Then he looked past his mate and his children to the weapons on his wall. His jaw tightened again, and he had to force himself to relax and smile as Danton aimed an imaginary arrow. If raiders were watching his mate—and him again—there could be no complacency between them. This county was wide open, and the raiders were too widespread. As long as Dion ran trail alone, she had to protect herself. He didn’t worry about the boys. A mother was the fiercest predator a man could ever face—and Dion had the strength of the wolves in her arms. No one would hurt their boys. As for Dion … He knew, watching her, that no matter how long she lived within his boundaries, he couldn’t keep her from the forests, from the Gray Ones who had locked themselves into her mind, or from the mountains that were part of her soul. Yet if the mountains, the forests, the wolves were not enough for her, what could give her the strength she needed to face the burdens she bore?
He glanced involuntarily toward the door, where he could hear the faint scuffling on the porch. Hishn had returned and was finding a place to nap. He glanced around his home, with its arched windows and smooth, polished root floor. It had been graciously grown, with large, open rooms and mountain views from the windows, but few visitors stayed here who weren’t family. It wasn’t Dion who drove them away, he knew, but Hishn who made people nervous. The wolf had fought for Dion before, when Dion’s bond was new, and Dion had not understood how it would affect the wolf. Because of that, Hishn had lost some of her instinctive wariness of men. More than once the creature had turned against those with whom Dion simply argued. Aranur’s lips twisted in an ironic smile: His mate was opinionated enough that when she argued, she did it passionately, and the wolves responded to nothing if not to strong emotions. Had the Gray One been male, it would have been the same, but in a different way—the protectiveness and jealousy would have turned to territoriality. As it was, no matter how large their home, there was room only for Hishn, her cubs and mate, and Dion’s family with them.
Dion turned then and smiled at him, and automatically, his expression lightened. She raised her eyebrows, and he shrugged. They would talk later. They always did, when the moons were riding the sky. But the sound of the wolf on his porch made him wonder, with the elders prodding and duty pulling, how long he could keep Dion there.
* * *
Aranur had already left for town by the time both boys were ready to ride, so after saying good-bye to her older, adopted son, Tomi, and the young woman to whom he had Promised, Dion had the two younger boys to herself.
Once the three had skirted the town and made it to the southern track, Danton, irrepressible as a pup, began egging his dnu to jump this little bump or race ahead when Dion wasn’t looking. Hishn, trotting just ahead of the boy’s dnu, took it upon herself to discipline the youngest boy, and Dion had to hide her smile as Danton received his third warning. Hishn had the patience of a worlag, but her teeth were also just as sharp. Danton had not yet learned not to push the Gray One’s tolerance, but he was growing older, and Hishn was ready to wean the boy of his antics.
Olarun, however, was a different matter. Dion smiled at her older son with pride. He was already skilled enough in the woods to have been allowed to run trail by himself, and he was eager to learn, asking question after question. If she hadn’t been so amused by Danton’s antics, she could have showed Olarun twice as much, but as it was the boys competed with each other as if they were in a fighting ring. By the time they reached the intermediate town of Sharbrere, they were picking at each other mercilessly.
“You have your choice,” Dion told them firmly. “Either settle down and behave, or I’ll leave you here in Sharbrere till tomorrow morning. I can’t have you acting this way in the clinic.” Olarun flushed, and Dion turned to her saddlebag to dig out their lunch while they decided.
Danton poked his brother in the side. “It’s all your fault,” he whispered.
“Is not,” Olarun hissed. He shoved Danton away.
But the younger boy tripped over a stone, falling on his rump. He was up again in an instant—not to pretend nothing happened, but to hit Olarun in the stomach. Dion whirled.
“Danton! Olarun!” she snapped.
Hishn had moved away to lie down in the shade of the fence around the commons where they had stopped, and now she flicked her ears. They have your temper, Wolfwalker.
“Don’t I know it,” Dion muttered. She looked from one to the other. Both boys were tousled, their clothes rumpled and dirty. She had a sudden vision of herself and her brother in front of her father’s smithy. She and Rhom had fought like this—when they wanted their father’s attention.
“It’s another hour to Kitman,” she said quietly. “I must do some healing there, and I don’t think either of you is really interested in waiting for me at the clinic.” Olarun shot Danton a venomous look, and Dion sighed. “Perhaps you two should stay here tonight, with Nior. Then we’ll have the next three days all to ourselves. You won’t have to worry about getting lost among the patients or—” She shot them a stern look. “—getting into trouble while I’m working. When I’m done there, I’ll come right back, and we can be together.”
“Just you and us?” Olarun ventured. “No escorts or scouting? No ringrunners or messengers who will take you away?”
There had been an unconscious longing in Olarun’s voice, and Dion forced her voice to be steady. “Not this time. It’s just you and I, boys.”
Danton eyed her from beneath long lashes. “Promise?”
“Promise,” she assured them. Pray the moons there would be no emergencies, she added, and that the ringrunners could not find them. She shook herself. There were other healers; other scouts. Her boys had to come first sometime.
She left Olarun and Danton in Sharbrere with some friends the boys had known since birth. When she rode out again, promising to meet them at the crossroads to Still Meadow, they were happily arguing over who would be the leader in the game of wolves and raiders.
Dion made it to Kitman with plenty of time to tend the ring-runner’s eye. It had been kept raw as she had ordered, and within an hour, she was able to repair the wound enough so that it would heal the rest of the way on its own with standard treatment from the local healer.
Dion felt a strange pang as she left the young ringrunner’s room. The loss, she knew, was artificial. She didn’t really know Merai. But part of her rebelled at that thought. It didn’t matter that she would not see the runner again; Merai was now part of her life. She could feel Merai’s will as if it were tangible, and the young woman’s determination was strong as a wolf—like Aranur when he was focused, or Gamon when he worked toward a goal.
“Why did you choose to ride the black road?” she had asked the ringrunner as she worked.
“I was fast,” Merai had answered. “And I ride well.”
But Dion had caught her hesitation. “And something else?” she prompted.
Hie ringrunner shrugged. “And …” She seemed reluctant, but her voice was steady as she said, “And I wanted to be like you.”
Something clenched Dion’s gut. Was she also to blame for this ringrunner’s blindness? “Like me?” she managed to ask.
“You’re the Heart of Ariye,” Merai answered.
“That’s just a story, Merai.”
“They say you Called the wolves once, back before the DogPocket War, and that the Gray Ones Answered. They say it’s why there are so many wolves now in Ariye.”
“I suppose that’s true enough.” Dion’s memory flashed back to an image of a tall, thin man who clutched her arms as she gripped his, while their minds paired in the Call. Sobovi, who died later on the Slot, a hundred meters from safety …
“And they say you can trail like a ghost…”
Dion shook herself out of her memories. “That,” she smiled faintly, “is exaggeration. I slip up as often as anyone else. The storytellers just don’t like to admit it—makes the stories seem mundane.”
Merai thought about that for a moment. “I heard neRitto
l telling some boys about Pacceli’s and my ride, and he never mentioned that the whole way back I was so scared that every breath I took felt like a scream.”
Dion began rebandaging her eye. “That sounds about right. A good storyteller lets you feel as if you could do everything the hero did and still feel everything you would normally feel. Which means, of course, that they always tell the story right, but they never quite tell the truth.”
Merai gave Dion a twisted smile. With her lips only half healed, the scabs stretched in a macabre expression. “It was a story neRittol told that made me want to be like you, Wolfwalker. I remember it from when I started training to ride the black road, and I had to choose to work the town towers or learn the longer night-relay shifts. I was scared of the night sounds at first, and neRittol found out about it. So he told me how you came to Ariye.”
Dion raised her eyebrows. “And what are they saying about that now?”
Merai grinned wider, then winced as her Up split. “They say that Aranur stole you from Randonnen because he realized you were a moonmaid. And that you brought the wolves to Ariye to keep you company, and that they howl at night because you are lonely to return to the moons. I was never afraid of the wolf sounds again,” she added. “‘The moons are Dione’s home,’ neRittol told me. ‘As they will again be ours. She is our guide to the stars.’ And I’ve wanted to be like you ever since.”
Dion had no answer for that.
She didn’t linger once she had healed the girl’s eye. Merai’s words disturbed her as much as the ringrunner’s blind faith that she could heal that damaged eye. And, difficult as it was to hide the internal healing from the eyes of nurses and others, it was even more difficult to answer a patient’s questions without revealing more of what she had done. The healing art of the Ancients, taught to them by Aiueven, was considered something lost with the domes. The few times wolfwalkers had tried Ovousibas since the plague, their wolves had died in fevers. Whatever trick the Ancients had used to keep their wolves alive was thought to have died with them in the plague.
When, thirteen years ago, Dion had tried the healing technique, Hishn should also have died. But the wolves Dion had Called to show her how to use Ovousibas also showed her a different way of using the bond—an Ancient way, not the way of healing described by the stories that had resulted in so many wolf deaths. So when Dion healed others, the focusing of internal energy burned only against her mind—like light through a lens— leaving the Gray Ones untouched by death. And the wolves acted as a buffer for her—against the patient’s pain—so that Dion could aim the energy where it needed to go, healing the body instead of burning her mind.
She put her thoughts aside when she stopped by to see Merai’s healer before she rode back out of Kitman. He was in the clinic still, laid up with spring fever.
Brye frowned when she entered his quarantine room, but she simply shrugged. “Wolfwalkers don’t get sick,” she returned in answer to his unspoken question.
He scowled at her, but she knew it was more because she was able to get around than because he didn’t want company. “Merai?” he asked without preamble.
“As well as can be expected. She’ll lose the one eye, but the other should heal.”
“Pacceli?”
“Recovering.” Dion smiled faintly. “But you knew that already.”
“You blame me for asking?”
“Not with you stuck in this bed.”
He harrumphed. “I heard you brought your boys with you. Planning on sticking around this time?”
“Uh-uh,” she shook her head. “And I left them in Sharbrere for the night. They’d have done nothing but fight if they’d come here with me, and they can stay with friends there. Besides, I’m heading back tonight, so you can’t stick me with any more healing.”
He ignored the jibe, frowning at her other words. “It’s still spring, Dion. Riding the black road isn’t the safest way to travel. I’m sure you heard what happened to Merai and Pacceli.” He gave her a deliberate look.
She made a face at him. “I’m going only halfway, and I have a bit of an advantage over ringrunners, Brye. There’s a wolf pack gathering in Moshok Valley. I’ll spend the night with them. I’ll meet my boys at the crossroads to Still Meadow well into the daylight.”
He picked irritably at the covers of his bed. “Checking the wild plantings?”
She nodded, hiding her smile. “I have four ninans, and I’m making the most of them. I’m taking the boys back through the woods with me so that they can brush up on some plant identification. Tomi—my other son—is great at teaching the boys textiles— and I think he will start them on lintel design soon—but he was never much interested in wilderness skills.” She smiled faintly. “I had originally hoped you’d be up and around by now so that you could come with us—you always had more patience in teaching than I—but I promised the boys it would be just me.”
Brye flopped back on his pillows. “Hells, Dion. I’d drink worlag piss if I thought it would get me out of this place sooner. Don’t know how the patients stand it.”
“Because you’d kill them if they didn’t,” Dion returned easily.
The brown-haired man grinned. “True. True. But then, that’s the privilege of a healer—to control life and death. Speaking of privileges, and of your impending flight to the forest, how do the skies look? Still clear enough to spit in?”
“Uh-huh.”
He studied her face. “What’s the matter? You don’t like the lack of menace in our fair Ariyen skies? I’ve always thought of you Randonnens as daredevils—and you especially, Dion— but I never figured you for being one to seek out danger and embrace it.”
In spite of herself, Dion laughed. “I’m not—and I’m just as glad as you are to see the skies still clear. I just don’t like the fact that the lepa haven’t flocked yet. It’s getting late for their migration hordes.”
“Sure,” Brye shrugged. “But you know as well as I do that every four or five years they don’t flock at all; they migrate in small groups instead.”
She agreed reluctantly.
“Ah, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Dion. Maybe the moons are shining on you.”
“On me? Hah.”
“And you with those violet eyes. It’s rumored you’re a moon-warrior, Dion—you can’t deny that, at least. The moons look after their own.”
Dion gave him a sober look. The moons were no patrons of hers, she knew. She had stolen the secret of Ovousibas from them through the memories of the wolves, and they were punishing her for her crime. Like Prometheus chained to his rock in the sea for stealing fire from the gods, she, who had stolen life itself, was chained to the burden of healing.
She smiled and said the proper things and left Healer Brye to his bed. Then she sought through the packsong for Hishn’s voice. The lupine song that washed through her mind released her from her duties. Yellow eyes, gleaming into her thoughts, urged her from walk to jog to run to sprint until she tore through the forest like a flash of thought. Even when the moons took over the sky and darkened the shadows by contrast, Dion forced herself on. The fierce joy that replaced the dread in her guts was the gift of the Ancients, the gift of release, the gift of Hishn’s wolf pack.
V
Where one Jepo circles,
A hundred eyes watch.
At dawn, the gray shadows scattered among the trees. The wolf pack surrounded Dion like a tide as she threw herself up the trail. She didn’t care that her thighs had long since numbed or that the pain that stabbed at her ankle was like a dozen needles. She had slept heavily, but not deeply enough to rid herself of a vague sense of disquiet. She was running now to kill her thoughts, to deaden her burden and drown herself in the packsong. She had hours, she sang out into the wolf pack. Hours of freedom. And then her boys would run with her, free with her in the forest, stretching their young muscles like the yearlings beside her and learning to leap with the wolves.
Up. Up to the ridge, sang the wolves in her he
ad. Then-voices were shadows of her own thoughts—snatches of lupine songs filtering through her mind. The hunt! they howled. The hunt is on the heights.
Farther now, beyond the first ridge, the wolves passed Dion, streaming around the short cliff. She sucked air as she forced her feet after the flood of gray shadows. Up the short cliff, then up again, across the slope of a slick morning meadow. As they had called out to the Ancients so many centuries ago, they now urged Dion with them. Run with us, Woljwalker! they howled. Run with the pack.
She paused and spun dizzyingly at the top of a ledge where it fell into a ravine, caught herself, and laughed at the thrill of fear that clenched her stomach. She sang her voice into their minds, her mental howl filled with the joy of her sons, her mate, her life. They washed her howl back into their memories. It blended with the thin threads of other human voices, shirting the tapestry until it became rich and thick with the numbers of Ancient wolfwalkers. Wolf eyes, the images frayed with time, were overlaid with slitted yellow eyes. Voices were accented. Power surged. Through the oldest memories the rhythm rang of cold and piercing power. It was all-encompassing, engulfing. It was both light and dark cracked open; it was shards of energy melting. It was a rhythm that shifted and transferred itself from alien to wolf to human. It was the rhythm of Ovousibas.
It struck a chord in Dion, resonating in her mind. Instantly, the wolves caught the resonance. Run with us! they cried out. But the thread of their song was now twisted with the thread of the ancient, internal healing. It coiled more tightly around their voices so that the death that had come to the wolves through the ages—the slow decimation of their numbers—became an underlying whine. Run with us, they cried out. But what they sang in their memories was, Find our death. Find our grief. Run with us, Wolfwalker!
The wolfsong radiated out from the first places, the truncated mountains of the Ancients. It flowed across rivers and valleys, and climbed back into the mountains of Ariye. Forward through the ages it moved, until it curled again around Dion’s legs and clutched at her hands. She threw her head back and stared at the sky where once humans and aliens had flown. Her hands, smudged with dirt, reached up to the moons that floated so far away.
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