story identification - What fantasy book features a feline race and a female lead character in a world with ghost-powered magic?

I am trying to remember the name and/or author of a fantasy book I read back in the mid 1980s. I have tried searching, but the Googles have not been helpful. This is what I remember of the book:

• feline humanoid race


• female lead character, something of a priestess


• priestesses had the ability to perceive and mentally dominate/capture "ghosts", and use them for different purposes, such as transportation, weapons, etc.


• the higher into the atmosphere a character searched, the bigger/more powerful were the available ghosts.


• the priestess eventually used captured ghosts for space travel.


• lead character died at the end of the story and her spirit returned to "the all".

Answer

I think you might be looking for the Darkwar trilogy by Glen Cook. The series is exactly as you have described.

The world grows colder with each passing year, the longer winters and ever-deepening snows awaking ancient fears within the Dengan Packstead, fears of invasion by armed and desperate nomads, attack by the witchlike and mysterious Silth, able to kill with their minds alone, and of the Grauken, that desperate time when intellect gives way to buried cannibalistic instinct, when meth feeds upon meth. For Marika, a young pup of the Packstead, loyal to pack and family, times are dark indeed, for against these foes, the Packstead cannot prevail. But awakening within Marika is a power unmatched in all the world, a legendary power that may not just save her world, but allow her to grasp the stars themselves.

Does the name Marika ring a bell?