boy stared at her. He started to speak, but Kiyun touched his shoulder to stay him. The boy swallowed and stepped back.

Dion let her own mind range free in the gathered packsong.

Each wolf passed her voice on, each pack picked it up and howled it to the moons. And far away, as if amplified by hundreds of wolves in between,

she felt Hishn touch her thoughts.Wolfwalker! the Gray One howled. The voice was faint.Dion touched the wolf, reveling in the shocking joy she had almost forgotten. Then she went on beyond even Hishn. Back, she stretched, through the ninans. Back, to read the song of the wolves who had run with her to her home. The yearling that Yoshi had killed... The three wolves who had moved too slowly when worlags caught them against a cliff... The wolf packs that Dion had healed near her house, too blind in grief to notice what she did to cleanse them of the fever... And the slow deaths of wolves -thirty-two Gray Ones-who died at the hands of predators after they were sapped by the fire of the plague...

Her lips moved, but her voice had no strength. "Dear moons," she breathed.

Now you understand.

"Now? What do you mean?"

You have borne children, while our cubs die. You grieve with us now; we grieve with you. We are brothers in the pack.

"There was not enough death in my life already? My mate, my son-" Her voice broke. "-had to die that we could be bonded more tightly?"

Your promise was empty of urgency. The promise of life, to take the fire from our wombs. Our pups still die, Wolfwalker.

"I've kept my word," she whispered. "Every month I've worked to find the cure. I've gone back to the domes; I've searched your songs; I've learned every story of the Aiueven. But I can't find what I need to heal you."

Time moves on, Wolfwalker. We Call you now to help us.

She cried out almost silently. "But I can't see what I have to do anymore. I can't see beyond the blackness. Don't you understand? To me, death doesn't bind us together. It tears my promise apart. I can't work like this- even for you. I have no future without my family. I have only a past of blood."

Life, death-both live in us. They are the same, Wolfwalker. Dion closed her eyes and rocked herself silently on the bed.

Time, Wolfwalker, lives in our minds as well as yours. Fight to live, not die.

"You ask much."

We ask for a future.

"And what if I have none to give?"

Then we will find one also for you.

Dion made a low, bitter sound.

Time, Wolfwalker, is life to us. We Call you now to run with the pack for the future of the pack.

"My promise... "

Life, not death. For you. For us.

The packsong raged suddenly, and Dion cried out. The harsh sound hung in the room like a ghost. Then it faded. Outside, the wolves began to howl. Dion's sight cleared slowly. The wolfsong was still there in her mind, thick as a winter pelt. The Gray Ones stilled, waiting. She swallowed, and her throat seemed to work. She felt something warm slide down her wrist; a trickle of blood spilled out from the cut of her own fingernails in her palms.

Wolfwalker, they howled. Seek this life, as it is something you must do. The image of Xiame was clear. Seek life-your life so that you may seek ours.

Your promise binds us as well as you. We will be here with you.

She lowered her hands. Her fingers were stiff and white. She looked at Asuli. "You have your healing kit?"

The intern nodded.

"You will make incisions along the body-short and shallow where I indicate. Two incisions for each small area."

"You intend to bleed the worms out of her?" Asuli's voice was suddenly

professional, matter-of-fact.

"Aye. You will swab the first incision with cytro to get it into the patient's bloodstream. When the worms appear at the second incision, you will wash

that area with cytro again to kill any still-living worms. Remove all worm masses to a bowl-make sure none of them live."

The intern nodded.

"We'll do her feet first, then calves and legs, hands and arms. Torso and

chest last. If we need to turn her, or do more than that, I will let you know."

"Should I close the incisions as you finish with one area?"

"Not till I'm done. Some of the worms will loosen and float free in her

bloodstream; those will have to be pushed out wherever I can find an open incision."

"She could bleed to death."

"I can control that." Dion glanced at the boy, who had made a strangled sound. "I will do my best, Roethke. I can promise no more than that."

Silently, he nodded.

Dion looked at Tehena, Kiyun, Gamon. "I will need help," she said flatly. All three moved forward, but it was Gamon who reached Dion first. He placed his hands on her shoulders and stiffened almost immediately. The wolfwalker's eyes were clear, but the sense of the wolves was strong in her, and he could feel the Gray Ones howling.

Slowly, she stretched her hands over the woman. Take me in, Gray Ones. Then run with us, Wolfwalker.

Still caught in the senses of the wolves, her mind spun left and down. It was not a gentle thing, but a swell of power that sucked her along like a raging torrent. The body of Roethke's mother was suddenly owned by Dion. Her lungs barely lifted; her mind fought the sea of blackness that pushed in on herself. Her heartbeat slowed and pounded heavily as it was dragged down by the worms in her blood vessels. She almost choked with the sense of it.

Slowly, she dug herself out of the blackness and back into the gray of the wolves. Then she sank her mind into the walls of the blood vessels, where she could feel the worms. Entwining, burrowing into the walls of the blood vessels, the worms sought their natural symbiotic places but found human tissue instead. Where they would have strengthened a badgerbear's vessels, they clogged the human veins.

Dion felt this, saw this, sank her mind into the sense of it so that each tiny pain from the dying tissues became a pain of her own. Then she followed the first of the pains till she found the incision Asuli had made in one of the woman's feet. It was bleeding lightly, and from inside Xiame's body, the cold air hitting the blood was a tiny shock to Dion. Even as she located the site, she felt the cytro wash into the bloodstream. The toxin pulsed along the blood vessels, sweeping by the worms or paralyzing them in place.

Dion's consciousness followed in that wake. Gently, she pulled a worm mass away from an artery wall. Carefully, she untangled the clot they formed and pushed it along the blood vessel. When she reached the area where the incision was, she opened the incision wider. Blood spilled out, pulling the worm clot with it.

In the room, Asuli couldn't help herself. "By the gods," she whispered. Even as she stared, the blood at the first incision point thickened into a tiny clot. It wasn't a scab; it was a subtly writhing, dying mass that was forced out onto the skin. Quickly, she doused it with more cytro and wiped it from the skin.

Dion swept on. Slowly, methodically, vein by vein, artery by artery, she followed the path of the cytro. Some of the walls of the blood vessels left behind when she removed the worm masses were patchy with near-dead cells. She had to stimulate those around them to heal even as she pushed the worms on. There were no clots in the smaller veins; hairworms needed space to breed. But there were hundreds of clots to find and untangle and push out of the rest of the body.

She didn't know how long she was there. The gray fog remained strong, thick with the presence of two dozen wolves, but she could feel the creep of exhaustion along her consciousness. Time... She had stayed in this body far longer than she had ever been in a patient before. Feet, legs, arms... Roethke's mother had been bled of most of the parasite masses, but there were still veins and arteries to clear near the woman's lungs and heart. If she left her patient now, the worms would replicate within hours and reseed the woman's body.

Dion tried to concentrate herself into the woman's chest, but her focus shivered. Like a thin leaf in a heavy wind, her mind suddenly shuddered.

The gray sea swirled and sucked at her thoughts.

Wolfwalker, the Gray Ones howled.Her thoughts set grimly. Help me, she sent.But her body was drained. There was no more strength inside her.In the room Tehena watched Dion carefully. She caught the drain of color from Dion's face, then the shiver that hit her arms. "She's fading," the

woman told the others.

Gamon looked at Asuli; but the intern, still busy wiping up clots of worms that trickled out of the incisions, didn't notice.

Tehena followed the older man's glance. She stepped forward and took the wipes from the intern, then pushed Asuli toward Dion. "I'll do this. Help Dion now," she ordered.

Asuli jerked away. "I am helping. I'm doing my job."

Tehena pulled her back, and her lean hands were like claws on the intern's

arm. "I can do this as well as you. We've all taken our turn with the wolfwalker. Now it's your turn to do it."

Asuli swallowed. "To do what? I don't know what she's doing."

"Ovousibas, just as you accused," Tehena said harshly. "Now help her

survive what you pushed her into."

"I can't-" Her voice broke off at Tehena's expression.

"You want to be a healer," Tehena snarled. "Then start acting like one, for

once. Dion can't do this alone. And we haven't the strength left to help her

ourselves."

Asuli shuddered. She could still feel the burning shock all the way up her

arms from when she'd grabbed the wolfwalker. "I can't," she repeated, shrinking back.

Tehena's fingers dug into the other woman's shoulders till Asuli gasped.

"You're always telling us how much you know. How much better than everyone else you are. You've been bragging about your skills since you attached yourself to us like a leech. It's time you stopped talking and started doing." She gave a shove so that Asuli stumbled toward Dion.

The intern hesitated, but Tehena cursed her. Asuli moved as if in a dream.

She dropped to sit on the bed beside Dion. This close, her skin prickled, and the hairs stood out from her arms. She could see the pulse in Xiame's veins, the subtle shift of clots. Gingerly, she touched Dion's shoulders.

The sting was mental, but it shocked her. She almost let go. But she set her jaw in stubborn lines and held on. Instantly, she swayed. The drain was like someone sucking the breath out of her body. Grimly, she held on. She had seen the others do this- hold on to the healer and stagger away, weakened by this thing Dion did. But to feel it herself... Gray voices echoed in her head. A wolf howl, lonely, was suddenly filled with other lupine tones. And the body before her opened up as if, through Dion's eyes, she saw not just the flesh and cuts she herself had made, but the inner vessels, the heart, the bones.