Starsilk (Berkley Science Fantasy)

Rating:
Summary: "Someday, someone would have to go..."
Review: ...And today is that day, when one of the Terlath family searches for Birnam Rauth, the lost explorer whose cloned 'sons' were sent to spy on the people of Brakrath, but chose to stay. Various crashed star-trader ships have been found, bearing the alien singing silks, and one does not sing, but rather speaks in the voice of Birnam Rauth, pleading for rescue from alien captivity. Iahn has long wished to go, but cannot be allowed to leave Brakrath for fear of capture by the Benderzic - he knows too much.

This story alternates between the viewpoints of Reyna Terlath, youngest daughter of Khira, and the alien Tsuuka, of the world from whence the silks come.

Khira Terlath has had three daughters by Iahn, her permanent mate, breaking both the traditions of not taking a permanent mate and of spacing a barohna's children decades apart. The technology of the outworld Arnimi has revealed that none of them had the potential to become barohnas, so if they undertake the traditional hunt for bronzing prey at their second majority (15), they'll be throwing their lives away for nothing. After the death of their eldest daughter, Iahn, insistent that the others be forbidden to go despite the decree of the Council of Bronze that the Arnimi knowledge not be revealed with its subsequent disruption of Brakrathi culture, has left Terlath on a long visit to his brother - and their second daughter, Aberra, died on the mountain 3 weeks ago, having nerved herself to go without telling anyone. Having lost Aberra, Khira fears that she will also lose Iahn - and so she breaks the decree, and forbids her last remaining daughter (Reyna) to go, seeing her begin to train in this year of her second majority.

But Reyna protests; a palace daughter has only one destiny and one purpose: to meet her beast and bronze, or to die. So Khira offers a choice: that Reyna seek prey elsewhere, and undertake the hunt for Birnam Rauth, and Reyna accepts this honorable alternative. Juaren, a hunter of Brakrath's outlands who is more than he seems, petitions to go with her, and together they explore the world that Danior, Reyna's brother, saw in the starsilk, searching for Birnam Rauth, and the answer to the mystery of how his voice came to be captured in the starsilk.