"Couldn't you give me a sword at least?"

"You can use one?"

"No," Asuli retorted. "But I could try. It would be better than having

nothing to fight with."

"You've got your tongue to protect you, girl. Compared to you, the rest of us are defenseless."

The intern's lips tightened. Tehena turned away, her faded eyes watching

the forest intently while Gamon closed up from behind.

"Stay in the middle," he ordered sharply. "Stay with Tehena."

"Thanks a lot, Gamon," Tehena muttered.

He didn't bother to respond.

The forest was close enough to the road that they could glimpse four of the

beetle-beasts in the shadows, but the worlags didn't move closer. Dion counted the two adults and two yearlings. Their purple-black carapaces almost shone when the sun hit them, and their beetlelike jaws clacked together. Their feet made no sound as they ran, first on four legs, with their middle, almost vestigial arms folded against their bodies, then on six with their middle arms lightly touching the ground. And like a wind in brittle branches, they chittered constantly.

Dion let her ears catalog their sounds. They were pacing the riders, but there was no overt threat as yet in their noise.

"Can't we outrun them?" she heard Asuli ask faintly.

"They will not attack," Dion returned.

"How do you know?"

Tehena snorted. Dion, her senses scanning the forest for a change in the worlags' manner, didn't answer. If this family group met up with more worlags, the riders might have to run or fight; but as it was, there were too many of them for the beetle-beasts. Worlags weren't sentient-not as Dion would define it-but they were clever enough at that. They were as likely to set a trap as a poolah who buried itself in soil, waiting for its prey.

For an hour, they rode with the worlags pacing them while their shoulders prickled with the soft chittering. Then the riders crossed into the swampy lowlands, leaving all but scrub forest behind.

Asuli watched Tehena unstring her bow. "Why don't they follow us?" she asked Gamon.

"Too wet for worlags."

"And we're safe now?"

"From worlags," he returned.

Kiyun and Dion exchanged glances. They were close enough to the coast that the danger here would be from two-legged, not six-legged, beasts, and Dion shrugged at Kiyun's unspoken question. Asuli knew the dangers from raiders; if she chose to ride where raiders struck, it was her risk to take. But Dion glanced back at the intern. The younger woman wasn't as nonchalant as she appeared; her knuckles were white on the reins, and her back just a bit too straight.

Kiyun followed her gaze. "If she had half a brain, she'd have stayed behind, at the inn. We were clear about the dangers."

"I don't think that's the issue with her."

"Then what is? Pride? Sure, by the second moon, she's got a sackful of that."

"Perhaps. And perhaps she really is dedicated to healing."

He snorted rudely.

"Don't you think that what she saw me do-or not do," she corrected,

"might have sparked her curiosity enough to risk this ride? She's smart. She

didn't mistake what I did for what I told her."

"She's in rebellion, Wolfwalker. She's just stubborn enough to refuse to back down when told she should go home. It's not an eagerness to learn that

drives her to follow you. It's willfulness and selfishness and ignorance of the road."

"That too," Dion agreed.

Kiyun grinned without humor.

Dion let herself sink into the packsong that surrounded this part of the scrub. Even without Hishn strongly in her mind, she could hear the wolves clearly. It was a large wolf pack-their voices were thick in the meadows that hid between the low hills-and the sense of them was like a dull roar, where Hishn's voice was now dim. There was no sense of fever within them as there had been with the wolves near her home. Whatever disease had struck in Ariye, it was contained in those mountain peaks. She knew she had healed the sickness from the Gray Ones that ran with Hishn, but she still tested each new lupine bond with which she came in contact.

Hishn... The ache in her chest cramped down, and Dion caught her breath.

Death, longing, loss... There were old tones, not just her own grief, in that mental song. Stretching, deliberately torturing herself with longing for her own gray bond, Dion felt Gray Yoshi's tones mix with those of Hishn's.

They had met then, up the valley. They were running the distance home.

And with summer's heat filling their urges, they would mate soon in the woods while Dion kept running, even though she was now alone...

"Tell me I did the right thing," she whispered.

Wolfwalker! Hishn cried out faintly. Even at that distance, the fierce joy in the gray wolf's tones answered more clearly than any image could.Gray One, Dion returned. Then she shut her mind to the wolf. But as the sound of Hishn's voice faded, Aranur's eyes hung before her. "You can't

hide in the packsong forever... "

She shuddered. "One day," she whispered. "One day to the coast. Then I'll return to you."

But she felt him behind her, hunting, like a wolf on her trail.

When Kiyun murmured her name, asking if she felt all right, she could only

shake her head and spur her dnu to move faster.

Dion's first glimpse of the sea was from the top of a low hill. She thought at first that the sky had changed back to a cloudy color, but as she paused on

the rise, she realized that she was seeing the waves. She caught her breath.

So many years since she had seen the ocean...

Low dunes, half forested and half grass, stretched south shortly to the sea.

A herd of coastal eerin, small and sandy-colored, moved into the shelter of a stand of trees as the riders appeared on the open stretch. Several flocks of seadarts combined, their shapes at first a gnats' nest, then a concerted flow of purple-white movement in the sky. Dion saw them and breathed deeply the salt tang. The white that frosted the tops of the waves shifted and rolled as the waters washed in, and she could taste the ocean now, not just see it.

" 'To wash myself in your waters, ' " she quoted softly. " 'To cleanse my soul in the sea.' "

"Dion?" It was Gamon.

She kept her eyes on the ocean. "I need to run for a while, Gamon."

"Here?"

"I'll be all right. There are wolves nearby; no worlags." She glanced behind her at the other three riders who straggled up the low hill, then she dismounted smoothly.

The older man took her reins. "We'll wait here, then."

She nodded, but her eyes were still on the sea. She took only one small pack from the saddle, then jogged off into the brush.

When Asuli and the others arrived, the intern's sharp gaze caught the

missing pack almost immediately. It was a healer's pack, not a running

pack, and Asuli looked around. "Where is she?" she asked.

Tehena glanced at Kiyun, who was already unsaddling his dnu. "Where she needs to be," the lanky woman answered shortly.

Asuli's brown eyes narrowed. "If she's working, I have a right to be with

her."

Gamon looked up slowly. "All this talk of your rights, Asuli, and none of the rights of Dion?"