truthfully.

The man frowned and touched her arm. "If you need to talk... " His voice trailed off, but the invitation to Kum-jan was clear.

Dion looked back down at the message. She didn't trust herself to answer.

There was an anger growing in her-an anger that the elders would call her even as they promised her a short release. If she opened her mouth, she would lash out at Vlado; and he stood there with his proposition held out like a compliment, well-meant as his friendship, as if sex was the release she needed. Even as she stared at the message ring, she felt that anger harden even toward him. How many such offers would have come her way

were she not a wolfwalker? And how many would have been advanced had she not been a master healer, the one who was Aranur's mate? Scouts had their own etiquette for sleeping on the trail, and some were as open with their bedrolls as they were with their information, but Dion wasn't one of those. Her Promise with Aranur was like her bond with Hishn-complete, engulfing, exclusive. To dilute either bond would trivialize the strength of her love and leave her unfocused and lost.

A tiny twig snapped behind them in the woods. Dion's slender body tightened, then relaxed almost as quickly when she recognized the woods' sounds that followed the twig snap. Vlado found his own body relaxing, as if his senses had taken their reassurance from Dion's wary acceptance. He eyed her thoughtfully. The wolf walker was not just strained, he realized, but dangerously so. He almost reached out to touch her again- to massage some of that strain out of her muscles-but her body shifted almost imperceptibly away. He shrugged to himself. It wasn't a rejection of him, he knew, but a reflection of her bond with the wolves. Where one was wary, the other was remote. But both were instinctively aware of every motion around them. She had told him once it had come from being raised in Randonnen, where she had run trail since she was old enough to stand and where the wolfsong was strong as a storm, but Vlado was not so sure. He'd seen her after she'd fought on a venge, and he'd been with her after she'd hunted with the wolf pack. Both times her eyes had been wild and not quite human: hungry, predatory-almost feral. He didn't care what the others said -it was no set of moons that claimed this woman. The wolves had a hold on Ember Dione, and he didn't think even Aranur knew how deeply their teeth had sunk in.

Dion stared at the message stick, letting her fingers register the haste in the crudely carved slashes and the tight but uncured knots. When she glanced up at the man, Vlado nodded.

"It came through the watchtower on Restless Ridge," he said in answer to her unspoken question. "They need a healer within three hours. They requested that it be you."

Dion stared down at the message. She was silent for a long time. Then, finally, she said, "Send Khast."

"Healer?"

She held the message ring out to the runner, but he hesitated for the briefest moment before taking it. Dion looked up. Her face was tight, but her voice was steady. "Send Khast," she repeated. Then she turned away.

Like a wolf, she faded into the forest. There was a moment when the sunlight shattered the ferns that shifted in Dion's wake; then the shadows swallowed her as if she was one of their own.

Vlado stared after her. He could swear he had seen a shadow of gray deep in her violet eyes. It had had no gleam, no spark, as when the wolfwalker was angry; instead it had been a guilt, a bitterness-a clouding of her mind.

Slowly, he strapped the message ring back on his belt. He looked once more toward the forest. Then he mounted his dnu and, catching up the other creature's reins, started the beasts up the road.

From the shelter of the forest, Dion watched him go. Her fists were clenched at her sides; her lips tight with the words she wanted to shout.

Wait! I'll go- But her jaw was locked, and her feet didn't move. She forced herself to breathe, and the sound that sucked between her lips was

harsh. I should have gone, the thought pounded in her head. It should be me, not Khast. She had seen the uncertainty in the messenger's eyes-in all the years he'd run with her, he'd never heard her turn down a call.

The gray fog in her head swamped her suddenly, and she swayed against a tree. Rough bark caught on her fingers; her forehead pressed the cool wood. But it was not guilt that forced her fingers into the bark; it was a growing ice in her gut. She pushed herself away from the tree and stared once more down at the trail below. Then she began to run.

By the time Dion reached the crossroads, the stone in her belly had loosened and her body had tired itself into the trail lope that covered the four kays like the wolves. She paused when she saw the boys below. The chest-high ferns hid her from their eyes, and she took the moment to revel in their youth. They were intent on building a message cairn, and their young voices filled her ears like a packsong as they ordered each other to do this and that, teased each other, then agreed excitedly on the next idea. So straight, so eager they were. So many dreams... Pride and love warred in her so that her eyes blurred, and for a moment their figures wavered. Irritably, she brushed at the tears. If Aranur thought she was overworked now, what would he do if he knew she'd been crying?

She was within meters of the boys before they saw her. Olarun felt her presence first, and he looked up sharply, his young ears already distinguishing sounds. It took him a moment to pick her out from the ferns. Then he poked Danton roughly. "There she is! I saw her first!"

The younger boy scrambled to his feet. "You did not!" "I did too," Olarun retorted.

"You always see her first," Danton muttered sullenly. Dion nodded to the three rider escorts, and they smiled acknowledgment and began to gather their things. They didn't bother to grasp arms with her before they returned to the village; she was already being pulled away on each side by her boys.

"Momma," Olarun said eagerly. "Come see what we made. It's a message

cairn. Look!"

Obediently, Dion bent to examine the cairn. "Oh, this is nicely done," she told them. Their faces flushed with pride, and she looked closer at their work. "I like the way you've built the opening," she said. "A ringrunner will be able to pull a message out without the rain dripping inside while he does it."

"That was my idea," Olarun said proudly.

Danton pushed him aside and pulled Dion down to look through the opening. "But I'm the one who made the message platform inside. See?"

"To keep the messages off the dirt? I had no idea you knew how important

it was to keep messages from being blurred, " she told him. "You've built an excellent structure. Any scout would be proud to use this cairn."

"Do you want to use it?" Olarun asked eagerly.

"Can you make a message right now?" Danton put in.

Dion looked down into his face. "We'll leave a message ring for your father," she agreed. "But you have to help me make it."

The boys almost fell over themselves to shove into her hands the pile of sticks they had already gathered. By the time they had chosen a single stick to use, then slashed and dyed and knotted their message in the wood, it was late morning, and the sun had risen enough to begin warming the shadows.

Dion gathered her sons, checked their small packs, and led them off into the

forest.

Danton immediately stirred up a largon nest that Dion pointed out, and they had to run for their skins while the large-jawed crawlers flooded out in search of the intruders. Then the two boys dared each other to taste the yucky leaves Dion found. She laughed at their expressions as they spat and coughed over the flavor. Finally, she led them to a bramble patch growing over a tiny plot of extractor plants. She pulled a new root from the soil, cleaned it off, cut from it two slivers, and wrapped each in a sweet bramble leaf so the boys could get the taste of the other plant out of their mouths.

Olarun carefully took the rest of the root and put it in one of his belt pouches.

Dion smiled her approval. "How much are you carrying now?"

"I have one dried root, and this fresh one."

"And if we were to be out for a ninan, and you were going to eat only wild

plants, how many roots would you need to carry?"

"Two if they were from the garden, " he returned proudly. "Just one, if it was wild."

Danton scowled. "It'd be bitter if it was wild."

"Wild or not, extractors are lifesavers," his brother quoted importantly.

Dion half smiled at her younger son. "Life is an acquired taste, little wolf.

You'll understand that more when you're older."

The younger boy scowled at his brother. "If I was as old as you, I'd eat meat all the time when I went out by myself."

This time Dion smiled without reservation. "You'd certainly try to do that, I'm sure. But it's more difficult to make a good snare than it is to pull a tuber from the ground. You're more likely to find roots than rabbits laying around for your supper."

"Besides, meat has more toxins than plants," Olarun admonished.

"Meat is different than plants," Dion corrected. "Most meats do have more toxins than plants, but some meats have less. It takes a while to learn how much of the extractors to use with each type. Until you know exactly which

animals contain how much toxin, the best rule to follow is to use twice as much extractor as you would if the quantity of meat was a plant."

"How come we have to use extractors anyway?" Danton asked. "Why can't

you just heal the plants so they don't make us sick when we eat them?"

This time Dion laughed outright. "It is we, not the plants, that are the problem, little wolf. This world wasn't made for humans, and the food that grows here naturally is poison to us even now. The extractor plants, when cooked with the native food, strip the poison from what we eat. Without

extractors, there would be almost nothing safe to put in your mouth. After a while you would be very, very hungry."

"I'm hungry now," he returned.

Dion mussed his hair. "Then let's eat when we get to Still Meadow."

As she brought the boys to the edge of the meadow, she let her mind range

across the hills to Hishn. The ridge between them barely dulled the persistent thread of Hishn's voice, and the Gray One sent back a shaft of lupine joy. Dion let it curl her lip as she told the boys to pull out their packed lunches. For claiming to be as hungry as they were, they ate slowly,

constantly stopping to pick at this leaf or that, to bother this bug, to see

which of them could dig their feet deepest into the dirt.

Dion wondered, as she watched them, whether either of them would bond with the wolves. They could hear Hishn clearly, but neither had taken one of the gray wolf's pups. Hishn said it was the strength of Dion's own bond that allowed them to hear the packsong, and their love for Hishn that prevented them from separating the wolf cubs from their wolf mother. But the boys were growing fast. Soon they would be independent enough to seek out their own gray packsong, to hear the wolves for themselves.

Danton, having finished his meatroll, shifted his gaze to the meadow. "Why

can't we ever ride dnu up here?" he asked.

"Because dnu get bogged down in the marshy parts of the meadow," Dion answered automatically. "And dnu don't like wild wolves."