The intern patted his shoulder. "She just wants to look, Wains. She can't do

anything I haven't already done."

Dion stilled. Gamon looked from the wolfwalker to the intern. In the heavy

silence, he instinctively edged toward the door. For a moment, no one moved. Then Dion seemed to explode.

"How dare you-" she snarled, her fury cracking like a whip across the

room. "How dare you presume to know my skills!"

Asuli took a step back, but Dion was incensed, rousing the wolf's ire to

sizzle with her own in the dim room. Gray Hishn was on her feet, teeth bared and bristle up.

"You have barely begun your internship, but you presume to judge my

skills? You, who can't recognize potential, but see only despair-even in the health of your own father?" Dion followed Asuli back. Her finger was like a sword stabbing toward the younger woman. "You are not even halfway through your twenties; there are two hundred years ahead of you in which you could learn if you wanted. Your menial learning now is nothing compared to what you could know later. Right now you haven't even the experience to see beyond what is to what can be. A cut can't be healed- that's your attitude. A crushed joint cannot recover. Yet those healings occur more often than an intern like yourself would know. You're blind as a

nightbird and twice as shallow as its cry. If you don't change to add some compassion to your skills, you will be forever in the dark." She barely took a breath to keep going. "Keep your ignorant tongue in your head where it belongs," she snapped, "lest you wag it where it will get cut off."

She turned back to the man who gaped at her from the table, ignoring the open-mouthed intern. "Sit still. Be quiet," she commanded sharply to Wains. She straddled the bench so that she sat beside Asuli's father. Take me in, Gray One, she commanded shortly.

Then walk with me, Healer, Gray Hishn returned. But Dion's fury was like a creature in its own right. It grabbed the gray wolf's focus like a mudsucker so that the link between the two snapped shockingly taut. Their minds slammed together. Something ripped apart and merged instantly back together. It was not Hishn who led Dion this time, but Dion who led the wolf. Down, left, farther, in. Energy snapped and sparked between them. The power of each one's body merged into a single resonant chord. Somewhere in the backs of their minds, yellow, slitted eyes blinked, but in the seething mass of gray-fed fury, neither Dion nor Hishn noticed.

Abruptly, Dion's consciousness drove into the wounded man's body. She barely pulled the gray, pain-killing fog around her mind as she shifted with the internal healing. Like a spear, she plunged into the wound. Tendons, ligaments, nerves-all had been neatly severed by the raider's blade. Firmly, she pulled the tissues together, welding them with her will till they held. Her fury held her where her will would otherwise have weakened, and she stayed, blending and weaving the tissues until the gray fog became a biting chill. She struck back at the fog, anger fueling her strength, but the gray wolf snarled and, like a fish on a line, she was hauled back, hauled out of the healing.

She opened her eyes, blinked once, shuddered like a ghost, and fainted.

"Healer?" Asuli jumped forward.

Hishn whirled, her teeth bared. Gamon barely caught Dion before she fell

forward; then he lifted her slender form away from the bench. He glanced at the man she had treated, but Wains wasn't watching the wolfwalker. The other man was staring at his hand.

"By the blood of a hundred worlags," the other man said softly. "I can feel my fingers." He moved them fractionally, watching them clench almost imperceptibly, then relax. Finally, he looked up. He saw Dion's figure in Gamon's arms and half rose. "What happened to her?" He looked at his daughter. "Is that it?" he asked. "That's all?" He stood up. "Why did she faint?" he demanded. "I felt... things moving. I felt... But she didn't do anything-" His voice broke off at Gannon's hard expression. "No offense, weapons master," he said hurriedly, "but she barely even touched me-"

"Aye," Gamon returned shortly, motioning with his chin for Asuli's mother to open the door. Hurriedly, the woman obeyed, then stepped back as the gray wolf snarled, slinking out the door before Gamon could step forward.

Asuli was still staring at Dion.

"Asuli-look!" Wains caught the young woman's arm. "By the light of the seventh moon, I can feel my arm." He grasped the wounded limb with his other hand. "Look, I can move it, wave it, close my fist-ah, hell, that hurts -".

"Don't move it," Gamon said sharply. "Let it heal first. Get that... daughter of yours to bind it up. Give it some time, or you'll tear out what the

wolfwalker did for you."

Asuli gave Gamon a look as hard as his own. "And just what, by the second

hell, did she really do? I watched her. Wains was right. She didn't touch him. She didn't do anything but close her eyes for a while, then faint."

Gamon shouldered coldly past the young woman, ignoring her questions.

Hishn was already down on the street, her fur stiff across her lupine

shoulders.

Asuli shook Wains off and tried to catch Gamon's arm. "Wait- What happened? What did she do?"

Gamon merely strode down the steps and didn't answer.

He barely reached the street before Dion blinked blearily and struggled against his strength. He set her on her feet only at her insistence, but backed off as he saw the anger that still flashed in her eyes. He glanced only once at the intern who stood on the porch and stared after them. The young woman had an odd expression on her face, but she said nothing more. When her father called to her again, she turned and stepped back inside.

X.

Release your heart And let it race away - Like the pounding of your pulse When you are breathless; Like a drum Beaten with urgency or hate; Like time Twisting out beyond the stars; Like love That has no boundaries.

Previous Top Next A few hours on the road, and the dull rhythm of the hooves of the dnu had beaten conversation to silence. Dion's fury had left her as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving her drained and dry as a dusty sinkhole, and Gamon, watching her out of the corner of his eye, pushed ahead to ride beside Tehena. "We should stop soon," he murmured to the lanky woman. "She's pushing it to stay in the saddle."

Tehena shrugged. "She wants distance."

"Five kays ought to be enough."

"You're thinking about raiders, or the intern back in that town?"

"Both, although I couldn't tell you which one I'd rather not face."

Tehena grinned, but the expression didn't lighten her hard-lined face.

"From what I saw of that intern, Dion deserves all the distance she can handle, raider threat or no. She can make it to Caeton. She won't be able to see the ocean from there, but she'll be able to smell it."

Gamon's shoulders twitched. "Holguin is closer," he said flatly.

"Dion never liked Holguin."

"She doesn't like raiders either."

The lanky woman shrugged. "They attacked three towns in two days. That's

a lot, even for a bold raider band. You can bet they're long gone by now.

They could be as many as twenty kays from here-they could be halfway to the coast."

"Could be," he agreed deliberately.

Tehena gave him a sharp look. "Even if they were actively hunting Dion, it's not likely they could guess exactly where we'd be at any particular time. They can't afford to hang around searching for her in this area now

that they've made a few strikes. It's more likely that they've made their bid for her for the month, and now they'll crawl back under their rocks."

"There are other towns through which we must ride."

"Sure, there are a dozen to choose from, this close to Sidisport. But you think any of them would welcome a raider gang? This isn't raider country here. Sidisport is. Dion should be safe till we reach the coast."

"It's a risk, Tehena."

"Not much of one."

"You heard what that farmer said as clearly as I did."

"Aye," she acknowledged. "But they are not actively hunting Dion," she

insisted, "or they'd be on our heels, not striking randomly around us. What happened in Prandton-and the other towns-was simple vindictiveness."

"Vindictiveness?"

She shrugged. "Find a group of dim-witted risk takers like those villagers back there, and hit them hard. You're guaranteed some fun, and raiders aren't known to pass that up when they're handed that on a platter."

"Moonworms, woman. Don't you have any feeling for the healer and villagers who died in that town?"

"As much feeling for them as they had respect for you, Gamon."

The older man snorted.

"Look, Gamon, if the raiders were hunting Dion with any kind of intent, she'd hear it through the wolves."

"You have a hell of a lot of faith in her."

"She's a wolfwalker."

"She's also vulnerable right now," he retorted in a low voice. "It was no

secret that she was badly injured in that lepa attack. If some raider wants her -alive or dead-then he also knows that now, when she is weak, when she