Aranur's hard voice cut through the din. "The wolf stays- unless you want

Dion to die."

The room went silent. Then it burst again into action. This time, Gray Hishn was not bothered.

Aranur was pushed back to the wall. He found Olarun beside him and

pulled him to his side. The boy stared at the healers, at his mother, at the wolf. When one of the healers herded Gamon out the door, the boy almost fled before them. He hesitated in the hall, looking back at the room that seemed to seethe with healers. Gamon said something to him and touched his arm, but he didn't hear. The boy's lips moved, then he turned and bolted toward the front door. He was running by the time he hit the porch.

"Olarun," Aranur shouted.

Gamon caught the other man's arm. "Let him go. His shoulder wound is stitched and sealed against jellbugs. It's his heart that needs to bleed now."

Aranur stared into the dark. His son. His only son. Because Danton now

was dead. It hit him then that his youngest boy was gone. His knees weakened. A void swept in. "Danton," he whispered. He swore, long and low-voiced, in the night. The darkness cursed him back.

Gamon tried to pull him back in the house, but he resisted. With the light from the house behind him, the forest was black to his eyes. He could not see Olarun. "Dear moons," he whispered. "Oh, gods... "

"He'll be all right." Gamon pulled on his arm. "He'll come back."

Aranur couldn't take his eyes from the forest, the courtyard, the night.

There were still wolves there-he could feel them. Like a sea of gray, they seethed at the edge of his mind. And they were with Olarun, he realized, following the boy in the darkness. Something tried to scream free inside Aranur's chest, but the steel of decades hardened his face. Slowly, he turned back to the house.

Gamon looked as if he wanted to ask a question, but Aranur shook his head.

He went back and, from the doorway, watched the healers work. It was time that killed his hope more than anything. They worked over her far too long, cleaning wounds so deep that Dion's soul should have escaped long before the dawn. Time, which should have given her life, ate at his mind like worms. He fixed an image of his mate in his head and held it there as they worked.

And later, when dawn blinked at the sky and silhouetted the mountains, the healers dispersed. The night nurse checked Dion, then stepped away, and Aranur was left alone.

He sank down into the nurse's chair. Dion's form was swathed in bandages, some of which were already spotted with blood. Only one hand was without coverings. He touched those fingers, cold and still on the sheets. Then he gripped her hand hard. His head sank onto her forearm.

"Live," he whispered. "Live."

VII.

What do you have but yourself?

Whom do you face but yourself?

What do you hear but your voice in the night?

Whom do you know but yourself?

-Answer to the Second Riddle of the Ages Previous Top Next Aranur awoke when the dawn healer did the final check for her shift, and he

eyed her wearily.

"You should get some sleep," she advised gently. "You'll be no good to her, getting sick yourself."

Aranur shrugged. But he stood and tried to stretch cramped limbs. Between the wolf-driven ride and sitting all night, his legs had stiffened to logs. He looked for Hishn, but the gray wolf wasn't there. He chilled.

"It's all right," the healer assured him. "Dion is all right. The wolf just went out to relieve itself, I think."

Aranur paced the room. "Did Olarun come back?"

"He's asleep. Downstairs."

Aranur raised his eyebrows.

"He didn't want to sleep in his room, or in the one you share with Dion.

He's over by Gamon and Tehena, camped out on the living-room floor."

"I'll be back in a minute," he told her.

"Better to be back in a few hours," she returned gently. "After you've had

some sleep."

He ignored her.

When he returned, he found the day healer had taken over and was sitting in

his chair. He looked at the man, looked at Dion, then looked back at the healer until the man glanced up and caught the expression on his face. The healer eyed him for a moment, then stood, saying quietly, "I'll take this chair," and moved to the other side of the bed.

Aranur sat down heavily. When he took Dion's hand, he squeezed it as if to tell her he was back. Then he put his head down again on her arm, as though he would be able to feel her pulse through her skin.

Five days passed. Five nights dragged on. Tehena settled in to one of the guest rooms and refused to leave. The hard-faced woman wasn't cook or hostess, nurse or nanny or helper, and she pestered the healers with hovering and constant criticism. Her words, acidic as worlag piss, irritated even Gamon. But somehow having Tehena there made Dion rest more easily, and it was Aranur who forced the healers to let her stay.

Tomi, Aranur's eldest, adopted son, and Gamon finally took over the

nursing so that the healers could go home. The healers didn't argue: inside, there was Tehena; outside, eight wolves had refused to leave, and they surrounded the house like a gauntlet. The yard, pitted with sleeping holes and wallows, was an obstacle course of gray bodies and bones through which the healers had to tiptoe.

A ninan went by like a trial in which voices drone on without pause. There were words in Aranur's head that circled like a lepa flock. Danton was dead. Dion was not living. Olarun was no longer there. Olarun, his own son... And Danton-Danton was gone. The boys' room was shut, and no one-not even Olarun-opened the door. Aranur tried to bring some of Olarun's things from the room the two boys had shared, but his son put them back in the hallway outside the room as soon as Aranur turned his back.

It was guilt, not his shoulder, that bothered the boy. Olarun refused even to enter his mother's room. Each morning, he would go to the doorway to see if Dion had opened her eyes before he would turn away in silence. Aranur couldn't get him to speak of what had happened. In the boy's eyes, it was his fault that Danton had died, that his mother lay like a statue. Aranur could almost see the logic in Olarun's eyes: If he blamed himself, surely his father blamed him too?

And Dion-she lay still as death. It was weakness, said the healers, from the loss of blood, but Aranur wasn't so sure. There was a quietness about her that disturbed him-a quietness that echoed in his mind where, before, the gray swell of the wolves had rang with the tang of her voice. He found no solace in the assurance that she needed sleep to heal. She was conscious, he knew; he could feel it in the way Hishn looked at her. But he could not reach her. He stared down at her body. His son, his mate... He stalked from

the room like death.

As though Dion's growing strength was reflected within the wolf pack, the wolves grew surly, then vicious. Twice they erupted into violence, fighting among themselves. The second time, Aranur and Gamon were standing on the porch eating some of the soup brought over by Tomi's Promised. One of the younger males slowly trotted too close to one of Gray Yoshi's bones, and the pack leader snarled. The young male didn't move fast enough out of the way. Instantly, the wolf pack was a frenzied mass of fur and snarls and slashing, ripping teeth. A moment later, it was over. The young male yearling was dead.

Aranur and Gamon stared at the wolf body. "Moons above us," the older man murmured, his soup bowl forgotten in his hands.

"They killed one of their own." Aranur's voice had a stunned quality.

Gamon tried to shrug, but his eyes were caught by the limpness of the wolf.

"Males always challenge males."

"Not that young. That male was a yearling-he wasn't old enough to challenge Yoshi or any other adult." Aranur started to step down from the porch. "He had to be sick for them to kill him. I want to take a look at the body."

Gamon caught his arm. "Might not be a good idea to walk into that right

now."

Aranur hesitated. Gray Yoshi looked up and caught his gaze. There was an impact of anger and grief that hit him like a punch. He staggered. His soup splashed out. Gamon cursed.

Aranur caught his balance against the porch post. He glanced down at the soup bowl he had emptied over his and Gamon's boots. "Sorry," he said belatedly.

"They got to you, didn't they?"

Aranur looked out at the wolves. "That they did," he agreed softly.

"They're getting to Dion, too."

"I know it."

The older man ran his hand through his gray hair. "Something has to break

her out, Aranur. Something or someone."

Aranur's voice was instantly sharp. "I am trying, Gamon."

"Yes, you're trying," his uncle agreed. "But it might not be you who can

reach her right now. She needs something else that's stronger. She's alert