Previous Top Next Dion ripped free and lunged forward, catching Aranur's hand. His weight swung him in a short, sharp arc, slamming him into the wall. His eyes flickered as he struck. Blood seeped from his jerkin. Dion half screamed her rage at his weight, at neVenklan's weight with his. Cold stone ground into her hips, her ribs. Her arm was tearing out of its socket. Then, suddenly, neVenklan's hand seemed to lose its strength. With an inaudible sigh, the raider let go.

NeVenklan's body struck hard. There was a sickening crack as his head hit the rocks: There was no doubt about his death. Below, Bandrovic barely glanced at neVenklan as he jumped awkwardly for the skiff that bobbed just off the rocks, laid out in the race of the tide. Three other raiders were already in it, letting down the sail.

Above, Aranur dangled like a doll.

Dion dug her fingers into his arm, drawing blood. She couldn't hold on. Gray Ones, she screamed in her mind. The strength that surged back crushed Aranur's wrist. She didn't notice the sounds of the raiders, Gamon's hoarse shout, the bay boats putting out with the tide. She didn't see the blinding sun or the flash of steel or the water that glistened like alien eyes. She didn't notice the tiny red stream that fell from Aranur's body. But the long, wind-pushed drips arced down to the jagged boulders that lay at the edge of the bay. And when they hit, the waves rushed past and sucked his blood from the rocks.

Dion dug her fingernails into his wrist. Her free hand clawed for a hold on the too-smooth stone. A sword clattered against the wall beside her, but she ignored its cold steel. She strained, and lifted her mate by a hand span.

"Damn you," she screamed at the moons. And lifted again.

For a moment, Aranur's eyes focused. "Dion," he gasped. "The wolves... "

Someone fell against her, and her grip, jostled, slipped.

Aranur looked at her as if he were drowning. "Wolfwal-" he gasped.

Below, the tide water foamed over the rocks, and the rocks bared their teeth

in the surf. A blade glanced off Dion's arm, cutting leather and flesh. She couldn't help her spasm. Her grip loosened."Aranur!" she screamed.The wind stripped him away.

XVI.

We die as we've always done- Leaving the living behind.

-From Journey's End, by Sarro Duerr, 2212 A.D.

Previous Top Next Someone yanked Dion roughly from the wall. The hands caught in her jerkin, on her arms, and blindly, she fought like a wild wolf to stay on the stones. The howling in her head deafened her; the gray tide raced like the sea. She couldn't see beyond Aranur's eyes. Aranur's voice. Aranur's body falling, dropping to the rocks and the surge of the tide below. She caught one glimpse of his body, half on neVenklan's, half on the rocks in the water. Then the racing waves sucked him away.

She screamed his name, but Kiyun yanked her from the wall and leaped out of the way of the blade that smashed down where he had been. She beat hysterically at his arms. The man ignored her and slammed the raider against the stone. The raider staggered back. "He's gone," Kiyun shouted, dragging at her. "Come on! We have to go-" Gamon pulled at her from the other side. Tehena took a cut on her arm and staggered back, but the raider who fought the lean-faced woman did not press the attack. Instead, he leaped for the seawall ladders and slid out of sight. Gamon yanked Dion through the opening the raider left while Tehena cursed at them to move. In a loose knot, they backed away from the wall while half the raiders went down the seawall and the other half guarded the first group's escape. Gamon and Kiyun forced Dion away, and the raiders didn't follow them. Instead, Bandrovic's men melted away along the waterfront. Within minutes, the raiders were gone. The street was empty except for three bodies that lay sprawled and silent-half in the sun, half in the shade of the seawall-and the carcass of one of the dnu.

Dion wrenched violently free of Kiyun's grip and flung herself back at the seawall, but there was no one below. Even neVenklan's body was gone, sucked away by the tide. And out on the bay, where the brine waters clashed, the skiff raced southeast, angling across the tide. She stared at the boat, and in the bow, one of the raiders turned. They stared at each other across the bay-Bandrovic and her. Their faces were blank with the distance, and only their thoughts continued the fight while the sailing skiff shrank toward the ships.

Gamon followed her gaze, then urged her away from the wall, pulling remorselessly on her elbow until she stumbled away. There were no dnu on which to ride away; the beasts, riderless, had fled. They found only one of the beasts nearby, and that one was lame; both hind legs had been slashed, and it limped heavily. Gamon glanced back, where a ship followed the tide and the skiff toward the sea, then back at the faces that peered from the windows. "Let's get out of here," he said in a low voice. "Before someone gets too curious."

Swiftly, they walked through the streets. Asuli met them a few blocks away, hovering nervously in the shadows of a restaurant awning. No one spoke to her, but the intern slid from her dnu and offered it silently to Dion. The wolfwalker didn't notice. Asuli hesitated, then simply fell into step behind them. Gamon looked at Dion several times as they hurried, but the wolfwalker made no sound. Her face seemed blanched, and her lips were tightly shut; her neck muscles were taut as wires.

There was already more traffic on the streets, but few eyebrows raised at their appearance. In the one small market they pushed through, the vendors, noting the blood on their sleeves, left them alone. In fact, it took Gamon ten minutes to find someone who would give him directions to one of the city dnumarkets.

While Gamon talked to the vendor for directions, Tehena leaned close to Kiyun. "Aranur?" she asked, her voice low.

"Dead," he returned. "He fell on the rocks."

The hard-faced woman glanced at Dion. "Sure?"

"His body was twisted. He didn't move when the tide sucked down."

Dion made a strangled sound-half sob, half snarl-and Kiyun grabbed her chin, pulling her to face him. She suffered his touch for a moment, then jerked free, her lips curled back. "She's deep in the Gray Ones." Kiyun's voice was soft.

"Best if she is," Gamon said flatly, turning to join them. Kiyun raised his

eyebrows, and the older man nodded. "Better for her not to think. You need a healer?" he asked Tehena belatedly as the woman wrapped a rag around her arm.

The woman shrugged. "Time enough for that." She nodded at the

wolfwalker's wrists. "What about Dion?"

"She'll heal herself. She always does, when she's with the wolves." Behind them Asuli made an odd sound, and Gamon glanced over his shoulder.

"You might as well go home now, woman. By the time Dion works again, your ninan will be over. She's no use to you right now."

"Perhaps then, I can be of use to her."

The older man just eyed her. His voice was cold. "You'll do what you want anyway, I imagine, and to hell with everyone else."

Asuli said nothing, but stayed with them like a leech.

They bought dnu at one of the city markets and began to ride to the inn, but

Dion turned her dnu back to the seawall instead.

"Dion," Gamon said sharply.

She looked at him. Her violet eyes seemed drowned in darkness. The

yellow glint was dull.

"North and east, Dion. Not south."

"Gamon," she whispered. "Is he really dead?"

Something blurred the older man's vision. Slowly, he rubbed his forehead.

His lips moved, but no sound came out, and he realized that he hadn't spoken. He cleared his throat. "Aye," he said finally.

She didn't nod. Her eyes, unfocused, seemed to see through him. In his

head there was an echo of something dark. The echo swelled, rose and fell,

and he knew it for the howl of the wolves.

With the sun striking his shoulders, a chill hit his blood. He didn't speak, but he took Dion's reins and forced her dnu with his, east, back to the inn.

She rode with them, but there was an emptiness in her that blinded her to what the others did. She had thought she was already empty-naught but a void when Danton died. But there must have been some corner of her self that still held emotion because now that too had drained away. The void within her cried out for sound, for something to fill it. And there was no answer at all.

She barely noticed that Tehena packed her things on her dnu, or that Aranur's things were packed with them. But when Gamon gestured for them to ride out again, north, back to Ariye, she turned her dnu south and west instead.

With a glance at her face, Kiyun shrugged at the others and let his dnu fall in with hers. Gamon hesitated, then did the same. A few minutes later, with the wolves filling her head, Dion rode back toward the sea.

She rode without stopping, and the others followed. Back through the markets, the stone streets, the sun-filtered shadows. Unerringly, she headed for the seawall. The city bustled as if it had not noticed the bodies in its streets, the wagons that had blocked the waterfront. The bloodstains had already been sanded on the stones, and the raider bodies were gone. The noon markets were busy, the sidewalks full. The city turned blind eyes to death.

Dion saw the seawall. Her eyes, she knew, saw the fitted stones, but her

mind saw the raiders upon them. Her ears heard the clatter of dnu hooves on rock, but her mind heard the clang of metal. She didn't remember dismounting or climbing over the seawall. She didn't remember the cold steel of the access ladders in her grip. But she felt the rocks when she stumbled across them. She felt her knees press into their rough texture, her hands rub across their edges. With her eyes unfocused, she simply knelt at the water's edge, ignoring the rough touch of the waves as they sucked at the rocks before her.

The sun burned at her from both sky and water, and brine spray showered her lightly. Her mind relived the fight. She could have seen it from her own eyes, but she had the memories of the wolves to double her vision. As she had let them into her mind in the fight, the violence was now in the packsong. She stretched, and the wild wolves howled with her. Their drive to hunt Aranur... Their urgency... The bloodlust they thrust into her mind.

Over and over, the scene replayed. Aranur hanging on to her arm. His eyes, his voice. Her arm-jostled. Her hand- slipping. And his body, falling away.

She started when Kiyun touched her arm.

"Dion," he said softly. "It's time to go."

She shook her head. The sun was still low.

"We can't stay here at night," he said.

She frowned and looked vaguely at the sky. The sun was low, but it struck

her eyes from the right, not the left. It had crossed both water and sky and was sinking back to the hills that ringed the bay. She shivered as if the brine spray had stripped away the sun's heat. Slowly, Kiyun helped her stand.

She swayed, then stumbled to the access ladders. She didn't remember how she got up, but somehow she was astride her dnu again, staring out at the bay. Her skin burned from the sun, but she felt cold as ice, and she shivered as though it were winter.

Kiyun leaned back to her saddlebags. He pulled her cloak from the bundle and started to put it around her shoulders, but she choked out a sound and spurred her dnu forward. Startled and cluttering like a stickbeast, it bolted down the road.

Blindly, Dion let the dnu have its head as she fled from the Sidisport sun. The others simply followed. She didn't know how long she rode or where the dnu took her. But it was dark when it stopped, and the eastern road was empty of city buildings and homes. The dark pressed in with mugginess, and it seemed to resist her as she slid from the saddle. The night was thick with wolves.

Unconsciously, lupine memories filled her skull so that she knew the land over which they rode. She didn't glance at the others as she dismounted and unerringly led her dnu from the road toward a short-grass clearing. When she reached the meadow, she unsaddled the beast, placed the gear by a log, and led the dnu to the stream that wound through the trees nearby. When it had drunk its fill, she lay down and let the cold water shock her face. Then she tethered the dnu to the log, walked into the grass, and lay down. She didn't speak as the others followed suit. Asuli said something to Tehena, but no one answered the intern. Within minutes, the clearing was quiet as a grave, the night as thick as a shroud.

Dion lay with her eyes open. The grass was half stiff with the dryness of summer, and the ground was warm and humid at her back. Four of the moons hung heavily in the sky, and they looked like pairs of eyes. Eyes that searched for her. Eyes that stared... Yellow eyes, gray eyes... A fist caught suddenly in her throat, and it choked her breath so that for a moment she thought she would suffocate. Then a body rustled in the grass. Another slunk by a moment later.

The wolves found her beneath the moons and curled up beside her. Their hot breaths whuffed the summer pollens, and their musk scent filled her nose. The packsong swelled in her head. Overhead, the stars shifted, the moons swam in the blue-black sea. Dion, surrounded by the wolf pack, slept They camped without fire. They rode with mindless urgency. They sped through villages and didn't stop, and camped only when Dion dropped from the saddle in exhaustion. For four days, they didn't even speak.

There was something wild yet fragile about the wolfwalker, as if she would somehow break were she disturbed by human speech. And there were wolves around her like clouds of gnats. They weren't seen so much as felt, so that a solid screen of predators surrounded the wolfwalker's group.

By the end of the fourth day, they had crossed into the eastern hills and out of Wyrenia Valley. They bought supplies at two of the villages through which they rode, but Dion barely waited for them to complete their purchases before spurring her dnu farther east. By the sixth evening they were deep in the forest, where roads as ancient as the wolves appeared, ran for kays, and sank again beneath the soil.

Asuli tried twice to get Dion to talk with her, but the wolfwalker said little, and Tehena watched her carefully. "There's a storm there," the lanky woman muttered to Gamon one dawn. "It's brewing as surely as if it were