Wolf's Bane

by Tara K. Harper

  “Hah. I think they thrive on it.”

  But she didn’t smile, and Gamon studied her for a moment before handing her her cloak. “You want to look at the others now?” he said finally.

  She nodded. She pushed the blanket aside and ducked through. Instantly, Cheria got to her feet. “How is he? Will he be all right? Asuli said—”

  “He will be all right,” Dion told her. “Your intern did a good job with the stitching and herbs. She should be able to do the rest from here on out.”

  The woman’s worn shoulders hunched slightly, but she forced herself to ask, “Will he … walk again?”

  “It will be a while, but yes, he will walk again.”

  The woman sank down on the chair. For a moment she merely sat, looking blankly at the rug. Then she sprang to her feet and hugged Dion fiercely. Hishn, beside Dion, snarled, and Cheria didn’t notice, but she did feel the ridges of scar and gouged flesh on Dion’s shoulders. Abruptly, she stiffened. “Healer, you— I’m so sorry—I forgot. We’d heard …” She stepped back abruptly. “You’re so thin,” she said finally, briskly. “You need food.” She bustled to the kitchen.

  Gamon watched the woman with a grin. “The ubiquitous stew, I imagine.”

  Dion shrugged.

  “Better watch out,” he warned. “You might start to like it.”

  Dion raised her eyebrow, but Gamon’s sharp eyes noted the almost imperceptible stretch of her lips. It was not a smile, but it was a lighter seriousness. He felt a tension release from his own shoulders. “Come,” he said. “You have another house call to make.”

  Cheria hurried out of her kitchen then. “Where are you going? Healer, I’ll just be a moment. It’s small enough thanks to feed you supper for what you’ve done for my Jorg.”

  “Later,” Gamon called back.

  Outside, the village felt hostile and closed. The gray sky seemed to press down on the summer heat so that thought itself was stifled. A small party of men and women were building a funeral pyre off to the side of one hub of houses, and Dion and Gamon heard the curses clearly as they dragged the raider bodies up. The two crossed the streets in silence, as if their own voices were themselves oppressed.

  The door to the other wounded man’s home opened before they reached the porch, and a slender young woman stepped out, eyeing them, but letting them come up on the porch before she spoke. “You’re here to see Lege,” she stated more than questioned. Gamon frowned, but the young woman ignored him, meeting Dion’s level gaze with her own. The plain, uncarved silver band of an intern circled her brow, and her dark blond hair swung freely as she gestured with bare courtesy for them to enter. “I’m Asuli maLian, intern to the late Healer Yrobbiquipel.”

  The young woman’s voice was almost haughty, and Dion studied her for a long moment. “Healer Dione,” she replied finally.

  At her side, Hishn snarled so low in her throat that Asuli didn’t hear. She challenges you, the gray wolf growled.

  She is young, Dion returned.

  But Hishn gave the intern a baleful look. Dion’s own lips began to curl, and she had to force her expression to steady. “I am here to see Lege,” she reminded the intern softly.

  The other woman barely nodded. “His concussion is critical,” Asuli returned. “He is declining. There is nothing more to be done except wait for him to die.” She gestured for them to enter, but as Dion neared her, the younger woman drew herself up almost imperceptibly and tried to look down her nose. Dion, slightly taller, narrowed her eyes but said nothing. When Asuli turned her expression on Gamon, the lean old man quelled her with a look so cold the young woman took an involuntary step back.

  “Where is the patient?” Dion asked shortly.

  “Through here,” Asuli returned, striding past Dion to lead the wolfwalker through the house. “But you won’t be able to do any more than I’ll followed Yrobbi’s directions to the letter.”

  Dion stared at the intern’s back. A spark of ire roused in her gut while beside her, Gray Hishn’s bristle was up. When Dion passed the intern to enter the room, she stifled an impulse to snap at the other woman’s expression.

  She is the thorn in the paw, Hishn sent. She is the bitter scent of the lepa. Slap her down now, or she will challenge you again.

  “No,” Dion said sharply. Asuli and Gamon looked at her. She shrugged, and Gamon, with a glance at the wolf, nodded. The intern watched Dion with narrowed eyes.

  When Dion saw the still, gray form on the bed, she hesitated. She sat beside the man’s body and took his pulse. But when she looked at the man’s eyes, she had little hope. One pupil was blown—dilated twice as large as the other. There was no response to the light. She glanced down at the wolf and met the yellow gaze.

  He is dead already, the wolf told her.

  There is death, and then there is final death, Dion returned. Ovousibas has made the difference between life and death before. Perhaps it can do so again.

  Gamon saw the expression on her face. He turned to motion for Asuli to leave the room, but the intern was standing with her hands on her hips.

  “I’ll stay,” she said flatly, before he could open his mouth. “The man’s my patient, and I treated him carefully—there’s nothing more to be done. If you think to do something different, I will judge that treatment.”

  Slowly, Dion turned her head. But the other woman didn’t move.

  Dion stared at Asuli for a long moment. Then, even more slowly, she stood. The master healer’s band she wore was worked with the ancient lapis lazuli, not the flashier holspet, but the intricate carvings on the simple circlet made her rank plain. At Asuli’s words, Gamon could almost swear that the silver of Dion’s circlet itself glinted with the same anger that flashed in the wolfwalker’s eyes.

  Dion’s voice was deceptively quiet. “Asuli,” she said, “I recognize you as an intern. But as a master healer of Ramaj Ariye and Ramaj Randonnen and the outlying districts of both counties, I will judge the condition of this patient. And it is I, not you, who will judge your skills in handling this patient properly.”

  The young woman didn’t back down. “If you think you can do something more, I have the right to stay and see what you claim I’ve done wrong.”

  Gamon eyed the stiffening of both women’s jaws. Dion’s temper had been nearly dormant since Danton’s death, but he’d bet on the speed of the sixth moon before he’d bet that her flash-fire rage had died with her son. If it was this intern who could break the emotion free from the wolfwalker’s heart, Gamon would not interfere.

  Dion’s gaze was steady, but a tiny muscle jumped in her jaw. “I haven’t said you did anything wrong, Asuli. I merely want to see if I can do something more. I ask you again, leave this room while I work. It’s hard enough to do certain healing techniques without someone’s hostile breath going down my neck.”

  Asuli was already shaking her head. “I have the right to see anything you do to my patient.”

  Hishn growled.

  “You do have the right.” Dion’s voice didn’t quite mask the steel behind her words. “But if you stay, you will be silent; you will not move no matter what happens; you will not disturb me in any way.”

  The younger woman opened her mouth in automatic protest, but Dion cut her off. “If you disturb me during this time—” The steel of her voice was obvious. “—you risk my life and the life of this man. And, as a master healer, if I deem your actions improper, or worse, deliberate, your rank will be stripped from you, and you will be exiled from ever joining the healers’ ranks or ever again abusing whatever skills you think you now have. Trial blocks are not just for raiders.”

  Asuli stared at her for a long moment, then finally nodded shortly.

  Dion turned away from the other woman, sitting again beside the wounded man. She barely had to touch him through the internal healing to feel the cold, clutching gray that had grown over his mind. Nerves hung lifelessly; blood flowed sluggishly where it flowed at all; pink coils of brain were compressed and crushed
from swellings along the skull. The wolfwalker shivered when she opened her eyes to Gamon’s empathetic face. “He is already dead,” she said flatly. “He will never regain consciousness.”

  “I told you that already,” Asuli said flatly. “I’ve already done everything for him that could be done.”

  Gamon watched Dion bite back her temper. Thoughtfully, he eyed the intern.

  “If there are others waiting to be seen, I will see them now,” Dion said curtly.

  The few others who had serious injuries did not need Ovousi-bas to get them on the road to healing, though they might be ninans getting back to their work. Dion noted with wary surprise that Asuli, obviously seeing where the wolfwalker’s concerns lay, was screening the patients, admitting only those whose injuries might cause permanent damage. It was quietly done, and Dion would not have noticed it except that Hishn, outside, saw those who were turned from the door.

  “How is it going?” Gamon asked in a low voice, passing Dion a bowl of stew.

  Dion followed his glance toward the intern. “She is competent, but that doesn’t make up for lack of courtesy. I’m beginning to feel like throttling her myself.”

  Gamon grinned without humor and cracked his knuckles. “Let me know if you need any help.”

  Dion pushed away her empty bowl, and Asuli moved quickly to Dion’s side.

  “Is there anyone else to see?” Dion asked flatly.

  “Just one man.” The intern gathered Dion’s tools and herbs automatically and led them out toward another hub. As they climbed the steps to the front door, the woman paused. “My fa—the man’s elbow was cut so that the tissues and nerves were separated. He’ll probably lose the arm.”

  Dion studied the other woman’s face without speaking.

  Slowly, Asuli stiffened. “I don’t see what else you’ll be able to do for him that I haven’t already done.”

  Dion had to tighten her lips to hold back her words. But Gray Hishn, following at a distance, snarled loudly enough that Gamon looked warily over his own shoulder.

  Easy, Hishn, Dion sent.

  She walks as if she bites at your heels.

  I cannot strike her simply because of what she says.

  I can, the Gray One sent.

  The rush of lupine heat that flashed in Dion’s mind almost made her stumble. No! she snapped back. This is a human thing, Gray One. Do not interfere.

  The snarl that returned made Dion’s own hackles rise.

  The door to Asuli’s home opened before they reached the porch, and the blond woman who gestured them inside was already talking. “Asuli,” she rounded on the intern, “we needed you back hours ago. Wains is in a great deal of pain—”

  “I’ve brought the healer,” the younger woman cut in abruptly. She brushed by her mother. “He’s in here,” she said over her shoulder to Dion.

  Inside, the man at the table looked up. His right arm was in a sling, and his fingers were curled in a frozen fist. He started to get to his feet, but Dion motioned for him to stay seated.

  “Healer Dione,” he greeted her. He looked down at his hand. “We’re honored to have you.”

  “The honor is mine,” she returned automatically. She nodded and gestured for him to take his arm out of the sling. “Was it a clean blow or a crushing blow?”

  “Clean, Healer—like a sickle through wheat.” His face was stolid. “Don’t know that you can do much at this point. I can’t feel a thing below the elbow.” He nodded with his chin at his daughter. “Asuli said the nerves were cut, and I’d never use the arm again—a pretty present for the moons to give a farmer.”

  Dion’s voice remained steady, but there was a hint of steely gray in her violet eyes. “The moons sometimes give back what they take away.” She began to examine his arm.

  “Not this time,” he grunted. “Asuli said the use of it was gone for sure.”

  The intern patted his shoulder. “She just wants to look, Wains. She can’t do anything I haven’t already done.”

  Dion stilled. Gamon looked from the wolfwalker to the intern. In the heavy silence, he instinctively edged toward the door. For a moment, no one moved. Then Dion seemed to explode.

  “How dare you—” she snarled, her fury cracking like a whip across the room. “How dare you presume to know my skills!”

  Asuli took a step back, but Dion was incensed, rousing the wolf’s ire to sizzle with her own in the dim room. Gray Hishn was on her feet, teeth bared and brisde up.

  “You have barely begun your internship, but you presume to judge my skills? You, who can’t recognize potential, but see only despair—even in the health of your own father?” Dion followed Asuli back. Her finger was like a sword stabbing toward the younger woman. “You are not even halfway through your twenties; there are two hundred years ahead of you in which you could learn if you wanted. Your menial learning now is nothing compared to what you could know later. Right now you haven’t even the experience to see beyond what is to what can be. A cut can’t be healed—that’s your attitude. A crushed joint cannot recover. Yet those healings occur more often than an intern like yourself would know. You’re blind as a nightbird and twice as shallow as its cry. If you don’t change to add some compassion to your skills, you will be forever in the dark.” She barely took a breath to keep going. “Keep your ignorant tongue in your head where it belongs,” she snapped, “lest you wag it where it will get cut off.”

  She turned back to the man who gaped at her from the table, ignoring the open-mouthed intern. “Sit still. Be quiet,” she commanded sharply to Wains. She straddled the bench so that she sat beside Asuli’s father. Take me in, Gray One, she commanded shortly.

  Then walk with me, Healer, Gray Hishn returned. But Dion’s fury was like a creature in its own right. It grabbed the gray wolf’s focus like a mudsucker so that the link between the two snapped shockingly taut. Their minds slammed together. Something ripped apart and merged instantly back together. It was not Hishn who led Dion this time, but Dion who led the wolf. Down, left, farther, in. Energy snapped and sparked between them. The power of each one’s body merged into a single resonant chord. Somewhere in the backs of their minds, yellow, slitted eyes blinked, but in the seething mass of gray-fed fury, neither Dion nor Hishn noticed.

  Abruptly, Dion’s consciousness drove into the wounded man’s body. She barely pulled the gray, pain-killing fog around her mind as she shifted with the internal healing. Like a spear, she plunged into the wound. Tendons, ligaments, nerves—all had been neatly severed by the raider’s blade. Firmly, she pulled the tissues together, welding them with her will till they held. Her fury held her where her will would otherwise have weakened, and she stayed, blending and weaving the tissues until the gray fog became a biting chill. She struck back at the fog, anger fueling her strength, but the gray wolf snarled and, like a fish on a line, she was hauled back, hauled out of the healing.

  She opened her eyes, blinked once, shuddered like a ghost, and fainted.

  “Healer?” Asuli jumped forward.

  Hishn whirled, her teeth bared. Gamon barely caught Dion before she fell forward; then he lifted her slender form away from the bench. He glanced at the man she had treated, but Wains wasn’t watching the wolfwalker. The other man was staring at his hand.

  “By the blood of a hundred worlags,” the other man said softly. “I can feel my fingers.” He moved them fractionally, watching them clench almost imperceptibly, then relax. Finally, he looked up. He saw Dion’s figure in Gamon’s arms and half rose. “What happened to her?” He looked at his daughter. “Is that it?” he asked. “That’s all?” He stood up. “Why did she faint?” he demanded. “I felt… things moving. I felt… But she didn’t do anything—” His voice broke off at Gamon’s hard expression. “No offense, weapons master,” he said hurriedly, “but she barely even touched me—”

  “Aye,” Gamon returned shortly, motioning with his chin for Asuli’s mother to open the door. Hurriedly, the woman obeyed, then stepped back as the gray wolf
snarled, slinking out the door before Gamon could step forward. Asuli was still staring at Dion.

  “Asuli—look!” Wains caught the young woman’s arm. “By the light of the seventh moon, I can feel my arm.” He grasped the wounded limb with his other hand. “Look, I can move it, wave it, close my fist—ah, hell, that hurts—”

  “Don’t move it,” Gamon said sharply. “Let it heal first. Get that … daughter of yours to bind it up. Give it some time, or you’ll tear out what the wolfwalker did for you.”

  Asuli gave Gamon a look as hard as his own. “And just what, by the second hell, did she really do? I watched her. Wains was right. She didn’t touch him. She didn’t do anything but close her eyes for a while, then faint.”

  Gamon shouldered coldly past the young woman, ignoring her questions. Hishn was already down on the street, her fur stiff across her lupine shoulders.

  Asuli shook Wains off and tried to catch Gamon’s arm. “Wait— What happened? What did she do?”

  Gamon merely strode down the steps and didn’t answer.

  He barely reached the street before Dion blinked blearily and struggled against his strength. He set her on her feet only at her insistence, but backed off as he saw the anger that still flashed in her eyes. He glanced only once at the intern who stood on the porch and stared after them. The young woman had an odd expression on her face, but she said nothing more. When her father called to her again, she turned and stepped back inside.

  X

  Release your heart

  And let it race away—

  Like the pounding of your pulse

  When you are breathless;

  Like a drum

  Beaten with urgency or hate;

  Like time

  Twisting out beyond the stars;

  Like love

  That has no boundaries.

  A few hours on the road, and the dull rhythm of the hooves of the dnu had beaten conversation to silence. Dion’s fury had left her as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving her drained and dry as a dusty sinkhole, and Gamon, watching her out of the corner of his eye, pushed ahead to ride beside Tehena. “We should stop soon,” he murmured to the lanky woman. “She’s pushing it to stay in the saddle.”