She fumbled the securing straps as she eyed Wolfs expression. The burden of being a protector was easily shouldered, but not easily set aside—Wolt had said that to her once. He had ridden the venges for twelve decades before he gave up his blade to save what was left of his soul. But even after two years on the relays, his hands were clenched at word of the raiders, and his eyes darkened like night. Merai’s fingers pressed into the message rings. The wolfwalker Dione—she was young now, but if she kept riding the black road as the elders asked, she would someday look like this man: eyes dark and cold, and hands like twisted wire, while trying to shoulder the burden that the elders set upon her. Merai wondered suddenly how much weight it took to kill a wolfwalker’s soul.
Wolfs hands finished checking the message rings, and he caught the expression on her face. His voice was as harsh as her thoughts. “This is not a drill, Merai. Three miners died, and six others were wounded. There’s a venge already gathering to cut off the raiders, and Dione is riding in fast to join them.”
“There are three other healers closer.” She yanked on the straps to make sure they would hold.
“Yamai’s tending a dozen who are down with pogus flu. Boccio still can’t use his left arm, and Brye nePentonald is sick himself with spring fever.” He pushed her toward the down-pole that led to the stable, but her feet didn’t move. Wolt was suddenly closer, his voice as sharp as a slap. “You’re young, Merai, and this is your first time riding the black road, but you know the way by heart.” He put his hand on one of the message rings. “This is what you’re here for, girl. Not to practice ring-carving, or to moon after Pacceli, or to dream about bonding with wolves, like Dione. We need healing kits and two fighters ready when Dione rides through in three hours. The road crews this side of Stone Gate must be warned, and the Willow Road site must be guarded. This is not the night to drag feet, Merai. You’ve a job to do. Now do it.” Her cheeks paled, then burned at his words, and he nodded, a curt, sharp movement. “You’ve an instinct, Merai, to ride like the wind and run like a fire in a grass field. It’s time to show your paces.” Abruptly he set his palm against her sternum. “Ride safe,” he said.
Her lips moved, and she heard her voice choke. “With the moons.” Then she found her hands on the wooden downpole, and slid out of sight toward the stable.
Pacceli had already saddled his dnu by the time she ran to the stalls. Late, always late, Merai … He was at the stable door while she tightened her cinch. Late, always late, Merai … At the courtyard gate while she ducked through the doorway. And out on the track toward Morble Road before she had crossed the courtyard. Dione was riding in like a wolf, and Pacceli was out there before her. Angrily, she urged her dnu. It leaped eagerly for the road.
But Pacceli’s hands flashed a warning before she could spur her dnu past him. “Me first,” he said. “Till we reach Morble Road. Then you can ride like the wind.” He didn’t wait for her answer. Instead, he loped ahead onto the relay tower track, letting his mount warm itself up into the wary, smooth, six-legged pace of an escort while the ringrunner stewed behind.
* * *
“Sixth moon’s set, and fourth moon is nearly up.” The elder’s voice was eager, sharp. Her pale blue eyes peered down the road from the porch of the brightly lit house. The village of Ontai was dark except for a few late lights, and her house would stand out like a beacon for the rider coming in.
Royce nodded shortly, but his dark eyes smoldered; rather than trust his voice to answer, he checked his bowstring again.
“Stop fidgeting,” she said impatiently. “This is an honor for you. It could gain you a great deal of notice from the healer, and so then from her mate. It’s not every day you get a chance to ride out on a venge with a man like Aranur—especially not a venge that guards our mining and metal trains.”
“It shouldn’t be my chance at all,” he muttered. “Not yet, on my own, at least.”
The elder rounded on him. “You’d shame yourself—you’d shame me—in front of the Healer Dione? Of ail the things you could protect in this county, the metals are the most precious.” She stared him up and down. “Centuries, Royce. That’s what those metals represent. For centuries, we’ve been hiding our metalwork and sciences from those moons-damned alien bird-beasts. Working steadily, quietly toward the goal of reaching back to OldEarth, and space, and the stars … But you, the son of an elder yourself, are not willing to help protect that? That’s not just juvenile shortsightedness, Royce, that’s a betrayal of everything this county has stood for for more than eight hundred years. How many counties have the burden and the goal of returning to the stars? Ariye. Only Ariye. No other county— even Randonnen, though they help,” she conceded shortly, “has the dedication that we do—”
“Gama,” he broke in irritably, “I didn’t say I didn’t want to protect the miners. It’s just that I’m not yet certified—”
“No more, Royce,” she snapped. “If I say you’re ready to ride escort, then by all the moons, you’re ready. You fought off that worlag by yourself last month when Cliff fell off his dnu and broke his leg in the bargain. You spent three and a half ninans—practically a month—riding guard to the salt pools and back. Nulia had high praise for the way you handled your shifts.” She looked him up and down in sharp satisfaction. “The route from here to Carston is short, and the venge will be just beyond it.”
The young man’s words were carefully measured, but deliberate for all that. “Distance doesn’t define danger, Gama.”
Her expression changed. “Royce—” Her voice was suddenly hard. “If your own father hadn’t died just two months ago with the others in the council, I’d—I’d—”
“Have sent Tentran or Jonn in my place, or woken Nulia to go with me.”
Her face tightened. “I am the lead elder now. I can make those decisions alone.”
“For now,” he agreed. He didn’t say the words that hung on his lips—that the council was reconsidering her interim leadership already. She had been an elder before, but not a lead elder. Her temporary responsibility had merely been an attempt to keep his father’s knowledge alive. Once someone else understood his father’s work, there would be another elder in charge. As it was, she might not even hold on to her secondary council seat now that his father was dead. It wasn’t something that his gama awaited with anything akin to pleasure. Even now, her face tightened at his lack of response, and he wondered if someday her skin would split across her aged cheekbones. He asked quickly, to forestall her, “What if Dione asks why a youth is her escort?”
“We have no fighters more capable than you.”
His lips set thin and stubbornly. He was tall for his age, his shoulders already filling out, and he was strong as a dnu, he acknowledged. But there were five fighters in this village as good as he in either sword or bow—three that were better—and every one of them still talked about one-armed Tule, the man who now herb-farmed the lower Lull Fields but who had once fought like a moonwarrior, fast and fierce. They said he had faced a dozen worlags, just like the wolf walker Dione. Another time, he had climbed out on a rockslide to carry back a wounded miner just before the slide had loosened and cascaded over a cliff. They said he had even seen Aiueven, the aliens who lived in the north. Royce’s lips thinned further. Even that one-armed herb-farmer would be a better escort.
Royce stared bitterly at the older woman. The only reason it was he who would ride at the wolfwalker’s side—and without his mentor, Nulia—was that he was the elder’s great-grandson. That, and his gama had told the relay stablemen to stand down and then had refused to notify the others of the task. Roused too late to ride for Jonn or the others, there was only he to protest.
Movement caught the corner of his eye, and he glanced back over his shoulder. His sister hovered behind the door frame, her brown eyes peeking out. Royce caught her hero gaze full-blast. Quickly, he decided.
“Where are you going?” The elder’s voice was sharp as he turned back to the house.
&
nbsp; “I forgot my boot knives.”
“Moons save us from our children,” she snapped. “Get them quickly. I think that’s the healer on the upper road.”
He didn’t answer as he ducked back into the house. Instead, he beckoned to his sister. Hesitantly, Anji stepped toward him. His voice was low as he said rather than asked, “You know the healer rides in.”
She nodded solemnly.
“She needs a fighter to ride with her north, across Zaidi Ridge.”
Anji’s eyes caught the light off his newly woven warcap. “You’re a fighter, Royce.” The pride in her voice made him wince.
“But not experienced enough to be justified in taking Jonn or Bogie or Tentran’s place—not this time, anyway. I’m not the right one for this ride.” He glanced quickly over his shoulder, then back at Anji. “What about you? Are you brave enough to go on an errand yourself?”
“I’m as brave as you are.” Her eyes flickered with excitement.
“Right now?”
She looked over his shoulder. The front-lit shape of the elder was stooped and sinister against the inky blackness, and in spite of the girl’s eagerness, her voice was hesitant. “It’s dark, Royce.”
“It is,” he agreed. “But you’ll be on the roads and inside the barrier bushes. The bushes are thickly grown here.” He took her small hands in his. “Ride for Tule. Tell him Healer Dione needs him, and the elder thinks to send me in his place. Bogie’s out on the night crews, Nulia’s home is in the outer fields, and none of the others will stand up to Gama if she insists that I go alone. Tell Tule that I ask it. I’ll ride as his student or stay behind, as he chooses.”
She hesitated again. “Does it have to be Tule?”
Royce’s lips stretched in a humorless smile. “He’s mean as a starving lepa, and you don’t like him—I know that. But he is closest, he’s experienced, and he is the one who’s needed. He’s also the only one you have a chance of reaching before Healer Dione arrives. And if Dione is riding the black road on a night of worlag moons, you know that it’s important.”
The girl hesitated, then nodded. She turned to go, and Royce touched her shoulder. “Ride quickly, Anji. Gama will try to talk with the wolfwalker. That will give you some time, but not much.”
“Not much is enough to get Tule.” She flashed a sly look over her shoulder, and Royce suddenly realized his sister was not as young as he thought.
“The fledgling tries her wings,” he said softly to himself. A moment later he heard the hooves of a dnu pounding out of the stable. He turned and went back to the elder.
“Well?” she said sharply. “Are you finally ready?”
He forced himself to nod. Anji did not appear in the fight, and the faint sound of hooves was already almost completely gone. He flushed slowly. She’d taken the back road, which led around the village proper—something he should have warned her to do but that she’d thought of herself. Of what use would he be to the wolfwalker, when he couldn’t even think to keep his own sister out of sight?
He fingered his bow irritably, letting his grip slide and stick, slip and stick on the fresh varnish. His gama had ordered it detailed with inked drawings of Aiueven, as if those images could give him the alien perception and farsight that had kept humans down and away from the stars for so long. Aiueven could see kilometers through skies dark or light, but Royce was just a human. No carvings would change his eyesight or make his bow arm stronger. He had never seen a real scout with paintings on his weapons. Not even Tule, retired last year, decorated the weapons that still hung on his walls. Royce couldn’t help glancing up the road. One-armed or not, he thought, Tule still kept his sword sharp as a razor. And if Tule was as good as they said he had been, the man would be out of bed at the first sound of hooves and running for his weapons.
The older woman grasped his shoulder. “There—look there. That has to be the wolf walker, crossing the black-grain fields. SheTl be here in ten minutes.” Like claws, her hands turned him toward the light. “Let me check your tunic. Straight for once, thank the moons. And your sword—is it polished? Show me. Good, good. I’ll have no rust ride with Ember Dione. She saved the Lloroi’s son, you know. She has influence with all the elders.”
“The Heart of Ariye,” Royce said, more to himself than her.
But his gama heard. “It’s not for nothing that they call her that,” the older woman said sharply. “Dione is the reason the wolves came back to Ariye: She Called them, and they Answered, and now we have more wolfwalkers than any county except Randonnen.”
“It’s not a competition, Gama.”
She snorted. “Everything is competition, Royce. And the sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be. This escort ride is a chance to show what you can do—to bring you to the attention of the weapons masters so that you can get that position in Pillarton. I’ve worked hard to get you this opportunity. I won’t have you discard it.” She glanced at the upper road and just caught the expression he made. Her features tightened. “By the seventh moon, Royce, if you don’t get that scowl off your face, I’ll scrub it off myself.”
He carefully blanked his expression.
“Move the dnu out into the light,” she said curtly. “She’ll want to see them as soon as she arrives.”
“Our dnu aren’t the fastest, Gama. She ought to have the relay dnu.”
The elder’s voice was suddenly cutting. “We’ve gone over this twice, Royce. The healer Dione deserves the best. There’s not a man or woman here who argues that our dnu are the finest in the village.”
“But not the fastest—”
“You’d rather she rode one of the relay ronyons? Those dnu have more scars and mange than a whole pack of wild cur.”
He shrugged eloquently.
The ringing slap of his great-grandmother’s hand left his cheek bright red and smarting. For a moment, neither one moved. Then, urgently, “Royce—”
He turned away.
She caught at his arm. “Royce—darling—”
His voice was flat and strangely adult. “Leave it be, Elder Lea.”
Had he seen the expression on her face, he might have softened his tone; but as it was, he left her alone, as her sons and their sons had done, and strode coldly out to the road.
* * *
Dion thundered toward an Ontai hub that was dark as the ebony grain. Baton, Menedi, Ontai, Mandalay; then Carston, Allegro, and Kitman … The litany of relay stops was a chant that tickled her brain. Behind it was a constant whisper in the back of her head—the mental voices of the wolves. Howling, growling, the packsong was a constant drone. It seeped into the back of her skull like water from under a door. Right now Dion held her bond with Hishn tight, ignoring the other wolves, so that the only images that were clear in her head were those she received from Gray Hishn.
Ahead of her, the gray wolf flashed like a thought, nearly unseen in the night. Dion didn’t have to use her eyes to know where Gray Hishn was; the invisible link between their minds locked them together like the sea to the sand. Ancient engineering had accentuated the natural lupine bonds so that humans and wolves could be mental, not just physical, partners in exploring new colony worlds. That same engineering had mutated some of the humans, linking them in turn to the Gray Ones. And in the eight hundred years since the Ancients had landed, the wolves had grown and spread across the planet. Now they were a constant noise—a rich packsong in each other’s minds, and a pull on the wolfwalkers with whom they bonded. No simple thread of mental gray linked Dion to those wolves. The longer she lived with the bond in her head, the thicker grew the howling.
She wondered whether, if she had not grown up so isolated in that small Randonnen village, she would have bonded to the wolves so strongly. “Closer to Gray Ones than to humans,” they said, “was Wolfwalker Ember Dione. And closer to the moons than the world itself, was the moonmaid Ember Dione.” She had heard those lines just last month at a puppet show. The puppeteer, when he saw her, coerced her out of the audience to s
peak the voice of the wolfwalker doll. He had been clever to use her: He had earned more silver that night than in five previous nights of work. And as for what he had said about her: closer to wolves than to humans … At the time, flushing and flustered, she hadn’t argued the puppeteer’s point. But now, with the world dark and quiet as death, she wondered if it was true. She didn’t even have to stretch to feel the wolf like herself. Her bond with the Gray One was close as family, and the constant din of the lupine voices was never absent from the back of her mind. Hishn was friend, packmate, wolf pup … The Gray One had taught Dion more about mothering than any human she had known, since her own mother had died soon after childbirth, and Hishn had had several litters now. To Hishn, Dion was packleader and friend, hunting partner and family. A double bond, between them.
As she rode closer to the town, Dion let her senses flow through the yellow lupine eyes. The mental wolf voice strengthened immediately. Movement became sharper to Dion’s eyes, and contrast increased. An instinctual joy spread through her. She felt the fog on her teeth. She threw her head back silently. The howl that tried to burst through her lips made no sound in the night, but it echoed far into the graysong. Instantly, lupine howls returned. Hishn’s voice was clearest, but there were others in that mental fog: Gray Rishte, Gray Elshe, Gray Barjan, Gray Koursh … The touch of each wolf in the pack was light, like a feather against her hand.
Sonorously, in her mind, the voices soared. Rising, then falling, falling, falling. From the depths of Dion’s mind, the graysong felt her, surrounded her, howled at her presence. Through Hishn’s mind, the wolves stretched back. Night flavors touched the tip of Dion’s tongue. Night sounds hit her ears. She reached out, as if she could capture the images and save them for her sons. Thirteen years with Aranur … Their sons were now eight and nine; and Tomi, her adopted son, had just Promised himself in mating. Dion let herself read the packsong for the sense of her family. Like Hishn longing for Gray Yoshi, the female wolf’s lupine mate, Dion reached for Aranur and the boys. Soon, she thought, she would see her sons. Soon she would feel Aranur’s hands on her skin, his strong touch on her slender shoulders …
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