Wolfwalker - Wolf In Night Part 7

Ovousibas, the internal healing, was forbidden. In the centuries that had pa.s.sed since the aliens sent plague, internal healing had become a myth, carried only in the memories of the wolves. There were perhaps two dozen people who knew it was real. Only one-Nori's mother-had mastered the technique. To do it now, without having the control to keep from being discovered by other wolves and, through them, by other wolfwalkers, was to chance being hunted down and killed. But oh, it was tempting.

Strain her thigh? Just reach for the yearling and heal it up. Break a leg, and knit the bone as neatly as melding clay. With internal healing, she'd be able to touch the packsong and seal muscles back together like book-matching a grained veneer. It wasn't quite that easy, but it could mean the difference between life and death, between dragging a leg to get away and limping at a run. She'd never have to worry about gelbugs or weibers again. Not that she usually did-the taint had some advantages-but there were times when even those slitted yellow eyes did not protect her. But the grey wolves hated the taint in her, and the yellow eyes hated the wolves.

Rishte growled softly.

Choose, she thought, between yellow and grey. Choose her form of protection. She was tempted . . .

Wolfwalker, no.

She blinked. For a moment, she stared unseeing at the yearling. Then she sat back on her heels. "Aye,"

she said softly. She was too tired, too unfocused, too distracted by fear and the newness of what was happening between them. "You are right. This is not the time."

She shifted, felt the papers crinkle in the sling, and pulled them out to study them while she caught her breath. She'd grabbed what she could, but the bag with the message tubes would have been a better catch. Those tubes probably contained the letters and contracts of every ring-runner dead in the past two ninans.

The first was exactly that, a contract from one merchant to another. She moved to a brighter patch of moonlight and smoothed it out. She recognized the guild seal even if she couldn't make out more than half the spidery writing. That could be pa.s.sed on intact. Then there was a torn report from a caravan guide on the status of trade along a particular route. It would have been more useful if there had been more than the halves of the first two paragraphs. The third was a letter, this one written in symbols that looked like a Tamrani House code. If she'd had her scout book, she might have figured out enough of it to know which one. Ariye kept close tabs on the Houses, and there was almost always someone who could be bribed.

There was little enough on the last torn piece. She'd interrupted the raider before he had written much down, but the three irregular lines made her sit back on her heels abruptly. Code, and not a House or guild code. She couldn't read it; it was new, but she recognized the structure. At least four other scouts had brought in samples like this one over the past year and a half. She knew, because she'd been birded just three ninans ago with a message from her mother. Six Ariyen scouts had gone missing after reporting to the council that they would try to get more samples. It was one of the reasons the Test council would be bigger than usual this year. The Ariyen Lloroi wanted to hear directly from the elders in the outlying towns. Something was coming, something was building up against Ariye; they just didn't know what it was.

Nori was no elder, but even she recognized that raiders didn't bother with code unless they were part of something much bigger than a single raider band. "c.r.a.p on a stickbeast," she whispered. If the raiders at Bell Rocks survived the worlags, they could be on her trail even now to retrieve their code and silence the one who took it. She jammed the papers back in the sling.

She had to get this to her parents, but staying onDeepening Road would be a mistake. It was the first place the raiders would look for her. And although she knew both scouts and ring-runners a.s.signed in this part of the county, she didn't know how to locate the contacts her parents used. Payne, not Nori, kept track of the web of informants, and people found Nori, not the other way around. There was an old weaver woman in Ayerton, but it would take Nori at least a day to reach her. With Test coming up next ninan, the woman might not even be there. On the other hand, Nori could make it back toWillow Road by morning if she managed to borrow a dnu. Then Payne could send the code by fast rider north to Mama and Papa.

The irony of what she was doing made her snort. The elders were so anxious to get her to do duty, but she'd been doing exactly that half her life. It was visibility they wanted, another Dione in the ranks, and that's what she denied them. If she had a choice, she'd stay in the background forever.

Puzzled, Rishte stared into her violet-grey eyes.The trail? The two paths?

Nori caught the image of the wolf at a fork in the trail. It was the same image she'd had since she was a child, of the choice between yellow and grey. She smiled wryly. "Choice," she agreed. "Of that, too.

Soon enough."

Rishte stared back into her violet eyes. He didn't understand, but he recognized the sense of the slitted eyes, the sense of power that seemed to crackle around the image of her mother. Tendrils of that power had already seeped into Nori, but not through the wolves. The sense of Ovousibas didn't bother the yearling, but the sense of the taint touching Nori's grasp of power made him growl, as if he would challenge the yellow eyes. The slitted gaze seemed to flicker open.

Grey Vesh snapped.

Nori and Rishte jerked.

Vesh bared her teeth and glared. Tainted. Alien. The thought grated on the pack. It was why Vesh and Helt were so reluctant to let Rishte bond. A wolfhuman link was an intimacy that clung to every level of thought. It would echo through the memories of the telepathic wolves. Accepting Nori meant accepting not only another human in the packsong, but also the things attached to the taint.

"No harm," she breathed. "I meant no harm."

Vesh backed off, but didn't stop snarling.

Nori's sweaty skin p.r.i.c.kled. She shook it off, but her lips were still curled back with Rishte's own, lower growl.

Wolfwalker?Rishte nudged her uncertainly.

She stared down at the yearling. Even under Vesh's protectiveness, she could feel his need for the bond like her own.

Blood-scent,he sent.Sweat-scent, breath, hot breath, your breath, Nori-breath.

Wolfwalkerwolfwalkerwolfwalker . . . Rishte's voice was a simple song, the need for affirmation.

"I am here," she whispered, projecting the words into his mind.We are together. She touched the grey fur again and let her finger run slowly along the ruff. Rishte's shoulders rippled. Wild as he already was, he could allow only the edge of that contact, but she could hear the longing in his mind for the close touch he didn't understand.

Human-thing, Nori-thing. Nori-mind. Mine. Wolfwalker, wolfwalker.

Vesh snapped irritably, and Rishte's ears flicked at the pack mother. The yearling turned his golden eyes away from the wolfwalker. Contact broke. Her breath caught at the loss. The Ancients had engineered the bond to trigger off the optic nerve. With the link so new, the abrupt cessation of intimacy was like going blind atnoon .

In front of her, Rishte turned to face the pack. His chest seemed to gain breadth as he growled at his pack mother and father.Nori-mine, he sent.Wolfwalker-mine.

Helt snarled.Human-thing. Tainted. Not-pack. Not-mine. Lobo. His ruff rose like a brush.

Rishte's hackles rose in return.Nori-mine, he insisted. His lips wrinkled back like old skin. His white, curved teeth were bared.

Slowly, carefully Nori stood.

Vesh watched her with that unblinking gaze. Finally, the female snapped at Rishte's shoulder. The yearling's ears flicked back. Vesh snapped again, and he submitted with another snarl. The mother wolf glared at Nori.Danger. Danger-you. Old death, new death. Danger.

Slowly, Nori nodded. The other wolves were older and stronger in their minds than Rishte. They could see the taint in her like blood on the gra.s.s. Rishte could not see that danger clearly, not through the excitement of first-bonding, but the taint in her mind had brought the pack's sense of nearby plague to the foreground.

"That kind of death is long gone," she tried to rea.s.sure them. She let her voice help focus her words through her mind. "I'll mark the place. My mother will check it out, but it's just a memory. You have no need to fear it."

New death,Vesh growled angrily. The female glared at Nori.Danger-you.

Nori didn't argue, not with a full pack of wolves with teeth bared right in front of her. She understood completely: the mother wolf wanted the human-thing gone as soon as her pups were safe. She took a breath. Distance, she told herself. Focus on that, not the taint. "The men on the road," she said instead.

"They are still kays away. Are there any humans closer?"

This, the wolves could answer. There was a sense of Nori's voice falling, falling away. Then a din of snarling grew far back in her mind. It thickened, blended, split apart. It came back more darkly before it tightened, like loose strings being slowly twisted into a thin cord. Moments later, the young wolf bared his lips as he gazed back into Nori's eyes.No men. Poolah hunting to the east. OldEarth deer moving away to the west back to their night hideouts. Bollusk bedded down beneath the thickest blackheart trees. Nothing else on the trails. Men on the trail. Closest.

Two more kays, then. Maybe three to reach the road. She rolled her shoulders to ease their tightness.

Three kays, max. She could do that.

Grey Vesh, impatient to get going again, pushed up beside Nori. The wolfwalker opened the sling. The mother wolf sniffed her pups, then looked up, met Nori's gaze, and growled. The older voice was harsher, wilder than Rishte's. It reminded her coldly that her link to the yearling was not yet set. It was barely clay or hard-packed sand, not twisted silk or stone.

Nori stared unblinking, unwilling to risk breaking that contact as she caught the depth of images and grey law that lay behind that voice. She suddenly realized that this was to be a lesson, the teaching of the young. For to the wolves, Nori was still young. She was not yet on her own, away from her pack, her family. Instead, she clung to the freedom of youth that her mother had fought to give her. It would not last. Eight ninans, and she would turn twenty-three, the final age of a Journey youth. It was the age at which even the Wolfwalker Dione must admit that Nori was grown. The wolves could read that point in her as clearly as if they counted the days to her birthday. Until then, as a yearling, she could still be influenced, could still be swayed toward the grey. Vesh had begun to realize that Rishte was already well caught. The pack mother had only this night to change the human-thing to better protect her child.

Nori sucked in her breath.You honor me, she sent reverently.

Vesh merely snarled more loudly. Behind the rough voice, the packsong seethed. This was not what Nori had seen through Rishte. That had been a wash of sound, like a hundred wolves howling from beyond the hills or the sound of surf near dunes. Vesh's mind was deeper, clearer, more distinct. It was like looking at a painting and seeing the individual brushstrokes instead of mere shapes and shades. In its own way, it was as strong as the taint that twisted her guts together. She and Rishte would be like that someday-if they stayed together.

Nori stretched her mind toward that packsong, using Rishte as a focus. Like light in a lens, voices shifted from a din into lupine growls. Needs and urges broke against each other like children crying out, laughing, hitting each other in play. Distinct images swept past: field mice digging desperately down, away from the wolves who pawed at their bolt-holes. One pack, then another, hunting eerin and deer into the brush.

Packmates tumbling at a den, splashing across streams and nosing through spa.r.s.e meadows for rasts and moles and rabbits.

The memories stretched back from yesterday, from last ninan, from years ago. Pa.s.sed from one grey generation to the next, these were the images that formed the base of the packsong. Any wolf could tap into that ocean of memories. They could see from other wolves the trails that had become too deadly to run, places of predator fights, places the wolves avoided. They could see other memories, too: humans they had bonded with, humans scouting, human-things that had little meaning to the wolves. Old images were faint as smoked gla.s.s, but the recent ones like Nori's run and the death of the messengers in Gambrel Meadow were sharp as heavy crystal.

Curious, Nori deliberately tried to ease into the image of the death-seep near the cliff that had reminded the wolves of plague.

Vesh growled louder.

Nori did not flinch. Slowly, she sent her question again.When was it there? she asked.What was it that formed the danger?

Uneasy, but caught by Nori's violet eyes as much as the wolfwalker was by the grey, Vesh pierced the packsong with her question. The seeking swept out reluctantly. The answer came back with a snarl.

Wrongness, unease, old danger burning-it was a jumble of need to avoid the area. It was also crisp, as if the urgency from Nori's run had pulled it into the foreground and given it more focus. There was more than one seep at the cliffs. The wagon track was the remnant of only one memory where men had dug in the earth. Six other swamps had begun to stretch north along the ridges, and the wolves were getting nervous. Nori frowned. The wolves were shifting north and east, not just to escape the worlags, but also to avoid the ridge, to avoid places where men had been near the cliffs. Places men had died.

Show me,she sent.

There was a flash of fear, the scent of sickness, the odor of decay. In that instant, Nori saw trees, flat walls, charred wood in piles. Fear-sweat. Terror in men. Death, burning death, sick death, and something too deliberate.

She felt a chill.Take me in- Vesh leapt back with a snarl. One wolf snapped at Nori's leg with a vicious bite that had her stumbling away. Grey Helt's fur was bristled like a hedgehog, and another one's lips had curled back so far that its mouth seemed to drip red off its teeth like the open maw of a poolah. Even Rishte stared at her like a badgerbear, caught up in the defense of the pack.

"Easy. Easy," Nori breathed. She swallowed her sudden fear that it was she, not the seep, that was the greater danger. She edged back, automatically letting the hum rise in her throat. She kept her gaze on Rishte. "I mean no harm to you."

Vesh growled without stopping, and some part of Nori's brain wondered how wolves could do that while still breathing. The other part focused on that sense of deliberate death. It had been recent, like a hunting trail a few years old, not faded like the Ancients. It crawled like cold steel up her spine. She could almost taste the dread in Rishte.

It was Helt who nipped at his mate's shoulder, glared once more at the wolfwalker, and indicated the trail.

Nori understood. There would be no more memory-walk. Not with her. What she didn't know was whether their rejection was for any wolfwalker who sought that danger, or for her alone, the scout with the taint in her mind.

X.

Look closely, the signs are small, Like spider prints in dust.

-fromTracking the Moons, by Vergi Vendo Wakje watched and chewed on a stalk of gra.s.s as Payne paced the edge of firelight. This close to the trailhead, the verge was wide. He had room to jog if he wanted.

Mye, Ki's son, turned over again in his sleeping bag. "Moonworms, Payne, are you going to pace all night?"

"If I have to," he said shortly.

"You might at least try to sleep." Mye tried to restuff his shirt under his head.

Ed Proving belched softly, and one of thechovas rustled his bag of jerky, trying to get the last pieces.

Another outrider was snoring like a bollusk. Payne's voice was dry. "I'm more likely to sleep in a full-blast furnace than with all this peace and quiet."

Ki glanced over from his watch post. Like both his sons, he was a lean man, incredibly fast in spite of his age. It was Ki who had taught Nori the knife and the guitar, with his fingers flying equally well over steel or strings. He'd taught Payne and Nori to ride, climb, shoot, splice rope, how to judge a man's moves by his balance and the way he set his muscles. Ki had eyes like a lepa watching the gra.s.s, seeking any movement, yet he'd never lifted his voice to them in all the years he'd taught them. Payne's father had said more than once that, if it hadn't been for Nori and Payne, Ki would have gone back to his raider ways within a year of joining Payne's father. It was why Ki avoided their mother as much as Wakje did.

The Wolfwalker Dione was a constant reminder of how they'd been caught and sentenced, of the killers who lurked inside them. When Payne bonded-if he bonded, Payne reminded himself-Ki might turn away from him, too.

Now Ki watched Payne with an unreadable brown gaze. "You won't be any good tomorrow. You'll need sharp eyes to catch her trail."

"I know," Payne returned too shortly. He was trying to stay controlled, but it had grown harder as every hour pa.s.sed. Nori might be older by two years, but Payne had looked after her since he was twelve. No one had asked him to, but he'd been there when they'd brought her back from Sidisport. Payne and Nori always slept side by side-she'd had nightmares since she was born, but after Sidisport the dreams were worse. In the months it took for her to recover, he'd become a shadow-guard. He'd followed her until she got so used to it that she stopped looking over her shoulder to find him. Mama had been furious when she learned that he'd been challenging the older boys, but Papa had taken Payne quietly aside and shown him a few more techniques. With what Wakje, Ki, Weed, and his other uncles had taught him, he'd lost only three of those fights. He'd also earned a strange, unconditional approval from his uncles, as if, even at twelve, he'd suddenly become a man, one whom even they could rely on, almost an extension of the Wolven Guard. It had been exhilarating, and he'd been c.o.c.ky as a preening chak until he'd been caught by six boys behind the packing house. If his uncle Weed hadn't come along, he'd have had every bone-not just an arm, a wrist, and a nose-broken well into the second moon.

And Nori, well, she could fight, but she rarely did. She was terrified of something inside her. He'd seen her freeze up a dozen times rather than strike first, as if some demon could tear physically out through her skin if she lost control of herself. And then afterward, the blinding headaches that could put her down for a ninan. She could barely be trusted to defend herself until after she was actually attacked.

Payne rubbed his jaw and stared at the camp with its small, lonely fire in the midst of the tramped-down clearing. If Nori had been uneasy, if Wakje and Ki thought someone was stalking her in the caravan, perhaps she had fled willingly to protect herself or to draw the danger off.

Dammit to the ninth h.e.l.l and back, he cursed silently. Out here, away from the caravan, she'd have no one to watch her back. He wanted to snarl at Murton as thechovas pretended not to watch him. One of the otherchovas, Gretzell, raised Payne's hackles also. There was something far too jovial about the man, like a fatty veneer over a rigid, vicious core. Even maSera, the slender young outrider with the long brown braid, felt like a threat right now. "Idiot-brained bollusk," he cursed himself.

"Payne," Ki started.

He whirled and slammed his fist into a tree.

The small camp went silent.

He stared at his own hand. He hadn't known that was in him. "Moonwormed a.s.s of a cave bleeder," he muttered. He closed his eyes and rubbed his bruised knuckles. Two of them were already welling out blood. He wiped them on his leggings and met his uncle's gaze. His voice was low. "My apologies." But he couldn't help adding, "It's just that she could be anywhere. She could be-" He shrugged angrily.

Wakje waited a minute. Then he said simply, flatly, "Payne."

The warning was clear. The ex-raider had never tolerated a man who lacked control. Payne took a breath, let it out. "I know," he returned finally. "But I can't sleep. I can't sit still. I just need to . . . move."

He resumed his pacing like a badgerbear in a cage.

Wakje's cold eyes followed the youth, but his thoughts flew after Nori. The two were close enough that the one sometimes unconsciously felt what the other did. They both admitted that they could sense the wolves on the edge of their minds. If Payne was this restless, perhaps he reflected the girl through the Grey Ones who never quite left either one. Wakje remembered more than one grey dusk with gleaming eyes, a carca.s.s shredded by long-jawed fangs, the smell of blood and musk . . . Wakje felt a chill in his bones. He had never trusted the grey.

XI "Rest a while," said the Tiwar.

"Why?" she asked, puzzled.

His voice was soft. "Because you are still bleeding."

-fromWrestling the Moons By the time Nori saw the barrier bushes forDeepening Road , she was barely doing a walk-jog. The wolves had judged the wagon's speed well; it wasn't far ahead. But instead of relief at catching up, she was getting increasingly jumpy. She finally realized that it wasn't her, but Rishte's growing sense of fear as the wild wolves approached the humans. Bad enough that he'd had to trail the behemoth-wagons all day to get her attention. Now she wanted him-and the pack-to nip at the giants' heels. She had to dig deep for the discipline to hold the wolf-link open and still lope toward the wagon sounds.

The odor of the shrubs began to hit her like sharp, jabbing slaps. The fireweed, blackthorn, and roroot that made up the hedge were usually faint-just a mild, pithy scent easily dulled by the herbs planted inside the border. For some reason, the stench of this stretch was stronger. She wrinkled her nose and tried to breathe shallowly. It took her more moments to realize that, with their link as open as a gossip's mouth, Rishte was sending her the odors received by the entire pack. The nasal a.s.sault was from the Grey Ones. "Rishte-" Abruptly, she closed down on the link. Her last sharp sense of the wolf was an echo of lupine laughter.

She crossed the first wide lane, stumbled over the tree-lined meridian on knees made of gelatin, and forced herself onto the other side of the road. It seemed to take forever to catch up those last few hundred meters to the trailing wagon guards. There were no dogs to warn of her approach, for which she was grateful. The wolves would have killed any guard-pets. Still, the wolves stayed in the rootroad trees as she loped up behind the citychovas.

Instinctively, Nori had stayed in the shadows until she was close, and the one outrider who had looked over his shoulder hadn't seen her. She didn't have the voice to call out to them, and with the wolves in her mind she couldn't force herself to do it. The pack was on the edge of attack-panic already as she took their pups among humans. She simply drew up beside one of the riders and, numbed, waited for him to realize she was there. She was not disappointed by the reaction.

"Buk p.i.s.s!" one of the younger ones cried out. The youth jerked the reins and actually startled his dnu into his partner's mount.

"What the-" The young woman's mount skittered into the meridian, nearly unseating the girl in the soft edge of the roots. "Hevre take you-" she snapped.

The first youth drew a sword so shiny that Nori could see its engraving. His thoughts-and his sudden spike of fear-were transparent: the beasts he saw behind him were a pack of the pink-eyed, doglike bihwadi, slavering at his heels.

There was a commotion in the front of the wagon as the lead guards reacted to the noise in the back.

Nori didn't have breath to rea.s.sure them, but it didn't matter. Already the third guard, the one who had been alert, was putting his half-drawn sword back in the scabbard. This man was no youth, and he'd read her in an instant. Quickly he whistled the signal for a ring-runner, then nudged his dnu closer to Nori.

She didn't greet him. She just extended her hand. He caught her sweat-slick wrist with a firm, callused grip and swung her up as if he didn't even notice her weight. He settled her more firmly behind him before he realized her whole body was trembling. Rishte dropped back to the pack with a low, mental snarl.