"What happened?" Dion asked as she ducked into a small side street. 'The ringrunner and her escort were riding the black road-I mean, they were bringing the message rings in-when they were attacked by bihwadi. Through here, Healer. It happened up on the track from the relay tower to town. You know the one? The barrier bushes are still new up there-this way, Healer- and the line of shrubs won't be grown in for a decade. Merai - she's the ringrunner-and Pacceli went over the bushes to avoid the bihwadi on the trail. The thorns tore them up something awful. Pacceli-he took fierce wounds from the bihwadi, and then the barrier thorns cut him more. He's lost too much blood. He doesn't even move. Merai, I think, will be blind."

"Brye's down with spring fever, isn't he?"

"Aye. He daren't go near Pacceli's open wounds. The clinic nurse treated Merai and Pacceli." Dion nodded, forgetting that, in the dark, the motion was lost on the woman. But they were already at the door to the elder's home, and the other woman pushed her through the brightly lit coralline doorway and into another man's grasp before she could answer out loud.

"This way," the man said to Dion. "In here." He let go of her arm only after pushing her into the sickroom. She took no offense. Instead, her gaze went to the beds.

One figure lay still, swathed in bandages. The nurse, an older man, sat beside the youth, holding onto the limp wrist. "Pacceli?" Dion asked quietly. The man nodded without speaking. On the other bed was the young woman who had been the ringrunner that night. Merai clenched her bandaged hands at her sides to keep from tearing at the bloody cloths that hid her face and eyes. Dion touched her briefly on the arm, then went to the young man who lay still.

The nurse moved only reluctantly aside for Dion, but the wolfwalker took his place without comment. For a long time, she held Pacceli's wrist with one hand and let the other rest on his chest, her eyes unfocused and dull.

Then she rose. "He'll be all right," she told the nurse. "The pressure of fluid on his spine paralyzed him temporarily. He'll be weak for several ninans- a lot of blood lost, as you said-but his wounds are clean, and his blood will build back naturally." She indicated the woman who had brought her to the house. "Give him two or three days, then move him to a better location -someplace where he can rest for a few ninans."

The nurse frowned. "Healer... "

"Heartbeats can tell you many things if you listen long enough." Dion

fielded his unspoken question. She turned to the ringrunner. "Merai, is it?"

she asked gently.

The young woman caught her breath through torn lips. "Healer Dione?"

"Yes," she answered. "May I?" she asked the nurse, although she was

already sitting on the bed. The ringrunner shuddered as her weight shifted, then lay still, and Dion peeled back the bandages, her body shielding Merai's face from the others who waited near the door.

"Your eyes, Merai-how were they hurt?" Dion asked, not because she

needed the answer, but to give the ringrunner something to do while she

examined the wounds.

Merai fought to steady her voice. "The thorns, Wolfwalker. I was trying to get Pacceli over the bushes before the bihwadi attacked again. The bushes weren't thick enough to support our weight, and we fell through. Pacceli was caught, and I-oh, moons-I hurt him more getting him out-and my eyes were gouged."

The last bandage came free. Dion didn't flinch, but she suddenly looked tired. She forced her voice to be light. "Merai," she said briskly, "your face is a mess."

"I know, Wolfwalker."

"I think, after the venge, I'll come back to see you again."

"I am blind then."

The young voice was strangely adult, and Dion was silent, the words she

would have spoken caught in her throat.

"Wolfwalker?"

"I'm here, Merai."

On the edge of town, Gray Hishn howled. For a long moment, Dion

fingered the bandages in her hand. The blood that had soaked them was starting to dry, stiffening the threadlike strands of beaten bark that made up half of the gauze fiber. She could smell the bark in the fabric; she could smell the openness of the ragged tears in Merai's face. The torn and swollen tissues gave no hint of the young woman's features, but the ringrunner's voice was steady, and her hands obeyed the nurse and stayed at her sides instead of clawing at those raw, burning eyes. Dion stared down. She could

feel the strength of will in Merai as the girl heard what Dion didn't say. Dion rubbed the bark gauze between her fingers again. The healing chemicals that were part of the bark would help those gashes heal quickly into scars, but no simple ointment or touch of salve would repair the thorn-torn eyes.

The Ancients had known how to heal such wounds before the aliens killed them. Their technology paired with the internal alien arts so that healings were simple and quick. If the aliens ever found out how determined the Ariyens were to recover those sciences, she didn't think they would continue to be absent from these northern Ariyen skies. She shivered. She had heard the voices of Aiueven herself-in the packsong of the wolves. She had followed those harmonies back through the time layered in the Gray Ones' minds until she reached the earliest memories: wolves, new as babes on this world. The first landing of the colonists. And Ovousibas, the healing art that the aliens traded the Ancients...

An art that was partly now her own. Absently, Dion chewed her lip. But it was an art that was without most of its knowledge: the details of the body that the Ancients had known and been able to manipulate, to mutate, to engineer... What Dion could do was only a shadow of the original skills. And until they could reclaim the Ancient domes and ships and relearn the Ancient knowledge, it was all she was likely to be able to work with. She glanced at Pacceli. What she knew had been enough for him: His wounds were deep, but simple. But the ringrunner... She studied Merai's torn eyes.

"Wolfwalker?" the ringrunner asked, her young voice barely a whisper. "They say that you can heal people. They say your patients don't die." Dion glanced at the nurse, but he hadn't heard Merai's words. Her own voice was soft in answer. "My patients die as often as those of other healers. I do what I can. That's all."

"I'm not a child, Wolfwalker."

Even without the use of her eyes, the young woman's voice was expressive.

A faint smile touched Dion's lips. "I understand," she said.

"You said Pacceli will be all right."

"Yes."

Her voice dropped even lower. "You healed him."

Dion hesitated.

In the distance, Gray Hishn howled. "That wolf," the ring-runner managed.

"Is that Gray Hishn?"

Dion looked up, toward the window. "Aye."

The ringrunner paused. Then, "Wolfwalker?"

"Yes, Merai."

The young woman's lips moved, but no sound came out, and the bed

trembled. Dion lightly touched her cheek. If Merai had still had eyes, they would be glistening; if she had had tear ducts, she would cry. Hope warred with fear in the ringrunner's body, and Dion could feel both. She closed her own eyes for a moment. The darkness was filled with the sense of the wolves, and she hardly remembered what it was like anymore to be without the Gray Ones. But Merai didn't have a wolf in her head; her mind was alone in its darkness.

Slowly, Dion opened her eyes. "Merai," Dion said softly, "I'm going to examine your eyes more closely now. This might feel odd, and it will

probably hurt, but I need for you to lie still."

Merai forced the words out. "Yes, Wolfwalker." She couldn't quite hide her hope.

Dion let her fingers explore the wounds, her unfocused gaze on Merai's

face. The young woman jerked, then went still, then twitched again. Then Dion touched the bruised cheek gently. "You will lose the sight of one eye, Merai. There is nothing I can do to help that."

Merai's chin seemed to stiffen. "And my other eye?"

"Your other eye, I can save."

"Tonight?"

"No. It will be a long process, Merai. I can start that process so that your

own healer can continue it, but I cannot do that in the few minutes I have left before I ride out again."

For a moment, the ringrunner was silent. "The venge," she finally said.

"It's your eye or their lives," Dion agreed quietly.

The young woman struggled to control her breathing. When she spoke again, her voice was carefully steady. "Ride with the moons, Wolfwalker."

Dion set her hand back on the bed. "I'll be back in a few days." She rose from the bed, swayed, and caught the nurse's arm.

"Healer?" the man asked quickly, supporting her. "You're not well?"

"I'm fine." Dion straightened. "It's just been a long night," she managed.

He nodded, worried, but she gently shook him off. "You've done a good job with Pacceli," she said instead. "As for Merai, salve and bandage all the wounds as you have been doing except for her good eye-the right one. Do

not treat her right eye with anything but oliginal. If your healer-Brye-has a question about that, assure him that I mean what I say. Oliginal only, until I return. I'll be back as soon as possible. It might be the whole ninan, but venges this far north don't usually last nine days. I expect to return before then, perhaps in two or three days."

"Oliginal will keep the wound from healing," he commented as he handed

Dion some wet cloths to clean the blood from her hands.

She nodded her thanks as she reassured him. "That is what is needed. If, before I return, her eye begins to form scar tissue, she'll have no sight at all except perhaps that of distinguishing day from night." She glanced at the ringrunner. "Do you understand that, Merai?"

The young woman tried to nod.

"It will be painful, and it will feel as if the pain gets worse every time the

nurse applies the oliginal. But you've got to stand it if you want to see again." She handed the towels back to the nurse.