Book 2 - Warlock Read Online Free PDF Page B

endure
sleeplessness. You wish to see your friend Braydic, you will remain
stubbornly devoted to your studies.” Dorteka pushed a scrap
of paper across the table. The notes on it were in a paw almost
mechanically perfect. “
Suggested motivators for the feral
subject Marika.
”
    “The most senior?”
    “Yes.”
    The interest shown by the most senior was a bit
intimidating.
    The sheet was filled with a complicated diagram for earning the
right to visit Braydic or the city.
    “As you see, a visit to your friend requires you to
accumulate one hundred performance points. Those are mapped out for
you there. Leave to go outside the cloister will be more difficult
to obtain. It is subject to my being satisfied with your progress.
You will never get out if I feel you are giving less than one
hundred percent.”
    Crafty old Gradwohl. She had speared to the heart of her and
tapped forces which could
make
her learn. The thought of
seeing Braydic sparked an immediate urge to begin. The opportunity
to get into the city, too, stirred her, but less concretely.
    “I doubt that I will permit a city visit anytime soon.
Perhaps we will accumulate several opportunities for
later.”
    “Why, mistress?”
    “The streets could be dangerous for an untrained silth. We
have been having a problem with rogue males. I expect the Serke are
behind that, too. Whatever, silth have been assaulted. Last summer
ringleaders were rounded up and sentenced to the mines, but that
did little good. The brethren—those you call
tradermales—may have a paw in the movement.”
    “The world is not so complicated on an upper Ponath
packstead,” Marika observed.
    “No. You see the schedule and rewards. Are they
acceptable?”
    “Yes, mistress.”
    “You will become a full-time student, with no other
duties. You will accept the discipline of the Community?”
    “Yes, mistress.” Marika was surprised to find
herself so eager. Till this morning she had cared about nothing.
“I am ready to begin.”
    “Then begin we shall.”
     
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II
    Marika’s education commenced before the next dawn. Dorteka
wakened her and took her to a gymnasium for an hour’s
workout. A bath followed.
    Marika’s determination almost broke. She nearly broke her
vow to obey and conform.
    A bath! Meth—of the upper Ponath, at
least—
hated
water. They never entered it
voluntarily. Only when the populations of insects in one’s
fur became too great to stand . . . 
    The bath was followed by a hurried meal prior to the first class
of the day, which was an introduction to being silth. Rites and
ceremonies, dogma and duties, and instruction in the secret
languages of the sisterhood, which she hardly needed. She
discovered that there were circles of sisterhood mysteries silth
were supposed to penetrate as they became older and more skilled.
Till Dorteka, she had no idea how much she had been shut out.
    She ripped through those studies swiftly. They required rote
learning. Her memory was excellent. Seldom did she need to be shown
anything more than once.
    She excelled in the gymnasium. She was her dam’s pup.
Skiljan had been fast, strong, hard, and tough.
    The second class lay across the cloister from the first. Dorteka
made her run all the way. Dorteka made her run everywhere, and ran
with her. The second class was not as susceptible to rote learning,
for it was mathematics. It required the use of reason. Silth
naturally tended to favor intuition.
    After mathematics came the history of the sisterhood, a class
which Marika devoured in days. The Reugge were a minor Community
with a short, uneventful past, an offshoot of the Serke that had
established independence only seven centuries earlier. Sustenance
of that independence was the outstanding Reugge achievement.
    Silth had a history that stretched into prehistory, countless
millennia back, when all meth lived in nomadic packs. The earliest
sisterhoods existed long before the keeping of records began. Most
silth had little