"She's never brought any art home."

The other man shifted uncomfortably.

"You are special to her," Aranur said.

The man shrugged.

"She has always cared for you."

"She doesn't love me like that," Kiyun returned.

Aranur gave the other man a hard look.

Deliberately, Kiyun took up his mug of rou.

Aranur's voice was cold, unforgiving. "You offered her Kum-jan."

"She asked me to," the other man said calmly. He nodded at the cold fury

that glinted in Aranur's gray eyes. "She asked me to do so as a friend, so that her rejection was public. Only a woman who wants an exclusive bond with her mate will publicly reject Kum-jan from an intimate friend."

"She didn't tell me that."

"No." Kiyun paused. "I've never hidden what I feel, Aranur."

"I know it too well." Aranur bit the words out.

"And you think someday I'll try to take her from you," the other man

returned, his voice hard. "You're dead wrong, Aranur. Of all the things I feel for Dion, one of them is respect. Even if she were to offer Kum-jan now, I would refuse her that. She will never want me except as a way to reach toward what she thinks she has lost with you. It is you she chose as her mate, not me. I would never be enough."

And I am not enough now: She seeks what she has never had, and I cannot give that to her. Aranur's thought was written on his face. Kiyun said nothing. Aranur stared around the hall, one part of his brain automatically cataloguing the number of paintings against the years he had been with Dion. "She is riding out tonight," he said finally. "I can't stop her."

The other man put down his mug and waited.

Aranur had to force the words out. "She said she would ride with you."

"All right."

Aranur glared at the other man.

"Say it," Kiyun said. "You might as well."

"You... She... "

"She is yours, Aranur. I'll not touch her."

Aranur didn't trust himself to speak, but his eyes were cold and icy.

"I'll swear it, if you need the words," offered the other man.

Aranur turned abruptly away. "Don't let her get too close to the wolves.

She's lost right now. She could... She... "

"She will be all right," Kiyun returned. "Whatever else she is, she is still Dion. She's strong, and she knows, deep down, that you love her. She won't abandon you and Olarun, even for the wolves."

It wasn't the wolves that scared him. Aranur didn't know why he thought that, but he knew suddenly that it was true. He stared down at his hands.

Long-fingered, lean, strong hands they were, skilled at pulling and holding together men and women in a common cause. But strong as they were, desperate as they were, they could not hold on to Dion. "Those who have strong passions, create strong self-destructions," he said finally, flatly. He looked up. "Make sure that she seeks healing, not death."

The other man nodded.

Brown eyes bored into gray. Neither man moved. Finally, Kiyun held out his arm. Aranur stared at him. He turned on his heel and strode from the

room. Kiyun was left standing, arm out, as if the emptiness of the room would shake Aranur's words from the air.

"He doesn't know," he told the paintings finally. "He'll never understand

her. The world is black and white to him, but she lives in shades of gray."

It was dusk when Dion rode out, and there were three riders with her, not one. Gamon, Tehena, Kiyun-when they showed up together, Dion merely looked at them, then turned her dnu toward the darkening forest cliffs.

Aranur, alone in the courtyard, watched her go in silence. Olarun refused to see his mother off; he had disappeared instead. And the others had sensed

the chill of Aranur's fury. They left quickly, so that only the twilight, which gathered around Aranur as the wolves gathered to Dion, stayed to keep him company.

Aranur's voice was cold and hard as he watched the riders reach the upper ridge trail. "Damn you, Dion," he breathed. "But you've made me love you more than life. You've made yourself a part of me until I can't turn around without looking for your touch, listening for your voice. Now you think you have to leave me to become whole again by yourself." He stretched his own mind to hear the faint echo of wolves, but all he found was a wisp of fog that shredded beneath the moons. A lone wolf howled up on a ridge, and the sound hung over his ears. His jaw muscles jumped, his gray eyes narrowed. "You are torn, Dion, and so you tear me. You need balance, but you won't find it without me." His fist pressed against his sternum. The two gems of their mating, which studded his bone, were hard nodules under his fingers.

His voice grew intent, and only the night saw the steel that glinted in his eyes. "I am yours, Dion, and you are mine. You can't lose me by leaving me, no matter what you think you deserve." He watched a shadow flit across the ridge, and he knew that it was she. "You'll face yourself-and me -again, or you'll find no future you can live with. You can't hide in the packsong forever, Dion. You can't hide in whatever you seek. If you don't come back to me on your own, I'll track you down like a wolf does a deer, to the ends of this world and beyond. Through the mountains, through the wolves, through alien peaks or the depths of the sea-on the very path to the moons, if I must." The gemstones ground into his bones. He didn't notice. "By the Gray Ones," he breathed. "By Ovousibas, by all nine moons, by all the Ancient curses, I swear this, Ember Dione maMarin: By all the gods of past and present, I'll find for us a future. I'll bring you back to me."

IX.

Time turns the planet round in place; Time moves the days from dawn to dusk; Time dulls the grief until it fades; Time turns one's heart into a husk.

Previous Top Next South and down along river mountains. South, where trails were hard and dry above brutal, white-watered rocks. South, away from the mountains, away from Ariye, Dion kept their dnu turned. Two days on the trail turned into three, then five, then eight. And all the while, the ground lowered itself from the mountains to the border hills that ringed the coastal valleys. The trails, which had been half rock, became softer soil and dirt. The summer air, which had been clear and cold at night, grew humid and warm with moisture. And the sea began to flavor the wind.

From the hilltops, the summer fields stretched out like swatches of rolling green caught between taller, darker forests. Thick lines of barrier bushes gave way to stone or wood-weathered fences. It was easy to tell where the plants of the Ancients were grown. Within the fields of indigenous vegetables and grains, as if guarded by their contoured rows, the irregular patches of darker and lighter shades made a poxlike pattern of color. Seeds of the Ancients, Dion thought, carried across the stars. Like the seeds of their past, carefully guarded and protected by legend and books. Or the germs of new science, grown up behind walls and sheltered from alien eyes... She couldn't help the look she gave the moons. If the moons could give the Ancients a world, why couldn't they give her peace? But the white orbs floated silently in their distant, blue-humid sky.

Four times they crossed raider sign on the roads. The first time it was old sign, the deep hoofprints and shards of wagons locked into hardened mud where the traders had driven their caravans. The other two signs were more recent. At the fourth place they passed where raiders had fought, the stone cairns on the side of the road marked funeral pyres. The cairns still shifted and swirled with ash that had not yet been blown off by the wind.

They passed villages and small towns, skirted caravans, and watched the young men and women who traveled on their Internships and Journeys. Small groups, large groups, and once or twice, single riders... The days blended from one to the next.

Early into the second ninan, Dion eyed yet another pair of riders as she waited with Gamon and the wolf near one of the roadside message cairns. Kiyun and Tehena were checking the snares they had set out the previous night, while Dion and Gamon broke camp.

One of the young riders on the road raised his hand in greeting as he passed. Gamon waved slightly in return. His gray eyes followed the riders. "Young," he murmured.

Dion nodded.

Gamon glanced at her, then motioned with his chin at the riders. "You were young like that when I met you. You and your brother-new as spring grass."

Her eyes unfocused, as though she could feel her twin even at this distance.

Gamon caught her expression. "We could ride back east into Randonnen.

You could see him and your father."

Abruptly, her eyes focused. "No," she said flatly.

"Dion, you need your family right now. If not Aranur and Tomi and Olarun,

then why not your twin and his mate? You need someone to talk to-and you've always been able to talk to your twin."

"He already knows. There is no need to tell him."

He eyed her steadily. "He might be able to feel your pain at this distance, but don't you think you owe him more than that? At the least, you should give him the reassurance of seeing you-of seeing that you're okay."

She couldn't meet his eyes. "I sent a message ring," she said, her voice low.

"It's not the same." He studied her. "Ah, Dion," he sighed finally. "You haven't even seen your father in two years."

She looked up then and met his gray, faded eyes. "What would I say if I

saw them, Gamon? 'Greetings, Father. I've killed your grandson?' Or, 'Say, Rhom, did you notice that really dark period when I let your nephew die?' I look back, Gamon, and wonder how much danger my father really let Rhom and me get into when we were growing up. Then I look at my life and the life I've led my boys into, and I know what he and Rhom think of

my taking my sons out on the trail. Their blame is deserved, Gamon. And

that's something I'm not ready to face."

"They would never blame you. Only you do that. And your brother has taken his own children out on the trail."

"But never far from home. And Randonnen is safer than Ariye. The lepa don't breed in our mountains, so there is never danger from a flocking. The worlags are smaller, and we don't even have barrier bushes. There's no brown fungi or fruga bushes or eye-mites or spiela. But here in Ariye, all those things fill your forests, and they are dangers every day. By the moons, Gamon, I've taken my boys out where even adults are wary."

"Aranur learned to run trail that way. I learned that way when I was a boy.

Even the Lloroi grew up that way. How else would your sons grow up?" he demanded.

"Inside the barrier bushes," she retorted.

"You'd rather have them ignorant?" Gamon shot back.