“Ah.” Aleytys sat up. “And you want me to do the volunteering.”

  “If you will.”

  A strained silence settled over the room. The fire crackled noisily, snapping and hissing; tendrils of adoradee vine tapped at the tall narrow windows, a jittery slithery noise. The leather creaked under Aleytys as she shifted position. “He’d really hate it, you know. Me running after him like an overprotective mother after a halfwit child. Madar, Canyli!” She slapped her hand down on the chair arm, the sound loud and abrupt. Linfyar spilled cha on his leg, yipped and began rubbing at his fur with a napkin Shadith pushed into his hand.

  Shadith watched Aleytys, worried. She knew too much about the ups and downs of the relationship between Grey and Aleytys and too much about the bitter strength of the bond between them. She switched her gaze to Head and thought about what the woman had just said: I waited for you. TRAP. The word popped to the front of her mind and quivered there in big black letters. She bit her lip, wondering if she should wait or say something, but kept quiet when Aleytys spoke again.

  “What a choice you give me,” she said. “In a few weeks my mother will be here to take me to Vrithian. You know how long I’ve waited for that.” Absently she brushed at her hair. Her hand shook a little; she brought it quickly down and clasped it with the other. “But what if I am the only one who can pull him out of that hole? Him and Ticutt? If they aren’t dead already.” She bent forward, her hair falling forward to hide her face. Shudders moved in waves through her body. Shadith got up from the floor where she was sitting beside Linfyar and went to kneel by Aleytys, cradling Lee’s shaking hands in hers.

  “I’ve thought of that,” Head said softly. “I’ve also thought about another time when someone came to us with a Hunt that was something else. Grey sucked in might be an accident; Ticutt makes it a habit. A habit we have to break, Lee. We’re in the bind we kept putting you in—we can’t afford to fail. Our reputation is only as good as its last manifestation. We’ll have to send in another Hunter to finish the job, but we can’t go on dropping drachs down that hole. Two of the top four left, Sybille and Taggert, but I don’t think the outcome would be different. Eventually we have to come to you. Interesting, isn’t it? We have to come to you.”

  Shadith felt a jolt pass through Aleytys, nodded to herself. “Trap,” she said, “because you’re close to reaching Vrithian.”

  Aleytys freed her hands, pressed the heels of the palms against her eyes, pulled the hands down her face. “Kell.”

  “One of Ticutt’s last reports.” Head ruffled through the fax sheets, pulled one out, put it on the top. “He said he picked up a smell of an alien mixed up with the Sikin Ajin, a master designer who built some things for him that impressed the hell out of everyone around him. Just a wisp of a wisp, but after Sybille he’s the best ferret we’ve got.”

  “Lee.” Shadith caught hold of Aleytys’s hand and shook it side to side. “Listen. Go to Vrithian. He’ll come after you, he can’t help it. Send me to Avosing. You know what I can do. And he won’t be expecting anything like me, if he’s hanging around there still. Linfy and me working together, we’ll sniff out that trap and spring Grey loose before anyone knows what’s happening. And Ticutt. You could probably do it better and faster, but look at it this way—you there on Vrithian, me on Avosing, we’ll be coming at the same problem from different directions.” She jumped to her feet. “You’ll be facing Kell; you’ll have the hard part. Linfy and me, well, it’ll be a walk-over.”

  “Linfyar? No.”

  “Don’t fuss, Lee. He’s tough. Aren’t you, imp?”

  “Uh-huh.” Linfyar flicked his pointed ears forward, then back. “I want to go, dama, I do. It’s better than school.” Vast contempt in the last word.

  “No doubt, Linfy, but …”

  “Lee.” Shadith bent down and patted her arm. “Look, I’ll take care of him. This is the best way, really it is.” She straightened, turned to Head. “Want to bet Kell’s had a long look at all the escrow flakes? Want to bet he’s even found a way into Hunters records, knows everything about all your Hunters, down to the way they breathe? Send Aleytys to Avosing and you maybe win, maybe lose. Send anyone else alone without backing and you lose for sure. Send a Hunter, Taggert maybe, and me, not together, working on our own, while Aleytys tackles the other end. You’ve got a better chance that way than any other.” She spread her arms, then sketched a bow. “Aleytys isn’t so good on the courtesies—she hasn’t introduced me. I’m Shadith. Singer and poet. We’ve met but I was in another body then. Uh-huh, you got it.”

  Head put her hand over her mouth; her eyes danced with the laughter she couldn’t quite suppress. After a minute she said, “You look about fourteen.”

  “So? The body is, I’m not.” Shadith slanted a quick anxious glance at Aleytys, who sat stone-faced not looking at either of them, then fixed her eyes on Head. “I’m your wild card. Play me.”

  “You think a lot of yourself.” Head’s voice was dryly skeptical, the amusement gone from her eyes.

  “Yeah.”

  “Aleytys?”

  “Lee’s going to Vrithian.” Shadith stepped back so she could see both the women. “You have to, Lee, you know that. He wants to distract you, keep you and Shareem apart. Use that against him. Go with your mother, distract him with his own distraction, draw him off from Avosing so Taggert and I won’t have to fight him, just what he’s left behind.” She started pacing back and forth along the hearth. “Listen to me. He knows you too well. Remember what happened the last time. He almost took you. If the three of us hadn’t been mere to back you, where’d you be now? He’s had time to plan this. If you do what he expects, he’s got you. Don’t go after Grey. Shake Kell up, disappoint him, confuse him. Let me take care of the Avosing end. He’ll come after you—he’s got to. Vrithian is his ground, well, I know that, but it’s not the ground he’s got ready for you. Are you listening? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Is letting you get yourself killed the biggest favor I can do for you?”

  “Hunh, I like your faith in me.” Shadith clicked her tongue with disgust, then looked more closely at the woman sitting crouched in the big chair. “Stop trying to manipulate me. I know you, remember? I’ve lived in that head of yours far too long.”

  Aleytys sighed, straightened her back. “You don’t have to beat the point to death, Shadow. I agree.” She stretched her legs out, lay back in the chair, eyes closed, her face looking hollowed out. Her hands rested limp and motionless on the chair arms. “Give us everything you’ve got on this, will you, Canyli? Ticutt’s reports, the Pajunggs’ spiel. Anything else you can dig up.” She lay still for several moments, then tightened her hands on the chair arms and got suddenly to her feet, a quick twisting movement so full of violence it was as if her body shouted, as if the grief, fear and fury she was holding under taut control were close to escaping her grip. “I’m going north to make a wild trek. It’s something I have to do.” She walked swiftly across the room, turned in the doorway. “Shadow, if Shareem comes … if she comes asking for me before I get back, you tell her … ask her … you know.” She wheeled, knocked her shoulder against the doorframe, caught herself, then sped off down the hall, the click of her heels fading into silence.

  “Ibex was difficult,” Shadith said when Head turned to her, brows raised. “Painful.”

  Head smoothed a square hand over the short thick helmet of pewter-gray hair, the cabochon sapphire set in a heavy silver band catching light from the fire and gleaming suddenly bluer than the blue of her pale eyes. Those eyes were troubled. “She has only one of you left now.”

  “Yeah.” Shadith rubbed her back against the edge of the fireplace. “But her mother’s going to be with her. A full Vryhh. What about Taggert and me going to Avosing? Are you going to do it?”

  “Have I a choice?”

  “Sure. Sit on your hands. “It’s me that’s got no choice. To get Grey loose, it looks like I’ll have to finish your Hunt for you.” She sniffed with delicate disgust, then grinned at Head. “Don’t you think you’d better tell me what the Hunt is?”

  “It’s in the data sheets.” Head spoke absently, looking out one of the long narrow windows, seeing visions that disturbed her deeply. “No point in making mysteries. Avosing is a Pajungg colony, the Sikin Ajin is a Pajungg from the homeworld, was high up in the shadow government, what they call the criminal side, made enemies and skipped out, ended up on Avosing, where he stirred up a rebellion and has been a thorn in the official side. Grey was supposed to hand him over to the Colonial Authority.” She rose from her chair, crossed the shadow-filled room and stood beside the window, looking out at the sunset reddening the glaciers on the mountain peaks. “They never spent much time together, one or the other off on a Hunt or testifying on Helvetia. And they had some spectacular fights. I never understood why they stayed together.” She hitched a hip on the sill, leaned against the frame. “This hit her harder than I expected.”

  Shadith looked from Tamris to Linfyar and said nothing.

  “The boy speaks interlingue quite well.”

  “He’s a quick learner. And he sings like the angel he certainly isn’t, and he has the appetite of a herd of caterpillars.”

  “I hear you. Tamris, take Linfyar into the kitchen and see what you can find to feed him.”

  Tamris wrinkled her nose, but left holding Linfyar’s hand. The boy whistled a scornful trill but made no other protest about being shunted away; he was determined he was going with Shadith and didn’t want to annoy her.

  After the door shut behind them, Shadith said, “Some things I can’t talk about, too private, but … The bond between them is, well, it’s complicated, but it’s not going away. She came out of Ibex determined to make peace with him, maybe start a baby—all that. She was excited and happy when we landed. It was a long way to fall.” She wound a curl about her finger, frowned at the floor. With a sigh she raised her head. “You think he’s dead.”

  “Why would any sane man keep him alive? Grey dead and Grey alive are equally good as bait. And Grey dead is easier to control.”

  “Kell’s not exactly sane.”

  “I wouldn’t count on him being as stupid as he is crazy.”

  “Not count on it exactly, but there’s a sliver of possibility he’s keeping Grey alive. Kell likes hurting things, and he knows what Grey means to Lee. I’m hoping Grey makes an acceptable substitute until he has Lee to play with.” Shadith shuddered. “Weren’t for Lee, I’d be hoping Grey is dead.”

  Head slid off the sill and began walking about the room, a sturdy squarish figure, solid as the furniture. “It’s all guessing,” she said. “Likely there’s no trap, no devious plan, no mad plotter. Just Grey tripping over his feet.” She stopped by the cha pot, lifted the lid, let it clink back down, moved on. “Just the Sikin Ajin being cleverer and more powerful than the reports make him.” She stopped by the window again. “Clouding over. Be sleeting before morning. The Pajunggs lying their collective heads off, more or less normal for our clients. They all lie about something. Ticutt, getting past his prime and careless for once.” She stopped in front of Shadith. “It could be just that, a series of coincidences.”

  “Could be.” Shadith traced a fingertip along the brand on her cheek, the acid-etched outline of a hawk’s head. “Happens all the time. I don’t believe it. Not a word. It’s Kell.”

  “Yes.” Head swung around to look at the door. “Vrithian. Will she come back?”

  “Depends.”

  “On Grey?”

  “Some. And Vrithian.” Shadith stepped away from the bricks, stretched and patted a yawn. “Oh-ah, I’m tired. All this emotion. Look, Canyli, legends have a way of turning sour when you track them down. And this house, the land, the horses, they mean a lot to Lee. And she likes the work; forget how she bitches about it. And you’re the best friend she’s had in years. Pulling up is going to be harder than she thinks. Even if Grey is dead.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter. We’re committed whatever she decides. A matter of survival. You hungry?”

  “I could eat a raving silvercoat.” Shadith started for the door.

  “Reminds me, you should talk Lee out of the trek. It’s the worst time of the year.” She opened the door and waved

  Shadith through. “The silvercoats are coming out of their winter holes hungry and mean.’’

  “Good.” Shadith chuckled at the expression on Canyli’s face. “She needs the toughening.” They walked together in a companionable silence down the high-ceilinged hall with carved eiksjo panels and tapestries from a dozen worlds, boot heels clicking a double rhythm on the intricate parquet, heading for the stairs that led to the kitchen. “If you’re worried it’s a death wish, forget it. I’ve been with her the other times. She’ll come out of it with a lot of rubbish cleared out of her system.” A sigh, then a rueful short laugh. “I rather wish I were going with her.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “No. Not this time.”

  Head was silent until they started down the stairs. She glanced several times at Shadith, amusement at her own hesitations and puzzlement on her face. Finally she said, “What does it feel like? Coming out after so long? I get the weirdest double impression when I look at you, ancient child.” She shook her head, laughing a little. “I get the feeling I ought to mother you, and at the same time the thought appalls me.”

  “God! so it should.”

  “You had a kind of immortality. Now you could be dead and gone tomorrow.”

  “A short life, but a merry one.” She sniffed the air. “Haa, that smells good.” A flash of a grin at Head and Shadith was clattering down the last few stairs and pushing into the kitchen.

  The Wildlands.

  Mist and cold and fatigue.

  Thicker than she remembered, the mist swirled around her, distorted what she could see of the ground so that footing was never certain, and would have disoriented her if the compass in her head hadn’t kept her on the line she’d chosen. She ran through mud and slush, over ground still frozen, through patches of ghostly desiccated weeds, forcing herself on and on until she was stumbling along hardly able to lift her feet. She ran until the sun set and the darkness magnified the sounds of stealthy movement thickening around her. She spent the night in the crude shelter the Wolfflan provided for the first night of a trek taken in this season.

  In the morning she had the aches and uncertainties of her body to cope with along with the harshness of the land and the brutal cold. She began the struggle to relax into these things, to meld them into a smoothly articulated whole, knowing this would have to be done morning after morning when the night’s disturbed sleep with its surges of fear and anger and grief would jar her out of that oneness of land and self. But, little by little, as the days passed and the outer world sloughed away, the days and nights would merge.

  For a while her body and her memories distracted her, kept her from the center she was trying to find. Grey’s ghost ran beside her in the fog, along with memories of the time she’d come here to set aside the dream of reclaiming her son. This time she came to Wolff with a dream that meant even more to her, a dream perhaps as illusory as the other.

  By the fourth day she’d collected a following of silvercoats, gaunt shadows in the eternal mist, tagging her from cold camp to cold camp. There was no fuel left in this stony wilderness; whatever there had been was stripped out and used up by the first men and women coming to build the cairns and make the wild trek in pursuit of the oneness with the worldspirit that only exhaustion of mind and body would produce, that beating. down of barriers between spirit and substance. Some came here driven by pride and fear and shame; most of those died, the rest of them came back empty, pride satisfied, shame and fear defeated for the moment. Nothing more. Other Wolfflan came out centered, filled, changed—enough to keep the Wild Trek from degenerating into a sterile game whose rules were only game rules that could be broken without recoil if the player chose to win no matter what. After a thousand years the Wild Trek was hammered into the flesh of the Wolfflan, into the mythology of this narrow hardy people. They seemed to know by instinct that if they gave up on this, they would start an inward spiral to destruction. Like the immortals of Ibex, she thought, and wondered if those feeble, trapped creatures had used her

  blood and cells to free themselves from their machines. Wondered if Kenton Esgard had begun to regret what he’d done to himself. Wondered if Hana had worked her way into the Vryhh data and got her hands on her father’s business.

  But those things touched her only fleetingly, phantoms in the mists, distractions from mind sores and body aches, from an anger so all-encompassing it had no focus, or rather many foci. Kell. Fate. Grey. Her own stupidities. Head. Hunters Inc. Harskari. Shadith. Shareem. Hagan. In turn and all together, she raged at them for forgetting what they were, what she was, raged at her powerlessness. No way to change the past. You could go over and over and over what had happened, what you’d done, what other people had done, you could see where you’d gone wrong, you could see what you might have done, by force of will you could make yourself believe for a few seconds that it had not happened, but you couldn’t change any of it, not really, and if you lied to yourself, willfully blinded yourself, well, that was madness, a common enough madness and one that had its good points. Some things were too horrible to live with.

  No fuel to fight the cold, no shelters after the first to keep off the silvercoats and that cold. After a long day’s run she had to spend a racking time gathering stones and building a rough shelter so she could snatch a few hours of sleep with a degree of safety. Custom demanded that she scatter the stones, but she had to come back this way and she’d do the scattering then.

  The first cairn.