In the morning, one day out of Changsong, Dion left at dawn when the wolf pack howled from the ridge. But the others had barely finished breakfast when she returned. She melted out of the forest like a ghost; Asuli jumped when the dnu beside her grunted its warning. Dion looked at the intern, then at Gamon and the others. She was breathing quickly, as if she had run, and her hands were stained with dark patches. But the marks weren't blood, Kiyun realized; they were sap stains and something else.

"Stay," Dion said tersely. She stooped and took his machete from his pack.

Then she faded back into the ferns. She was out of sight within seconds.

Asuli stared after her. "Stay?" she asked Gamon. "What does that mean?"

The older man rolled his eyes.

"It means stay," Kiyun answered for him.

"Stay and do what?"

"Wait." Tehena uncinched the saddle she had just tightened onto her dnu.

"Wait?"

The lanky woman dropped the saddle over the log beside Asuli. "Wait

patiently."

"That's it? No questions asked? No 'What will you be doing, Dione, while we sit here on our behinds?' "

Tehena shrugged.

Asuli seemed to explode. "You're a bunch of idiots," she snapped. "What

do you think she is? A moonmaid? A god? The wonder healer, the great Dione-"

Tehena's open slap struck so blindingly fast that Asuli's whole body rocked

back before she knew she had been hit. The hard-faced woman glared at her

like a lepa.

Asuli pressed one hand hard to her cheek. "You can't silence the truth," she managed. "No matter how you strike at it." She checked her hand for blood.

Gingerly, she touched her cheek again.

Tehena didn't move. "And what do you see as truth, Asuli?"

"Dione's just a woman," snapped the intern. "And a poor excuse for one, at that. She's no elder to command you here and there. No venge leader to demand your loyalty. She throws away what she is just because she's too lazy to look at herself. You ask what the truth is? It's that Dione is just

another weak-willed person who can't handle life as it is." She sat down on a log and rubbed at her cheek.

Kiyun shook his head. "You know nothing, woman. If Dion has our loyalty,

it's because she earned it."

Asuli snorted. "When?" she demanded. "How long ago? Five years? Ten years? Twenty?"

"Dion has been many things to many people-"

"Who cares what she was before? It's what she is now that's important. It's

always what you are now-that's the only thing you have to work with to make things happen in your life."

"That's worlag piss. Dion is what her past has made her."

"Dion is selfish and useless," she shot back. "Is that what bought your

loyalty?"

Gamon's voice was mild. Kiyun, having heard that tone before, eyed the

older man warily. "So you think," Gamon said, "you should throw a person away if they become useless-or inconvenient."

"It's not a matter of inconvenience. Don't twist my words, old man."

Gamon's gray eyes glinted.

Asuli gestured sharply toward the forest. "You let her run around with the

wolves like a wilding. You don't do anything to stop her, to make her face what she's feeling. This thing with the jellbugs-does she think she'll avoid death just because she's a master healer? Or avoid raiders if she stays out of Ariye? She can't run away from Aranur's death-or the death of her son or, hell, the death of anyone she's ever known. Death is her lifestyle. The woman's not just a wolfwalker-she's a moon-wormed scout. She's lifted her sword against raiders as often as she's used her scalpel-probably caused as much death as she's prevented." Asuli jabbed her finger at them.

"And you, you're all as much to blame for the way she's acting now as she is herself. You're so caught up in her reputation, you don't care that you're simply making it easy for her to run away-to escape herself no matter how much it costs everyone else. You're like a bunch of disciples trailing some

sort of messiah. Anything she needs, you get her; anything she does, you accept. But you're blind as she is if you follow her. She's hardly even human."

Kiyun's jaw tightened visibly. "What is human?" He threw the question at her. "Words? A speech pattern? Emotions? Thoughts? You think you are more human-somehow better than she? Dion is more human than either of us will ever be. She's seen eight centuries of birth and death. She's felt eight hundred years of grief. You have the option of forgetting, of letting memories fade. Dion doesn't have that luxury. Those wolves, who make her so 'blind' to you, accentuate every emotion. They carry every event in their memories and play them back, again and again. When her son was killed, the wolves were there in her mind, locking that memory into their packsong so that it haunts her, day and night. When Aranur died, the wolves were there- she let them into her mind to help her find the strength to hold him as long as she did. And now the image of his death is with her every moment, in the packsong of a dozen wolves. She can never escape it now." His jaw tightened. "You think we help Dion run away-for a few days or ninans or years if we have to? You're goddamn right, we do."

Asuli looked at Tehena. "What about you? You're going to let her run away too?"

The other woman's eyes narrowed. "You think she can be responsible for you when she's escaping herself? You, who are so desperate for her to give you direction, to give you purpose? Don't you see? She can't give you a reason to live-not when she's lost herself. And if she's not willing to pull herself out of whatever hole she's in, what will you do for her? Help her dig it deeper? Or help to get her out?"

Tehena's light-colored eyes were intent as a wolf on its prey. She opened

her mouth, but Gamon put his hand on her arm. The lanky woman stilled

with difficulty.

Slowly, Asuli got to her feet. "She can't save you-not as she is," she said

quietly. "She can't even save herself."

Tehena watched Asuli walk away. An odd expression crossed her face, but

she said nothing. The long day passed in near silence.

Dion did not return that night, and Asuli was restless. She paced the camp

at dawn and fidgeted with the fire until she drove Kiyun to cursing.

"By the moons, woman, can't you settle down?"

"Where is she?"

"Do you care?"

"Does it matter?" she shot back.

He cursed again. "I'm going to check the snares," he muttered.

"If you see her, tell her I'm waiting here."

"I've already seen her, and she doesn't care where you wait as long as it's

away from her."

Asuli merely nodded. But when Kiyun left camp, she watched with sharp

eyes. And later, when Gamon was digging up tubers and Tehena was

checking their fish traps, Asuli disappeared.

When Tehena returned from the stream, she had a fat fish in her hands. She

prepared it, wrapped it in leaves, and set it in the hot ashes of the fire pit

before she realized that the intern's absence was more than a momentary

lapse. Slowly, she stood and glanced around the camp. When she moved east she located Gamon easily. She circled the camp, but although there were two peetrees within forty meters of their site, the intern was not at either one. Tehena chewed her thin lip.

Then she set off in the direction Dion had taken at dawn. There was a wide game trail-used by everything from herds of eerin to worlags and badgerbears-and it was that which Tehena followed.

She had gone only two kays when she heard human sounds: steel on wood, cursing, half sobs. Within twenty meters she spotted Asuli. The intern was crouched near the top of a rocky rise in a stand of koroli bushes, where the fat, waxy, summer leaves hid her shape. When Tehena climbed the rise silently and followed the intern's gaze, her thin lips tightened grimly.