Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  “He is not in Randonnen,” she said softly. “He is on his way to Ariye. But I would feel him anyway.”

  Tehena had been content to let Kiyun question the wolfwalker, but now she raised her thin eyebrows. “Why Ariye?”

  “Because I need him,” she said even more softly. “I think I have been calling him to me as I’ve Called the wolves— through my needs.”

  Tehena and Kiyun exchanged a glance. Kiyun cleared his throat. “It will take him ninans to reach Ariye. We’ll be halfway out of the county by the time he reaches your home.”

  Dion shook her head. “He’s not taking the valley route.”

  “Surely you can’t tell the route he takes—” The burly man broke off at the wolfwalker’s expression. “How do you know he’s not taking the valley?”

  “Because he is crossing The Dry.”

  This time, the look between Tehena and Kiyun was almost comical. Dion caught it and actually laughed out loud. “I can feel the dry, the thirst, the heat. It’s just like sensing a distant wolfwalker through the pack. Like an Ariyen wolfwalker sensing the cold here through my own link to the wolves. Don’t worry. I’m not crazy, even after what happened up north.”

  “After what happened?” Tehena snorted. “That’s about as mild an understatement as even you could make. You deliberately invaded the alien breeding grounds, and a birdman carried you off like a hare, sliced you up like a dinner goose, and dumped you on a glacier.”

  “I came back,” Dion said mildly.

  “You did,” Tehena agreed. “A full day later and covered in blood.”

  The wolfwalker shrugged. “I was alive.”

  “Like poolah meat,” Tehena retorted. “Something nearly tore your babe right out of your womb. You act as if you took a stroll, instead of setting yourself out to die. And just because you didn’t come back completely gutted doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.”

  Dion gave her a sideways look.

  “What?” Tehena asked suspiciously.

  Dion’s voice was dry. “I’m just trying to parse the negatives.”

  “Pah.” The thin woman snorted again. “So you can feel Rhom at this distance then. I thought you didn’t have that kind of resolution.”

  Dion looked north, then back toward the wolves. “I don’t know. I feel different. I am different, and it’s not just from carrying this child. I hear the wolves differently now, as if there is a touch of something cold, something wrong in the packsong.”

  “That hunter?”

  “No.” She hesitated. “I think it is the Aiueven.”

  “The birdmen? How can you be sure?”

  “I met them, spoke with them, felt their power. I channeled enough of it that I almost killed you,” she added to Tehena. “I am sensitive to it now. Like being able to distinguish a touch of color where before, I thought it was just an odd part of the gray.”

  Kiyun said slowly, “Like an injury to your guts, and ever after you can feel your spleen?”

  She nodded. “And if I can hear them, even so faintly, who knows how much I have changed in other ways? I feel urgent, drawn, pulled, hunted, and I know those things are through the wolves. But my thoughts seem sharper, my vision more acute even in the last few days. Like this child.” She touched her belly. She tried to ignore the guilt that came when she thought about her children. She had adopted her eldest when he was eleven. She loved him as her first son, but had never felt him through the wolves as she had the two boys she had borne of her own body. Last spring, Olarun, her oldest blood-son, had run from her, blaming her for his younger brother’s death, but she knew she had abandoned him as much as he had run from her when she rode away from Ariye. Gods, but she missed them. Cursed herself for leaving them, and cursed herself a dozen times more for still being unable to face them with the guilt for the deaths of Danton and Aranur. Yet she felt her two living sons less than she should—or rather, she realized, she felt this unborn child with more closeness than she ought to if there were only wolves in her mind. She pressed hard against her flesh. “I feel this child with a clarity I never had with my sons. I feel the edge of power in the packsong and know that I could use it as easily as you use a knife.”

  “To heal?”

  She shrugged. She had been blinded by the legends, she realized. She had thought of Ovousibas as a tool only for fixing broken bodies. But the energies she had manipulated for years now seemed infantile compared to what was possible. The aliens used their ability to manipulate energy for everything from building tunnels to killing—as they would have killed Dion, if not for her . . . mother. She had forced a mental link between the alien and herself and her child. With the near-permanent memories of the telepathic birdmen, they had not been able to kill one of their own—as much as Dion was such. Instead, they had let her live, and she had learned as much from that brief contact as she had in the fourteen years since she first tried Ovousibas. There had always been a hint of yellow in the back of the wolfpack’s song. Now she knew what it was. It was power like that of the Ancients, the power of the land, of the world, of the stars. It could be used for more than healing. She tried to hide her shiver, but she could feel the female presence of the alien like a silent, wary watcher. She had run north to escape her demons, and had bargained with the devil instead. It should have been a simple thing, a bond between mother and child, but this bond was between human and alien and was filled with power that would taint even her children’s children.

  She looked down at her hands, then back up at the others. “Have you ever wondered whether a wolfwalker’s faster healing was because of the alien influence?” she asked. “That there might be some latent sense of Ovousibas in the wolves’ memories, and that we tap into that so unconsciously we don’t even realize there’s something else behind it?”

  Tehena studied her thoughtfully. “If that were so, then surely in eight hundred years, other wolfwalkers would have discovered that, too.”

  “I think the Aiueven recognize it when any wolfwalker does. We’ve always known they can hear the wolves, and through them, the wolfwalkers. We’re like fleas in their mind, irritating the edges of their thoughts.” Dion gestured with her chin to the north. “They barely tolerate humanity as it is. If a wolfwalker understood that the aliens were actually inside the packsong where their power patterns could be read— where the patterns are read by healers like me—that realization would be as distinct as a bonfire on an icefield. It would bring the aliens down on that person like lepa on a staked-out rabbit.”

  “If they can hear you so clearly . . .” Kiyun cleared his throat. “Dion, your wolf-bond is stronger than that of almost any other wolfwalker. And the birdmen know of you. You threw your presence in their face when you challenged them. What’s keeping them from killing you?”

  “We made a pact, they and I,” Dion said simply.

  “A pact,” Tehena repeated. “Like that with the wolves?”

  “Different, but just as binding.” Dion’s lips twisted in a humorless smile. “The Aiueven will let me live, as long as I leave them alone.”

  Tehena scowled. There was something more to the wolfwalker’s words.

  Dion fell silent and let her mind stretch out into the gray. Graysong, thicksong, distance . . . There was a faint sense of a crowd, as if a hundred gray voices murmured a kay away. Fur ruffed against the wind. Calloused paws broke through the crust to crush the powder beneath. Cold claws. Cold, cold dewclaws . . . Dion stretched farther, trying to reach her twin, but without the intense emotions of the moment, the sense of the hunter intruded instead, and the echo of that man’s voice chilled her like the wind. The pause lengthened into minutes, and she shrugged irritably, as if she could toss off the feeling that he was tracking her through the wolves.

  Kiyun said quietly. “This is the fourth time you stopped today to listen. Yesterday, it was five. Was it Rhom all these times?”

  “No. Rhom could use the wolves to find me if they were willing to come to him, but he doesn’t need to do
that. We’re too close. We can feel each other on our own.”

  “It’s the man in the packsong,” Tehena said flatly.

  Dion nodded, still silent as she cocked her head to listen.

  Moons, it was like pulling teeth. “Is he a wolfwalker?” Kiyun persisted.

  Dion looked back at him. “No,” she said finally. “I should be able to speak to a wolfwalker through the Gray Ones if that were the case. Even with the wild wolves and even at this distance, I should be able to send an impression of what I am thinking. But I cannot do that here. No, this is no wolfwalker. This man, he is something else.”

  Tehena studied the wolfwalker carefully. “What kind of person could hunt you through the wolves but not be a wolfwalker?”

  “You don’t have to be a wolfwalker to hear the Gray Ones,” she said slowly. “Aranur could hear the wolves. I Called them to find him at the coast, and now, in their memories, they look for him forever to bind us together again. It is that sort of hunting, a seeking that goes beyond location to intent.” Cold intent, she admitted to herself. Frighteningly focused intent. Moons, but the wolves had found a man enough like her mate that in their eyes, he was already bonded to her. Her flash of anger pierced the gray as she fought to hang on to her memories.

  Kiyun glanced at Tehena. His voice was quiet. “Dion, you have to let go of Aranur. You have to move forward. He is gone. He’s dead.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “Then I love a ghost,” she returned. She held up her hand to stop him from speaking further. Her voice was soft. “We were kum-tai, Kiyun, not kum-jan or kum-vani, not simply friendship or tenderness. We had the forever bond. Do not take even that away, or what’s left of my heart will break.”

  “Dion . . .” He forced his voice to hide his own emotion. “Dion, your heart is already broken.”

  She gave him a slow, twisted smile. “Then it won’t hurt to cling to the pieces.”

  “And the wolves?”

  “The wolves . . .” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes unfocused as she stretched back into the packsong. “They don’t understand. They think to direct my mating. This man . . .”

  “Is hunting you,” Tehena finished.

  “Yes. And I am—” She broke off. She spoke more softly, as if to voice what she felt would be to call it into a more physical existence. “I am . . . afraid.”

  Kiyun and Tehena exchanged a glance.

  Dion nodded to herself as she admitted it. She reached farther into the gray to feel that man more clearly. She had been right: he had no real voice, no real bond with the wolves. Yet she could sense his presence like a roiling cloud on the edge of the gray, cold and full of fury. It cried out with need, and it struck out in rage and vengeance as she did. It was blind will and fierce determination, and spurred on by the gray steel will of the wolves, it was hunting her down like a deer, listening to her voice in the gray, feeding on her senses. By the time they met, he would know her as well as the wolves: her strengths, her weaknesses, the ways to manipulate her skills. She would know the same about him: his pain, his goals and fears. She shook herself, but she could not rid herself of the chill that wormed its way up and down her spine. She had sacrificed her family already to the elders in Ariye. What would this man demand? If she could not say no to the elders, she could still leave that twice-damned county. Could take herself out of range of the elders and use her skills for those who would help her child to live, not use it as another tool. But this hunter was not one to stand still and wait for her to come to him or accept a quick yes or no. He projected his determination toward her like a spear. She reminded him of his family just as he reminded her of her own, and he would not let go so easily if she simply rode away.

  The look she gave Kiyun was sober. “The man who hunts me, he is forced toward me either by the wolves or by his own wishes. And he is a man of fury. A man of grief and violence.”

  “You can tell this through the wolves?”

  She laughed without humor. “Always.”

  “And this man, he is a danger?”

  “He is strong,” she whispered, unaware that she answered out loud. “He is driven. He will not give up, not to the ends of the world and beyond.” She didn’t realize that her violet eyes grew haunted. “Something binds them together, the hunter and the wolves. He fights it as he fights his own griefs, and he will fight me like death when we meet because I will remind him of everything he has lost.” Her voice was low. “I am too close to my own griefs. I’m not yet strong enough to face his. This man, he will tear my memories, try to take over my life, make me fit his needs just as the elders did.” The wolves in her head howled like drums. Wolfwalkerwolfwalker . . . He wanted her, wanted the strength in her bond, the power in her hands. He threw his rage at her as if he didn’t know or care what it would do when she felt it through the wolves.

  Tehena’s pale gaze narrowed. “Then this man, he is a danger to you.”

  Dion opened her eyes and stared blindly at the woman. Her whisper was sharp with fear. “This man, he could destroy me.” She clenched her fists on the reins, and her dnu chittered and skittered with unease. Wolves, demons, Aiueven—damn them all, she cursed to the wind. She was not ready to fight, but the wolves were pushing, shoving her toward this hunter. Until she faced him, she could not force the Gray Ones away, could not regain her own life. It was the wolves’ own Calling that she had to Answer, and she cursed them silently as they crawled inside her mind.

  Kiyun frowned at her expression. “Dion?”

  “We ride,” she said in a hard, flat voice. She kicked her dnu to a canter. “South and west to Ariye.”

  XXIII

  Talon Drovic neVolen

  My mind is clear,

  And night, stretched out before me,

  Is a dark eternity;

  I see no path;

  My hands, still grasping sword and bow,

  Find no serenity;

  My eyes are black—

  Their images are tainted;

  What blood has done within my soul,

  I do to flesh with this blued-steel knife,

  And plow and plant and cultivate

  The dark, the dreams, the nightmares which

  Become my life.

  —from “The Lost Ring” by Aranur Bentar neDannon

  Talon was heading to the barn when he felt the hot eagerness shaft through his mind. With his headache, it triggered a blinding pain. He staggered, caught himself, and stiffened as he recognized the gray tint to the emotion. He found himself sprinting toward the barn. The dogs on the back porch were barking to deafen an entire church, but it was at the wolves who streaked through the courtyard. Something was beside him, and he realized it was lupine. Gray Chenl, he recognized.

  Hunt with me, the wolf projected eagerly. Find. Protect.

  He realized suddenly that there were other wolves behind them: Ursh, Lanth, Thoi, Vrek . . . The Gray Ones’ eagerness was a focused heat in Talon’s limbs, and he found himself stretching his legs to race the wolves as if he could beat them to the barn. It was the hunt they had been pushing, a hunt close enough to the one they wanted that their eagerness whipped through his mind. For a moment, he ran in a tide of gray. Then the wolves left him behind, split around the barn, and swept over and through the half-patched fences to race across the fallow fields and disappear again into forest. Only moonlight was left to trace the broken line of grasses and remind him that the wolves had been beside him. His nostrils flared to catch their scent, but only fading images remained in his mind, like a dream that leaves a man panting.

  Slowly, Talon came to a halt. He stared after the wolves. Then he stiffened at the curse and the cry that came from within the barn. Quickly, he moved to the doorway, keeping out of the light. With the dnu snorting and stamping and the darkness, neither Fit nor Kilaltian noticed him. Fit had the girl from the farmhouse, and he’d already stripped her, leaving torn ribbons around her ankles and wrists where the heavier seams had held. She struggled wildly in his grip, and as Talo
n watched, Fit struck her hard on the cheek and threw her down in the straw. Talon started forward, then realized that Kilaltian would stop Fit for him.

  Fit’s knife was in his hand, and Kilaltian’s hands were empty, but the tall, handsome man did not flinch. “Give her back her clothes,” Kilaltian said. “Or I’ll dig your teeth out with a dull knife and sew up your mouth with wire so hot it’ll burn your name into your gums.”

  Fit spat at Kilaltian’s feet. The girl tried to crawl away, but Fit put his boot on her calf and ground down so that she sobbed. The move gave Kilaltian his opening, and he struck Fit like a lepa, fast and brutally accurate. The smaller man staggered back into a post. He half slid down in a cloud of dust and lost his knife in the straw. He came back up like a worlag. The two men crashed together, and the girl scrambled out of the way. Fit was a whirlwind, striking three times like lightning, but Kilaltian punched back so hard that the shorter man went down like a rock. Then Kilaltian backhanded the skinny man so that Fit fell sideways and lay like a discarded twig.

  Kilaltian looked down on the other man with his hands on his hips as if Fit were an errant child. The taller man’s voice was mild. “We’re a venge, not a pack of raiders, and you take Drovic’s orders like the rest of us. Besides, rape this girl, and even Talon might take your head for ruining this retreat. Make her want you—then it’s no fault but her own.”

  Talon’s lips tightened. Kilaltian tended to take women freely, but then to protect them from others. This girl with her frightened eyes had triggered that protective sense, and he knew Kilaltian hated himself even as the man protected what wasn’t his. Talon’s hand rose without volition to rub at the old gems that studded his sternum beneath his tunic. One for Promising, one for Mating. He had not protected what was his, and now the wolves were throwing that in his face.

  “Besides,” Kilaltian continued, as he reached down and hauled the girl up by her arm, ignoring her half scream. “It’s much more satisfying when you walk away after she asks for it and leave her with her shame.” The tall man shoved the girl toward the door of the barn. She fell, sobbed, then staggered to her feet. She fled in a blind, naked run.