He picked irritably at the covers of his bed. "Checking the wild plantings?"

She nodded, hiding her smile. "I have four ninans, and I'm making the most of them. I'm taking the boys back through the woods with me so that they can brush up on some plant identification. Tomi-my other son-is great at teaching the boys textiles- and I think he will start them on lintel design soon-but he was never much interested in wilderness skills." She smiled faintly. "I had originally hoped you'd be up and around by now so that you

could come with us-you always had more patience in teaching than I-but I promised the boys it would be just me."

Brye flopped back on his pillows. "Hells, Dion. I'd drink worlag piss if I

thought it would get me out of this place sooner. Don't know how the patients stand it."

"Because you'd kill them if they didn't," Dion returned easily.

The brown-haired man grinned. "True. True. But then, that's the privilege of a healer-to control life and death. Speaking of privileges, and of your impending flight to the forest, how do the skies look? Still clear enough to

spit in?"

"Uh-huh."

He studied her face. "What's the matter? You don't like the lack of menace

in our fair Ariyen skies? I've always thought of you Randonnens as daredevils-and you especially, Dion- but I never figured you for being one to seek out danger and embrace it."

In spite of herself, Dion laughed. "I'm not-and I'm just as glad as you are to see the skies still clear. I just don't like the fact that the lepa haven't flocked yet. It's getting late for their migration hordes."

"Sure," Brye shrugged. "But you know as well as I do that every four or five years they don't flock at all; they migrate in small groups instead."

She agreed reluctantly.

"Ah, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Dion. Maybe the moons are shining on you."

"On me? Hah."

"And you with those violet eyes. It's rumored you're a moon-warrior, Dion -you can't deny that, at least. The moons look after their own."

Dion gave him a sober look. The moons were no patrons of hers, she knew.

She had stolen the secret of Ovousibas from them through the memories of the wolves, and they were punishing her for her crime. Like Prometheus chained to his rock in the sea for stealing fire from the gods, she, who had stolen life itself, was chained to the burden of healing.

She smiled and said the proper things and left Healer Brye to his bed. Then she sought through the packsong for Hishn's voice. The lupine song that washed through her mind released her from her duties. Yellow eyes,

gleaming into her thoughts, urged her from walk to jog to run to sprint until she tore through the forest like a flash of thought. Even when the moons took over the sky and darkened the shadows by contrast, Dion forced herself on. The fierce joy that replaced the dread in her guts was the gift of the Ancients, the gift of release, the gift of Hishn's wolf pack.

V.

Where one lepa circles, A hundred eyes watch.

Previous Top Next At dawn, the gray shadows scattered among the trees. The wolf pack surrounded Dion like a tide as she threw herself up the trail. She didn't care that her thighs had long since numbed or that the pain that stabbed at her ankle was like a dozen needles. She had slept heavily, but not deeply enough to rid herself of a vague sense of disquiet. She was running now to kill her thoughts, to deaden her burden and drown herself in the packsong. She had hours, she sang out into the wolf pack. Hours of freedom. And then her boys would run with her, free with her in the forest, stretching their young muscles like the yearlings beside her and learning to leap with the wolves.

Up. Up to the ridge, sang the wolves in her head. Their voices were shadows of her own thoughts-snatches of lupine songs filtering through her mind. The hunt! they howled. The hunt is on the heights.

Farther now, beyond the first ridge, the wolves passed Dion, streaming around the short cliff. She sucked air as she forced her feet after the flood of gray shadows. Up the short cliff, then up again, across the slope of a slick morning meadow. As they had called out to the Ancients so many centuries ago, they now urged Dion with them. Run with us, Wolfwalker! they howled. Run with the pack.

She paused and spun dizzyingly at the top of a ledge where it fell into a ravine, caught herself, and laughed at the thrill of fear that clenched her stomach. She sang her voice into their minds, her mental howl filled with the joy of her sons, her mate, her life. They washed her howl back into their memories. It blended with the thin threads of other human voices, shifting the tapestry until it became rich and thick with the numbers of Ancient wolfwalkers. Wolf eyes, the images frayed with time, were overlaid with slitted yellow eyes. Voices were accented. Power surged. Through the oldest memories the rhythm rang of cold and piercing power. It was all-encompassing, engulfing. It was both light and dark cracked open; it was shards of energy melting. It was a rhythm that shifted and transferred itself from alien to wolf to human. It was the rhythm of Ovousibas.

It struck a chord in Dion, resonating in her mind. Instantly, the wolves caught the resonance. Run with us! they cried out. But the thread of their song was now twisted with the thread of the ancient, internal healing. It coiled more tightly around their voices so that the death that had come to the wolves through the ages-the slow decimation of their numbers- became an underlying whine. Run with us, they cried out. But what they sang in their memories was, Find our death. Find our grief. Run with us, Wolfwalker!

The wolfsong radiated out from the first places, the truncated mountains of the Ancients. It flowed across rivers and valleys, and climbed back into the mountains of Ariye. Forward through the ages it moved, until it curled again around Dion's legs and clutched at her hands. She threw her head back and stared at the sky where once humans and aliens had flown. Her hands, smudged with dirt, reached up to the moons that floated so far away.

The wolves paused, caught on the edge of the ridge. Their throats loosened, their voices rose, and the wail of their ancient grief was thrown with Dion's gaze into the sky. Their longing was Dion's, their grief in her mind. And when she began to run again, to drive that from her mind, the wolves became a wash of gray that raced after her on the sun-dried ridge below the ancient moons.

Run! they howled into her head. Hunt with the pack, Wolfwalker!The old female sang out, The high trail!Cross the heights, the others returned. The trail of sky and stone!Like shadow water, they flowed up the trail toward her, then beside her till they reached the rise of broken stone where the rocks jutted out like knuckles. The Gray Ones had to leap and pace, turn and jump to make their way up again. Beside Dion, the yearling in the lead lost his balance as he tried for a higher rock. Wolfwalker! he cried out.

Dion reached like a flash, snagging her hand in his scruff. She jammed her other fist between two boulders and hauled on the yearling's fur, straining to hold him until his front paws reached over the edge. Thrusting hard with his hind legs, he kicked off pebbles. One hind leg caught her roughly in the chest. He yelped his apology. She squeezed her eyes shut against the dust

he threw back and ducked her face into her elbow, then pushed hard, shoving him up. An instant later, his weight was gone, and he bellied over the edge. Dion and the other seven wolves jumped up after him.

At the top, ahead of Dion, the old gray female hesitated. Yellow eyes bored through Dion's violet gaze, neither one challenging, but neither giving ground. Then the yellow gleam faded into deep, aged tones. Wolfwalker, the female sent.

Slowly, Dion reached out. This wolf had never run with a human-had never bonded as Hishn had-and although the female accepted Dion into the pack, the wolf was wary as a predator. She barely stood for Dion to touch her shoulder, but her mental voice reveled in the touch.

Wolfwalker, she sang softly again.Dion's voice was a whisper. "You honor me."

You carry the weight of the pack. Your love binds you to Gray Hishn. Your promise binds you to us. Run with the pack, Wolfwalker!

Dion ducked her head, unable to hide her sudden rush of feeling. The old one almost touched Dion's thigh with her nose, then was gone along the trail.

The wolves had already run around the next set of cliffs by the time Dion reached them. It was a quick climb to the top, and halfway up she grinned at the gray wolf who waited impatiently above her at the rim, where the cliff had eroded into scattered dirt paths.

Hishn eyed the wolfwalker, then turned and snapped at Gray Yoshi when he urged her away. Wait, Hishn told him flatly.Dion, one hand on the top rock, paused at the sharpness in Hishn's tones.

She could see Gray Yoshi with her own eyes, but that was only visual. The image of the male in Hishn's mind was harsh and unforgiving, and Dion could not move closer.

If the pack leader picked up Dion's hesitation, he gave no indication. Instead, he snarled. The human can catch up later, he sent.

Hishn bared a mouthful of teeth. She is my wolfwalker. Dion's hands began to ache from their hold. She steadied herself, waited another minute, then determinedly hauled herself up and rolled over the edge of the boulders. For an instant her eyes met Yoshi's hostile yellow gaze, and she halted on her hands and knees. The gleaming eyes seared her mind with accusation. Then the Gray One turned away. He did not look back as he loped after the rest of the pack. Hishn snarled at his backside, then ducked her head and sniffed at Dion's cheek.

Dion got to her feet only slowly. She said nothing as she gazed after Yoshi, but Hishn felt the hurt in her mind. The massive female nudged Dion in the thigh, then butted her head under Dion's hand until the wolfwalker gripped the thick fur. "Hishn," Dion said softly.

He sings his loneliness.

"I feel it-like a knife in my mind."

My mate does not speak for the rest of the pack.

But Dion couldn't hide what crossed her thoughts. Yoshi had not and would never forget what had happened to his wolfwalker. Where Dion had survived, the man had died; and the gray wolf, alone and abandoned, blamed Dion for his grief. It didn't matter that it had been a raider bolt, not a blade of hers, that had speared the man in the chest. Sobovi had given his life so that Dion could escape from the raiders with others up a cliff.

Raiders who had been after Dion and other wolfwalkers like her... Raiders who were after her and Aranur again... Hishn had kept her safe back then, but at what cost? And Gray Yoshi, waiting at the top of the cliff for his own wolfwalker, had found that death climbed with Dion instead.

Hishn gazed at her unblinkingly. Sobovi lives on in the song of the pack.Dion, looking after Hishn's mate, tugged at the fur beneath her hand. Memories passed on from wolf to wolf. Hishn's new pups, if Hishn mated again this summer, would know Dion not only through Hishn, but also through Yoshi's eyes. She looked down at her hands. The taint of blood-of Sobovi, of the others who had died from raider wounds she could not close, from raider swords they could not dodge... All that clung to her thoughts. Raiders... And her duty forced her to face them. She wanted protection, she realized. She wanted a place that was safe. A goal that was not built on violence, but on the hope of some other future. Her fingers trembled, and she thrust herself away from the wolf and clenched her hands like fists.

"Come," she said. Her voice was flat and sober. "The pack runs far ahead."

Hishn eyed her, then turned back toward the path.

When they reached the top of the ridge, Dion halted to catch her breath.

Hishn snarled at Yoshi, but the gray male looked once, deliberately, to the west, then turned his shoulder to Hishn's snapping teeth and loped after the others down the slope.

Dion followed Yoshi's gaze. There was only one thing to the west: the split, truncated mountain on which his wolfwalker had died. Like a dream, the

mountain remained, unnaturally shaped, and forbidden to humans. Sobovi's death was only one attributed to that mountain; raiders, too, had died there. And Aranur's sister, and Aranur's men, and the hundreds of Ancients who had been struck with plague... Eight hundred years ago, that mountain had been a tall, rounded, lumpy peak. Then the Ancients had landed, cut off the top, hollowed it out, and carved the deep slot through its center. The tethers that had linked this world to the stars had once run through that slotted mountain. Now only wind whistled there.

Dion gazed at the mountain with loathing and longing, unable to separate being drawn to the sky from being linked to the death on the planet. Hishn growled low in her throat, and Dion touched the wolf's fur. The freedom she felt with the wolves was only a whisper of what the Ancients had had. The symbols left over from the time of the Ancients-their slotted peaks and stone-round domes-represented both death and freedom. It was as if, on this world, the two were inextricably entwined. The gift of one was the other, and the price of the other was the one.

Hishn caught Dion's hand in her teeth. Blood flows because it feeds us. So the hunt returns, like the moons to night-it is the pattern that must be. Death is life, and life is death. Only the packsong lives on. The gray wolf bit down so hard that Dion jerked her hand free and swatted at Hishn's ears. The Gray One laughed in her mind. Sing with the pack, Wolfwalker. Our blood is yours. We own each other here.

As if called by Hishn's images, from below, the wolf pack seemed to coalesce into a single driving need. Hishn's ears flicked toward them. Dion caught the echo of Gray Yoshi in his mate's mind: His urgent tones pulled Hishn like a leash.

Dion's voice was soft. "We are bonded, Hishn, you and I. But we each must have our own goals." She looked after the male. "Go," she urged. "Go seek your mate. Your heart belongs to him, not me."

Hishn hesitated, but Yoshi's call was strong. Yellow eyes gleamed. Then the massive wolf bared her teeth and raced away on the trail. Dion cut east over Dry Ridge. She could already hear her sons on the trail through the ears of other wolves. The voices of those wolves-a small family group-echoed from pack to pack until they reached her mind through Hishn. The other wolves didn't run right beside her sons, but they could tell, through the noise of the riders, where the boys and their escorts were. It would be an hour before the small group reached the crossroads; they were moving swiftly, but they were late. Dion smiled faintly. Danton had probably run off to play when they were supposed to get started. It would have taken Olarun some time to find and haul his brother back.

Dion climbed Lookout Rock before she passed it-there was a lookout stone on each ridge-to check the skies again, but there was only a single dark shape soaring to the east. Deliberately, she let her gaze roam the ridges on all sides of the message tower before she allowed herself to read the flags. When she did finally read the patterns strung up against the sky, she felt her jawline tense.

"Someday you'll damn them to the seventh hell," she said to herself about the elders. Her words held no anger, but her very quietness was a curse. The council... They knew she had left to be with her boys, yet they still called her to work. To the council she was a healer, not a mother. In their minds she had only a wolf family, not a human one. She felt her fingers clench and unclench, then wiped the dirt from her scarred hand onto her leggings.

Finally, she turned and made her way down the ridge.

She found the ringrunner on the road near the stone corral. He had been waiting long enough that his dnu and the relay beast he had brought for her were staked out and lazily poking around in the ferns. Vlado himself was

relaxing, though his eyes were alert enough to catch her movements the moment she came down the trail. She greeted him reluctantly.

The lean man studied the wolfwalker as she read the message ring-Dion

had never been good at hiding her feelings. Right now, she was grim- almost guilty-and her hand, which had strayed to the hilt of her sword, rose unconsciously to tuck a wisp of hair under her silver healer's circlet Her eyes were shadowed; there was no mistaking the strain in the lines of her face. "Dion?" he asked quietly.

She looked up.

"Are you all right?"

She shrugged. She'd known him long enough that she could answer