Kiyun struggled with the reins of the other dnu, shouting and yanking them by brute force away from the cliff. Dion skidded to Tehena over the ice, ignoring the jagged bumps of ice that bruised her knees through her trousers. For all her speed, she grabbed the woman’s wrist in a surprisingly gentle grip.
The wild wolves were thirty meters away, but as she automatically reached for the gray, she heard them clear as bells. They howled mentally, surged, and seemed to leap to the left. Dion was sucked in after them. It was not a physical plunge. It was in her mind: a spinning, twisting sensation that stretched her consciousness out past her own self and into the other body. This was not the melding of minds that Dion had felt before. This was a fury of energy and awareness, like riding a hurricane. The wild wolf pack supported and thrust her at Tehena; and something else behind them focused Dion’s mind like a lance, something that flickered yellow in the back of the gray. Something cold and eerily distant. Something . . . alien.
She felt the bones, the raw flesh, the heat of Tehena’s blood. With her own healing knowledge and with the instinctive wrongness of the break, she saw the bones knitted and whole. In that instant of awareness, the power in her nerves and veins coalesced. She reached for it, but reached too far. Her wolf-bond snapped tight. Gray Hishn, far away in Ariye, felt her lupine mind yanked into patterns so Ancient that they were a frigid path of fire. Light—coarse light—flashed across their minds. It was fractured with energy, jagged like the splinters of a hundred types of wood. It pierced toward Tehena, and it burned, instead of healed.
Dion cried out as she tried to pull back, and the energy had nowhere to go. The surge backlashed her mind. Wolves panicked. The pack broke violently apart. Flames concentrated on Dion’s flesh and fingers. Tehena screamed as fire seemed to lick her body. It was only the edge of that energy, but the woman jerked away, skidding farther as she fell awkwardly, clutching her wrist close.
Talon stiffened. His hands—they burned. He burned with fire. The pain lanced through him as hard as the days of his fever. He cursed almost silently through clenched teeth. “I won’t give in, you piss-soaked piece of pain. . . .”
Wolves plunged through Dion’s mind, snarling and snapping, deafening her to the distant howl of her own wolf. Near-blinded, she barely found her voice. She cried out a sharp, unintelligible command. The pack, startled, went silent. Then they swept back in, urgent and gray, seeking her thoughts in spite of the pain.
I’m here, she returned sharply.
The heat—
I know.
The fire—
It’s all right, she snarled.
The wolves read the pain that roughened her mental voice. Slowly, they slunk back in her skull. They milled up the road, snarling when they looked back at Tehena, while they snapped at each other with fear. Overhead, the snowsprit flitted to an ice-stiff branch and cried piercingly at their presence.
Kiyun stared at the two women. Tehena’s breath was ragged. The lanky woman gripped her wrist hard to slow the bleeding, but the bones no longer poked through her skin. Only the raw mass where the wound had been was still exposed to the cold.
Dion rocked lightly on her knees. She breathed roughly, her eyes squeezed shut and her neck rigid with effort as she hunched over her hands. Deep in her mind, one voice still howled with her pain. “Hishn,” she breathed.
Far away in Ramaj Ariye, the female wolf plunged through the forest. Gray Yoshi was beside her, and the two wolves sprinted north through the trees as if they could somehow reach across the kays by speed alone. Dion could feel their legs like stretched pistons, feel the twiggy leaves slap their coats. Heavy dust and dried soil kicked up into her nostrils. Hishn strained until her gray voice stretched around the peaks, repeated by other threads until a tenuous, wasp-thin link touched the mind of her wolfwalker.
Hishn, Dion reached back almost desperately. Her human voice wove instinctively into Hishn’s patter with the smoothness of years, but the contact was faint with the distance. She blinked, sucked in a breath, and power faded into simple fire.
Wolfwalker, the Gray One sent. At that distance, the thinness of Hishn’s voice could not hide the image of her muzzle pressed against Dion’s neck, and her broad chest seemed to pant against Dion’s.
I need you, Dion whispered hoarsely.
I am here.
The ghost images held for less than a moment. Then they began to shred. Not even the number of bonded and wild wolves in Ariye could sustain the link with that distance. But Hishn knew. In that instant of blending, the massive wolf had read Dion as clearly as Dion had heard the wolf.
Deep in the forest, Hishn suddenly stopped running. Gray Yoshi felt her absence beside him and halted, his forelegs on a log as if to leap over. He looked back at his mate.
We cannot reach her, Hishn sent, panting strongly.
We must wait?
For her pack brother. He will take us to her.
Yoshi dropped down from the log. She is on the heights. We cannot run there. I could taste the thin air and ice.
Her pack brother will keep us with him. We will not hunger.
Yoshi turned back toward his mate to nuzzle her, but she nipped at his thickly muscled shoulder. It was a love bite, not a snap, and he nuzzled her deliberately, as if to remind her that he too was part of their bond. Then we wait, he agreed.
Hishn nipped him more gently, and they turned back toward their territory, but Hishn stopped again and again to stare at the peaks in the north.
Dion felt the echo disappear. The wild wolves who had created the distant link separated from each other, back into individual packs. There was a brief howling up the road—more an acknowledgment of the strength of that moment of whole-ness than of what had just been lost. In the mountains, it seemed almost hollow.
Dion raised her head. Agony burned in her hands. Her eyes were bright-blinded as if she had stared at the sun, but she could see the silhouette of the others, and she knew where the Gray Ones were. She could taste the sweat-fear of Kiyun and Tehena, but as the link faded, she began to lose that too.
Finally, Kiyun cleared his throat. “That was . . . different.”
His words broke the tableau, and Dion found her voice, though it was low and somewhat unsteady. “It was only Ovousibas.” Her vision was clearing, though things were still in contrast.
Tehena shook her head violently. “If that was Ovousibas, then I’m a garden beauty.”
Dion flexed her hands slowly and shuddered as the burned skin stretched and cracked in her gloves. Her flesh was on fire, and through that pain she could barely feel the wetness of her own blood welling through the cracks and soaking into the glove liners. She drew a ragged breath. Power, she thought. It had never been so intense. There had been a touch of her mother in that. Not the mother she had never known— not the human woman who had died soon after childbirth— but the alien mother Dion had adopted. The alien that could take itself to the stars or suck the life out of a worlag without thinking. The power that had first healed, then had brought plague to the Ancients. She shuddered again and controlled her breathing with almost visible effort. With only the tendrils of the wild wolves in her mind, she focused on herself. Spin left and in, left and down . . . Power still beat at the boundaries of her mind, but she was prepared now, and it was more controlled and almost faint, as if the patterns that had created it were too old to be strong or too new to be developed. The answering sweep of gray, lighter and thinner than before, softened the continuing burn until she could feel her flesh start knitting.
Then she forced herself to lean across the ice and look at Tehena’s wrist. As Tehena tried not to flinch, Dion merely waited. The thin woman continued to stare at the wolfwalker, then finally extended her wrist.
Dion pretended to ignore Tehena’s reaction as she examined the punctured wrist. Some part of her brain noted that, even after all these years, it was still becoming easier to open to the wolves. Their response to her was direct, and they almost automatically guided
her now in that mental spiral to the left. She sat back on her heels again and forced herself to speak calmly. “It’s not completely healed. The bones are set, but they’re barely reattached; there is almost no healing of the other tissues. I wasn’t in long enough.” She looked up at Tehena’s carefully blank face. “I scared you,” she said flatly.
The woman’s voice was tight and hard. “If you want to call that ‘scared,’ be my guest. You’ve touched me as a healer more than once, but you’ve never done that before.” The gray-haired woman took a shaky breath. “By all the moons that ride the sky, that wasn’t the wolves in there with you.”
Dion started to remove her gloves and winced. Even though she had begun to control the pain, it took all her will to peel back the leather and liners on one hand.
“Moonworms!” Kiyun squatted beside them and took her blistered hand. The wounds ran the gamut from raised red welts to deep pocks with white-blistered edges. They covered her entire palm. Even the back of one hand was reddened. His own voice was hard. “You’ve never done this before, either.”
The cold was already biting deeply into the wounds, and Dion began to feel weak. She gritted her teeth. “I have, but you weren’t there the first time.”
Tehena got awkwardly to her knees, then to her feet. The pain was less—more of a raw throbbing than the shock of the broken bones. Her voice was still tight as she moved to the wolfwalker’s side. “This happened the first time? You burned your own skin? And you still tried the healing again?”
Dion smiled crookedly. “There were few choices—my brother’s life, Gamon’s, Aranur’s.” She forced herself to shrug. “Wolfwalkers heal quickly, you know. It didn’t seem a high price to pay.”
Carefully, Kiyun stripped off Dion’s other glove to expose the rest of the wounds. Her right palm was like the left.
“If you’ll wrap my hands,” she forced herself to say clearly, “I’ll splint Tehena’s arm.”
He shook his head as he got to his feet. “I can splint her arm as well as you.”
She shrugged, but her violet eyes shuttered as Tehena looked almost relieved.
“It’s not you, Wolfwalker,” Tehena said quickly. “I trust you with my life. It’s just . . . I mean . . .” The woman stood helplessly.
“It’s all right, Tehena.”
The thin woman regarded Dion for a long moment. Even after all that Dion had done for her, she could not stand up for the wolfwalker. She turned away, glad in spite of herself that the cold disguised her flush of shame as wind-chapped cheeks instead.
Kiyun herded the four remaining dnu into a cold-huddle, then got Dion’s medical kit out of her pack. Dion watched him almost blankly. His image blurred, and it took her several seconds to realize that she had started to tremble.
“Dion?” Tehena said sharply. “Kiyun—”
“Hungry,” Dion managed. She had gone pale.
Kiyun squatted beside her, removed his gloves, and put his hand inside her neck gaiter against her flesh. “Moonworms, you’re like ice.”
“Shock?” Tehena managed. Stationary as she was, the cold was beginning to reach her own bones, especially where the saddle had warmed her inner thighs.
“N-n-no.” Dion shivered. “Jus-st n-need food.”
Kiyun quickly wrapped Dion’s hands, then jerked her gloves clumsily over the bandages. He got out some smoked meat, cut off a chunk, and fed Dion the first bite like a child before turning to bind Tehena’s arm. His voice was low. “The next passhouse is three more kays. Can you make it?”
Tehena’s voice was still a little high as she answered. “Can always make a few more kays. We ride with the wolves, remember?”
Kiyun exchanged a glance with Dion. The wolfwalker was sucking on the jerky, but she shook her head at his silent question. Tehena wasn’t in shock. The woman was just upset at herself, at Dion, at the world. Tehena had put her faith in Dion, and Dion had nearly killed her. And now Tehena couldn’t face herself. It was hard sometimes to remember that the gray-haired woman was almost ten years younger than Dion. The drugs that had aged that thin body so quickly and the steadiness that Tehena had shown in serving Dion so long made it easy to think that Tehena was more mature. Dion swallowed her hurt. This was no betrayal, she reminded herself. Tehena had stood by her for over a dozen years. The woman was only afraid.
Dion forced herself to bite off another smaller piece of the jerky, rather than swallow it whole as she wanted. She felt starved. Most of the energy that had burned out on her hands had been stripped out of her own body. Before, the drain on herself had been light, but she had never focused such power either. Except once. She pressed her forearm to her belly. She could still feel the claw that had split her open like a grape. There had been just such power in the creature that had put her back together—power beyond human ability. The power to reach the stars . . . She shook herself. Her mind was wandering with hunger and pain. She had to focus or go into shock.
She forced herself to tear another bite from the strip of jerky. It was an awkward agony, since the burning in her hands did not abate, and even her fingertips were blistered. At least with something in her stomach, she no longer shivered so much.
Kiyun finished with Tehena’s arm, then studied Dion closely. “Healer?” he asked. “Can you make the passhouse?”
She glanced at Tehena and saw the edge of fear still sharpening those pale eyes. “I’m Randonnen,” she returned mock-haughtily. “We need only the wind and the mountains, and we’re strong as the world.”
Kiyun smiled grimly. Dion had still been Randonnen when he met her years ago, but she had changed over time, let herself drift to the Ariyens’ tune, forgotten her roots, set aside her own goals. In the past year, she had begun to remember who and what she was on her own. It was what she needed, he thought. If the moons had not pushed her so hard, she might have taken longer, but she would still have remembered: she was Randonnen, a wolfwalker, a healer, a woodswoman. She was tied to the world, not the stars; bound to the wolves, not the Ariyen goals. And when she was whole again, she’d have peace. “Good,” he said. “Because wind and mountains are the two things we have.”
As if to prove his words, it gusted like an elder. Tehena shivered, but it wasn’t the cold. Dion acknowledged it expressionlessly. She understood Tehena’s fear—she was feeling fear herself. Neither Tehena nor Kiyun had noticed, but Dion had felt and seen the water under her boots, and she had understood at once. She had made that water out of the ice. Had stripped the structure and tiny nutrients from the ice just as she had stripped energy from her own body. And she had fired the ice like pottery just as she had seared her own flesh. Too much, she told herself with hard-quelled fear. Too much power in her hands. She hid her fear in the pain, but it was there, eating at her as she chewed at the jerky, and churning around in her guts.
She let Kiyun help her into the saddle and smiled to reassure him, unaware of how haunted she looked. Kiyun turned to one of the pack dnu and rearranged the panniers to make a mock saddle for Tehena. It would not be comfortable, but it would do until they reached the passhouse. He stepped back and waited for Tehena to mount. He didn’t offer help. The scrawny woman would refuse the help of a god if she had the chance, he thought sourly. Then he gathered the reins of the one remaining pack animal and started them all up the road. There was nothing to do about the lost dnu. With both Dion and Tehena wounded, they could not risk staying in place long enough to try recovering any gear. They needed warmth and food, and the passhouse would give them both.
Wolfwalker, one of the Gray Ones sent to Dion. They closed around her mentally, nuzzling her, comforting her with their own images of body warmth and strength. It was the same way they had dealt with her grief. They had smothered her, deafened her to everything but the packsong, and shared their own grief for their cubs. Gamon had not understood the depth of that grief, and his words echoed harshly: You think you are the only one who has ever lost someone you loved?
“Yes,” she had torn back.
“At this moment, in this place, I am the only one. It is my grief, not your sympathy, that exists to me. It is my heart here, not yours.”
The wolves had understood. Had lost enough of their own pups and packmates to give her the solace of solitude for her shattered self. They had also, she admitted, latched onto that understanding to forge a stronger link between them. They had bitten at her to get her up out of the dark place in her mind, had snarled in her ears when she tried to turn away. They had stayed with her until she tried to use the internal healing again, but in her grief, she had not been strong enough. That time, the healing had threatened to deplete her into her own death, but she had refused to stop. She had reached out for anything, and her hand had hit a wooden post. She had sucked the leftover life from that wood like a leech, leaving it powdered like old ash. Here, it had been ice that she left melted and distilled like a filter. That lance of power she had thrust toward Tehena—that was an Aiueven pattern, the energy lines that the aliens used to feed or fight. And Dion had tried to use it to heal.
The fear of what she had done and of herself was growing with every moment of realization. She had broken the ice with her mind. Dry fingers stretched into her mouth, pressed down on her gut, and pinched at her breath. She felt her control start to slip. Pain radiated back into her hands as she lost her grip on it.
Wolfwalker, the wild wolves howled. The flames on your paws. The fire in your claws—
“Breathe,” she told herself harshly.
She hugged her arms to herself, guiding her dnu only absently with her knees.
Fear, her old friend, was harsh. She had used Ovousibas so lightly, so carefully through the years, never taking too much from herself or her friends. Never pushing too far, never risking her life too deeply. The wolves had been patient throughout, helping her focus the healing, shielding her from the energy, waiting as she learned. But she had never found the cure she had promised them. Never put aside everything else to focus on that promise.
Silver Moons, Black Steel Page 19