The wolf­walker nodded. Unslinging her water bag from her shoulder, she began unwrapping her hand. The wound looked worse than it was. The mangled flesh was scabbed over, and though the movement forced long needles of dull-red pain up her arm, she could wiggle her fingers.

  Shilia got up and looked at the injured hand with a frown. “You couldn't do that a few hours ago.”

  “I worked it as I ran.” Dion smiled briefly at the look of uncertainty on the girl's face. “I'm a wolf­walker, Shilia. I always heal fast.”

  Shilia nodded, then went over to her uncle and spoke to Aranur, who rose and came over to Dion.

  “Can you try the internal healing?” he asked quietly, drop­ping down beside her.

  Dion looked at him. “There is no record of a wolf­walker trying Ovousibas on herself,” she said, voicing her fears.

  “There was no record of the way to do the healing success­fully, until you found one.”

  “That was luck.”

  “It was logic,” he corrected. “The moons do not give gifts that are not deserved. Look at Gamon, Narnina, Shilia. Even your own brother would not be here if you had not cured him of the plague.”

  She glanced at her hand. “But I was not in need of healing then, Aranur. It will be different this time.”

  He touched her arm, and in the dimming light, his hand was strong on her skin. “I will be here,” he said. “And I will be the same.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then met Hishn's eyes. Gray One, she sent. You feel this wound of mine?

  The wolf's eyes gleamed, and as she opened her mind to Dion's pain, she snarled silently. Like a dnu pounding over my own paws, she sent. I would lick your hurt, but you cover it from my touch.

  Aranur's hands were on Dion's shoulders, and she glanced at him, then at the wolf. She smiled softly. There was poison in the wound, Gray One. If you had licked it, the poison would have affected you, as well. She rubbed the creature's ears. Aranur is willing, Hishn, and it is Ovousibas I need now. Will you take me in?

  The wolf cocked her ears. You want to walk within yourself?

  I need my hand, Hishn, and the tendons are torn. They will not heal by themselves, and I know of no other way to get the use of my fingers again.

  Then walk with me, Healer.

  She did not need to look at Hishn, but the yellow almond shapes of the wolf's eyes followed her into her mind. For Aranur, those gleaming yellow coals swallowed him until he could hear Dion's and Hishn's voices as if they were his own. And under his hands, Dion stiffened.

  Her mind spun to the left. There was a dizzying drop of thought, and images rushed by like a fall from a mountain cliff. There was a jumble of color and scent—the fragments of mem­ories and bodies and wounds and then of flesh torn and blood vessels ripped apart. And then the pulse, the pound of the heart far away and the cells forcing their way through the debris of the wound, leaking away only to die. There—the tendons curled into balls where they snapped from the bones, and Dion reached into herself with her mind. Aranur's strength buoyed her, and Hishn directed her focus while the nerves whipped and frayed beneath her consciousness. The healer aimed her en­ergy, touching here, there, until the tortured oozing of her blood stopped and she could sense the damage that burned at her as from a distance. Hishn was a gray wall that the pain could not cross, and Aranur fed the wolf his own strength until the wall became a solid thing.

  Dion did not hesitate. She knew the wall would not last. She seamed and placed the tissues. Each muscle to a ligament; each tendon to a bone. She set them in place and welded them with her thoughts until their bonds held like steel. There were pock­ets of brackish poison still hiding in her flesh, and the toxin crawled as she forced her antibodies to crowd and crush it. Her pulse grew loud. The gray wall was strong, but it thinned and shortened until the Gray One began to withdraw, letting the impulses from the nerves grind against it. The healer shuddered within herself. She fought the pull briefly, then surrendered as it warred with her own strength and won. Her pulse caught her up and shot her away.

  She opened her eyes. She was shaking, her hands trembling as the one clenched the other, and Aranur sat back as she shrugged herself free of the weight of his hands. Hishn's teeth were closed about her arm, and Dion, loosing that hold, real­ized that it had been Hishn's sharp touch that pulled her back from the healing. Other hands steadied her, and she looked up to find her brother beside her, his face lined with concern.

  “Was it enough?” Aranur's voice was hoarse until he cleared it.

  Dion nodded briefly. Her stomach cramped, and her hunger consumed her, and she did not trust her voice. She uncovered her hand instead, and both Aranur and Rhom stared. It had not healed cleanly; there were thin ridges and lines where the flesh had set back together without bonding, but beneath the trans­parent layer of skin that now covered the wound, they could see that the tissues were in place, and the muscles and bones rippled slightly as she worked her fingers.

  Rhom turned his attention to his sister. “I thought you would tell me before you did this again,” he said steadily.

  She looked up at him, then clenched her good hand against her cramping stomach. “It had to be done sometime,” she managed, “and better now, before infection set in.”

  Rhom gave her an unreadable look, then dug the last of his jerky from his wallet. He added the tubers Shilia had saved for her, and Dion accepted them without speaking. She felt starved, but she tore only half the jerky off for herself. The other half she offered to Aranur. Hishn, after nudging Dion and nearly tipping her over, trotted off into the shadows to hunt her own meal.

  Aranur accepted his share of the tubers as well, but his eyes did not leave Dion. “Was it different?” he asked finally. “Do­ing the healing on yourself instead of someone else?” He watched her carefully. “I can only sense your thoughts, not what you do when I ride Hishn's strength to help.”

  She stared at her hand. “It was ...” She paused and frowned, struggling for the words. “I ...” she tried again, then shrugged helplessly.

  He touched her thigh. “You don't have to talk.”

  “No, I—I want to.” Meeting his eyes, she lay her hand on his. “It was ... intimate, private, Aranur. But at the same time, more vast than—than the sky where it spreads across the desert.”

  Aranur frowned, trying to see the image.

  “I was inside myself—in my own thoughts, my own heart,” she tried again. “But the sense of it stretched beyond my body through Hishn, through you, through my own mind.” She motioned at the clearing. “It was as if I was an extension of a sense that was not limited to what I can see now. As if I understood the motion of every cell, every molecule. As if the gray wall that shielded me from myself took me beyond thought to a—to a level that was pure life.”

  Aranur, watching her, smiled.

  She caught his look. “You don't understand.”

  “No.”

  She shrugged and pulled away slightly.

  “Dion—” His hand tightened on her thigh.

  She looked at him unwillingly.

  “It is not important for me to understand completely,” he said softly.”What is important is that I am here when you need me.” He touched her hand. “This—this is real,” he said, squeezing her palm in his.”What strength I can give you is real. But what I feel and see when you do Ovousibas is like a dim candle compared to the light you see with. The healing is a gift from the moons, Dion. A gift only you can truly understand.”

  The wolf­walker stared at him for a moment, then leaned toward him until her forehead touched his shoulder, and his chin rested briefly on her hair.

  Across the camp, Rhom threw a dark look at Aranur. Ovousibas was dangerous. And Dion knew that, but nothing Rhom said would give Dion more caution—especially when Aranur encouraged her to do the healing at every turn. She had not needed to do the Ovousibas—she knew Dion was a wolf­walker. Her hand would have healed eventually anyway. And the pull of the internal healing—he had seen it, and it was stron­ger than the pull of the wolves. He had caught it in her eyes before Hishn bit Dion's arm and pulled her back, and he knew that it could hold his twin if she tried it on herself again. He tossed fitfully on his blanket. He stared at the faded stars. Aranur merely gave his strength in the healing; Dion gave her soul. If she went too far ...He tightened his jaw. Finally he forced his eyes closed.

  The next morning, a light gray veil of clouds covered the sky, and the group went only a few kilometers before the wind rose, bringing with it a stagnant warmth. Aranur, in the lead again, climbed a rise and made his way carefully into a steep gully, following the wolf. Hishn picked the deer trails as if she knew them already, though Dion had told Aranur that the Gray One learned the trails from other wolves who had run that way in the past; the memories of the Gray Ones stretched far beyond their own lives. In front of him, Hishn paused, sniffing, before lunging up the hill. The path was a switchback so steep that even Aranur found himself climbing over the eroded rocks with his hands on his thighs, as if to force his legs to work. Sweat beaded on his temples. As he crested the ridge, the wind cut to the left and swept along the treetops, and he stood for a mo­ment, waiting for the others to catch up. The smell became familiar, wrinkling both Aranur's and Hishn's noses. “Swamp,” Aranur said as Tyrel joined him.

  “At least it's a small one,” his cousin said, peering down through the trees as he caught his breath.

  “About a kilometer across.”

  “Should we go around?”

  Aranur shook his head. “Look at the growth patterns in the valley. There are swamp trees at both ends; it wouldn't be any drier unless we went back into the ridges, and that would cost us a day and a half.”

  The boy lowered his voice and glanced at Dion, who crested the rise with her brother. “What about mudsuckers?” he asked. “Dion said the scouts have already seeded this area.”

  “Mudsuckers need open water.”

  Dion gave him a sharp look. “You want to cross the swamp here?”

  Aranur nodded.

  An odd expression crossed her face, and she turned away, standing with her back to him for a moment, until Hishn, who rubbed against her thigh, whined. Turning to face him again, the wolf­walker said flatly, “Hishn and I will go around the swamp, Aranur. We'll meet up with you again on the other side.”

  Rhom glanced at her, then nodded. “I'll go with you, Dion.”

  But Aranur shook his head. “No, Rhom, Dion. We'll stay together.”

  Dion stiffened. “You take this staying together too seri­ously, Aranur.”

  “If I didn't,” he returned sharply, “some of us would be dead.”

  But the wolf­walker stood her ground. “I will not cross that swamp, Aranur.”

  “You would not have hesitated before yesterday,” he said deliberately.

  Dion clenched her teeth. “Even if I wanted to cross,” she said in a low voice, “I would not be any good to you until you got to the other side.”

  He shrugged. “I'll take that chance.”

  She shook her head angrily, and Hishn bared her teeth. “You don't understand,” she insisted. Shilia and Namina had joined them and were listening. Dion's face flamed. “From what the scouts said, this swamp was seeded ninans ago—and mudsuckers reproduce after every feeding. That's more than enough time for there to be dozens of suckers in that place— and long enough by now for some of them to be twice our size.”

  “The swamp is large, Dion. And there are tastier fish to feed on than leather and steel.”

  “And if they like leather and steel?”

  “It's summer, Dion, and even though the clouds are thick­ening up, they will not bring rain before tonight. Right now, the water is low, and we can cross on the floating islands for most of the way.”

  “Even from here, I can see open water.”

  “And I can see that you're losing your nerve.”

  Dion's face stung, and no one else spoke. Even Rhom did not look at his sister.

  “I'm sorry, Dion,” Aranur said. “That was not fair.”

  She clamped her mouth tight and dug her hand into Hishn's fur until the Gray One glared at him as well. “All right,” she said in a low voice. “We will cross with you.”

  He touched her arm. “I will be going first, Dion.”

  “That won't help you,” she said bitterly. But she fell into line anyway, ahead of Rhom, who came last, brushing out the few tracks they left behind.

  Ten minutes later, they trudged down into the tall grasses of the marsh, wading through the jagged blades and snorting at the pollen released by their passage. The ground, soft at first, quickly became soggy, and the mud began collecting on their boots and turning their feet into blocks of weight that became increasingly difficult to lift. As she watched the others care­fully picking their footing ahead of her, Dion motioned to Rhom to pass her, and he gave her a steady look but went on.

  At the edge of the deeper mud, Dion hesitated, but at Rhom's backward glance she clenched her jaw and stepped out into the fen. Hishn sniffed the rotting mud and snorted, backing away. Motioning for the Gray One to follow her, Dion forced herself on, but Hishn whined. The wolf paced along the muck, looking after Dion and stretching her nose.

  Rhom glanced back. “She's as reluctant as you.”

  His sister gave him a cold look. “I'm here, aren't I?”

  “Yes, but where's your better half?” He extended his hand to her and held it there, waiting for her to take it.

  Dion stared at him, then laughed shortly in spite of herself. As she accepted his help to the next solid footing, she said sourly, “My better half is keeping dry while we get bogged down in this mud.”

  Rhom chuckled. “She'd better come soon if she's going to try it. We'll be out of sight in a minute,” he said, stepping carefully to the next spongy island. The swamp grass grew taller here, and clumps of thick brush made islands of more-solid mud in the marsh.

  Dion glanced up. “Since when has Hishn needed her eyes to find me?”

  “Since you smell like the mud you're wading in,” he teased.

  “Well, you smell just as bad,” she retorted. She looked at the mud and shuddered as she made her way through the next deep hole. “Maybe worse, with the way you're sweating on top of it.” But she paused and looked back. The wolf had taken two gingerly steps into the marsh, then stopped... Come on, Hishn. Dion sent. Hurry up.

  The wolf whined, then loped off to the east, returning in a few seconds to whimper and try the mud again.

  Dion frowned. “She's beginning to panic.”

  Gamon, four islands ahead of them, turned and motioned for them to catch up.

  “If you were out of sight, she might be more eager to come after you,” her brother suggested.

  But Dion hesitated. “The longer we're away from home and the more unfamiliar the land, the more she insists on staying close to me.”

  “Dion, Rhom,” Gamon called irritably. “These islands aren't stable, and we can't wait all day.”

  “Moonworms,” Dion muttered. Come, Gray One, she sent silently. I agreed to do this for both of us. But you have to walk this path, too. Just follow my steps like you did as a pup. I am no farther away than my thoughts. She turned and jumped to the next floating clump of grass, and the tall, yellow-green stalks abruptly cut her off from the wolf's view. The Gray One's howl, however, followed them across the mud as easily as the hungry bugs that clouded the air over their heads.

  Her brother swore under his breath at the wolf's long whine. “Why not let the whole countryside know we're here? Can't you tell her to do that in your head and not our ears?”

  Gray One, I am here. Just follow my thoughts.

  Rhom offered Dion his hand as she teetered on the edge of a muddy rock before jumping to his slippery island. “If we'd only left you behind as well, everything would have been fine,” he teased ungently.

  But as Hishn howled again, Dion turned back. “I'm going to have to go back for her,” she told her brother. “Tell Aranur that I had no choice. We'll find a better place to cross, and then meet up with you later.”

  But Rhom snagged her arm and hauled her around. “That's no solution, Dion. Hishn's young, but she's got to learn some­time,” he said sternly. “And so do you.”

  Dion shook his arm off. “She's scared, Rhom. She needs me.”

  “She needs discipline, not coddling, Dion. You're both old enough in your bonding to know that.”

  “But she'll panic—”

  “She's testing your independence, Dion. And your cour­age.”

 

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