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"Everything's all nght, Dion," Aranur said softly, smoothing her hair. "You're okay." She
realized her cheeks were wet and started to pull away, embarrassed, but he held her tight
and touched her cheek gently. "Dion . . ." He hesitated. "Why did you come here?"
She looked around the cavernous room, and he dropped his arms from her and let her go.
"This place has been calling me," she said uncertainly, still shaken by both the ancient
images and the sudden heat of an unexpected passion. Hesitantly, she stepped toward one
of the skeletons, unwillingly leaving the warm and real touch of the man.
"Calling you? What do you mean?" He made no move to follow, just watched her with his
eyes.
"I've felt this this dome ever since we left the first mountain range. The wolves . . ." Her
voice trailed away. She could still hear their echoes in her mind. Hishn looked at the
woman from where she sat, her yellow eyes bright against her gray fur and her ears perked
as if to catch Dion's thoughts with them. "The wolves have been calling me," she said
finally.
"What do they want?"
"The Gray Ones? They want me to to help them." The words stumbled over each other as
Dion struggled with the
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270 Tara K. Harper
thoughts that bound her to the wolves. "To . . . sing with them, become one with them.
To to let them in to their people and -and bring the ancients back. Gray Hishn knows.
Hishn feels it all."
"Dion, look at me," Aranur said forcefully, turning her to face him. He tried to put one
hand on her forehead, but she shook tt off.
"I am not feverish, Aranur," she said sharply.
"I'll be the judge of that." He felt her cheeks.
"Aranur, I am not sick. Look around you. What I'm saying is true. The wolves they ran
with the ancients. They still have the memories of everything that happened, and they
won't get out of my head. It's their songs I keep hearing, their memories."
"Dion, you know that sounds crazy."
"I can't help it." She broke free of him and gestured at the room. "The ancients died here.
Died for the secret of Ovousi-bas. And the wolves know why."
"What do the wolves have to do with this?"
"The Gray Ones are the key. There's no such concentration of them anywhere else in the
continent. Only here, where the ancients first landed, the Gray Ones are as thick in the
woods as fleas. And the memories are strong. Even Hishn feels them like they were her
own." She looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes. "They know, Aranur. They know how
to merge. How to meld the mind into a tool ... If I can only listen, if I could understand the
images ..."
He just looked at her. "Dion, you said the fever was still here. How do you know you don't
have it already? How do you know that what you're seeing or hearing in your head is real
at all?"
"I know this, Aranur." She could hear her voice rising in frustration. "I just know it. And I
know what it is. It's Ovou-sibas," she whispered. "They know how to do Ovousibas."
Aranur gave her a steady look.
Hishn's voice was echoed by the haunting call of other wolves. You can bring the people
hack to us. You can bond us again. Take the pain away. Give us back our pups, give us back
our future . . .
Hishn! she cried.
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Hishn nudged her hand, and a chill crawled down the woman's spine. She stared at the
wolf. But deep inside, a tiny spark
WOLFWALKER 271
of excitement pushed back at the fear. "Ovousibas is for real," she whispered. "The
plague it didn't just strike the ancients and the wolves. It hit all the creatures. It killed the
rabbits one year, the lepa the next. It mutated and ate away at everything alive in these
hills. It's killing the wolves even now."
"That's impossible," Aranur contradicted. "The plague killed only the ancients and, ever
since then, only the wolfwalk-ers and wolves who Ve tried Ovousibas. Or those who've
entered the domes."
But Dion was not listening. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, and the pattern
was not one of life but one of death. A slow death. One that crept into the species like a tiny
worm and then multiplied until they were all gone. How arrogant, she realized, they had
been to think that the Aiueven would count on a single plague to rid Asengar of the
humans.
Aranur glanced at her, then said suddenly without looking up, ' 'If the wolves know how to
do this healing, you could learn it from them, couldn't you?"
She laughed. "Don't be ridiculous . . ." Her voice trailed off. Aranur did not answer, and
she looked at him, his face unreadable. "They are wolves. Creatures of the woods. Not
human beings, Aranur. Their part in this is only a memory of death."
"Ovousibas. 'Look to the left.' If the wolves know how to do it, they must know why it has
been killing them off.''
"They know only the pain," she whispered raggedly. "The longing for the wolfwalkers they
lost. To ask them to teach me it would be suicide, for them as well as me."
"How could it hurt to ask? You wouldn't actually be doing it, and no one seems to have
died from that. Give it a chance."
Hishn got up and padded around the room, small clouds of dust puffing up in the air at her
feet. / remember how it's done, she oifered. She sniffed at a gleaming bone that stretched
across her path and stepped over it, unconcerned. Don't worry. We would be together.
"Hishn 'remembers,' " Dion said without inflection. "As much as the other wolves, she
knows how to do it."
"Then you will try?"
"By the time I figure out what I'd be trying, we might already be dead from this cursed flu.''
The images from the Gray Ones'
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272 Tara K. Harper
minds flashed in front of her eyes, showing her just how those ancient healers had died,
and she shivered again.
Aranur spread his hands. "I'm just asking you to find out about it. I'm not asking you to do
anything yet."
"Yet?" she repeated. "So when does the sword fall? When is the favor asked?" Her voice
was rising, and her anger with it. "You get all these ideas in your head from tales your
uncle tells when he's drunk, and then you ask me to turn myself inside out just to satisfy
your curiosity.'' He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off. "Look around you,
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