Dion hesitated. “That is ... different.”

  “It is a secret.”

  “Not one that cannot be shared with a friend.”

  “I'm not your friend,” Tehena snapped.

  Dion shrugged. “You can be trusted.”

  The other woman laughed bitterly. “I'd betray you for an extra piece of bread.”

  “I think not.”

  Tehena glared at her in silence.

  “Healing like this—it is an art, like any other,” Dion said quietly. “But one we thought was lost.” She stared at her callused hands and turned them over as if the fingers were even now new to her. “It is Ovousibas.”

  Tehena stiffened, but her expression did not change. “If it was,” she returned harshly, “you'd be dead by now, and not from the whipping.”

  Dion hesitated, then shrugged. “The curse of the ancients is not always fatal.”

  “If it was Ovousibas, you'd be dead,” Tehena repeated. “And a Gray One, too.”

  The wolf­walker raised one eyebrow.

  The other woman licked her lips. “Do you—do you run with the wolves, as well?”

  “Questions, Tehena? I thought they brought death them­selves.”

  Tehena tightened her lips, and instantly Dion was sorry. “The Gray Ones choose whom they will,” she answered softly. She motioned toward the corridor and changed the sub­ject. “My friends—are they all right?”

  Tehena stared sullenly at the bars for another minute before answering. “They're still here,” she said finally.

  Dion closed her eyes in relief. She had not realized how much she had wanted to ask that question. “And the bones— the fang sacks?” she asked when she opened her eyes again.

  “Where you left them.”

  “Under your mattress?”

  Tehena nodded abruptly.

  “Please,” Dion said softly; she was still so weak. “Get them for me.”

  “What am I, your personal slave? Get them yourself.”

  The wolf­walker just looked at her, and Tehena found herself doing as Dion asked.

  “Thank you.” Dion turned the bones over and over in the dim light, feeling as much as seeing their shape and sharpness. They had been picked clean. “Is this all of them?” she asked, puzzled.

  “I didn't guard your bone pile with my life,” Tehena snarled, sitting back against the wall on her own straw tick. “There are other things in here that like to eat, too.”

  “I meant no offense, Tehena.” She picked over the bones until she had just less than a dozen selected.

  “A needle gun, huh?”

  Dion nodded.

  “Look, Healer, you've been sick. And you're still sick if you think you're going to make a weapon out of rat parts.”

  “But you saved them for me,” Dion pointed out.

  Tehena turned to stare out at the corridor again. “False hope,” she muttered. “Like I said before.”

  “There's no reason the hope can't be real.” Dion scraped one of the dried bones against the stones. “These will sharpen better now that they're dry.”

  “Moon droppings.”

  “When I hollow the points, they'll hold a good dose of poison, too.”

  “You're serious about this, aren't you?”

  Dion continued to scrape a finer point to the bone.

  Tehena stared at her in silence, then lay down and turned her face to the wall.

  Although Dion slept again, she rested only fitfully. She dreamed of Aranur, of Rhom, of the beetlelike worlags, of raid­ers, and of a blank face behind which sat a man named Longear. She turned finally and reached for Hishn, and the wolf faded from her hands like a ghost. She woke and shivered alone.

  As she lay silently in the dark, it was Aranur's voice that comforted her in her head. It took her a second to realize that his worry was real. She snapped awake.

  Wolf­walker, Hishn called again, and Dion could sense Ara­nur's calmness beneath her tones.

  Rhom is with you? she asked.

  The Gray One bared her teeth. I run with them.

  Dion sighed in relief. Hishn, tell Aranur that Shilia and the others are still safe. Tell them that—”

  The gray creature cut her off. Your hunger is as strong for them as my hunger is for you. Hishn's voice was full of emo­tion that Dion could not accept.

  Gray One, she sent softly, you honor me.

  With my life, Hishn returned violently.

  Dion balled her fits. By the moons, Hishn, I swear I will be with you again.

  The wolf was silent a moment, and Dion could sense her struggling with her images. There is a danger that Aranur can smell, the wolf sent finally. It is one that crawls from overhead and bites like the fleas that chew my tail.

  Dion frowned, glancing at the ceiling of the cell. From overhead? That bit like a flea? That could only be a vine, like the roofbleeders. But bloodsucker vines needed short roofs, and the cell ceilings were too high. Unless it was something else that she did not know of. Is it roofbleeders Aranur is worried about? she sent back slowly.

  The wolf whined softly. These thoughts are not clear. She concentrated, sent a fuzzy image of pallid coils, then broke off the image and tried again.

  But Dion nodded. It's all right, Gray One, she soothed. I understand. Tell Aranur that there is no need to worry. The ceilings are tall enough. It is rats and parasites that bother us here, not bleeders.

  The wolf hesitated, and Dion sensed her reluctance.

  Gray One, she sent, I am with you always.

  The wolf­walker was stronger the next day, and she finished most of the darts, giving her fourteen with which to practice. The fact that she could hear Hishn and see the daylight through the gray wolf's eyes buoyed her while she worked, so much so that she felt guilty she could not share the images with Shilia. Tehena, who did not know if Dion truly ran with the wolves, did not understand the healer's mood. She watched Dion Work, not offering to help, but unable to keep from taunting. Dion ignored the insults. As if Tehena were her pupil, she carefully explained each step in a whisper, and though the other woman seemed to pay scant attention, Dion knew she had memorized every word. Finally, with nothing else to do, Tehena took one of the bone slivers from Dion's hands and began scraping a point to it.

  She did not ask about Ovousibas again, and Dion was re­lieved. When the wolf­walker had learned to do the internal healing, she had not thought beyond using the skill. She had not realized what it might mean if it became known that she could do the ancient healing. She ground another point onto a dart, then looked up briefly. She remembered the old farmer's wife. And as she recalled Tehena's reaction upon seeing Di­on's back heal, she realized that the situation could only get worse.

  How many people begged the healers for miracles even with­out Ovousibas? Even Dion herself, each time she had seen a child die, had pleaded with the moons for one more cure, one more chance at life. Aranur had already shown her that she could not resist that fight: it had been he who first pushed her to learn the internal healing, then pushed her to use it to keep his family—and her own brother—alive. But if other people knew? She shivered. There were too many people in the world who needed healing. They could own her. They could destroy her with their will to live. She stared at her hands.

  “Healer?” Shilia's whisper broke into her thoughts finally, and Dion started.

  “I'm here.”

  The girl stretched her fingers through the bars, and the wolf­walker crawled over to that side of the cell and stretched her own fingers through until the two could touch.

  “Dion,” Shilia whispered again finally. “What will happen to us?”

  “You'll lose your tan, more than likely,” Dion returned lightly.

  The girl stared, then choked back a laugh. “You always say things like that.”

  “Do they make you feel better?”

  “Yes,” Shilia admitted.

  Dion smiled wearily. “That is what healers are for.”

  As they sat, the damp stone pressed into their shoulders, and the icy touch of the bars on their wrists made the warmth of their fingers unreal. Shapes of others in the dark prison shifted and caught their eyes, but they did not move.

  “Shilia ...”

  The girl answered in a low voice. “Yes?”

  “How much of the Ovousibas did Tehena realize? Did she talk with you when I was in the fever?.''

  Shilia thought for a moment, remembering those hours, those days, and reliving her terror that Dion would die only meters away from her just like her cousin had died before. Die and leave her alone. She could not hear or touch Namina, and if Dion were gone ...

  “No,” she whispered finally. “I asked her to care for you as best she could, but I never knew if she did, and we did not speak other than that.”

  Dion was silent. “Shilia,” she began again, her voice so low that the girl had to strain to hear her, “what would happen, do you think, if I were to tell the guards that I knew internal healing?”

  The girl's fingers tightened, and she flushed slowly, both honored and surprised that Dion, a wolf­walker, was asking for her opinion. “I thought about that at first,” she said finally. “And I told myself that they would take you out of here be­cause of it and treat you with the honor your deserve.” She paused.

  Dion waited, listening.

  “And after I was so sure of this that I was going to tell the guards for you,” Shilia continued, her voice trembling slightly, “they came by with a man whose hands had been cut off.” Her voice shook again. “They said that—that Longear had not liked something he wrote.” She caught her breath. “I asked myself what my brother would do if he was here. Aranur,” she whispered vehemently, “would never tell Longear that you could do Ovousibas.” She gripped Dion's fingers tightly. “They would make you prove it. Then they would make you do it for them, not for people who needed it. And they would never let you free again.”

  Dion was silent for a long moment. “That is what I thought also.”

  “Healer,” Shilia whispered.

  Dion did not answer, but she gripped the girl's fingers, and Shilia let her head rest against the bars. They sat that way for a long time.

  Dion used her headband to break a piece of wood from their dinner trough the next evening. Then she rubbed the trough across her mattress and the stones until the fresh break was as filthy as the rest of the wood. No one noticed.

  Aside from the whispered instructions and insults, the two women did not speak. They did not trust the other prisoners, any one of whom would turn them in to get an extra ration of food for a ninan, and they never knew when the guards would make their rounds. When footsteps echoed darkly in the cor­ridor, they scrambled to hide their work, living in a constant sweat that one of the guards would search their cell. Twice when the guards came by, Tehena caught Dion on the edge of Hishn's thoughts with her lips curled back and her teeth bared. The healer shrugged it off, but Tehena just licked her own lips and watched silently.

  Oddly enough, to Dion, it was not the smell or the dampness or the cold that got to her most, but the way her teeth felt thick and fuzzy and ached with jammed-in filth. The way the grime under her fingernails no longer came out when she picked at them. She could not stand to feel the gray wolf's senses any longer; the clean smells from Hishn only made the odors around her worse, and the clear sound of Aranur's voice brought a bitterness to her laugh to hide the despair in her chest.

  Four days. Four nightmares each night. Four breaths in the morning to clear each dream from her eyes. Four bites of bread. Four strokes on each side of a dart to sharpen the point. By those things were her days measured. Finally she began picking threads out of what was left of her clothes, and Tehena, watching her as usual, frowned.

  “What are you doing?”

  The wolf­walker carefully pulled a long thread free. “The two halves of the blowpipe have to be lashed together. But since the weapon is so tiny, I can use thread rather than raw­hide. The pipe will be finished tonight. Then we can practice.”

  Tehena scowled.

  “I won't put poison in the darts for practicing,” Dion con­tinued, “but it is ready whenever we need it.”

  The woman snorted. “Poison from rats takes ninans before it kills. How is this stuff going to knock out a guard in sec­onds?”

  “I added some other ingredients. It'll take a man out in­stantly.” She gave Tehena a sharp look. “Which means that the one thing to make sure of when you use this is that you don't breathe in when you have the pipe near your mouth.”

  Tehena nodded slowly.

  Dion tied the ends of the threads together to make one long string, then picked up the two halves of the tiny blowpipe. She had scraped a gutter down the center of each piece of wood so that when the two halves came together there was a perfect hole through the block. She began winding the thick thread around the ends. “Our darts will be so light that you won't need to blow hard to make this work. Just give it a puff, like this.'' She demonstrated.

  Without the blowpipe, Tehena looked like a fish puffing away, and Dion had to turn her head to stifle her smile. When she was done binding the thread, she selected a dart and placed it inside, then aimed and, with a quick breath, sent the dart flying into the corner of the cell. It struck the corner of the mattress there with enough force to bury itself deep in the straw tick, and Tehena, watched Dion swear under her breath and scramble to search the ragged mattress for the bone. The woman got a look of wonder on her face.

  “It really works,” Tehena said slowly.

  “Yes, if we don't lose all the darts before we learn to aim.”

  “You could use that on a guard.”

  Dion nodded.

  “And he'd go down. Just like that. Without calling for help.”

  “If your aim is true, then yes.”

  Tehena got a strange look on her face and said nothing more that day. But when Dion finished practicing with the darts, the other woman held out her hand for the gun. Dion, who let Hishn's voice fill her mind with a dim, gray fog, fell into her dreams, her slipping thoughts punctuated by the soft snapping sounds of the tiny bones sinking into Tehena's mattress.

  The next day, they waited for the prisoners across the hall to fall asleep again before they practiced, and in hours, their accuracy increased to the point where they could come within half a finger's width of any spot in the cell.

  “Healer,” Tehena whispered, putting down the blowpipe after Dion had shown her how to control her breath for max­imum distance and force. “I owe you.”

  Dion did not even bother to look up. “You owe me nothing, Tehena.”

  “I owe you,” Tehena insisted. “And I pay my debts.” She glanced at the weapon in her hands and looked at the wolf­walker. “I haven't had many friends. No one's done anything for me since I was ten years old. With this—” she looked down at the weapon again “—I'll get out of this rat hole if it kills me. Then I'll repay you.”

  “There is nothing to repay,” Dion repeated, though she was surprised at the other woman's vehemence. “We are here to­gether. If I can find a way out, I won't leave you by yourself.” She tried to smile in the dank gloom. “Moonworms, I'll need someone to listen to my ravings and tell me how insane the next stunt I'm going to try is.”

  “Don't make this sound like I'm doing you a favor,” Tehena said sharply. “No one does anything for anyone else just to get a moon blessing.” She stared at the healer. “I figure you just don't know how things work, that's why you're treating me so nice.” She gave a bitter snort. “Just wait till you take a whipping meant for me. I didn't lift a finger to help you against the guard, remember? I wouldn't even blink if you died right now. When you've been here a few more ninans, you'll understand.” She paused. “But I do pay my debts, Healer. I pay all my debts.”

  She broke off. Guards were coming into the prison, as if her mention of them had brought them in. Dion frowned. It was not yet time for gruel, and as Tehena realized that also, she shot the healer a wary look. Down the cell block, doors clanged, and Dion went to the bars to see what was happening. The soldiers had stopped at Namina's cell, and the girl was being dragged out, unresisting. As Dion watched, Shilia was next, and then the guards were at her own cell. They struck the bars with a pipe to make her stand back, then thrust a key into the lock. One of them pulled open the heavy door.

  “You, out.” The guard gestured peremptorily at her. She stared at him as if he were joking. “Yeah, you. Move it. And hurry. I've no wish to be Longear's lesson-of-the-day.”

  Tehena, who had flinched at the mention of Longear, watched impassively as Dion was dragged from the cell. The two women exchanged a long look while the guards fettered the wolf­walker's hands together, then pushed her to join Namina and Shilia. The girls had lost enough weight to make their high-boned cheeks too sharp, but they were not nearly as gaunt as Dion. The strain of Ovousibas and the fever that had fol­lowed it had taken their toll on the wolf­walker. Her cheeks had hollowed out, and the rags of her whip-cut tunic hung from her shoulders like moss from a winter tree.

 

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