"Toward suicide," he agreed. He stared after her. "I feel as though I should be able to talk to her-to talk sense into her if nothing else. But she looks

through me half the time, Tehena. She answers me, but she's not listening.

There's something else in her head."

"She doesn't see you, Kiyun," she returned. "You and I- we're like

dreams to her. We don't exist to the wolves. What is in her eyes-what she sees night and day-is the ghost of Aranur."

"It's been two months. She's got to let him go."

"He was her life."

His voice was hard. "He'll be her death."

"No," Tehena returned. "In her own way, she's as stubborn as Asuli. But

where that one looked only to herself, Dion searches elsewhere."

Kiyun's voice was low. "He told me to make sure she sought healing, not death. All I've done is help her turn her back on her own county, her own land."

"When there is no one left to hold you to the earth, why not seek the

moons?"

"She has Olarun still, and Tomi. She has Gamon and you and me. Her own father and brother are still alive. She can't abandon them."

"She hasn't really abandoned them." Tehena's voice was thoughtful. "She's just changing the way she lives. I think she sees a way to make the future safer. To confront the one thing on this world that threatens the family she has left."

He shook his head. "What she seeks is still escape, Tehena. If death comes

to her, she won't fight it now. She'll welcome it like a gift."

"I'm not so sure anymore." Tehena's hard voice was quiet. Absently, she rubbed at her forearms. "Something changed in her, back in that town, after the Gray Ones Called her. She's focused now. Before, they drew her- showed her the way. Now, I think she draws them. Whatever she sees when she stares at those peaks-it isn't part of the wolves. And Aranur's image might haunt her days, but it won't be that one who kills her. Out here, there are alien eyes to stalk her and alien deaths to find."

He followed her gaze toward the ragged peaks. "It is said that they are born like black demons, in the bowels of the earth. That as they grow, they change. By the time they're adult they are white as the snow over which

they fly, and their wings encompass the heavens."

Tehena bundled up her bedroll. "There are no heavens near Aiueven. Dion at least knows that."

"Aye." But he said nothing more.

Two more days of slow, steep riding brought them to the Aiueven Wall.

There they halted. It was like facing a forest of barrier bushes: The spiny shrubs were three meters tall and so thickly grown that their spines turned in upon themselves and pierced their own wiry branches. Dion fingered the edge of the bushes, twitching back as the sharp thorns pricked her hand.

Like life, she thought, always drawing blood.

"Do we go through now, or camp here?" Tehena asked. Dion hesitated, and

the other woman added, "The skies are clear-it will be cold tonight."

"If we stay on this side of the wall, we at least have the Kiaskari spring house to sleep in," Kiyun added.

"All right." Dion nodded. She rubbed at her gut.

Tehena's gaze followed the movement. "We've been eating off the land for

days now, Dion, and the groundroots are getting thin as the soil. We won't be able to stay here for long."

"It won't take long to find them."

Kiyun gave her a thoughtful look. "For you to find them, or for them to find

us?"

Dion shrugged. Kiyun and Tehena exchanged a long glance.

The night air was thin and cutting as paper, but the sky was thick with stars.

They were washed out along the path the moons made and thick as curdled

milk along the edges of the horizon. In the distance, a wolf pack raised its voice. Dion rose and went outside. She wrapped herself in her white parka and stood for a long time, listening.

Tehena, restless, got up to stand with her. The lanky woman pulled her

cloak tightly around her as the night wind bit into their cheeks.

"Two days," Dion said softly in the dark. "As soon as we reach the snowpack I will see Aiueven."

"Are you sure?"

"There is something other than wolves in the packsong. I feel that, in my

mind. Like Aranur's voice, only sharper. I asked, in that village, if they were ever sighted, and the people laughed and said yes."

"They laughed?"

Dion smiled without humor. "Every couple of years, they told me, some

climber would dare the snowpacks. The few that have ever made it back- they lived only a few hours. They died with their bones soft as pudding.

They had seen Aiueven, they would say. They had touched the wings that stripped their bodies like worms eating them out from inside."

Tehena drew her cloak more tightly around her.

Dion glanced at her. "Don't worry. They're sighted over the towns, too, but

they never attack. They touch humans only if their dens are threatened-if the climbers get near the peaks."

"And that's what we intend to do."

The wolfwalker shrugged.

"Dion, you'll be the death of us."

"You could always stay behind."

The other woman snorted.

Dion's voice was soft. "I can Call them now."

"Through the wolves?"

"Through myself."

"Dion," Tehena said quietly. "You stopped drinking rou after Sidisport."

The wolfwalker didn't answer.

"And you stopped using brevven in your meatrolls."

Dion hesitated but still didn't speak.

Tehena prodded deliberately. "It's more than the rou and the brevven."

The wolfwalker almost sighed. Tehena waited, and finally, Dion said the

words. "I'm pregnant."

Tehena nodded shortly, but her voice was cold as the air. "And you're out

here, looking for likely death, instead of caring for your baby."