"What... what did you say-to get them to come?"

She stared for a moment at her lean, hard hands. Then she looked up and met his eyes. "I told them that Dion was lost in grief and could no longer see the packsong. That she needs the wolves to help her find herself. To force her to live. I told them to find her a future."

"You Called them to... Call her?"

"Aye."

"But if she's doing a healing when they Call her... "

Tehena nodded. "She'll be drawing them like a magnet to help her with the

healing, and they'll be converging on her like a storm to Call her to heal

them, too."

"She'll be too weak to resist them," Gamon put in. "She could be sucked into the wolfsong so far she can't come out again." He flung his own cloak around his shoulders and followed Kiyun into the hall.

Tehena's words, so quiet in the night, were lost as the two men strode out of

the room. "And then where will I be?" she asked.

They asked directions to the boy's home from one of the men on the porch and strode quickly down the street. There were shadows of movement along the roads, flashes of light reflecting from eyes. Dogs barked constantly as the Gray Ones neared the town. Like Gamon and the others, the wolves followed Dion, gathering like a siege.

At the low, decorative gate to Roethke's home, Tehena eyed the two wolves she could see. Her arms and legs bothered her where the gashes were raw.

She hadn't told Dion what she had done; she carried enough of a trail kit to treat her wounds alone. Now, facing the Gray Ones brought a shiver to her shoulders. She steeled herself to walk steadily past the gleaming yellow eyes.

It wasn't Asuli who opened the door, but a woman from the village. The woman nodded to them and motioned for them to step inside, but as Gamon tried to move past her, the woman stopped him. "I was told that they needed to be alone with Xiame," the woman said. But as Gamon heard Asuli's

voice in the back room, he pushed firmly past.

"Wait." She pulled at his arm. "They said they need quiet-"

He shook her off. The woman looked at Tehena's face, then Kiyun's, and

seeing their uncompromising hardness, hurried out the door.

In the back room, Dion and the intern stood beside a bed on which lay a woman. Roethke's mother, Xiame, was haggard, her face lined with pain even in unconsciousness; and the boy, between the two healers, clutched at his mother's hand. There was a cloudiness to the air, as if the song of the wolves had become tangible, and Dion's voice was hard as she answered

the intern. "She's too far gone on the path to the moons; there can be no cure for her."

"I don't believe you," Asuli retorted.

Dion's shoulders tensed, but she forced her words to remain steady. "At this

stage, there are too many worms clogging her veins. If I kill the worms, their decomposing bodies would fill her blood with clots and toxins. It would be like giving her a hundred tiny heart attacks with a heavy dose of deathbriar-she would die within a day."

"Imminent death hasn't stopped you before." The intern nodded at Dion's expression. "You know what I'm talking about." Dion shot her a warning look toward the boy, but the other woman ignored it. "I've seen you work. I know now what you do."

"I do nothing that others can't-"

"That's a pail of moonworms," the other woman retorted. "You can save her -if you want to."

"I can't," Dion snapped. "Even with... there's only so much I can do. This

-it is beyond me."

"You don't know that until you try. What have you got to lose except a few

minutes of your oh-so-precious time? It's not as if you have something better to do. You've given up everything useful."

"This isn't some sort of miracle, Asuli. It saps you like a mudsucker."

The intern didn't budge. "So you're not even going to try. The great

Ovousibas Healer Dione won't lift a finger to help someone else-not when she can wallow in self-pity instead. Yes, I know," she added at Dion's wary expression. "I figured it out. I'm not called smart for nothing." Asuli failed to notice the way Dion's eyes began to burn. "I know what you're capable of, Dione. But you'd rather watch this woman die than soil your grief to save her. Look at her-" Asuli reached out to grab Dion's arm, then cried out in shock and jerked back, staggering against the bedpost. "Moons!" she gasped. Her arm tingled as if it had been struck with a sledge, and the pain radiated up.

Dion clenched her fists. Violet eyes and yellow, slitted eyes had merged into a single gaze, and the blast of energy had flowed through her body like rage. Her mind had spun left, focused her own self, and spun out again, loosing that fire at Asuli.

Caught in the sense of it, she Called to the wolves and felt them race to gather around her. In the village, in the ridges... The Gray Ones were close, as if they had felt her coming. They were eager, as though they had hunted her voice. Had she Called them or had they Called her? She swallowed hard and tried to separate herself. Her words were low and harsh. "The healing isn't to be spoken of. Do not mention it again."

Asuli, still backed against the bedpost, retorted, "You deny what you can do?"

"I sent Hishn away long ago. I have no wolf to help me."

"There are a dozen wolves around this town. Call one of them instead."

A shiver crossed Dion's face. They were too close, too thick in this village.

If she opened to the Gray Ones here, they would Call her even more strongly.

Roethke looked up at her. "Please," he said. "You have to help her. She's

my mother."

"Dione can't be convinced like that, boy," Asuli snapped at him. "She doesn't know what it's like to love someone else like a child does its mother."

Dion's lips tightened so far that skin around her mouth went white. A muscle jumped in her jaw. "I may not have grown up with a mother myself, but at least I know what it is to love like one."

Roethke touched her sleeve, snatching his hand back as he felt the fury within her. "If you don't have a mother, you can use mine," he said quickly.

"She can be your mother, too. But please, don't let her die."

For a moment, Dion didn't move. Her violet eyes seemed to gleam. Then, as the boy got up quickly and moved almost hurriedly out of her way, she sat beside his mother. Blindly, she pulled back the sheets. Then she touched the woman's body, letting her fingers feel the sluggish pulse.

Gray Ones in the dozens seemed to shout inside her head. Wolfwalkerwolfwalkerwolfwalker...Deliberately, she opened her mind to them. Help me with this, she sent.

Wolfwalker. Hear us. The pack Calls to you. By the Ancient Bond, you must Answer.Help me, she whispered deep in her mind.

Answer! they howled back.Her fists clenched against her temples. Her face went taut; she made a strangled noise. From the doorway Gamon cursed. Tehena grabbed his arm, holding him back. "Not now," she said sharply. "Don't touch her. She's deep in the Call of the wolves."

Asuli eyed Dion intently. "Is she doing the healing?"

Tehena cursed the intern coldly. It was Kiyun who said, "Not yet."

Dion heard but didn't hear their words. The sense of the Gray Ones had

swept in and filled her head like a maelstrom. Her consciousness was sucked down into the whirling gray. Images of dens, of night, of hot sunshine, of dusty trails clogged her mind. The hunt-lust of hot blood and tendon, the eagerness of the yearlings, the tumbling sprawl of pups, the snap of bones, the snap of teeth...

A howling rose outside the house, and inside, Tehena shivered. Dion didn't notice. "What do you want?" she whispered.

Your promise, Wolfwalker-of life, not death.The images blurred and shifted. The voices of the wolves were suddenly overlaid with dimmer sounds, faded scents, and she knew they projected their memories. Back, back through time and distance... Back to trails she had almost forgotten. Back to Hishn, when the wolf was still young. Back to mountains, where snows fell like drifts of time, and the dome of the Ancients was a coffin of death filled with an alien plague. There, deep in the packsong, the voices sharpened like teeth. Colors swirled and yellow eyes gleamed. White wings cut through the skies. Fire burned in Ancients' bodies, eight hundred years ago. Time jumped, and the fire jumped with it. searing her blood and burning her own body with the fire of a fever that would not cool. Her brother, Aranur, Gamon... Their bodies, wracked, convulsed in places of white light and flattened walls. A Call- hers, replayed in her head. Lupine voices drowned her in memory while flashes of healing swept forward. Ovousibas- she saw it again as the wolves remembered it through her. And her words cut over the healing, stubborn in her desperation, replayed over and over like a drummer layering beats on a song. Take me back. Her own voice, spoken years ago, echoed in her skull. Not just once, but back... Time... She shuddered as the memories took hold. Her words rang in the packsong, and her own history struck her with the images of the wolves. Show me how. The fever burns. Time... Time...

And the shades of long-dead wolves, their voices raised in ancient howls: The fire strikes. We die, Wolfwalker. We burn. The fire strikes... Death,

Wolfwalker. Death, not life.Over the wolfsong, over the memories, Dion's voice rang out... Teach me, Gray Ones. Ovousibas... I'll help you kill it... Kill it... I'll take it from your bodies...

Death, our pups. The wolfsong howled. Death, our births. The fire kills...I'll help you. Dion's voice layered over the packsong. Show me how to keep my brother, the rest of us alive. Show me, and I'll help you.

Live now. Live tomorrow. Live...

The packsong faded, and the eyes of the wolves stared into her mind. A single gray voice spoke then. You hold life in your hands, yet you seek death. You forsake your promise, Wolfwalker.

Plague. The image was clear. She could not help but recognize what she had felt before. "I've tried," she whispered. "But there is no cure. I cannot find one for you."

We bought your life with our deaths, the wolf voice answered. And time fled backward, but now the images were sharp and clear, and the death, she knew, was her own. She saw Aranur through the eyes of the wolves; saw Olarun standing near him in the dark. Saw the wolf pack gather at the meadow and race with her mate toward her home. Saw the Gray Ones force the dnu to run, and felt her death again. The darkness swirled. The ragged pain that throbbed through her heart-her old heart, her heart of months ago -weakened, dimmed, and stilled. And Aranur screamed her name.

Her nails cut through her skin. "No," she whispered.We carried you. We held you-as you still hold our future. And we died for you because of it. Died with the fire in our wombs, in our blood, in our bodies.

The single voice withdrew. Dion sat, blinded by the images. In the room the