a moment. "Still angry?"

She tightened the last part of the splice and began to coil the rope. "If

you're worried that I'll cut your throat some night while you're sleeping, you can relax. I have better things to do."

"Like Kum-jan?"

"Go snort a worlag, Gamon."

The older man grinned slowly. "That's one I haven't tried. What about it,

Tehena?"

"Personally, I'd rather bed a badgerbear."

"Good. I know just the man. Come with me."

She shook him off. "You're a mutt-faced hypocrite. Leave me alone."

"I'm serious.""So was I.""And I was a goddammed fool. Look," he said heavily. "We're friends-""Were friends," she corrected."Are friends," he retorted grimly. "Why did you ask me for Kum-jan?""Don't play games, Gamon.""Can you, for once, just answer a moonwormed question without barricading yourself in that shell?"

"All right." She glared at him. "Why did I offer Kum-jan? Maybe it was to prove to myself just how worthless I really am. Maybe I was getting too

comfortable in Ariye, and I needed to verify that you all still think of me as spit."

"Go snort a worlag," he retorted. "You just can't say it, can you?"

"I've not been humiliated enough? You want to humble me further?" Her

voice was low and hard. "You know the mistakes I've made in my life. You know what I've done. I'd have died in that prison if it wasn't for Dion, and you and I both know I'd have deserved it. Now, I'm so afraid of being responsible for myself that I have to have Dion to be responsible for me. I can plan strategy, but I cannot give orders. I can follow Dion like a dog while she's hurting, but I don't dare try to help her myself. I know what she needs to face her future, but I'm so terrified of making a mistake that I can't even Call her to do that myself. I have to get the w-someone else to provoke her for me. She has to live, Gamon-for me, not for her. I need her." Her voice, low and hard already, sharpened as if she tried to cut herself. "Without her to be for me what I am not, I'm worse than nothing- I'm a murderer who should have been punished and wasn't. Prison doesn't compensate for the life of a child. But Dion gave me a chance to make it up.

And I've tried. Moons know I've tried to make her proud of me."

"She is proud of you."

"She'd be proud of a rockworm that got itself to the surface. Maybe, just this once, I was hoping that someone else would see me differently, too.

That what Dion believed about me was true-that I'm not just prison- fodder. Maybe I hoped that someone I've known for years-trusted, respected... and whom I thought might actually respect me a little by now

- would think of me like any other person. Might sleep with me, as a friend."

He studied her. "Funny thing is, Tehena, it was me who was humbled, not you."

She stared at him. "You self-centered, egotistical, mud-brained, son of a worlag." Getting abruptly to her feet, she slapped the rope over her shoulders and started to walk away.

He caught her arm. "Tehena, I'm not mocking you. I've something to say- to a friend, as a friend."

They faced each other almost aggressively on the steps. "I'm seventy-eight years old," he said. "I figured I'd seen it all, done it all, felt it all-life, living, dying, death. All I had left was a hundred and fifty years of passing on my wisdom. It hit me, this morning, that I've been almost arrogant in my perception of that-of my 'wisdom.' I may be nearing eighty, but I've still got a lot to learn, and I'm not half as wise as a worlag if I can't see you for what you've become. It... humbles me to apologize to you, a baby-murdering drug addict," he said deliberately, "for teaching me about learning to accept and forgive. I've been so short-sighted that I can't even recognize the only person-you-who understands Dion enough to keep her sane."

"So it's for Dion, not me, that you offer this apology-this Kum-jan."

"No. It's for me, and you."

She eyed him warily, as if he would bite, and the older man shrugged.

"I might be arrogant as an Ancient, Tehena, but I'm not too proud to

apologize. And if, for once, you want to spend time with a man you know

respects you, then take Kum-jan with me."

He waited. She didn't speak. He waited still. Finally, he stepped forward and took her arm and led her to an empty room upstairs.

In the village, Asuli finished her trading and made a beeline for the local healer's house. It was an older woman with faded white hair and spidery arms who came to the door. The old woman's circlet was simple and old- made more than two centuries ago-and Asuli nodded at the healer in acknowledgment of her status.

"How can I help you?" the old woman asked.

Asuli stepped inside.

Dion could feel the wolves gathering outside the village. The packsong had grown since they had cut through the ridges and come down into the valley.

Something had disturbed them and pulled them after her, and their voices were beginning to cloud her mind. It had been hours since Dion and the others had arrived in the town, but for once she didn't want to move on. She knew almost no one here, and it was quiet except for the wolves. They were thick here-as though, she admitted, the closer to her childhood home she got, the stronger grew the graysong. Last night, the wolves had been in her mind, whispering and howling and curling around the slitted yellow eyes. This morning, they were a growing din that crashed against the insides of her skull. She clenched her fists to separate the sense of lupine pads on the palm of her hand from that of her own fingers.

Twenty years ago, Ramaj Randonnen had been one of the few counties that still bred a wolfwalker every decade or so. Twelve years ago, the wolves had come back to the county, spreading from across the River Phye into Ariye and Randonnen. If, in the years since then, the wolves had multiplied as they seemed to have, there should be wolfwalkers in every mountain village, wolfwalkers in every town. But Dion didn't stretch her mind to feel them. There were faces, old friends and teachers, in these villages who might recognize her still, and she had no wish to see anyone but strangers, who would not ask what had happened to make her eyes so dark.

The commons house had cooled quickly once the sun went down, but the chill, like the wolves, seemed to draw Dion outside to the balcony between the rooms. Kiyun was already out there, watching the stars and the black silhouette of the mountains. For a while, they simply leaned on their elbows and watched the yellow lights in the homes and the people moving through the streets carrying late-night bundles and walking beneath the summer stars. Dion's voice was quiet when she finally spoke. "I hear his voice at night, sometimes," she said.

Kiyun glanced at her. "You hear the wolves-he's in their memories."

"I know." Yellow, slitted eyes flickered, and Dion shivered in the packsong.

Hishn's voice, so distant, barely touched the back of her mind, as if the wolf howled her longing from a year away. Dion closed her eyes. She imagined she could see the massive wolf, but the eyes that looked back at her were foreign, not familiar.

Wolfwalker, the Gray Ones howled in her head. Run with us tonight."You have to let him go," Kiyun said. "You know that, Dion."She and rubbed her arms. "It's the dreams on which he has the strongest hold. At night, when the lights fade... The wolves howl inside my skull, and I see him when my eyes are closed as though my mind fights fever demons."

"He's dead, Dion. Let go of him, and you'll begin to sleep again. Hold on

much longer, and you'll dig your own grave with him."

"It's not me holding him-it's his voice in the packsong. Danton died, and there was nothing left but emptiness. But with Aranur... I set the wolves to find him, and they hunted him even as he was dying. He could feel them, so he was in their packsong. And when he died, as he fell, he set his words in their memories, so that all I hear now behind the wolves is him calling, over and over and over again, 'Wolfwalker, wolfwalker, wolfwalker.' "

"He loved you, Dion."

She looked at him. "He was jealous of you, Kiyun. He was afraid you would take me away from him, just as the wolves sometimes did. He never

understood that I could no more leave him than I could leave Hishn."

"I know."

Her voice trembled. "He thought I bought all that art for you because I took

Kum-jan with you. He went to his grave thinking that I wanted more than him and took what I wanted from you. He never knew that I bought that art because you... you... "

"Because I was too embarrassed to buy it for myself." His thick, muscled hand covered hers. "And you were the only friend I could trust to buy it for me and not laugh at me." He squeezed her hand. "After all," he added wryly, "who would believe that a fighter like me was really a frustrated artist?"

That won a faint smile from her, but it faded almost as soon as it had touched her lips. The wolves howled, and her hands trembled, and she pulled away from him to clench her hands against her arms. "I loved my son, Kiyun."

"I know.""I don't want to go on without him.""I know," he repeated softly."And I hate him. "He glanced at her soberly."For leaving me." Her voice was low. "For racing away to the moons before I could explain the things I didn't say to him before. For abandoning me to deal with everything he planned and expected. For taking the path to the moons where he'll be up there with Danton, and leaving me a son who

hates me. Moons, Kiyun. It isn't Danton who needs him in the heavens; it's Olarun who needs him here. But he's gone, and he's locked me into a life of nothing but duty. I blame him for dying-isn't that rich? And I blame the wolves for haunting me with his voice, his touch, his eyes, while they let my Danton's memory sit as still as stone." She rubbed at her temples.

"It's natural, Dion, to feel as you do."

"Is it? I wonder sometimes if this is some exclusive human thing-this blaming that we do. Is it the only way to balance the guilt in our lives-to blame others along with ourselves? Olarun blames me. I blame Aranur.

Aranur blamed the raiders. The Ancients blamed the Aiueven." She stared out at the darkness where the stars hung like a swath of gems. "We're so far from the stars, Kiyun. We're so far from everything but ourselves. When

we look here, at ourselves, what do we really see? The brightness of our future, or the blame we hold in our past?"

"The future is what you make it, Dion. If all you want to see is blame, then

that is all you'll have."

Slowly, she turned her head. "Hard words, Kiyun."

"You need to hear them, Wolfwalker."

A woman and child walked on the street below them, and Kiyun eyed them

absently before he recognized the intern beside some unknown boy. He pointed, and Dion followed his gaze. Her face stiffened slightly.

"Want me to stay?" he asked quietly.