The Blood Of Ten Chiefs

The Spirit Quest by Diana L. Paxson

In the moist darkness of the soil, a point of life waited for its slow transition into form. Goodtree stilled, focusing her awareness upon it, trying to understand its essence, wondering if she could touch the power that would make it grow.

**Goodtree—**

Questing for the magic at the heart of things, consciousness registered the call, but noted no meaning. It was only sound-symbols, not a true name.

"Goodtree, where are you?"

Audible this time, the calling stirred memory, and awareness detached itself unwillingly from the essence of the flower. One pointed ear cupped instinctively to catch the whisper of skin-booted feet on grass.

**Lionleaper?**

Goodtree straightened, grimacing as stiffened muscles in slender limbs sent their own pained messages, and with a sigh remembered why she had wanted to be a tree. Her father, Tanner, chief of the Wolfriders, was gone.

The stiff foliage of the bearberry bushes that edged the clearing shivered, and a lithe figure, smooth-muscled and tawny as the beast from which he'd got his name, slipped past.

"Oh—this is pretty!" Lionleaper hunkered down beside her, patting the vivid moss beneath the trees.

Scent stimulated Goodtree's awareness of his physical nearness—the mixed smells of wolf on his tawny leggings, mint from the banks of the stream on his brown boots, and from the lightly tanned skin of his bare torso, the scent of his own pungent maleness. Instinctively she reached out to touch him, and he pulled her close and rubbed his cheek against hers.

"Nobody knew where you'd gone," Lionleaper said then, "but I thought I might find you here."

Abruptly Goodtree was separate again, green eyes widening in suspicion. "Did the others send you after me?"

"I don't take orders from anybody." His gaze went determinedly back to the moss. "But they're worried, Goodtree— they don't understand why you won't let them call you chieftain. I wish your mother was still alive—maybe she could talk sense into you!"

Goodtree shook her head, grinning crookedly. "You can't remember her very well if you think so! Considering how she fought against being chieftess to my father I don't think she would have dared to press the responsibility on me!"

"Are you trying to be like her?" asked Lionleaper. "Or are you still grieving for Tanner? We all loved him, but he's gone now—that's the Way—and it's no dishonor to his memory to tie up your hair in a chief's lock and carry on."

Defensively, Goodtree smoothed back her curls, golden as the sunlight that bathed the moss. The strand of ivy with which she had bound her hair came loose and she cast it angrily away.

"Is that what you want, Lionleaper?"

"You know what I want, my golden one!" he turned to her suddenly and she shrank from the glow in his amber eyes. Lovemates they had been, lifemates they might be, but she could not afford the closeness, could not take the chance that one night he might offer her his soulname and find out that she had none to give him in return.

"I say what I have said only for the good of the tribe," he added then. "Come back with me now. We have howled for your father; it's time to let him go."

For the good of the tribe! Goodtree thought as she followed Lionleaper back through the forest. How can I lead the Wolfriders without knowing my true name? I wish it were not my father we were mourning, but me!

It was the beginning of the green, growing time, and on the sandy slopes of the hurst the beech trees were already in delicate leaf against the somber dark green of the conifers. Soon the grass would be high on the plains that stretched between the forest and the southern mountains, and the great herds would move northward again. Time then for the elves to leave the protection of the Everwood for the good hunting of the grasslands, but for now it was enough to set the heavy furs of winter aside, and rejoice in the rebirth of the world.

When Goodtree and Lionleaper came into the clearing on the crest of the hill, those who had slept the day away were beginning to waken, wolves and elves emerging together from hollows beneath the great roots of the beech trees, or thickets where they had fashioned rough shelters. Goodtree staggered as a warm weight struck her from behind, and with a quick twist of her slender body, turned her fall into a grab for the brindled pelt of the great she-wolf who was pressing against her.

"Leafchaser! If you're too sleepy to walk straight, go back to your den!" Her words were harsh, but her arms were around the wolf's neck, her face buried in thick fur. From the wolf came a wordless amusement, and Goodtree had a momentary impression of herself as a cub to be knocked over in play until it had the wit to avoid or the strength to withstand it.

"Oh all right!" she answered, sitting back on her heels to stare into the wolf's yellow eyes. "I suppose it's my own fault for not sensing you were there." Leafchaser's eyes slanted as her jaws opened in an answering grin, then two pairs of pointed ears pricked at a long-drawn, distant howl.

**Good hunt, much meat,** came the wolf's images.

**Hunters coming back.** All around them wolves were answering in sweet harmony, and several of the elves had leaped to their friends' backs and sped down the slope to help the hunters bring home their kill. Goodtree could just remember a time when, for fear of the humans who roamed the plain, the elves had hunted only during the hours of darkness. But when the humans were not fighting elves, they fought each other, and for many seasons now their numbers had been too few for them to threaten the Wolfriders.

Goodtree stood up, tugging her close-fitting doeskin tunic back down over her leggings. She had eaten nothing since early that morning, and her belly was already rumbling in anticipation. Her anguish of the afternoon was forgotten. Joyously she cut a length of the clingsilver that twined up the trunk of the great beech tree and twisted it into a new wreath for her hair so that the little bell-shaped blossoms hung trembling over her cheeks and brow.

Soon new sounds heralded the hunters' arrival—Joygleam first, as befitted the senior huntress of the tribe, sitting her wolf-friend proudly despite her evident weariness, and then Brightlance and the others, each bearing a portion of what must have been a mighty beast indeed.

"The branch-horns are coming!" cried Brightlance. "Their forerunners are moving into the grasslands, and the main herd will be here soon. This bull was the first of them, but we were too clever for him. How I wish we could have brought his head too—his horns were like the limbs of this tree!" He gestured broadly, and the haunch he was carrying slipped to the grass.

Elves seized it eagerly and carried it into the clearing in the center of the hurst, and soon knives of flint and bone were stripping skin from flesh and carving the dripping muscle-meat into pieces so that everyone could share. They sat in a circle on the grass, and for a time the only sounds were of those strong jaws moving and an occasional growl as a wolf worried at a particularly resistant piece of flesh, followed by sighs of repletion as one by one, both wolves and elves were filled. Goodtree leaned back against a friendly trunk, at peace with the world. The sun had sought its den and the first stars were pricking holes in the mantle that evening had drawn across the sky. Elfin eyes grew larger and more luminous as the darkness deepened. Then the child moon lifted above the trees, and one of the wolves lifted his pointed muzzle and sang out in greeting. One by one the others echoed him, and the elves joined them, their howling shifting imperceptibly into song.

"Two moons in the sky— High the way they go ... To their hidden hall. Well the way they know ..."

The final vowel sounds were drawn out and held, providing a soft background as Acorn Songshaper continued. Goodtree could just glimpse his soft brown hair against the darker tree trunk, his thin body no broader than it was. He was gentle, as her father had been, and as she knew well, lying with him on the grass in the moonlight was like being part of a song.

"Wander ers are we, Free, we find our way Through forest, over hill, Still we cannot stay ..."

Goodtree felt her spirit shaken by a longing for something she could not name, and, opened to the emotions of the others by the sweetness of the music, knew that they felt it too.

"Forever must we roam, Homeless here below? Oh, are we all alone? Only the high ones know!''

The Wolfriders had hunted through Everwood since before her birth, and yet, singing this song, Goodtree felt as if she had lost a place and a people that she had never known. For a moment she could almost see it, then the last echoes faded, and the image glimmered like a rainbow in the morning mist and was gone.

"Mold and mushrooms, Acorn, you'll dissolve us into puddles if you keep this on!" exclaimed Lionleaper, blinking rapidly. "Can't you find anything livelier to sing?"

"Oh, Lionleaper is a hero—" the Songshaper responded immediately. "With him around what shall we fear-oh? Oh, oh, oh, aoow!" Everyone began to laugh as the wolves provided the chorus, and as Acorn continued with verses describing Joygleam's success as a hunter, Chipper's expertise in working stone, and Freshet's ability to find dreamberries, someone began clicking out a rhythm on clapper stones. By the time they had surveyed the peculiarities of most of the tribe, someone else had added the twittering of a reed flute to the music, and Acorn was thrumming an accompaniment on the eight-stringed bow-harp he had made.

The music grew wilder, and elves sprang into the center of the ring to dance. The Mother moon trailed her offspring across the skyfields, and her leaf-filtered light dappled the soft grass. In that deceptive radiance the leaping figures of the dancers flickered in and out of vision. Goodtree rose to join them, then blinked, wondering if she had eaten too many dreamberries. But the music was headier than they. Forgetting everything, she danced, linked once more to the deep magic of the night.

Goodtree did not know how long it had been when she realized that the wordless song of the united tribe and pack had become a deep chanting—affirming their identity—

"From the frozen mountains to the pathless forest!"

"We are the Wolfriders, and the pack runs free!" came the full-throated reply.

"From the Muchcold Water to the Sea of Grass!" the chant went on, and the response was repeated. "Blood of the high ones, Timmorn's children!" "Led by chieftains' might and wisdom!" Unwilled, Goodtree was caught up in the litany.

"Rahnee the She-Wolf, Prey-Pacer, Two-Spear—" "Huntress Skyfire, Freefoot, Tanner!" Goodtree jolted to a halt like a fleeing doe who senses the cliff-edge before her, but the tribe's response vibrated through her.

"We are the Wolfriders, and the pack runs free!" "Goodtree, Goodtree, chiefs' blood, lead us!" They roared, and she stood trembling, mouthing denials that no one could hear. Exultant faces glimmered mockingly in the moonlight; her head was pounding and the meat she had eaten lay in her belly like a stone.

**No!** she sent finally, with a violence that flared like lightning through their ecstasy. **The tribe is safe here— what do you need a chief for? Choose someone else if you have to—but not me, not me!** Sobbing, Goodtree found the power of motion finally and dashed from the circle into the sheltering shadows of the trees.

Instinct urged her to run like a stampeded branch-horn. But the log that tripped her brought Goodtree partway to her senses—she sought escape, not death, and she must not go weaponless. Hastily she ducked into her shelter and slung bow and quiver across her back, wrapped the longtooth pelt that Lionleaper had given her around her shoulders, and picked up her bone-tipped lance. Then she was out again, a shadow among shadows, slipping silently through the trees.

She was halfway down the hill when the snap of a twig behind her startled her. She missed a step and her nostrils caught a familiar scent just as a gust of warm breath tickled her ear.

**Leafchaser!** Her sending held mingled relief and annoyance, but she knew that she could never have evaded her wolf-friend for long. But where Leafchaser could follow, others could trace her as well. What if the rest of the Wolfriders refused to let her leave?

**Old friend, I don't know where I'm going. Are you sure you want to come along?**

Whether or not the she-wolf had properly understood the sending, her determination to stay with Goodtree was clear, and the elf felt her heart imperceptibly lightened. It was not natural for either wolf or Wolfrider to hunt alone. She let the wolf find a way through the thick trees, but when they came to the river she forced the complaining animal to follow her upstream through the water. Even wolves would be thrown off the scent by that, at least for a little while.

But both the wolves and the Wolfriders had gorged to satiation, and bellies shrunken by winter's scarcities needed time to digest the considerable quantities of meat on which they had feasted. It was not until midmorning that they realized that Goodtree and Leafchaser were gone and began to search for them.

For two days Goodtree pressed onward, pausing only to hunt. Behind her was the deep forest and the ever deepening river that flowed downhill toward the Muchcold Water to the north. Before her the trees grew thinner, and at the end of the second day, she saw through the last outlying pines wind-ruffled grasses furring the long slope of plain that rose toward a blue etching of mountains, sharp against the sky.

They camped that night at the edge of the forest, listening to the incessant whispering of grasses in the wind. -When morning came, Goodtree and Leafchaser shared the last of the meat. Then she sprang onto the wolf's narrow back, clutching at the thick neck fur and laughing joyously as Leafchaser leaped forward across the plain.

In the forest behind her, Lionleaper stilled as his wolf-friend Fang barked out the short call that told him that the animal had found the scent they were looking for. He tipped back his own head then and gave tongue, and heard the nearest elf echoing. From one to another the call carried back to the hurst where the fighting strength of the Wolfriders was waiting. They had been getting ready for the spring hunt in any case, and needed little preparation. Before another hour had passed, everyone who was fit for a long ride—a good two-thirds of the tribe—was mounted and ready to follow Goodtree's trail.

The first release of energy carried Goodtree and Leafchaser a half-day's journey across the plain. Leapers soared out of their way as they approached, but the little beasts sensed that they were not hunting, and would settle to cropping the rich grass again before they had quite passed. The first scattered bands of branch-horns did not even bother to do that much, knowing well that they were in no danger from a solitary hunter, whether it went on four legs or two. Goodtree stared admiringly at the play of muscle in their shaggy flanks and the immense sweep of horns that gave them the appearance of ambulant trees.

A walking forest ... she thought then, wondering if elves could ever find the same sense of kinship with creatures like this as they did with the Everwood's trees. As the thought came to her she was aware of an odd sense of dislocation, as if she had lost something important. But she could not remember what it had been.

A few hours later they came over a rise, and Goodtree nearly fell off as Leafchaser halted suddenly. She felt the hair rising along the wolf's spine and sniffed at the wavering wind, questioning silently.

**Longtooth hunting,** came the wolf's answer.

The land fell away before them in a series of gentle ridges covered by a varicolored carpet of green and tawny grasses where the new growth was pushing through the old. The occasional small patches of brush made it hard to judge size or distance, and except for a rippling in the grass as the wind touched it, nothing moved.

Leafchaser started to circle around, but Goodtree stopped her, gripped by an unexpected sense of anticipation. The wolf snorted then and sat down, and Goodtree slid off her back and moved to the rim of the hill, where she squatted, becoming as still as the rest of the scene.

Then she felt a vibration in the earth beneath her. An outraged trumpeting split the air, and suddenly a hairy brown shape that even at this distance seemed the size of a moving mountain, heaved over the next rise. For something that big it moved astonishingly quickly, and Goodtree half rose, ready to run if it neared her, for one step of that flat-bottomed foot could have turned her into a stain on the soil. As it approached she saw the gleam of huge tusks and the sinuous upflung trunk and recognized a beast that she had half-believed a legend.

But the dun-colored shape that flashed after it was faster still, coiling and uncoiling in great bounds across the grass. And at the moment when the serpent-nose slowed and started to swing those murderous tusks toward its pursuer, a second longtooth exploded suddenly out of invisibility in the dead grasses, leaped to the great beast's shaggy shoulders, and clung, snarling furiously as it sought for a killing grip on the spine.

The first cat leaped for the huge haunches and fell back again as the serpent-nose spun. But now two more lions magically appeared, leaping and slashing with claws sharper than the Wolfriders' knives. But this prey was not to be taken easily. The serpent-nose bucked and stamped, flexible trunk seeking to capture one of its tormentors.

As Goodtree forced herself to take a breath, one of the lions missed its leap, and as it rebounded the huge head swung and caught the cat on its tusks, lifted and flung it in a squalling arc to land with a sick thud a good distance away. But the movement had opened the way to the first longtooth's savaging jaws, and in that moment the sword teeth pierced through muscle and sinew and snapped the spine.

The serpent-nose reared upward, blasting its agony, looming against the sky. For a moment it seemed impossible that something that big could ever fall. And then, with the ponderous inevitably of some great tree uprooted by a winter storm, the giant beast swayed and toppled to the ground.

Goodtree felt the ground shake beneath her as it fell. Dying, the serpent-nose continued to struggle, but with its spinal cord cut, its movements were purposeless. Ignoring them, the big cats pounced upon the twitching carcass and began to feed. She sensed from Leaf chaser a rather wistful approval, for even the full wolf-pack with riders would have hesitated to tackle something that size.

Goodtree herself was admiring the perfect teamwork and discipline with which the longtooth pride had caught enough meat to feed them all for several days. Her stomach rumbled as the hot blood smell came to her on the shifting wind. She only wished the tribe could do so well. The wolves' way was to run down their prey, but she wondered if perhaps the Wolfriders could learn something from the big cats she had just seen. Riderless, the wolves could chase their chosen prey until it was exhausted, then herd it into the elves' ambush where a well-placed arrow or lucky cast of a spear might reach a vulnerable throat or eye. She would have to ask Joygleam if that had ever been tried—

—And at the thought, Goodtree remembered why she was here, alone. Tasting bitterness, she stood up. The longtooth male lifted his head from the kill to look at her, decided that something so puny was no competition, and returned to his meal.

He was probably right, Goodtree thought unhappily.

Lionleaper had fought one once, an old cat weakened by the winter snows, and taken one of its great fangs for a hunting knife. But he had been badly wounded in the battle, and roundly scolded by Tanner as well. Foolish feats of individual valor were not the Wolfriders' Way—elf lives were too valuable to be wasted. Elves did not kill each other, but far too many died defending the tribe from other enemies.

Only together did they have the strength to survive, and as a result the Wolfriders were rarely out of sensing range of other members of the tribe. No wonder she felt incomplete, alone out here beneath the empty sky. If she had not had the comfort of Leafchaser's calm presence, Goodtree thought she would have sat down again right where she was and howled.

As it was, she felt a suspicious ache in her throat as she climbed onto the wolf's bony back and directed her to continue her steady trot toward the distant hills.

Together, the Wolfriders wound through the Everwood more slowly than a single rider, but they were still following Good-tree's trail. Lionleaper led them, but Acorn was close behind.

The warrior had never had much use for the song maker, especially when he saw how Goodtree favored him, but there would have been no honor in challenging someone who was obviously so much weaker. Even to himself he did not admit that what he won with blows he might have lost with words.

Now, however, Lionleaper found the other elf's presence oddly comforting. The rest of the tribe loved Goodtree too, because she was Tanner's daughter, because she was part of them, their chosen chieftain. But the warrior sensed that of them all, perhaps only he and Acorn loved her because she was herself, sometimes merry as the morning sun, warming all she smiled on, and sometimes distant as some glittering star, lost in some inner realm to which neither of them could follow her. But at least she had still been there, and they had known that eventually she would come back to them.

But where was she now, and why? There had always been something unfathomable in Goodtree, even in the moments of greatest intimacy. Joy and sorrow he could understand, but not flight, if that was what it was, for her trail was not the erratic wandering of a lost cub, but a purposeful movement toward some goal that only Goodtree knew.

If she was killed, or she never returned to them, what would they do? Timmorn's blood flowed in all the Wolfriders, but additional generations of leadership had given the chiefly line a special quality that made it impossible for Lionleaper to imagine anyone else as head of the tribe, even—despite the times he had chafed at Tanner's caution—himself.

**We will find her—we have to—** he thought, and only realized that in his intensity he had been sending when he sensed Acorn answering him.

**She's still all right. I had an impression of her a little while ago, as if she wished she could tell us about something she had seen.**

"Where?" Lionleaper said aloud. "Where is she now?"

"On the plains somewhere—there was a feeling of space around her," Acorn replied, urging his wolf alongside Fang.

Lionleaper nodded. "That's where we're headed. Another day's travel and we'll be there."

But will Goodtree be waiting for us? anxiety added, and will she be happy to see us when we catch up with her?

The plain rose almost imperceptibly, but steadily, and that night Goodtree and Leafchaser slept curled together in the grass at the base of the foothills. The mountains that had been an irregular gray wall when she fell asleep were revealed in luminous precision in the clear light of dawn, tree-clad folds and ridges rising to jagged peaks sharp against the translucent sky. But the light showed also a glacier carven cleft as if the mountains themselves were welcoming her. Eagerly they began to climb.

As is the way of mountains, the path that had looked so easy from a distance proved less open than it had seemed. Very soon Goodtree dismounted so that she could use all four limbs to climb, and there were times when Leafchaser's paws could find no purchase and she had to help haul the wolf up the scree. But although the climb was in places difficult, it was nowhere impossible.

Gradually the stands of budding hardwoods and the rocky moraine of the lower slopes were left behind, and they came to groves of conifers and little mountain meadows where scatterings of purple and white flowers jeweled the new grass. By this time the sun was sinking once more, and Goodtree saw the peaks suffused with mauve and rose. Too tired to hunt, elf and wolf-friend found a sheltered place at the edge of a meadow and were asleep almost before the last light was gone.

A cold poke in the armpit brought Goodtree suddenly awake when the mists of morning still hung heavy in the trees. Pulse pounding, she struggled to unwind herself from the furry folds of the lion pelt and sit up, sending a frantic query to Leafchaser.

**No danger,** came the silent reply. **Deer in meadow ... hungry!**

Goodtree grimaced, realizing, now that she was upright, that she ached in every limb. All her senses counseled a return to sleep's oblivion, but Leafchaser's steady amber stare would not release her.

**Oh all right, I'll try,** she agreed finally, **but if you think I'm going to hit anything you're in worse shape than I feel!**

**Hungry ...** repeated Leafchaser, and Goodtree realized that she was hungry too. The wolf was right. They were only going to feel worse if they went much longer without food.

The deer were in the meadow, dappled as the forest floor with legs so slender they almost seemed to float above the grass. The wolf scent made them uneasy, so Goodtree sent Leafchaser to circle around upwind. But even when a shift in the breeze carried her own scent directly toward them they did no more than lift their delicate heads, long ears swiveling in curiosity. They had never encountered elf before, she decided, and had no way of knowing that this new scent they were ignoring heralded a predator more dangerous than the wolves they rightly feared.

For several minutes she watched them, forgetting her sore muscles as she identified two does with their new fawns, and the guardian stag. Then another deer moved out onto the meadow—a split-horn buck, his red hide ragged where his winter coat was coming away. She lifted her bow and nocked an arrow, holding it half-drawn, waiting. The young buck moved this way and that, as if he was trying to hide behind the other deer.

**Move downwind for just an instant, then away,** she sent to Leafchaser. In a few moments she saw all four dainty heads lift questioningly and caught a hint of wolf-scent on the breeze. The does nudged their fawns nervously toward the edge of the wood as the stag started forward. But the young buck stood with one foreleg half-lifted, poised on the edge of flight.

And in his moment of indecision, Goodtree's own choice was made. With a single smooth motion she drew the bowstring back and released it, and the arrow flew flawlessly toward the paler fur behind the buck's elbow; flew, and struck, boring between the fragile ribs to penetrate the pumping heart behind them.

The buck gave one convulsive leap and fell, dead before he hit the grass. The other deer, finally realizing their danger, disappeared into the trees in a few frantic bounds. Now that the hunt was over, Goodtree felt her aching muscles once more. Stiffly she moved toward her kill, leaving a wavering trail across the dew-pearled grass.

The deer's eyes were already dulling as she knelt beside it, but she could sense the startled spirit near.

"Thy spirit for my spirit, thy blood for my body, brother—as mine shall feed others, a circle of life without end!" she said softly, and stretching the neck taut, drew her knife carefully across the buck's throat to release its blood into the soil.

She felt Leafchaser's familiar presence at her shoulder. Her nostrils flared at the sharp tang of blood and her stomach grumbled sharply. Cutting carefully down from the gash in the throat, she tugged slippery hide away from the red flesh it had protected, and together, elf and wolf began to feed.

Sustained by that nourishment, the pair made good time during the morning's climbing, and just as the sun reached the summit of the sky, Goodtree found herself suddenly looking downward. Rocky slopes fell away before her, less steeply but otherwise much the same as the ones she had climbed. But beyond them stretched a green plain to which spring had come sooner than her own, and at the edge of sight the misty blur of a forest.

With an odd throb almost like Recognition she identified it, seeing in her mind's eye green, leafy spaces friendlier than the woods of home. She took a deep breath, scenting the sweetness of sun-warmed grasses mingled with the crisp mountain wind.

I will go there—someday I will go see, she promised herself, but memory of the Wolfriders tethered her. Whether she had been running toward something, or only running away, she understood now that she could not leave them behind. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder what the tribe was doing now.

With a sigh Goodtree turned away from the tantalizing vista ahead and looked around her. She was standing in a cleft in the hills. To one side gray stone sheered upward to a jagged crown barely softened by a straggle of stunted pines. In the other direction, two ridges met and plunged downward in a jumble of rock and trees cut by the silver ribbon of a mountain stream. As it neared the pass, the canyon opened out into a small meadow, but the stream turned southward, toward the distant forest she had seen.

It was an omen, thought Goodtree as she considered the canyon once more. Getting up that would be difficult, but not much harder than parts of the climb she had already made. And she felt a growing curiosity about the source of that little stream.

Carefully Goodtree began to climb, but as the summit grew nearer, she scrambled more quickly, caution fading so gradually she never knew when it disappeared.

Acorn clapped his hands to his head with a cry.

Fang stopped short as Lionleaper turned. Another stride brought the songshaper's wolf up to them and Lionleaper slid from Fang's back to catch the other elf as he fell.

"What is it? Did something hit you?" The warrior looked wildly about. Behind him he saw the rest of the tribe, stretched out in an irregular line across the rolling plain. The plain! What could drop on Acorn here? Swiftly he scanned the shivering grasses, searching for any sign of an enemy. But he saw nothing, and the sensitive noses of the wolves found no trace of any foe.

Joygleam jogged up beside them, her lean features creasing in concern. "Is he ill?"

"No—" said Lionleaper. "I don't know, but I'm afraid—" He could not voice the words. Acorn moaned and stirred against him, then relaxed once more.

"Afraid, warrior, because sickness can't be faced with a sword?"

"No!" Lionleaper glared at her over the singer's head. "Acorn thinks he's been sensing Goodtree. He said she was all right, traveling straight across the plain ahead of us, except when she stopped to look at the longtooth kill, and your trackers say the same. I'm afraid something's happened to her, and he is picking it up somehow."

The hunter sobered abruptly. "Dead?"

"I don't think so." Lionleaper swallowed, not liking to think about what might happen to Acorn if Goodtree died while they were mentally connected this way.

He looked down at the limp form he held. Once he had despised the song maker, frustrated because he and Goodtree shared something which the warrior could not understand. It would have been easy to hate Acorn now, linked to her in a way that none of them understood. He had thought at first that this bond somehow meant Recognition, that he had lost any hope of Goodtree's love—but he had never heard of such a connection even between the most devoted of mates. And now his anxiety for Goodtree had swallowed up all lesser emotions; as he felt the other elf shudder in his arms his heart was wrenched by an odd mixture of pity and envy for his pain.

"He can't ride—what do you want us to do?" Joygleam asked practically.

Lionleaper stared at her. He knew that she had had to perform the final mercy for comrades more than once when they were wounded beyond bearing on hunting expeditions far from home. They had had no healer in the tribe since Willow had died.

I don't know! You're older than I am—why are you asking me? he wanted to shout at her. He was perfectly sure now that he would not have taken the chieftainship if they offered it to him on a white wolfskin. But for now he had to pretend he could do it-—he had to hold together long enough to find Goodtree—alive... And he was suddenly determined that when that happened Acorn would be alive too.

"Let's make camp now. We can tend Acorn here and let the weaker ones rest while the hunters go after meat."

Joygleam nodded, and presently they settled Acorn on a soft bed of furs where a hillock curved around and provided a little protection from the wind. And Lionleaper stayed by him, smoothing the damp hair back from his brow and giving him water when he began to stir. But it was dawn of the following day before he came back to consciousness fully and told them that Goodtree had hit her head, probably in a fall, but she was on her feet and on her way once more.

Her vision still blurred if she turned her head too quickly, but Goodtree kept moving. She had come to herself just as the sun was lifting above the eastern peaks, to find Leafchaser licking her face anxiously. She hurt everywhere there was a where, but she was lucky to be alive and intact, and she knew it. There was no excuse for the carelessness that had made her miss her footing and fall. She told herself that whatever she was seeking would still be there when she arrived, but even now she found herself hurrying.

The way had grown easier, but the pines through which she was moving now had been forced to grow at an angle by the pressure of the wind, so that the evidence of inner ear and eye conflicted; she found herself inadvertently leaning so that they would seem upright. Finally she closed her eyes, and gripping Leafchaser's thick ruff let the wolf lead her through the wood.

The wind deformed those trees, but they changed, and survived... She wondered then, Have we elves also changed to survive this world, and if we have, what were we like when we began?

Only the wind answered her, and she could not understand what it was whispering. The brisk touch lifted the damp tangles of pale hair from her brow and tingled on her skin. It sang in her blood, stimulating her circulation until the throbbing in her head faded finally away. The wolf stopped then, and Goodtree let go of her and opened her eyes.

Below her lay a circular valley—no, a cup, a crater in the heart of the mountain with a round lake in its center that blazed back the brilliant blue of the sky. There was meadowland around it, and groves of trees like none in the Everwood, all in exquisite miniature.

Goodtree gave a great sigh. There was a feeling here that set an odd tremor rippling through her belly—the same shiver that came to her sometimes when Acorn told his tales. There was power here; she could feel it, and she would seek it even if it proved too great for an elf-woman to bear.

She folded the lionskin and laid it down, slipped bow and quiver off her shoulder and set them atop it, and the long-bladed spear after. She would not need them where she was going. She must pursue this path fasting now. She pulled off her doeskin tunic then, and leggings and boots as well, scarcely noticing as the wind pebbled her pale skin. The Wolfriders went to their soul quest naked as they were born.

**Leafchaser, I am going down there. You must guard these things for me and let none come after until I return. Do you understand?**

Amber eyes stared into hers for a moment, then the wolf pushed her cold nose into Goodtree's hand. **Come too ... hunt for you...**

**No! No hunting! I have to go alone! Please stay here and guard!**

The great wolf sat down, head slightly averted, tongue lolling as she panted in the thin air. She could not remember when Goodtree had tried to find her name before, and failed, but she recognized the finality in her elf-friend's sending. With a gusty sigh, she sank the rest of the way down and looked up at Goodtree.

**Will guard... Come soon...**

Three days later, Acorn and Lionleaper stood where Goodtree had stood, and looked down into the valley where she had gone. The sun still shone brightly, but far to the west cumulus clouds were capping the peaks with white towers. Leafchaser sat beside the pitiful pile of possessions that had been too much weight for Goodtree's spirit, but when the two elves began to seek a way down the slope after her, the wolf rose, snarling, to block their way.

Lionleaper looked at his companion helplessly. "She told Leafchaser to stop us!" He supposed they could ask their own wolf-friends to get the she-wolf out of the way, but he was not sure they would obey.

"Goodtree doesn't want us to follow her!" exclaimed Acorn in sudden anger. "We've hounded her for almost an eight-of-days, but we have to stop now—"

"Why?" Lionleaper began. "We don't even know if she's still living!"

"Even if she were dying, we wouldn't have the right. This was her choice. And there's magic in that place. We can't go down there. Don't you yet understand?"

"No..." Lionleaper hunkered down beside the pile of abandoned clothing with a sigh. "All I understand is that I had to follow her."

Acorn's sudden smile transformed his angular face. "So did I. ..." He lowered himself to the stone.

"The others are safe enough in the little vale at the top of the pass. I'll send Fang with a message for them," said the warrior. "Do you know enough stories to fill the time until she returns?"

Acorn laughed. "Long ago, in the time of legends, the high ones came to the world of two moons ..."he began.

By the end of the first day, Goodtree's belly was cramping with hunger until she wanted to scream. It had been that way when she tried this before, she remembered, and tried to distract herself by focusing on her surroundings.

For her vigil she had chosen a grove of what she called sun trees, for they were new to her, rising like columns covered with smooth bark that had a golden sheen. Their leaves were a translucent pale green edged with sunlight, and the radiance that shone through them filled the grove with a gold-green glow. If she concentrated on it, perhaps she could feel the luminous warmth penetrating her body. Her heart shook with longing to understand the secrets of those trees.

Fill me! Transform me! she prayed, opening her awareness to the sensation as if she were trying to contact a cub who was just learning to send. And for a moment she did feel it. Then the demands of her belly distracted her. She swore, and settled herself to try again.

Sometime during the third day the hunger pangs left her. Goodtree looked down at her naked body with a curious detachment. Her breasts were still pointed and firm, but her hipbones jutted painfully and she could count her ribs. It occurred to her that several days of hard travel after a lean winter had not been the best preparation for fasting, but the thought had no power to disturb her now.

What was disturbing her was memory.

Living with the wolves made it too easy to see life as they did—a succession of events whose connections were rarely remembered or recognized. The moons and the seasons flowed by; cubs were born and the old were killed or died. But one cycle of the seasons was much like another, and those who died nourished the unborn so that nothing was really lost, only transformed.

It was a good way to live, a way that had enabled the Wolfriders to deepen their bonds to the beasts with whom they shared their lives so that both survived. But there were times when understanding cause and effect required a linear view of reality. Perhaps, once she had done this, Goodtree would never have to think this way again. But to understand who she was now, it was essential for her to remember who she had been.

With the same discipline with which she would have back-tracked an animal to its den, Goodtree began to move backward along the paths of memory. The death of her father was a recent sorrow; the death of her mother more distant but in its way more painful, for Stormlight had died as violently as she had lived.

But how Goodtree's parents had ended did not matter. What was important was that with each death she had felt as if she had failed them, and there was too much that she could never say to them now. And yet somehow it still needed to be said.

They were so different! she thought in wonder. How could they have Recognized, and produced me? In theory, the offspring of such a union should have the best characteristics of both parents, or at best, something new. But I can't do anything unusual, thought Goodtree, the easy tears spilling from beneath her eyelids. Until I find my soulname, I don't even understand what every other grown Wolfrider knows! She shifted position on the grass beneath the sun tree as if she were in physical agony.

Mother! Why couldn't I have your courage?

The image of Stormlight came vividly to mind: midnight eyes bright and pale hair sparking wildly, preparing for the hunt as if she was going to war. Goodtree remembered sitting behind her mother on the wolf's back, clinging for dear life as they charged into a herd of branch-horns. She heard once more her mother's yell of triumph as the sharp spear bit, and relived her own terror when the murderous horns grazed her as the beast fell. She had sobbed hysterically all the way back to the hurst, and her parents had argued over it for hours— that was a painful memory too.

O my father, why couldn't I have inherited your calm patience?

She remembered the gentle abstraction in Tanner's face, already weathered by the years when she had been born. A lock of brown hair would fall over his eyes when he was working—and he usually was working, always trying to refine the process he had invented to tan the leather the Wolfriders wore. She had wanted to help him, she remembered, so that he would be pleased with her, but the acrid preparations he used had blistered her hands, and the fumes had stung her eyes until she ran away, weeping. He and Stormlight had argued about that, too.

I cried a lot in my cub days, Goodtree thought distastefully, but maybe I had reason. When did I stop being so sensitive, and why?

A chieftain's cub was adopted by everyone in the tribe, and she had certainly never lacked for food or care. But apparently it had not been enough to make up for the sense of separation she felt from the two beings she loved most in the world. She did not know what would have become of her if she had not had Leafchaser.

When Goodtree was small she had been sure that her father was the wisest elf in the tribe, just as her mother was the bravest and the most beautiful. But as she grew older, she had fought with her mother, refusing to hunt with her or learn the craft of the warrior and Stormlight's skills with the stabbing spear. Instead, she had spent long hours alone, practicing with the bow. Her father had tried to talk to her about the craft of the chieftain. Tanner had been old when Goodtree was born, and she understood now that he had suspected how young she would still be when she succeeded him. But she had refused to hear.

But they are both gone now, and I cannot turn back the seasons to seek them! Once more she wept as if her parents lay newly dead before her, but it was the loss of all they should have shared that she was weeping for. They had tried their best to help her, just as she had tried to please them. There was no blame for either them or Goodtree—all they had needed for understanding was time.

But they had not been given it. Where had those bright spirits gone when the flesh failed them? Was the soul extinguished, or did it dissipate like mist before the sun? Or did Tanner and Stormlight live still in some realm where even wolf-senses could not discover them?

Darkness had fallen while she was still retracing the tangled paths of memory. Exhausted, Goodtree fell into a fitful sleep in which her unconscious replayed all the incidents of her cubhood with implacable clarity. Only when the rising sun illuminated the grove with a glow that was almost silvery, as if it were being filtered through clouds, did she awaken, or rather, shift consciousness, for she could scarcely feel her body now.

That was the solution! It was the flesh she wore that prevented her from communicating with Stormlight and Tanner—she wondered why she had not understood that before. If she could leave the clumsy thing behind her, perhaps she could catch up with them.

Breathing slowed and grew shallower; sight fixed on the flutter of golden leaves and then lost focus; senses shut down until Goodtree was only a point of awareness hovering in a haze of light. But it was not enough for her to lose herself, however pleasant it might be. What she was seeking lay elsewhere. Her spirit strained like a pup struggling against the birth-caul, and suddenly she felt warmth like the she-wolf's tongue dissolving the last constrictions, and she was free.

**Mother? Father?** Familiar presences flowed comfortingly around her. **Myr ... Lhu ...** Goodtree recognized the two she had known as Tanner and Stormlight.

**We are here ... we have always been with you ... could you not feel our love?**

With that answer, Goodtree received from them a totality of acceptance that healed wounds that had festered in her spirit for far too long. Freed, she sank deeper into the magic, awareness expanding to encompass it. Myr and Lhu were only part of something larger, a multiplicity of glories which she gradually recognized as the essence of the world around her, as real as the physical appearances she had known.

And as she perceived them, Goodtree named them, understanding with that act the inner truth of tree and flower and stone. She knew how the rootlets of the grasses spread through the rich soil, sensed the absorption of nutrients from the earth and the transformation of sunlight into energy, and more deeply, the cell-deep changes that made the plant grow.

But the grasses were only marginally aware. It was far more rewarding to touch the deep enduring life of a tree, its spirit encircled with rings of memory. Now, the tree's upper branches rustled and swayed in the wind, but its trunk recorded its biography. One year had been dry and hard, another so cold that heartwood cracked; lightning had scored a shapely trunk, and the tree was still slowly curling bark over the scar; floods had bared roots and torn branches away. All these things Goodtree remembered, and with them understood the internal patterning that enabled the tree to adjust to trauma and still continue to grow.

Some emptiness within her that no bond with elf or wolf had been able to fill accepted union with the trees and was satisfied. And in that knowledge she understood her own essence at last and named it.

Neme! I am Neme! And this is my true home!

Neme perceived the minimal life-processes of her own body, and understood how its elements would nourish the trees around her when the last tenuous connection between flesh and spirit faded away. Then she would be part of the grove forever. She would never again have to deal with failure or loneliness or fear.

Seeking that union, Neme's spirit quested outward. Beyond the Golden Grove, oak and beech woods whispered the same response to the rising wind. She felt their movement as if she herself were moving, sensed their leaves' adjustment as clouds dimmed the light, knew the strength that rooted them, understood even the layering of soils and the structure of underlying stone.

Ever more widely her spirit expanded. Now she perceived the roots of the mountains, where hidden earth-fires burned still. Awareness identified Acorn and Lionleaper, keeping their patient vigil beside the wolves, and felt them flinch beneath the first stinging drops of rain. Neme sensed how the land folded downward to the pass and without surprise she perceived the Wolfriders camped beside the stream.

The rain fell with a sudden fury, and the elves and wolves scurried for the dubious shelter of the bank. Neme's body was wet now as well, but that did not concern her. She was too fascinated by the way the leaves gave to the pressure of the rain, and the soil absorbed the water that fell.

Here at the top of the world, the soil was stretched as thin across the stone as the skin of a starved beast over its bones. Water soaked swiftly into what earth there was, and when the soil could contain no more, began to pool in hollows and sheet across bare stone. She rejoiced as thunderclaps shook the heavens, rock trembled, and more rain poured down.

The little stream was becoming a torrent. Water leaped from every outcropping, scoured every crevice, funneled through every fold in the stone, tugging loose pebbles, leaves, and fallen branches free and carrying them onward, at first sluggishly, and then with gathering power.

The flood grew quickly. In the time it would have taken an elf to shoot a quiverful of arrows and gather them up again, the stream had changed from trickle to torrent. Now the upper canyon roared with the rush of swirling waters. Small branches gouged at the banks and tangled in larger ones to form temporary dams until the growing force of the waters blasted both free. Collecting and bursting in stages the river rushed downward, scouring all that lay in its path, and Neme's spirit shared the explosion of raw energy.

**When the waters reach the pass, the Wolfriders will be swept away...** came the thought of her mother. The statement held neither accusation nor sorrow. It was simply an observation, leaving her own response free. Neme felt a tremor shake her spirit as emotions she thought she had left behind her with her body stirred. Why should the plight of bodied creatures move her?

**If the flood takes them they will only be transformed, and become as we are now...** she protested.

**Those who were left behind cannot survive without them,** came her father's reply. **The Wolfriders will be no more.**

In the canyon, the waters roared like a longtooth balked of prey. The communication of the elves was timeless, but the flood was growing fast.

**Isn't it better to be like this, without the anxiety of the search for food and shelter, the body's pain at wounds and the spirit's pain at loss?** Was she arguing with her parents or with herself, now?

**Or without the pleasure of tasting fresh meat, feeling the warm caress of the sun or the cool kiss of rain, without the delight of a lover's touch and the warm weight of a cub in your arms?** Emotion throbbed in her mother's thought now.

**We chose the adventure of living as physical creatures! Without that, we could not be what we are now!** her father added passionately. **If the tribe dies, all that we have suffered and learned will have been in vain!**

But it was her mother's words that struck home, as truly as one of Stormlight's spears. Memory was like a fire exploding through Goodtree's being. Vividly she remembered Lionleaper's strength and Acorn's sensitivity. Joygleam's dour fortitude and Freshet's unflagging humor; from the oldest beard to the smallest tousle-headed cub she remembered them, and as a mother loves her cub she loved them, knowing all their faults and virtues, and all at once her own fears were forgotten in a greater agony.

As if a bowstring drawn to the breaking point had been suddenly released, Goodtree's spirit snapped back to her body again. She convulsed and moaned, soaked and shaking with cold, so confused by the abruptness of her transition that for precious moments she was not sure where she was or why.

Then a fresh gust of wind sent needles of rain against her, and she pushed herself upright with a cry. The grove was a maelstrom of thrashing branches, and the wind howled louder than any wolves. She strove to focus her will, sending with all her strength to Joygleam, Chipper—any of the elves in the pass.

But they were too far, or perhaps too distracted by the storm, to hear. Gathering her strength once more, she reached outward to the peak above the valley, and was rewarded by an incredulous response from Acorn.

**Flash flood's coming down the canyon! Can't reach the others—send—they have to climb out of the way!**

**Yes! I'll try—**

More faintly, she heard Lionleaper vowing to go with Fang to warn them. But could they be in time? Sobbing, she collapsed back to the muddy grass, letting her spirit expand once more into the elemental chaos around her. Again she rode on the wings of the wind and felt the force of the waters that were hurtling down the canyon.

She could see, also, the tiny figures of the elves and their wolf companions, huddled sodden and terrified. But the chaos rushing down upon them filled the canyon well above the rocks where they had taken refuge. If Acorn's message had reached them, they had not understood it, and Lionleaper could never get to them in time.

**NO!** Goodtree did not know to whom she was sending, but she could not lose them, not now, when she had just understood how much she loved them all!

**Mother! Father! Help me!**

**We have no power in your world—use what you have learned!**

Learned? But what did she know except that those she loved were going to die, and she was helpless to prevent it? And what had she learned in her vision besides her name?

And at the thought, as if she was Recognizing herself, the syllable that was her soulname resounded once more in her awareness. Neme ... a sound which held the essence of all that she had experienced, the totality of living strength and green, growing things ... and trees...

And trees! She understood their slow transformations, but if she could somehow accelerate those processes—

—With no more time for thinking, Goodtree thrust her awareness toward the canyon, finding roots deep in the walls just ahead of the waters. A sharp nudge set a loosened rock-face clattering toward the streambed; diverted waters sluiced earth after it, but she knew that would not hold for long. There, where the earth had fallen, tangled masses of brambles now swung free. Pouring all her concentration into them, she stimulated growth and sent them reaching greedily for the rocks that had fallen into the stream.

Nothing could get through a bramble patch—she knew that from painful experience—but a sufficient force of water might wash the whole mass away.

Above the brambles grew sortie twisted pines. With a frantic apology, she wrenched the roots free, launched two of the bigger trees downward to strengthen the dam, slid several saplings after them in a shower of earth, and stimulated them to lace powerful roots through all the rest.

And then there was no more time to do anything. With a roar like the world ending, the flood funneled down through the canyon, struck the logjam, and burst upward in a fountain of muddy spray.

Goodtree thrust her consciousness into the heart of the dam, reaching out to each vine and tree and tendril like a warchief sending to her fighters, rallying, compelling, holding them to their places through sheer force of will. She shuddered to the buffeting as storms of water strove against her; held on while the pressure crushed her, and then clung still harder until she knew no more...

Like a longtooth balked of its prey the snarling waters tore at the unexpected barrier. Streams spouted between rocks and poured over the top of the dam in a hundred waterfalls. Gradually, the level behind it fell, but by the time the water reached the shallow streambed above the pass, the Wolfriders had all scrambled to safety on higher ground.

As if the flood had been no more than a cub's tantrum, the clouds were brightening, separating, and letting the spring sunlight through. Light glittered on wet rock surfaces, and glowed in the steam from soaked soil.

Clinging to one of the pine trees that had remained on the rim of the canyon, Lionleaper stared down at the disorganized tangle below in wonder. Floodwaters could do strange things, he knew, but it was hard to believe that a construction of such complexity could have been achieved by chance. And yet, if it had not been chance, what power had saved them?

"It feels like magic—" said Acorn, leaning nervously over the edge. "Timmorn's blood! What a song this is going to make one day!"

"Let's not start talking about stories until we know the ending—" Lionleaper answered grimly. "We still don't know what happened to Goodtree!"

"There will be a song, perhaps my greatest, whatever the outcome. I know the power that drives me..." Acorn straightened with a sigh. "But there will be no joy for me in the making of it if the ending is tragedy." He met Lionleaper's eyes soberly. His face was smudged, and damp brown hair clung close to his skull; scarcely a sight to charm a maiden. But Lionleaper supposed he looked no better. He could scarcely bear to wonder what condition Goodtree was in now.

"Have you felt—" The warrior could not finish his question, but Acorn understood him.

"Nothing—not death, not life. I get no sense of Goodtree at all..."

"Well let's go find her then!" said Lionleaper explosively. "And if that cursed she-wolf of hers tries to stop us I'll strangle her!"

Goodtree swam up out of endless depths of darkness to awareness of pain that almost sent her back again. But someone was calling her, not by her soulname, but with a depth of anguish that compelled her attention. She took a deep, aching breath, letting awareness extend to limbs that felt as if they had been beaten with sticks. Exhalation became a moan, and abruptly she was shivering.

**High ones! Her skin is like ice! We've got to get her warm somehow!**

The sending had a familiar flavor, but she was too tired to identify it. She felt motion; her body was turned, and another naked body pressed against her back. She tried to curl up to protect her belly, but someone else was there, holding her close, and her feet touched the familiar rough warmth of wolf-fur.

**Leafchaser?** After an unmeasurable time Goodtree summoned her wits sufficiently to grope for the touch of her old friend's mind. She felt a kind of anxious amusement in return.

**Silly cub! Don't leave me behind again!**

Well perhaps she was a cub at that. Certainly she was curled up like a cub with its litter-mates, all tangled together. Returning circulation was gradually ceasing to be painful; she sighed and pressed closer to whoever was holding her, wondering where she was.

"Goodtree?" came a whisper in her ear. "Are you awake?''

Scent identified Lionleaper, but then who was behind her? Goodtree forced open her eyes and met his anxious smile. She blinked in confusion, shifted in his arms to look around and met Acorn's brown gaze, deep as a forest pool. It was their body heat that was warming her, and a warmth of the spirit came to her from them as well that welcomed her back to consciousness. She gazed from one to the other in wonder. Back at the hurst they had been unacknowledged rivals, but now she sensed only harmony.

The faces of the two elves had a radiance that came only partly from joy. The light was golden; Goodtree looked beyond them and saw sunlight filtered through fluttering green-gold leaves.

The Golden Grove! Abruptly she remembered her journey, and the storm, and her name. She stiffened in their arms.

"The tribe—" Talking was painful, and she switched to the speech of the mind. **Are the Wolfriders safe? Did the dam stop the flood in time?**

**That was your work then! Yes, they're all safe, and thanking the high ones for a miracle!** sent Lionleaper, but from Acorn came another question, **Goodtree, why did you come here? What have you become?**

She closed her eyes in relief, wondering how to answer them. She seemed to be a treeshaper, she thought, remembering how the vines and pine trees had obeyed her, and perhaps in time she would discover other masteries. But that was not what she needed to say.

Goodtree turned over so that she could slip an arm about the songshaper and the warrior as well and hold them as they had held her. She swallowed, meeting their eyes, and made her voice obey her will.

"I'm the chieftain of the Wolfriders now. ..."

"Must we always fight with the humans?" Woodlock asked as he braided flower stems together for Rainsong's hair.

"It's fight or run, isn't it? And we've done enough of both since the high ones came here," Rainsong replied sadly.

They were the quietest and gentlest of the Wolfriders. It was fortunate they'd been born near the same time and found each other. It would have been more fortunate, Longreach considered, if they'd been born when Prey-Pacer was chief or Freefoot or one of the other rare times when Wolfriders and humans did not intrude on each other's hunting grounds.

"I wish they'd just tie their bundles on their backs and go someplace else. We were here first." Her voice held both the hopes and the angers of the innocent. "The Father Tree is the Wolfriders' home—why can't they understand that?"

And wasn't that the problem? Never before had the Wolfriders stayed in one place so long, but since Goodtree had worked her magics on this grove it had been home to the tribe and none of them could imagine leaving it. The humans had changed too, put down their own sort of roots and made their own Father Tree, not with living magic but with piles of stone and little bowers where everything grew in straight, unnatural lines.

"Wouldn't they ask the same of us?" Longreach asked softly. "They have been by the caves a long time themselves."

Woodlock shook his head, his eyes growing uncommonly fierce. "It's ours—everything we can see from the highest branches of the Father Tree. It belongs to our wolves and it belongs to us."

Longreach shook his head. Such belligerence, such a sense of possessing—was this truly Goodtree's legacy through the Father Tree?

Rainsong took the finished flower-wreath and placed in on her hair, but the hard look did not fade from her eyes. "Someday," she whispered, forcing the thought deep into her mind where she'd find it no matter how wildly the wolf-song sang. "Someday we'll frighten them away."

The storyteller gathered his legs under him and pushed himself to his feet. There were stories—sad stories—that had an answer for her bitterness. But Bearclaw's Wolfriders could no longer hear them or learn from them. Strange—because they were almost all about Bearclaw's father—