them,” Marika chided. Grauel and Barlog, treating the search as they would a hunt in their native Ponath, left every resting place pristine, naked of evidence that anyone had visited. Both huntresses believed the Serke were hunting for them in turn.
    “One doubts it. No skilled huntress would have left a fire site so obvious to the eye. My thought was that you might use your talent to look where the eye cannot see.”
    “You are right, of course.” Marika went down through her loophole and caught a suitable ghost, then searched the area again, using the altered perspective of the otherworld. She found what Grauel wanted in a crack to one side of the ledge. She returned to flesh. “You were right. Over here. Whoever they were, it looks like they used one natural hole for a garbage pit and a latrine both.”
    “Grab yourself a stick,” Grauel said.
    “A stick?”
    “Do you want to stir through it with your paws?”
    “Of course. All right.” Marika collected pieces of dead wood. Grauel used one to dig at soil that had been used to cover the wastes.
    “Been a while for sure,” the huntress said. “It has all decayed away to nothing. It must not rain or snow much here, for the black on the rocks to have remained noticeable. But we’re wasting our time. There’s nothing... Hello!” Grauel dropped onto her belly and reached into the hole. She wriggled forward, bent at the waist, got hold of something, wriggled back and sat up. She held a lump to the light. Marika saw nothing special till Grauel spat upon it and cleaned it on her sleeve.
    “A button.” It was a tarnished metal button with a few fibers of thread still attached. It was embossed. Grauel passed it to her. Marika studied it, then compared it to the five upon the left wrist of her jacket. “That is a Serke witch sign on it, Grauel. We’re on the trail. They’ve been here. I have a premonition. We are within a few passages through the Up-and-Over of catching up with them.”
    “That’s what you’ve been saying since we established our first base.”
    “This time I am right. I can feel it. I am convinced.”
    “I hope you are.” Grauel sounded sour.
    “Grauel?”
    “I do not want to die out here, Marika. How would the All find me?”
    “What?” This was a surprise.
    “In fact, if I had my choice, I would spend my final days in the upper Ponath, at the packstead that gave me life.”
    Marika was baffled. What had brought this on?
    “I am getting old, Marika. In the Ponath I might already be one of the Wise. Likewise Barlog. The witchery and medicine of the silth have kept us young beyond our time, but time never stops gnawing. Lately I find I cannot help remembering that we are the last of the Degnan pack, and that our pack lies beneath the northern ice still unMourned.”
    “Yes. I know all that. You are indeed old for the Ponath, but not old by standards of the silth. There will be time, Grauel. We will see to the Mourning. But we can’t go now. We’re finally making some headway out here. We’ve finally found something besides a place where they aren’t and haven’t ever been. Maybe this world is a regular stop. Maybe if we just sat here and waited... I know what I’ll do. I’ll make this world our new base. We’ll continue the hunt from here.”
    “Which means a whole new globe of space to search,” Grauel countered, showing no excitement. “It will be like starting from the beginning.”
    “Think positively, Grauel. Think lucky. Let’s go tell the others.”
    “What I think is I wish I had not called you down here.”
    That