It was the drop in altitude that made her raise her head again: The alien was descending. Two other Aiueven floated down in tight turns around the one who gripped her, and when she forced her eyes open to see their shapes, Dion’s stomach spun at their conflicting motions.
They dove straight at an icy ledge. Fear clenched her mind. Hishn— she screamed. Aranur…
Gray voices howled back in her head. Wolfivalkerwoljwalker…
The instant of terror blurred into a tangle of white ice spires. Her stomach was slammed up into her throat as the ice gave way to a frigid cave, and that gave way in turn to an opening even larger. The Aiueven’s wings spread open again. It soared back up, away from the bottom of the cave, flashing into another cavern. Blue-white light seemed to glow through the walls, and patches of green-blue fungi swarmed on the roof of the cave.
The Aiueven swooped into another cavern, still paced by the other two aliens. Below them, the ground was mostly ice, with only the darkness of glacier rock showing faintly through the frozen buildup. And there were shapes below her—white shapes, ovoid. Eyes—yellow, slitted eyes—looked up as she was carried overhead. There were more of them the farther in she was flown. First one, then three, then eight in the caverns through which they blasted. Then four figures slightly darker in shade, and one more even darker in the next ice cave on.
Suddenly, Dion’s skin burned. Her cheeks were on fire, and her hands seemed covered with sparks, not skin. Some dull part of her mind realized that it was the temperature, not herself, that had changed. The air had warmed, and the wind that whistled past her ears was like a slap of shocking heat. They dropped lower, to a cave where a frigid stream of melted ice began to course over the floor. Another tunnel and another cave, and this one was empty except for a single alien squatting on the ice out of the water. Dion’s teeth burned the other way now, as the temperature rose with each drop in altitude as they dove toward the bowels of the mountain.
Seconds—it felt like hours of frigid wind—later, the alien dropped her onto the rock that made up the floor of yet another cave. She fell to her frozen knees. The alien circled tightly, then landed. He seemed to stare at her as she huddled, shivering uncontrollably, on the rock. She didn’t speak; she didn’t move except to shiver. Her mind felt numb, as though her thoughts had frozen during their flight, and the warmth that should have been relief only made her chill seem worse. All she knew was that she was in a cave littered with what seemed like brown carcasses, and the three Aiueven who had flown her in stood like lepa over her cold, cringing body.
“Its wings have no name.”
It was a voice, but not a voice. Clear as if it rang from a bell, the words/images shot into Dion’s mind, rather than through her human ears. Yet where Hishn’s images were muddied by the constant drone of the packsong, the alien’s voice was crisp like frost. Some part of her mind was still cold with fear, but part of her mind leaped forward. That voice was power—it was what the Ancients had sought when they went to the aliens. Dion’s hands, cold as they were, clenched with the thrill that jabbed her.
The male Aiueven who had dropped her regarded her dispassionately. The other two studied Dion in silence. With her arms crossed over her belly, she stared back, trying to read the expressions in their yellow-slitted eyes. It took long minutes to realize that it was not through their eyes at all that they saw her, but through their minds instead. She could hear them—on the edges of her mind, carefully not intruding but waiting for her to speak. There was a drone—it was similar to the fog of the wolf pack, but it was sharper too, as if she could hear individual voices more clearly. The young, she realized. She could hear the voices of the smaller aliens in nearby caves. The voices of the three adults were sharp, but the young alien voices were dull, as if their thoughts were not as formed. And the single dark-furred young alien who squatted in this cave had a voice even more dull than the others.
“Is it yours/ours?” asked one of the three adults. His voice was hard and dark gray like a wolf. “Does it (Know)?”
An image of consensus filled Dion’s head, and she almost blanked out as the thoughts overwhelmed her and drove her own identity away. “It Knows. I (heard) it,” returned the one who had brought her in, his voice a sharp white-gray.
“But it is so (young),” the first voice stated.
The third, softer voice eased its own question in. “It has no Name?”
“(Denial).” The first, hard-gray voice returned. “It is a (baby). It does not even dream of wings.”
“Leave it then,” the sharp voice said.
But the soft, yellow-bright voice hesitated. “If it tried to Fly on its own, it could be a (youth/dreamer) not a (baby/need/learner). It (possibility/indecision) is close to Naming.”
“(Baby) or (youth), it was too (eager/reckless/ignorant), if it tried to Fly without a Name.” The one that had brought Dion in seemed to study her more closely.
She stared at them. Their eyes didn’t see her; their minds picked up her projections and folded her into the blend of their voices. They thought she was one of them.
“If it Knows, it can Fly. But it must be Named to Fly,” agreed the dark gray voice that cut like paper across the other one. “And if it is close to Naming, who will (claim/mother-debt) it? You?”
“(Denial). Its coloring is too (soft) to be mine.”
“All (babies) are (soft),” the yellow-bright voice said. “Their (teeth) have not yet hardened.”
“(Agreement).”
The voices faded. Physically, the aliens spread their wings and leaped for the cavern opening. Mentally, they simply moved away, their thoughts echoing as they distanced themselves from the cave.
Dion stayed on her knees, shivering while the stone stripped more of her heat away. Alien. Aiueven. And she was here, a human. What would they do when they realized that she was not like them? Whatever idea she had had of confronting the aliens slipped away like water, and fear, which had settled into her guts, became as hard as a knot. She shivered.
Slowly, she realized the extent of her chill. Her face throbbed and burned with the heat of the air, and her nose was already dripping. Her teeth chattered louder. She tried to rub her hands on her belly to warm herself, but it took too much effort. Eventually, she simply huddled, arms wrapped around herself, on the stone.
Softly, the wolf pack echoed into her mind. Like a tiny stream, it flowed in after the aliens had left her. Hishn … She tried to project that name, but she didn’t have the focus.
A wolf’s voice echoed like a wisp of smoke. Wolfwalker…
She clung to that thought and staggered to her feet, dangerously cold. Roughly she bounced in place. She started gyrating, swinging her arms in wide circles and jumping from side to side. There was not enough focus in her to do more than force herself to move. Her muscles rebelled against the cold, jerking in unrhythmic patterns as her shivering began to lessen. But the blood was beginning to surge again. Finally, she slowed her gyrations. The chill still sat in her bones, but her lungs felt hot, and she could feel the heat seeping to her skin in that stage just before sweating.
How far had they flown? And how deep was this cave? There was a sense of pressure to the walls, as if the rocks and ice could collapse any time. And the air was not thin, as she had expected; rather, it was humid and cold. Survivable, though there was a taint to the air of gases—and a faint stench that reminded her of… lepa.
Those slitted eyes and hardened gums that served as teeth— they were lepalike also. And lepa, like Aiueven, used caves as breeding or feeding grounds. Dion eyed the young alien on the other side of the cavern. Bones turned to pudding …
But the creature was huddled in on itself, its light brown head tucked down on its breast and its darker wings by its side. Experimentally, Dion reached out to it with her mind. There was an instant of resistance, then a melting of what seemed like a transparent wall, and suddenly, Dion saw the alien outlined as though it was glowing. Startled, she blinked. The adult aliens
had not had this faint aura … But that was not quite true, she realized. There had been several times when the aliens seemed to flash with energy. And there had been a constant, dull glow while flying.
She stared at the young alien before her. “Do you have a name?” she asked, projecting the question from her mind.
Yellow, slitted eyes seemed to see her. “(Namewings flight/not-flight),” the Aiueven returned.
Dion paused, then tried to shift her thoughts into the image patterns of the alien. “How far is this place from the entrance (cave/tunnel)?”
“(Denial/confusion. Cold/colder/cold.)”
“What is (down/back) that (way/down/there)?” she asked, pointing to the wide tunnel at the other end of the cave.
“(Joy/heat), but (too-young) place. Must learn (speed/time) (move/advance/flight/cold).”
Dion struggled to follow the alien’s thoughts. Its images were not as clear as those of the adults. Even so, she could feel the pull of the little one’s mind as it seemed to suck energy from her through her voice. Carefully, she drew back, holding her thoughts to herself.
She looked up toward the opening through which she had been brought. It was not on the cave floor but was perhaps fifteen meters up, along a sheer rock wall. Clumps of ice hung from the upper lip of the opening and dripped in tiny runnels down onto the floor of her cave. It was rough enough, she realized, even with the drips of ice. She could climb it if she had to, though the wet rock and ice-slick edge would be difficult.
She turned and moved toward the other tunnel, which seemed to drop away. It wasn’t until she was right on the lip that she realized it wasn’t a tunnel either, but another opening that dropped away steeply—perhaps twelve or thirteen meters—into another cavern. The lower cave was slightly larger than the one in which she stood, but it was empty as an old nest. Rough-hewn and as light as this one, it smelled more strongly of gases, and its walls were thick with fungus. But it was warmer down there—she could feel the humid draft, like a chinook.
Brooding, she paced the edge. Then she looked at the other short cliff. The young alien who was in the cave with her paid her no attention. Instead, it merely stared at the ice wall where the melting water dripped across the coiling fungus patterns. The patterns—for there were fractal patterns in both rock and ice—curled in and out of themselves. When Dion looked more closely, she realized that the patterns came first, not the fungi. Half the cave was covered in subtle designs, and the designs changed constantly, as though a thousand different ring-carvers had had their way with these walls. The Aiueven youngling stared at the wall before it, concentrating so hard that Dion could almost see in her own mind the focus of its tiny power. And each time it focused enough heat to melt an ice pattern, another patch of fungi was exposed to its hunger.
Cautiously, watching the young one for reaction, Dion drew a meatroll from one of her parka pockets. She ate it, softening it with water from one of the runnels that crossed the ground. Then she rose to her feet and went to the cliff that led to the outer tunnels.
It took her half an hour to scale that short cliff. With her bulky clothes and winter boots, she could get almost up to the top, but there she would hang, unable to find a way past the last two meters of ice. She finally used her knife to chip handholds in the frozen shelf so that she could get over the top. By the time she did it, she was trembling; her right leg was weak with strain.
She crawled away from the icy edge on her hands and knees, then huddled on the first patch of dry ground she found. It was colder here, and the walls were more ice than stone, but it was still warm enough that the floor of the cave was covered with a frigid stream. The sound of dripping water was constant, like the drone of the alien voices, but the melting ice did not obscure the patterns etched in either ice or stone.
She could still smell the faint scent of gases and lepa, and irritably, she wiped her nose and rubbed her hand on her parka. One of the carcasses that lay in the empty cavern was close by, and she fingered it. It was nothing more than a pelt, half-feather, half-fur. It was not from a lepa—not the right feathering or shape, neither musky nor greasy enough. She couldn’t help the flash of memory, though, and she flinched at the images. Spring, and a meadow full of grass … The flight of the lepa was hard and dark, as though it was made of blood. But the flight of Aiueven was neither dark nor light, but simply a sense of power. The alien that had taken her up—its wings were almost unimportant. It was the focus of its flight that had mattered.
Words crackled through her mind as she thought, warning her an instant before the aliens returned. Then they were swooping into the cave, dropping to the ice. The last images in her mind— of flying with the birdmen, of wings sprouting along her arm bones—seemed caught and pulled away.
“It has become (mature/colder),” a gray-blue voice said. “And listen—it (dreams/desires) flight.”
Physically, they moved—she could see them: preening and shifting and perfecting the placement of furry feathers, picking at their mouths to clean those lines of hardened gum-teeth. But the voices they projected to her mind gave her the impression of motionlessness, as if they stood like statues, concentrating only on their thoughts. The gray wolf-fog, which had crept back with the aliens’ absence, was shredded and blown away. In its place, the sharp gray of the aliens’ words cut across her thoughts.
“It hears us,” the sharp gray voice confirmed.
They seemed to move toward her. Automatically, she cried out, Hishn!
“It calls out,” one of the creatures said sharply.
“For its (mother-debt/caring)?”
“It was a (baby) name it used,” agreed the yellow-bright voice that had been there before. The voice seemed to be reluctant. “A (baby) would use a (baby/need) name for its (mother/comfort).”
“I have no mother,” Dion said flatly, automatically.
Abruptly, there was silence. Then, “(Death/cessation/absence/grief). The (hole/void) in the mind. The (hole/void) of (unknowing/no-past).” A flurry of sensations swept over her. The voices spoke together—each one distinct like the patterns on the walls, yet soothing like a wash of warm water—and the weaving of image and sound filled the hollow part of her mind with twisting ribbons of nurturing. Abruptly, Dion began to cry instantly, the aliens reacted. “No (mother-debt/past)? (Need/longing/absence/grief).” She was swamped with their concern. Yet she felt also the distance behind the concern, and it dried her tears like fire. She felt pulled emotionally, as if they toyed with her, but there was no sense of maliciousness, only an almost absently projected comfort while they continued their conversation. Angered, Dion struggled to shut them out.
The yellow-bright voice followed her withdrawal. “It draws away,” the alien told the others. “It can (hear/read/understand) us.”
“Then it did not belong with the (youth/dark/immature/heat),” the gray-sharp voice agreed. “It is (old-enough/better) here. It (proves/agrees) that by moving itself.”
A golden red voice answered. “If it can read us so (easily/clearly), it may already have begun to grow its (wings/freedom/future).”
“(Denial),” shot back a thunder voice tinged with purple. “Listen to its thoughts. It has no (direction/depth) of a Name. I cannot even read its youth image. Without a youth Name, it cannot grow its (adult/complete/soaring/future) Name. Without its (adult/home) Name, it cannot grow its wings. Without wings, it cannot Fly. Even if it has reached this (mature/cold), it will not grow enough before Last Storm to survive the flight to (home/ship).”
Images followed the voice like a swarm of angry needlers: Flying dangerously slow so the newly winged could keep up. Expending power to feed starving cells against the icy jet streams. Getting caught in the whirling snow and ice bullets of Last Storm before making it to their (home/ship/stars) because they must wait for the weather to bring on the Naming …
“Stars,” Dion whispered. “You still go to the stars.”
One of the slitted pairs of eyes seemed to turn to her. “It
(hears/desires/dreams) again. It can (comprehend/future).”
The yellow-bright voice was thoughtful. “It has taken dream-debt then. We cannot (leave/abandon) it.”
The golden red voice agreed. “We already (debt/owe) it the (future/stars).”
The thunder voice was adamant. “(Denial). It is too (baby/young) for the (future/stars). And if it is too young, it was (badly/incompletely) made. It lost its (mother/ancestry/history) too soon. It will never reach (stars/future/home).” The dark voice dismissed her.
Dion felt his slitted eyes in her mind, but the impression they left was of an ancient time. She shivered. Was this how the aliens had assessed the Ancients before they sent the plague? She felt her anger stir. If she could not reach the stars, whose fault was that? How many humans had already died because of alien plague?
The Aiueven seemed to stare at her. The sharp-gray voice said speculatively. “It knows (anger/rebellion). It understands (death/cessation/end). It is already part of our (flight/past-debt/future-debt). (Abandonment/loss) will stay in our (minds/memories/stigma) for generations. Even if it is too (young/baby), we cannot (dismiss/leave) it here.”
“(Agreement).”
They seemed to pause.
Then the yellow-bright voice said, “What if it is a (throwback/ancestor)?”
There was a questioning sense, as though the others waited for more. The yellow-bright voice added softly, “(Throwbacks/ancestors) are slow to mature, yet they are a joy in flight. If this one was Named, it might survive. It might be able to make the Flight to the (ship/home).”
The gray-blue voice acceded. “Eastwind-rider-across-the-rocks said it (now/already) Knew. Naming is not so difficult once a youth (dream/future-debt) Knows.”
The voices paused, and the mesh of images was more than Dion could sort out. Finally, the blue-gray voice interjected, quieting the hum. “If it Knows now, it can learn to (chill/focus) here and to Fly during Last Storm. Then, if it cannot make it to (home/ship/stars), it will be our (loss/cessation/loss), but not our (stigma/memory/grief) and (life-debt/name-debt).”
Wolf's Bane Page 35