Dion took another deep breath. She could have released the power she had just felt, could have manipulated the patterns of the trapper’s body to accelerate his treatment. For a healer, such a skill was priceless—and forbidden. This Ovousibas, the internal healing art of Ancients and aliens, was deadly as a worlag. Wolves who helped a healer do Ovousibas died with the plague burning their nerves. Healers could be sucked mentally so far into the patient’s body that they could not escape, or they died with their brains seared from within. Dion touched the edge of power within her and shivered. An instant more, and it would have been her brain that burned.
In eight hundred years, hundreds of healers had tried to recapture the art that Dion and her wolf had practiced. All had eventually died from the very fevers they tried to prevent. Now even the attempt at internal healing was forbidden. But there had been no board of healers to forbid Dion from learning the art the day that she had tried. There had been no one but the mountains, the wolves, and the dying all around her. Necessity teaches; the moons judge, she reminded herself harshly. Perhaps her turn would still come. She removed her hand from the trapper’s neck, but she could still feel the pulse that would have guided her in.
Wolfwalker. The gray crept back in. They were as unnerved by the spike of power as she had been, and their voices were uncertain.
I am here, she reassured.
But the packsong shivered. They needed to see her, to smell her musky sweat and rub against her, to reaffirm her with the pack.
With that need tensing her own shoulders, Dion made her excuses and left the clinic, striding to the inn. She barely stopped to exchange her cloak for her running boots and weapons. Then she rode out of town toward the hills. She didn’t need her eyes to see the wolves waiting beneath the trees. She could hear them, pulling at her like taffy. She dismounted, staked the dnu in a patch of grass, and sprinted into the trees.
Gray wolves scattered through the scrubby fir trees like thoughts. Her thighs numbed quickly from exertion. The trail was dry and smooth, and her feet pounded with simple rhythm as the Gray Ones loped around her. They moved close, then farther away, wanting contact but being unwilling to sustain it for more than a moment. If she reached out, they would melt away like silk. But their soft mental symphony drove the yellow edge of alien power back from her conscious mind so that she simply clung to the gray and ran.
The air was almost cold beneath the trees, thinly hot in the sun. Old pain twinged in her left leg, but she ignored it. It felt good, she acknowledged. Good to push herself, to feel the burn in her legs, to feel exhaustion push out what was left of her emotions. Aches ran across her back as scars stretched with the swing of her arms. She had healed herself using the wild wolves in place of her partner wolf, but even she could not replace all the flesh that had been torn away. Now, her unborn child was a telling weight on her endurance, and she considered slowing. But she was also stubborn and needed to run, to pound out the fear that was beginning to drive her as much as she drove herself. She could not afford to give in to that persistent edge in her mind just because she was with child. At this distance, the aliens would clearly sense that lessening of will and rip her mentally as they had torn her physically before. As long as she felt that alien cold, she must be strong enough to reject its chill, or lose both herself and her child.
The wolves could not help her with that fear. They were bound up in their own desires. For months, they had been passing her from pack to pack. She hadn’t noticed it at first, had been too wrapped up in her own grief to recognize what was happening. But the Gray Ones had gone after her like a worlag after a hare. Their teeth had latched into her mind with a vengeance, and now her dormant promise to help them was a steel cord in the packsong, pulling her toward Ramaj Ariye and the man who haunted the packsong. Or rather, toward the man who was herded toward her as she was hounded toward him. These wolves ran with her now to keep that lupine link tightly braided with gray, to blind her to the aliens so that nothing would pull her away again. That distant man was part of the link between them. Human enough to meet human needs, hunter enough for the wolves. What she would be to him or he to her was already hinting through the gray.
She shook out her hands and forced herself to run faster. On this cliff, she was merely a wolfwalker, not a healer, a scout, a mate, or a mother. There was no duty here to wolves or Ariyen elders, no fear of alien eyes, only the savage pleasure of running till she had no more strength in her legs, till exhaustion burned out her mind.
Higher, the gray ones howled. The hunt is on the heights.
Gnats, gathering over the warming grass, whirled and boiled in the heat. Downwind, faint wisps of steam rose from cracks in the rocky ground. Dion had seen it in winter once, and the rings of ice that had formed around the vents had made fantasy towers that glowed blue and green at night. Now, the cracks were half hidden by yellow-red grass, and the wind blew the gasses away from the trail so that the air seemed thicker with pollens.
She scrambled above the valley while the wolves took the long trail around, and the wind cut across the ridge and dropped, drying her sweat and leaving her skin salt-tight. The dirt trail was fairly straight, dodging only an occasional outcropping or twisting around a boulder. Dion didn’t notice the almost feral grin that stretched across her features. She didn’t realize that her violet eyes held an almost yellow glint. Her braid, slapping her quiver on one side, then the other, kept rhythm with her feet as she sprinted along the rise.
Ahead, a tiny chasm opened up. Dion skidded to a halt and bent, hands on her thighs to steady her legs while she tried to catch her breath. The wolves flowed up along the trail behind her, then across the ravine like gray water. Dion watched them enviously. Then she laughed at the old fear of heights that stamped her gut as she watched them. It wasn’t even a wide jump; a child of ten could have made it. No, it was simply the height that made Dion pause. She felt the tremble in her fingers and knew that the fear was so much a part of her that she no longer questioned its presence. Instead, she accepted the thrill like a known flaw in an old friend. She raised her face, felt her pulse pound in her throat, and then flung out her arms and twirled madly on the edge of the cliff. “Ariyens be damned,” she shouted. Her child would know this—all of it. The freedom, the fear, the thrill. Let the Ariyens try to claim this child as they had herself, and she would throw them all off a cliff. Whatever the wolves wanted, they would get it in time, but here, now, she was only a woman running to break her demons. She let her momentum turn into a run back from the edge. Then she spun and sprinted toward it. Her moccasins hit the edge, and she felt the rough points beneath her feet. She began to launch herself—
The rock cracked beneath her weight.
Midstep, her stomach froze.
The rock split, three meters back, and her weight drove down against . . . nothing. The edge of the cliff broke away. Momentum carried her out into the air, over the black jaw of the narrow ravine, but the cliff was even now sliding down. Her arms went up in a desperate bid for lift. For a moment, she hung between the cliffs. Then she dropped like a stone. Her body slammed into the other edge instead of landing on top. Her knees smashed flatly against dark rock; her outstretched arms just managed to reach over the cliff. Her breath was gone like a boot kicking a ruptured ball. Then her own weight began to drag her back, down toward the rocky teeth. Far below, the broken cliff hit bottom with a series of shocking cracks and a cascade of rattling stones.
Wolfwalker! Gray Ones howled. Power seemed to surge up and out from the depths of her mind.
Rocks spattered into the darkness. Her elbows and hands ground into the trail. She was pinned against the cliff with her armpits, her legs hanging like sticks as she ate the dust in the wind. Her child . . . She was slipping. Her elbows dragged, leaving flesh behind. Her nails tore in the ground. Her daughter . . .
The wolves had turned; they were bolting back in her direction. Wolfwalker, take our strength.
She reacted instinctively to the
power they thrust toward her. In her mind, the icy glare brightened. She froze. She hung on the edge with blood on her legs and the ravine far below, and knew with a sudden flash of both clarity and dread that the wolves were as eager to bind her infant to their needs as they had bound herself. Take their energy because they willed it, not because she asked, and her use would feed her debt to them like a greedy child. Dion’s daughter would be locked into Dion’s duties and promises before she was even born. And Dion had already bound this child to one of the aliens by claiming the birdwoman as mother. The horror of that link still writhed in both human and alien minds. Aware, always watching, the icy edge of power behind the wolves would thicken with strong use of Ovousibas. Like the needs of the wolves, it would creep into the mind of her unborn child like mudsuckers worming toward prey. It sharpened as she hesitated, its cold glare tightening with the wolves in her mind. Fury filled the mother’s arms. She would not lose this child, she snarled to herself. Her daughter would choose her own path, her own duties in life. Her voice was hoarse. “Back . . . off.”
Gray Zair scuffed to a half just beyond her reach and panted as she met Dion’s eyes. The female wolf didn’t understand. The creature tried to send her strength into the wolfwalker, but Dion refused to take it. You need us, Zair snapped. Use our strength.
“I’m not falling yet,” the wolfwalker snarled. She drew up her right leg until her foot found a ledge in the rock. She could feel the blood welling out of her knees through the dust and grit.
The Gray One growled in her face. The cub . . .
Dion bared her teeth and growled back. “I’ve climbed two dozen mountains on my own, and a piss-poor cliff like . . . this piece of rotten . . . rock isn’t about to finish . . . us off now.” Her foot slipped, and she jerked a fraction. Her fingers dug into summer-dry soil.
Wolfwalker, for the cub, Gray Lash sent urgently.
“This is . . . for my cub—my daughter, dammit. If you get your mind in her through . . . me, you’ll never let her go. And if I can’t make it over one rough edge, then I never . . . deserved to be called a Randonnen climber in . . . the first place.” Carefully she eased weight toward her right elbow. Now the left foot searched for a nub. Small, loose rock cracked away and fell, fell into the blackened distance. Dion pushed down on her elbows, but her clothes caught on the rock. “Moonwormed piece of a mudsucker.” Had she been in actual danger of falling, she would have taken the offer of the wolves and to hell with her resolution. Better alive and bound to the wolves, linked to the aliens, and drowned in the elders’ duties, than dead in a blackened ravine. She rotated her body to the right and eased her hip up a handspan. Her arms began to tremble. She pressed out with her feet, but with only the pressure downwards on her forearms, the friction was barely enough to hold her in place.
Gray Zair’s teeth bared, and three other wolves paced with her, stirring up the dust. Dion lost another inch. Wolfwalker, Zair snapped. The wolf grabbed Dion’s forearm in its teeth, and the contact made Dion flinch. She jerked, slipped wildly, and almost screamed in fear as she lost the tenuous friction of her forearm in the dust. Her child . . .
Wolves howled in her head, and strength flowed toward her. Dion sucked it in. She shoved hard on both elbows. Her tunic caught for a moment, then tore free; her stomach scraped stone. She found a finger-wide spur with one moccasin. Automatically, she twisted to get the ball of her foot on the spur, then slowly set her weight. It held. She could feel blood from her knees soaking the tops of her moccasins. She swung her left leg up just under the cliff. She rested a few breaths, then raised the leg to the overhang. A moment later, she had her heel over the edge. A shift, and her calf was resting on the ledge, and Gray Zair had her teeth in the leather. Dion cursed while the wolf hauled on her like a distressed rabbit. She finally wormed the rest of her way over and sprawled in the dust, her limbs trembling and her scrapes clogging with dirt.
Gray Zair sniffed the blood and dodged back as Dion pushed herself to her knees, then her feet. On legs that still trembled, she leaned over the jagged edge to examine the rock face beneath her. Only then did she step back. Her hand remained on her abdomen. Fear may have been an old friend of hers, but not one she wanted to challenge when she carried Aranur’s child. In that moment, she would have given almost anything to feel his strong hands on her waist, his calloused palm against her belly, the heat of his body coiled next to hers, surrounding and filling her. He had been a weapons master and leader in his county, a man called hero too often for his people to understand what was in him. To her, he had been a climber, a fighter, a white-water kayaker, the man she had kissed on a wind-swept cliff, the father of her children, the other half of her heart. She had given him death when she let go on that seawall. He had given her life. Her sons— moons watch over them, wherever they were—and now this second heartbeat which filled her womb and echoed her adrenaline. “Taste that fear, that rush, that adrenaline,” she murmured. “Know it well, because the Ariyens would have you drink that, not my milk, in time.”
Gray Zair growled low, and Dion gave a shaky laugh. “Your first climb,” she told the child in her womb. “And may you use better judgment in picking your routes than I do. Otherwise, you’ll end up like your father, as fodder for every songster in Randonnen and Ariye, and dead as the dreams of the Ancients.”
Gray Lash whuffed and turned away to sniff at the trail, and although her hands still trembled, Dion grinned wryly. The moment was gone; the wolves were ready to move on, to follow the ridge to the south. Dion traveled the route with her eyes. The bare, weathered stone was interspersed with dying patches of summer grass. The overhead sky was blue-gray with high, thin clouds, and the early sun was harsh across the mountains that marked the edge of the county. That, she thought, was Ramaj Ariye, that balance of height and shadow, the rugged rock and plunging streams, the hunger in the same moment for both the den and the stars. Her mate had been like that, always driven, always wanting more than the world around them. Where she had been content to run with the wolves, he had kept his face to the stars. He should have lived long ago when he still had a chance to reach them. She looked back at the now-widened chasm. It was a painful truth to realize that it had been her lifestyle, not his, that had put them in greater danger. The world had torn her life apart, but she had offered it up for the tearing.
A wet nose nudged her hand, and one of the young males panted against her skin. We are here. You live forever in us.
She felt the edge of power in the gray mind. Behind it was still that faint, icy taste that seemed to scrape at the packsong. It was something the Gray Ones shied from as much as she did. She bit her lip, her breath still uneven as she glanced north. How many times had a wolfwalker realized that the tinge of ice in the back of the packsong was the voice of the aliens? And how many of those wolfwalkers had then died? The alien birdmen protected their breeding grounds like fanatics, and wolfwalkers weren’t known for long lives. Dion’s lips thinned as she brushed dust gingerly from her bloody knees. By her own hand or theirs, it was still the path to the moons.
Dion raised her fingers to her lips and tasted her own blood. She had met the aliens and challenged them, and they had nearly killed her. They suited this world, she realized. Thrived on its danger and violence. Dion had succumbed to the thrill of that danger, just as she had succumbed to the wolves. She laughed softly as she stared at the mountains around her. “You’re bound to me now,” she told them. “As bound as I am to you. On this world, there was no other path, not with the strength of your needs in me, or of my needs in the packsong.” She raised her hands and howled. The sense of power in her hands was addictive. The Gray Ones backed away, snarling. “Run,” she told them. “Run!” Her voice had them sprinting away. “You can hound me back to Ramaj Ariye, but I’ll forge my own life from there.” She followed them at a dead run.
IX
Rhom Kintar neKheldour
Cli fs so dry that rocks are ash;
Sunburned sand like pitted glass;
Shimmering roads like moons submerged;
Wavering heat like tidal surge;
Dust that scours the skin exposed;
Grime that cakes in eyes and nose;
Air that sears the flesh it touches—
This road is thirsty, long, and brushes
The path to the drying moons.
Rocks so cold their shadows freeze,
Moonlight gives no rider ease;
Firewood is scarce and thin;
Sands leech evening’s warmth from skin;
Night winds cut inside the lungs;
Dry air chaps both lips and tongue;
Icy botas split and leak—
This road is daunting as the peaks
Of Randonnen and Ariye.
—Traveler’s warning, carved in stone at the entrance to the high desert road between Ramaj Randonnen and Ramaj Ariye
Twelve hooves hit like hammers on the hardened summer soil. With the steady drumming of the six-legged dnu, Rhom and Gamon did not speak on the dusty, overhung shortcut. Not until they reached the white stone road did they pull up to rest the dnu. It was about time, Gamon told himself. Once the Randonnen committed himself, Rhom didn’t waste any time. It had been one of the traits he had appreciated in Rhom when they had ridden together before. Now he wished he could get the man to slow down.
The two riders studied their choice of directions. Jealous Fork split the road like a serpent’s tongue, wagging in the heat. One road curved southwest through Fenn Forest, then snaked into a long valley before shooting due west toward the river. It was the route that linked the peaks and the ocean, the major caravan route. It was the smooth route, the safe route, the route that provided water. But both men looked the other way, at the dry dust leading north.
The northwestern fork aimed like a bone arrow into layered, yellow mesas. For a space, the white stone road was visible as a thin split across the cracks of rock and soil. Then it disappeared into waves of shadowed heat. Rhom absently wiped the sweat from his collar as he regarded the wavering road. He looked a silent question at Gamon.
Silver Moons, Black Steel Page 11