"I understand, Wolfwalker," she repeated.

Dion eyed the ringrunner as the nurse rewrapped the bandages. "It was a

brave thing to do, Merai, to bring Pacceli with you."

"No," Merai said flatly. "I was scared as a hare in a lepa den. It was Pacceli who saved me, not the other way around. He pulled the bihwadi off me and got us away from the pack. And when he realized he couldn't run, he tried

to stay behind to stall the bihwadi so that I had time to escape. He made me keep going, even when my eyes were torn and he could hardly stand."

"Brave as his father," the nurse agreed, gentling his touch further as he

rewrapped the ringrunner's eyes.

"Healer," said the woman who had waited at the doorway. "I'll show you back to the stables."

Dion nodded, and followed the woman from the elder's house.

"Merai-she was every bit as brave as Pacceli," the woman said. "Slight as she is, she dragged that young man down the hill till they found one of the barrier channels and crossed back onto the road. Moons alone know how many times she fell-her knees are like pulp, and her feet are badly blistered. When she reached Mac neBanyon's house, she didn't have breath left to rouse anyone. It was Mac's dog that woke everyone up. Mac came down with his blade ready for a raider and found her, blind as a glacier worm on his porch. Said she handed him Pacceli, then told him he had to reach you, to get you the fighters and healing kits. She practically ordered him to ride in." They were in sight of the stable now, and the woman hesitated before releasing Dion to the crowd that was even now mounting up. "What you said to her-you can help her see again?"

"Yes-if her eye remains unhealed till I get back."

"She's a good child, Wolfwalker. She deserves to see again."

Dion's eyes were suddenly distant. "I've never noticed the moons to give

out what was deserved."

"No," the other woman agreed. "That's why we have healers like you."

Dion didn't answer. Something heavy settled onto her frame, and she

shrugged as if it could be shifted from her shoulders. But there was nothing there. She rubbed absently at the silver circlet covered by her warcap. Gray Hishn, on the other side of the city, caught the edge of her mind and howled again, deep into her thoughts.

"I hear you, Gray One," she murmured.

The hunt gathers, Wolfwalker. It is time to run down the moons. Hishn's eagerness was aggressive and hot, dispelling the shiver she felt. Dion glanced ahead. The other riders were waiting. "Soon," she murmured.

"I come to you." She put Merai from her mind. Then she turned and moved toward the dnu that Royce was holding for her. Tule nodded at her, called out to the other fighters, and gestured a question at Dion, to see if she wanted to lead. She shook her head. A few moments later, with the hub behind them, the gray shadows filled her mind. The sky became flat, and the forest filled with movement as they began to race the blood dawn.

II.

What you think you can see Is not real What you think not to feel is Real.

What you think to hold on to Is illusion.

What you think to escape Is yourself.

-From the fourth chapter of The Book of Abis Previous Top Next The night whistled in her ears, and the sky was filled with fog-chilled air. Her thighs clung automatically to the saddle, and she dozed as she rode, as she had earlier that night when she had reached the protected stretches. They hit a long, straight section thick with puddles, and Dion was jarred awake as the road-soiled rain flung itself at her. The healer intern, Monteverdi, was near the end of the group, and after a while, Dion dropped back to ride beside him. They had met eight years ago when he had entered a kayak race determined to place against his older brother. Monteverdi had lost the race, but not his determination. Now he was taller, even more scrawny looking, his hair even more cowlicked and awkward. But his hands were as sensitive as the hairs on a caterpillar, and even though he had not bonded with a wolf, he could hear the Gray Ones like Dion. This was his last year as an intern. Next summer he'd be on Journey, and his Promised, Sena, would go with him.

Dion caught the half smile on his face and wondered if he was thinking of his Promised now. The intern had been sharing Kum-jan with Sena for months, the two of them sneaking off in the night or late afternoon. And now they were Promised. Her smile twisted wryly. Ariye was so formal compared to her own county. In Randonnen, one would simply choose to find a private place to be together. Here in Ariye, intimacy between friends was Kum-jan, intimacy between two Promised people was Kum-kala; and intimacy between two mates was Kum-vani. According to Ariyen custom- and much to her own brother's chagrin-she and Aranur had shared two of those intimacies before she knew their formalities. Her brother had not cared about the formalities as much as he had-at that time- distrusted Aranur. Aranur, however, had assumed Dion knew the differences between Ariyen intimacies. It was an ignorance he had swiftly corrected when he took her back with him to Ariye.

She fingered the reins as if she could feel Aranur's hands, not leather against her skin. This last scouting assignment had taken her far west of their home, and she was as eager to get back as her dnu was to run. It was not enough to get a message ring from her mate, or to hear his voice through Hishn. The faint link that had grown between them, as happened with many wolfwalkers and their partners, was not enough for her. This ride was as much an excuse to go home as it was to ride as venge healer.

Yellow eyes gleamed, and Dion shook herself in the saddle. She cut herself off from the link. The predawn was cold enough without longing to compound it.

Half an hour out of the Kitman hub the fog was left behind in the lower valley, and a thin breeze crept over the hill. It dissipated her weariness like a soft alarm. Gray Hishn, up the road and out of sight, was only an echo in Dion's mind. Hooves beat, and heads didn't nod. Hands rested loosely on hilts. No one spoke, and the dnu didn't snort. The wary tension that filled their arms began to cross into their shoulders.

They hit a stretch of old road where the roots, hard as stone, had turned brown with age. The tiny streaks of new root growth that had begun to stretch in like needles from the edge of the road caught at Dion's mind. White walls, white light... The domes of the Ancients, pale in the skies, hung in her memory like moons. Just beyond this ridge, she knew, she'd be able to see the mountain. Truncated by the Ancients and flattened off, it was a landing place where the tethers came down from the stars, and the skycars soared back up. Empty now, with vacant sailplanes and the ever-present humming, that landing place was a taunt to this county-a reminder of what they could try to regain, but could never quite reach. Saturated with plague, but always within sight... Someday, she thought, she would find a cure. Get rid of the alien plague. And Aranur would have his domes again, while she had the lives of the wolves. She stared at the trees that hid the mountain. Beyond them both, to the north, were the peaks of the alien birdmen. Aiueven: the will of the moons, the eyes of the stars... Alien spacefarers who had settled here first and had claimed the planet for their breeding grounds. The Aiueven had not wanted humans to join them on this world. But the colonists had landed, and the aliens had coped-at first-as had the humans who began to build homes. The Ancients had said this world was enough like OldEarth to disguise itself with treachery. Yet in the end, it had not been the world, but the Aiueven who had decimated the colonists. A plague that raced through the human-built domes, and a slow death for the wolves... Anything that would keep humans out of the skies, away from the alien stars.

Over time, the Gray Ones, like humans, had recovered and spread across the nine counties, but the wolves would have spread more thickly and farther had they not lost half their litters to stillbirth. That the centuries of stillborn pups were connected to the alien-sent plague-of that, Dion was sure. That there was a cure for the plague that lay dormant in the wolves- that caused those stillborn cubs-of that Dion had only hope. She stared up at the blue-dark sky as the lupine echo followed her thoughts. Had the Ancients known how much they would lose, would they have dealt with the Aiueven differently?

As though the thought triggered Gray Hishn's own memories, the wolf snarled in Dion's mind. Soft at first, the bond between them hardened into a link of steel, and the rush of howling that burst out from the back of the wolfwalker's skull struck her like a whip. Lupine memories stretched back more than eight hundred years. Opened to their history, the Gray Ones howled together. Not just Hishn's voice, but a hundred wolves sang out the images of time. New memories faded into old lines of thought; old memories fled into ancient ones. Back, and back again, through the decades, then centuries, of life the packsong wove its threads. Wolves did not forget, and what each one experienced in its life, it sang back into the packsong or passed on to its young. Now there were hundreds of years of lupine lives sewn into the distant howling.

She let part of her mind filter back through the faded harmony. It was an old exercise for her-the searching out of the Ancients' voices and the alien overtones. She had made a promise once, years ago, and the Gray Ones still remembered. Since then, when she ran the hills with them or rode the black road at night, they opened to her like a book. Distant memories, ancient songs... Always in the backs of their minds were the clues to the cure she sought. Yet she never quite touched it-the cure for the wolves. Never quite understood...

Wolfwalker, Hishn sent. She found the single thread that was the wolf she knew and drew back from the ancient voices. She felt the windchill, cold as steel, as it hit her bared teeth, and realized she was grinning. Hishn was eager and focused. Dion shook herself. She had to remember to keep the wolf away from the fighting this time. The Gray One was growing aggressive. But Hishn tugged at her hands, making her fingers clench on the reins. Run with me, the gray wolf sent. The hunt is close. Run with us in the dawn. "Soon, Hishn," she murmured. "But this time, you will only scout. When the fighting starts, you stay behind."

Wolfwalker...

"You'll stay behind, Hishn. I mean it this time." She ignored the wolf's mental protest. "Besides, I'll be on the outskirts of the action anyway. I'll be in little danger."

The gray wolf howled beside her, and this time the sound was real. One of the other riders started, his dnu skittering away. The man gave her a wary look. She shrugged a smile and tasted the chill air like a cup of cold rou, rolling it around on her tongue. Dawn, she thought, was getting close.

Ten kays out of Kitman, they swung onto Red Wolf Road. There were fresh marks there from Aranur's group, which had come in from the east. Two kays-maybe four-Dion thought, and she'd feel Aranur himself in the song of the wolfpack. Hishn's voice would ring with his energy, and then Dion would see her mate for herself. Strong hands, stronger arms; broad shoulders and back. His face was not handsome as her brother's face was;

Aranur's cheekbones were too high and his chin too strong, his eyebrows too heavy over those gray, icy eyes. But those features caught and held the eye, as if they forced attention to them the way a magnet pulled at iron.

She stretched her mind and let the packsong float there like a mist. It was thick here, so she knew there were wolves in this rocky, mountain forest.

Like layers of gauze, the distant voices overlapped until they formed a chorus of rising and falling tones. Hishn raised her own voice, and Dion felt her throat open up. She had to choke back the howl that she wanted to cry out.

How far? she asked the gray wolf in her mind.Soon, Gray Hishn answered. The eerin ahead were chased from their beds, and your prey has gone on beyond them.

Aranur, or the raiders?

Your mate is close; the prey near the rocks, I hear nothing over the ridge.

Dion nodded absently. The ridge that Hishn pictured, flattened in the gray wolf's mind, was Missive Ridge. The southern side was a series of broken cliffs split by old, collapsed draws; the trail the wolf projected was of the narrow path that cut up through a split in the stone. One dnu wide, heavy with overhangs, rough with slabs of rock-it was a dangerous place to ride and a deadly place to enter if one was going after raiders. That Hishn knew raiders had not crossed the ridge meant that there were other wolves already on the heights and that those wolves had not seen humans.

Dion projected her thanks to the wolf, then urged her dnu along the line until she caught up to the leader. Dacarr spared her a glance. "News?" he asked tersely.

"I think the raiders have stopped at the cliffs."

"Then they'll face the venge there?"

She nodded.

"Well, raiders are rough, not stupid. That's good fighting ground. What

about Aranur?"

"We'll see him within the next two kays."

The short man grunted his acknowledgment.

Dion dropped back past Tule and Royce. If the raiders were this close and

staying on the roads, she wouldn't be needed till they reached the cliff. She looked ahead, but could see neither Hishn nor the venge. The way was

shadowed by the rootroad trees, and the dawn, barely lightening that blue-dark sky, turned the road into a muddy mess of contrasts. In the end it wasn't she who spotted Aranur, although she knew where to look. It was the man riding beside Dacarr who caught a glimpse of the riders.

No one called out, and it wasn't needed. Within minutes the two groups had merged. Aranur looked back to catch Dion's eyes, but the two rode far apart. Not until they approached the low, foggy stretch where the road began to swing by the cliffs did Aranur halt the group.

One minute, there were only men and women and riding dnu on the road. The next minute, the gray wolf had joined them. Instantly, the group's posture changed. The fighters, except for Tule and Royce, pulled away from Dion, giving the gray wolf room to join the wolfwalker. Tule, catching Dion's eye as she slid off the dnu, nodded almost imperceptibly at Royce. The youth had deliberately stood his ground when the gray wolf stalked up beside him, but the young man's eyes followed the wolf as carefully as a hare follows a worlag's teeth. Dion hid her smile.

"Ready?" Aranur asked softly, moving over to touch her arm briefly, lightly. There was an intimacy of years in that touch. Tule and Royce, with a glance at each other, moved quietly away.

Dion's ears automatically took in their footsteps, but she had eyes only for the man with the icy gray eyes. "There's a wolf pack on the heights," she said. "They have no sense of humans up there." She loosened her jacket, peeled it off, and bundled it into the small pack on the back of her saddle.

He rubbed at his chin. "They have to be close, then. If they didn't take the cliff route, I can't see them going on down the road where we could catch them on the flats. You can get close enough here to see them?"

She murmured agreement. For a moment, her scarred left hand rested on the pack. Aranur's hand covered the seamed flesh, his strong fingers rubbing along the ridges. The faint white lines on his own tanned skin made an old pattern in his flesh, and Dion's right hand covered his. Then Aranur squinted at the brightening sky. "Make it quick," he said simply.

"As the fourth moon," she promised. But she didn't move. "I miss you,"

she said softly.

"I'll miss you more when you go."

"I'm always going."

"Always?"

"Here, there... The council points, and there I go, trotting off like a dog to do their bidding."

"You wouldn't want to trade the council's bidding for that of a weapons master's bidding, would you?"

"I've heard you're a hard taskmaster."

"I've heard you're a tough scout."

His hand pressed hers. There was an instant where the gray ice of his eyes shattered into a gaze of intensity that hit her like a fist. The riders around them faded to fog. Violet eyes stared into gray. The yellow gaze that gleamed through both their minds brought a howling from the distant pack, blindingly intense.

"Soon," he promised softly.

Some of the other riders shifted as a group, catching the tall man's attention, and his expression hardened again into a distant focus. Dion