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brush was full of game. And everywhere there were tracks of other wolves. She had already
met the three unmated males of the pack that ran in those foothills; the soft gray thoughts
of the creatures echoed like the sound of a distant rain in Dion's head. It had taken the
wolfwalker a full day to realize that the dream images distracting her from her work and
filling the tedious hours of travel were from Gray Ones that ran as strangers to herself. But
even though they were strangers, she sensed them like lonely voices. Pacing silently,
hidden in the growth of the forest, the wolves padded after the small group of humans and
wondered at their presence.
They're curious, Hishn told her that evening. The two were sitting in a clearing eating what
was left of the smoked rabbit Namina had prepared the day before. The wolf shared Dion's
meal politely but took little, since she had already eaten and was not hungry. No one else
was awake in the near dark. It was Dion's turn to take first watch, and the already sleeping
bodies of the other humans were curled into comfortable positions against their packs or
one another.
The woman picked up a rotting stick and examined the odd moss that curled around its
end. Curious about what?
They haven't seen men in a long time. They feel your thoughts as I do. Hishn's ears perked
up, and she looked to her left. It is Gray Sholishen calling me to play, she said eagerly.
She nudged the woman quickly before taking off into the woods, giving her a toothy grin as
Dion caught the echo of a male wolf's interested thoughts.
Well, Dion thought philosophically, Hishn was not a yearling anymore, and it was time she
went into the false heat of adolescence. Happy for her, too, that her hormones were taking
hold in that playground of wolves. She was a good-looking wolf, bigger than most because
of Dion's care she would have as many mates as she wanted easily enough, and they
would over-
WOLFWALKER 235
look her capricious ways, whereas the wolfwalker had to live with them. She sighed, tossed
the stick away into the brush, and looked up to see another Gray One across the clearing.
Its yellow eyes reached her own, and she felt a different, deeper, older voice in her head.
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Wolfwalker, he said with respect.
She was startled. You honor me, she sent quickly, her awe . making her hesitate but a
moment. But the wolf had already melted back into the trees. Dion stared at the spot
where the Gray One had vanished, but he did not reappear. Only a tendril of thought, gray
as the creature who had sent it, floated through her mind.
"Dion?" It was Rhom, leaning up on one elbow and looking at her with a frown.
She shook her head, hoping unreasonably that he had not seen the wolf. Had the Gray One
sensed him waking? Rhom was her twin, but this was somehow private, and she guarded
the Gray One's honor with an instinctive jealousy that startled her.
As they pushed into the valley the next day, the terrain became thicker with growth and
damper with the scent of a marsh. The rock formations that split the soft ground so
abruptly showed evidence of high water, while others looked as if they were sinking. Twice
they crossed obvious fault lines, the first time dropping down over a vegetated ridge that
broke cleanly in two and began again twenty meters away.
"It'll get worse before it gets better," Gamon said to Dion as he took her pack while she
climbed smoothly over a nest of boulders. He tossed it up to her, and she then caught his
to do the same for him.
* 'Still, it's a lot easier to stay with the rocks than to try hacking our way through all that,"
she returned. She caught her breath as she gestured into the swampy forest. "Hishn says
the whole thing's a marsh."
"She's been talking with the other wolves?"
"That, and " Dion hesitated. "She remembers."
The older man looked askance. "That mutt's not been out of Randonnen before this, has
she?"
She shook her head and stepped over a rotting log that lay against the rock. ' 'No, but the
Gray Ones' memories stretch far beyond a single life. Sometimes I think they remember
everything that's happened to them since the ancients."
236 Tara K. Harper
"I'd think they'd remember only their own bloodlines."
"I don't know," she said slowly. "I asked Hishn what she remembered about this place, and
she said 'men.' Not one or two men but many hundreds, going back and forth on white
roads that cross the valley."
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"Well, there's no roads now. And the only evidence of the ancients themselves are the ruins
of some of their buildings.''
"I wish we could explore," she said wistfully. "Hishn said there were a couple of broken
buildings to the east, but she was taking about a two-day journey, not an hour's diversion.''
' 'Her memories are that clear?''
"Uh uh." The black-haired woman ducked under a spiny branch and shook her head. "It
took a good half hour to figure out the distance she was talking about. The memory of the
ruins must be five hundred years old. It was as fuzzy as a dust ball under a dark bed." She
pushed on, catching only a glimpse of Shilia in front of her but following the ragged trail
easily enough. Their tracks sank deeply in the treacherous earth, and Dion's boots were
already muddy up to her knees. "Strange," she said with puzzlement, "but when I asked
her about it, I got the feeling that there were other, larger places around here that weren't
broken down at all. At first I thought she was talking about the domes in Randonnen, but
the scenery was like this' ' she gestured around her "only a little different. Drier. More
like a forest than a swamp. Think of it, Gamon, whole buildings of the old ones we could
look in.''
The old man ducked under the same branch and calmly shook off a crawler that had
dropped on his hand. "Don't know as I'd say that's strange, Dion. There's at least five
places of the ancients in Ariye. It wouldn't surprise me if mere were some around here,
too. After all, some of the ancients were supposed to have dropped from the moons to the
Yew Mountains."
Something about the idea made her shiver, and Dion glanced quickly over her shoulder,
sure that she would see a ghost but meeting only the dense, waving branches of the low- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
