Air sucked into Dion’s mouth. She barely glimpsed the depths they dropped into before the wind caught the birdwoman’s wings and they swooped sickeningly to a more even flight. A jagged ridge rose up like twisted teeth, then fell away as if it had snapped at, then missed, their feet. The slash in her parka hung open, and the blood there froze in seconds into a rock-hard slab. They swooped sickeningly lower, across a steep expanse of snow, and the wind bit into her body, then her frozen cheeks, like a hundred tiny mouths.
In her mind, Dion could see the ring of light that seemed to surround the Aiueven. She could feel the mental laboring of the creature against the rising winds, and the rock-hard strength of its physical body as it hugged her to its breast. She could feel the strain grow like grief. Her mind flashed to Aranur, to Danton, to Hishn, and the gray tide in the back of her head swelled as it sensed her.
Woljwalker! The howl hit her, and she felt the dim strength of their bond. It was full and rich, even at that distance, and it made the strain of the Aiueven seem thin. Tentatively, she touched the alien’s mind. “Mother?”
“(Child-debt/youngling).” But there was still horror in its voice, and it tried to keep its mental distance.
“You are straining. Take strength from me. From the wolves.”
“(Denial).”
The alien swooped across a rounded shoulder of the mountain, and Dion swallowed against her stomach as it rose into her throat. The wind, which had seemed strong before, hit them like a sledge. The Aiueven strained, and Dion could feel its strength pouring out as it held her weight aloft.
They flew back along a ridge where the clouds boiled on the other side of the rock. Dion’s weight dragged the alien down. The Aiueven’s breath became labored, and the power that seemed to cling to its wings faded to a dull glow. As they dropped lower into the edge of the glacier valley, the wind surged, then struck violently. They were buffeted back up, then slammed down toward the ice. The Aiueven mother was grim.
“I can go no farther,” she said, stalling so that they fell quickly. “You must go the rest of the way on your own.”
The alien struck the ground heavily, as if she did not have the control to land well, and Dion hit the ice hard. She rolled meters across bumpy, sharp ice, and lay for a moment breathless. Slowly, she crawled to her knees. She hugged her arms tightly around her. “Mother,” she whispered.
Kiuntihin ’kiuntihin ’kiun, the other sent. The Aiueven leaped into the air. The cold, biting wind caught the mother-creature and lifted her so that she shot up, then away, fading into the swirling white. The sense of power was weaker now, as though it dissipated as the distance between them grew.
Dion didn’t notice her hand stretching out. “Mother,” she cried out. “What Name have you given me? What does my Name mean?”
From the distance, the voice returned. It was sharp in her head, in a way that the wolves never were, and it resonated with the focus of alien power. Human, it returned. You have no right. We are hound, hut not so tightly yet. This (stigma/horror) may stillfade.
“You Named me,” Dion called steadily, light-headed and almost numb. “You (mother-debt) me. And we share this child and our futures.”
Whose-wings-make-the-grass-flow hesitated, and Dion could almost feel the expenditure of energy that the alien put forth. The winds had strengthened, even in the few minutes that lay now between them, and the front that was moving across the valley thickened and darkened the sky. The blue-gray voice, when Dion heard it, was quiet. (Mother-debt/child-debt). The Naming is between us. There was a pause, as if the alien gathered her grief and set it aside, then put Dion in that mental space. It has (bright/dreams) images, the alien sent finally. It has (grief/strength) meaning. It is (constant/inevitable) and (changes/softens/sharpens) its (edge/meaning) with time. It is The-winter-that-cuts-the-ice.
“Mother,” Dion whispered.
The debt is paid, (youngling/Human). We are bound, but your (life/future) is your own.
Dion stared into the sky. She could no longer see the alien. The dry flakes that began to whirl into her eyes made her dizzy, but she still strained to find that speck of motion. “You bind me to you,” she cried out. “Then you give me up?”
You are Human.
“And part of you.”
(Denial). I am (unwhole/destroyed).
“You are more than you were before. How can that be destruction?”
The wind cut viciously, as if in rebuttal, and Dion hunched her shoulders against it. She stared across the snow: It was a massive expanse, and she was alone upon it. It had looked smooth at a distance, but close up it was covered with humps and ridges where shrubs lay hidden beneath the surface, and rocks and old ice created irregular lines. Far in the distance, kays away across the expanse, there were dark patches of trees. There were wolves somewhere there—they were a faint din compared to the Aiueven—and Kiyun and Tehena were with them. But the clouds were hunkering down even now, and the tiny, dry snow was coming down harder.
The wind whipped the frozen edge of her parka, but Dion turned into it, searching for a trace of the mother-alien’s flight. She thought she saw the speck of the creature, struggling against the wind. She stretched, and the link between them seemed to shiver. Loathing, disgust … And yet there were other things too. The empathy of one for the other’s grief… The need filled, one by the other … And the Naming, which bound them in each other’s mind …
The winds hit Dion hard on the right, and she staggered before she realized that it was not her body that had felt the gust, but the Aiueven who had faltered. “Mother!” she cried out.
The voice swept back. (Child/youngling).
But the winds cut, and Dion’s cheeks, white and chapped, felt a cold that was more alien than hers. Mother! she shouted. Mother, if you need my strength, take it.
No more debts, Human. But the voice was faint and weakening.
No debt. I give it freely.
Human. You have no (concept/knowledge/vision) of freedom.
Imagery was not enough, and Dion found herself straining with her voice to convince the Aiueven. “You made yourself my mother,’ she said fiercely. “Your flight is now my own.”
No power can be given over (time/distance). It is not the way.
“I am human,” she acknowledged. “So I do not know the way. But you are in (need/hungry/failing). Let me send this to you.”
At the risk of (your/my/our) own (baby)?
“I am human, not Aiueven. I do not risk our child in this.”
There was a hesitation in the alien, and Dion could feel her own mind crawling, as if the Aiueven somehow searched her for truth.
But it was not the truth of her statement of risk, but the truth that the child was both hers and the alien mother’s. The emotional void in the Aiueven swamped Dion like night, and Dion saw the death of the alien’s child. The heated gases of volcanic vents … The shiver deep in the mountain… The fractured stone, crushing down … The loss that tore at her guts like lepa. The alien’s need meshed with Dion’s; their grief screamed out together. And the child within Dion became a light between them.
The alien’s voice was faint in her mind. Our (children)? the alien asked. Our (child-debt)?
Dion caught her breath, and the cold air cut her throat, but she returned steadily, “Mother of myself. Mother of my own.”
Then we are (bound/family/timeless).
“Aye.” Dion’s voice was a whisper. She didn’t ask again if she could send the internal power across the sky to the other. Instead, resolutely, she gathered what was left of her strength into a fist of heat within her. And as if they had been waiting for her voice to Call, the wolves howled in the back of her mind. They were still faint compared to the alien, but it didn’t matter to Dion.
She pulled at them, sucking their packsong into her voice. Eagerly, they swept into her head. Energy flowed in—from her mouth with every breath, from her hands with every shiver, from her chest with every gust of wind. Greedily, she
clutched at the wolfsong. Images, strength, warmth—they were thrust into her mind in a tide of gray.
She loosed that heat in a single burst, like a silver-blue arrow shot through the clouds. It sought the Aiueven like a hunter. There was a moment of rejection. Then their voices merged. Dion could feel the alien, could feel the focusing of the power that the Aiueven controlled. Some part of her mind studied that while another part of her pushed her strength toward it. Emotions flared, clashed, clung. Something comforting and wise, distant and cold clicked into Dion’s mind. And in the alien’s mind, something determined and unyielding, as raw as youth and as uncontrolled, hot as bloodlust and powerful as love, slid into Aiueven patterns. Dion’s mouth was open, but she couldn’t tell if it was she or the alien mother who screamed. But it was not a scream of horror or anger or pain. It was a scream of recognition, as though a child were returned, or a mother found.
Wind seemed to cut through Dion’s mind, but it was no longer full of ice. Thin air screamed into her lungs, but it was no longer freezing her throat. The horror faded between them, and something else replaced it.
Kiuntihin’kiuntihin’kiun! The alien’s voice was suddenly strong.
Mother! Dion cried.
Then the blue-gray voice faded, and the snow thickened, and Dion stood alone.
She stared at the sky, blinking as the dry snow hit her face. Wind chapped her lips. She didn’t realize that she sank to her knees, her legs weak as grass. For a moment—for less than a moment—her eyes had been filled with a vision of darkness that went beyond night. Of a light that went beyond brightness. It was a star seen not through atmosphere, but from the vastness of space itself. It had been the alien’s future that she had felt, for the barest of an instant.
She stared up at the sky, heedless of the snow. Stars … Aranur ’s dream was as close as that—as close as an alien’s ship. The link to the past that he had sought to strengthen—that would never be enough. It was a link to the future that was needed.
She looked at her fingers, still stained with blood and now blue-white with the chill. She had touched something beyond herself—something alien, but also something more than that. As though Danton’s death had destroyed her vision, and Aranur’s had destroyed her future, she had forgotten that her own life was power, and power harnessed was hope. The plague in the wolves, the death in the domes … Power had created those, so power could find a cure. And she now knew that power.
She touched the parka where the slab of blood-ice covered her belly. The bond between mother and child was not something either she or the alien could deny. There was a power now between them that stretched through distance and time. And the energy brought with it a realization more clear than winter water. It wasn’t her humanity she had lost, but that sense of strength— of what she could do to create the future she sought. Not Aranur ’s future, but her own. Her future, Olarun’s future, the future of the wolves … Aranur’s dreams had been his, not hers; she had to find her own. “My sons,” she whispered. “My daughter.”
She looked out over the ice. In the distance, she could see the shapes of the wolves who ran through the snow to meet her. Woljwalker! they called.
Their song filled her head. She got to her feet and swayed. She took a step and staggered, then gathered her focus as she had seen the aliens do. Her legs stiffened, then strengthened as they accepted the energy. Her skin became suddenly warm. The wolves howled again, Calling her as they felt her mental voice strengthen. Her voice had changed, she realized. It was tinted with blues, not just gray, and the vision she projected was not just of the wolves, but of cold and starry futures.
She threw out her arms and spun, cold-clumsy on the ice. This time, when they Called, she sang her name back. For a moment the packsong was stilled. Then the wolves surged deeply into her head, seeking the voice they had known. They spun memories and flung them into the back of her skull. They dragged at her consciousness. What they found was not simply Dion, but something also Aiueven. Slitted eyes met lupine ones; promises met and merged. Histories blended so that time was a coil that touched itself through the ages.
Dion let the sense of the wolves strengthen in her mind. Hishn, so distant, clung to her, blurring her eyes and yet leaving her eyesight clear. Thick with the wolves, clear as Aiueven … She sang her name again to the wolves, and this time when she touched their gray-shadowed minds, they howled hauntingly with her.
XXIV
What do you have but yourself?
What do you face but yourself?
What do you hear but your voice in the night?
Whom do you know but yourself?
—Answer to the Second Riddle of the Ages
The three of them stopped at the barrier bushes beneath a blue-gray sky. Dion turned back and searched the clouds for a glimpse of a winged shape, but knew she wouldn’t see one. The Aiueven were far away, in deeper, stranger caves. There were still wolves around her—she could feel them waiting on the other side of the wall.
Slowly, while Tehena and Kiyun watched her, she stepped forward and touched the thorns. They pricked her skin, just as before, but this time, she didn’t flinch. In her mind, her body focused, the wolves howled softly, and the power flowed. The trickle of blood was stopped. The child in her belly turned. Her child, Aranur’s child. And now, too, an Aiueven youngling …
Dion turned to Kiyun and stopped him from automatically tightening the lashings of his pack. She opened the bundles on his dnudu and drew out a small shape, then took the wrapped sword from his saddlebags. “These, I think, are mine,” she said.
She unwrapped her healer’s circlet. For a moment, she simply held it in the light and let her fingers trace the carving of the silver. There were lines of ancient symbolism twined with lines of newer hopes; twists and metal coils that curled like wolfsongs against a silver sea. “This was my mother’s,” she murmured, to ears that could not hear and yellow, slitted eyes that could. “And now, through you, it is my mother’s, again.” She settled the circlet on her head. Then she buckled on her sword.
Tehena moved beside her, searching her face with those flat, faded eyes. Dion had not spoken when she returned, and the days coming back had been silent. Now, as Tehena watched Dion take back her things, the woman cleared her throat. “You found it, then? What you were looking for? The cure for the plague in the wolves?” The cure for yourself, she wanted to ask. Her hard voice had been carefully neutral, and Dion missed the flicker of desperation in the other woman’s eyes as Tehena rubbed at her forearms.
For a moment, Dion didn’t answer. She should have bought that painting back in Vreston, she thought, as she caught the worry on Kiyun’s face—or the one in Sidisport. He would have liked the blending and rawness those paintings had portrayed. And there had been that inlaid drum that Olarun would have jumped at. And Tehena … Dion wished she could share the strength of the Aiueven—the power and depth of that contact.
The wolves growled in the back of her head, and Dion’s eyes became unfocused. The bond between her and Hishn was strong, but the other wolves had entered it now, as had the alien mother. There was a richness in the gray din that went beyond any single voice. She felt it curl around her thoughts, around Ara-nur’s voice and Danton’s silence. Felt it touch the silver and steel and fold them into her heart like gifts. She fingered the circlet absently. The weight of it was no longer on her shoulders, she realized, but in her heart, as if she finally understood it was her own needs that drove her, not the pushing of other people.
Her fingers traced the circlet’s designs, remembering other, icy patterns. Her voice was quiet. “I failed. And yet I could not win. And still, I live—I breathe.” She looked up. “I found no cure,” she answered. “The moons left me that, as a goal—” Dion gave a faint, twisted smile. “—or a punishment.” She looked back toward the mountains. They were hung with a new shroud of white that looked clean against the half-gray, half-blue sky. There were no wings to break that cold expanse, no speck of motion soar
ing between the peaks. Her voice dropped, as if she spoke more to herself. “But it is a goal, and one that I can work toward.” Her hand rested against her belly, and she stretched through the wolves to the life that grew within her. “And if I do not reach that goal myself, my children will take up that burden. The wolves won’t let them forget the promises to which I’ve bound them.”
“You didn’t even find what you were looking for?” This time, the desperate taint was stronger in Tehena’s voice, and Dion didn’t miss it.
She met Tehena’s eyes steadily. “No,” she said. “But I found what was needed. And in the end, that is all that matters.”
Tehena let out an imperceptible breath, but all that showed was that the lanky woman nodded.
For a moment, Dion looked down at her hands. There was no trembling in her fingers. She stretched, and as if her strength had grown, not simply been sharpened by the touch of Aiueven, she could hear Hishn’s voice clearly. The Gray Wolf of Ran-donnen. The Heart of Ariye … She looked at Kiyun and Tehena, then glanced back only once at the mountains. Then, as one, they mounted and rode into the barrier bushes.
As she passed through the channel, in the back of her mind, the yellow, slitted eyes blinked, and a gray-blue voice brushed the wolfsong. Soft, it was there for no more than an instant, but Dion felt it cleanly. And around her, on the wind, her hope seemed to lift, like a pair of alien wings.
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