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"Just try again, Dion. You're just tired." He gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand
taller in spite of the pain. "I'll do better this time."
"Rhom, you don't understand."
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WOLFWALKER 305
Aranur looked from one to the other. ' 'What is it, Dion?''
She did not look at him. "What did you feel?" sheaskedher twin. "What was it like when
you touched me?"
"Like a shock," he said slowly, his voice husky with the fire of the fever. "Little sparks that
ran up my fingers. Like Gray Hishn was snapping at me even though I could hear her
talking to you."
She nodded. "Rhom, it's no good. I can't do this with you." Her hands were shaking, and
she pointed to a spot away from her. "Please, let me do this alone.1'
"Twin "
"Please, Rhom." She took a breath and rested her hands on Aranur's chest. Abruptly, the
wolf twisted her mind and flung it down. It was too sharp too sudden. She lost the
concentration and pulled out. Shaking, she tried to control her weakened body.
Walk with me, Healer.
They tried again, but she was too weak. She lost the focus and broke out again, shaking so
badly that she could hardly sit up. Her physical weakness would not let her mind keep the
contact.
"Too weak ..." the woman said hoarsely. "It's okay, Rhom," she said quickly. "I just need to
concentrate." How far could she push herself? Her face was already gaunt, as if she had
gone without eating for two ninans, and her hands shook badly. "Relax, lie back, and
breathe deeply," she said soothingly, calming herself as much as the man she was sitting
beside. "Breathe in, breathe out," she said softly, gathering up her last ounce of strength.
His will was so strong if she was lost inside, she would never survive this last try at
Ovousibas. "Let the beat of your own heart relax you."
Hishn? she asked. I don't know if I'm strong enough for this.
You are strong enough, the Gray One answered. / am with you. And in their melded
minds, the tones swelled as other Gray Ones joined them, encouraging, coaching the
healer with their strength till she felt the exhaustion slide from her like a heavy blanket
dropping to the ground. Walk with me, Healer. Walk with us. Run with us . , .
"You can do it, Dion," Aranur whispered hoarsely.
Her vision melted into pain-wracked gray. There was an instant of absolute rejection that
dissolved into the smooth feeling
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306 Tara K. Harper
they had had the first time they had tried Ovousibas together. It was as if Aranur were
walking with her in his own body. She could feel his strength, his own consciousness touch
the places where the virus had settled, reach for the patches of sickness. Her knowledge
guided her; his strength carried her. She built the antibody carefully, and Aranur
deliberately sped his own blood to send the compounds to the lymph glands, but even so,
she was weakening. She tried to pull out, but the force and strength of his consciousness
dragged her back into his body even as she struggled away.
Down, down, and in. Past the consciousness like a whip of wind, and there, the blood, the
body, the virus, waiting, eating at the man. She needed elements they were there, drawn
from the blood as she barely directed the flow. Compounds bursting into life as the wolves
backed her, pushed with their own exuberance of life. Blocks of the antibody growing,
binding the virus, whirling it away aimlessly, crushing it in certain death. A weariness of
death. The body indistinct, the focus fading in and out. Gray tones struggled to keep her
in in where? Consciousness intruding, shifting. So tired. Tired. Aranur? Rhom? No. No, it
was just the wolves, snow and moss underfoot as the dome's floors melted into a softening
ground and time burned away into the heat of a summer sun. The Gray Ones birthing,
growing, changing, mating, singing, dying. Packs that shifted perspective as one view, then
another became the focus of time, of the memories passed down the chain of gray minds.
Time, time, to sleep through time till she woke. And the Gray Ones, floating her beside
their legendary children while she dreamed of their lives and fell through their memories
of time, . .
Epilogue
Aranur's stomach was a pit. It had been that way for days, ever since Dion had gone into
the coma, and he stared now at her pale form. They had been feeding her, but the
hollowness of her cheeks and the gauntness of her face did not disappear. What else could
they do? The woman's brother blamed him for her collapse, but Aranur knew, too, that if it
had not been for what she had done, all of them would have died. He felt admit it, he told
himself guilty. The fever that had held each of them in its grip was gone, thwarted by an
antidote the woman had made with the last of her energy, but now she herself lay in a
coma, and after four days Aranur was not sure she would ever come out of it.
He tried again, softly, to wake her. "Dion?" Rhom had already sat with his twin for three
days, and Aranur had finally ordered the younger man outside with Shilia to get his mind
off things. They were all better all of them except Dion, he reminded himself bleakly. The
healer had pushed too far past the limits of her body. Breathing but not moving,
swallowing but not seeing, she lay as if already on the path to the moons. Even the Gray
One who ran with her could not tell the man how to reach her. "Wolfwalker," he
whispered. "Dion, forgive me."
The lean, hollow-eyed man stared at the pale, still form. And then he frowned. Had her
eyes moved? The wolf whined suddenly against his leg and thrust her nose between his
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arms up onto the bed. Fluttering, the woman's eyes blinked twice, then she opened them
to focus unseeing, squinted at the light, and frowned blankly.
Aranur stifled a shout. "Are you with us again?" he asked gently instead.
307
308 Tara K. Harper
She met his gray eyes in confusion, then turned away, her violet eyes filling with tears.
"Dion, Healer." Aranur turned her back to face him limply. "What's wrong? It's been so
long ..."
"The dreams. . ." she whispered raggedly. Threads of gray songs that filled her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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