The White Road n-5 Read online

  Riagil shooed the others out, then righted a fallen chair and sat down, clearly intending to stay.

  Mydri and Micum helped Seregil and Alec back to the bed. Sebrahn climbed up and nestled in between them.

  “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Mydri asked Alec, taking in his bloodstained nightshirt. It had been torn and hung off one shoulder.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Seregil?”

  “Much better. Thank you, Sebrahn. So much for keeping him secret, though,” Seregil said, frowning. “Micum, are any of them still alive?”

  “Not a one,” Micum replied. “Khirnari, your swordsmen are well trained but a bit too quick.”

  “Perhaps, but the invaders killed two of my watchmen,” Riagil replied, looking shaken and angry. “I have men out looking for more of them and any boats they came in on.”

  Seregil rose and grabbed his breeches and coat from the top of the clothes chest. Yanking them on, he pulled on his tall boots and headed for the door. “We can search the bodies, anyway. Alec, you stay here with Sebrahn.”

  Alec was in no condition to argue.

  “Mydri and I will stay, too,” Adzriel sat down on the edge of the bed and took Alec’s bloodstained hand in hers. Her hands were trembling.

  Seregil paused in front of Riagil. “I am sorry we brought this trouble into your house.”

  “I regret that I did not keep you safe,” Riagil replied. As Seregil hurried off after Micum, Riagil turned to Alec. “Who were these assassins?”

  “That’s what Seregil and Micum are trying to find out. It all happened so fast, and their faces were covered. If they’d spoken, I might have known the accent, but no one did. But they were damn good, whoever they were. If they had managed to kill Seregil before he woke up, Sebrahn and I would probably be gone.” Unless they’d uncovered Sebrahn’s mouth, of course, and that really would have been the end of their secrets. Too many people had witnessed Sebrahn’s healing, and word was probably spreading through the house.

  “I see. Then I will leave you and see what your friends can find.” He rose and gave Adzriel a small bow. “I give my regrets to you and your clan, as well, Khirnari.”

  “The fault is not yours, I’m sure,” she replied graciously, and Alec suspected the exchange had something to do with Aurënfaie honor, because Riagil looked relieved as he went out.

  The dead were laid out in a row just outside the gates. Men held torches for Seregil and Micum as they began their examination. With help from some of Riagil’s men, they stripped the bodies and studied the clothing.

  Riagil joined them, looking on intently.

  “They’re certainly not ’faie,” Seregil said. These men had hairy chests and were too bulky in their build. Seregil shook his head, wondering how Alec had managed to hold off so many of them in his weakened state.

  “Pretty damn plain,” said Micum, looking over one of the leather vests.

  “Let me see the stitching.” Seregil turned it inside out, then checked some of the other clothing. “Most have crossed stitches instead of slanting. That could be Mycenian work, or north Plenimaran.”

  “The knives may be Plenimaran, too.”

  They turned their attention to the bodies now, looking for any sort of guild mark or other tattoo that would indicate who they were or where they had come from.

  None of them carried a purse, so there were no coins to tell them anything, either.

  Seregil took one of the lamps and held it close to one of the dead men’s faces. “The lower portion of the face is considerably lighter.”

  “He shaved his beard.”

  “Yes.”

  Several of the others showed the same pale jawline.

  “Looks like Plenimarans to me,” said Micum.

  “There are dark-haired, bearded, hairy-chested men in Skala, too, and Mycena.”

  “True.”

  Micum examined the man’s hands. “Callused, but no dirt ground into them or under the nails. And more callused on one hand than the other. They were swordsmen by trade.”

  Seregil did the same with several others, inspecting palms and fingers. “This one was left-handed. And this one was an archer.”

  “If they were assassins, then why didn’t they kill Alec and Sebrahn, as well?” asked Riagil.

  “Because they weren’t,” Seregil replied, still at work. “They were kidnappers, and very well-informed ones, too. They not only knew that we’re in Gedre; they knew which room we were in. And they meant to kill me, not take me. You probably have a spy in your house, Riagil.”

  “I will make inquiries, of course.”

  Good luck with that, thought Seregil. If your spy is good enough not to be noticed before, then he’s likely to just lay low now. “Have you had anyone new come to live in your household in the past month? A guest? A new servant?”

  “No.”

  “It could be someone who visits the house,” said Micum.

  “We’re a trade port. People come and go every day!”

  Seregil stood up and wiped his hands on his breeches. “Well, if I had to wager on it, I’d say they were Plenimarans who somehow managed to track us here, sent by someone who knew the alchemist. I think it may be time for us to move on.”

  Yhali had the tubs set up in the kitchen, and Alec was forced to swallow his modesty in front of the servants as they tended to him and the others. Sebrahn remained calm when a pretty young maid gently sponged the blood from his face and chest, though he wouldn’t let go of Alec’s hand.

  By the time they returned to their room, someone had cleared away the wreckage of the fight. The carpet was gone, too. Micum came in as they settled into the freshly made bed with Sebrahn safely between them.

  Seregil fell back against the pillow beside Alec with a groan.

  “Does it still hurt where Sebrahn healed you?” asked Micum.

  “A bit. His flowers work wonders, but it’s not an instant cure.”

  Micum was quiet for a moment, looking pensively at Sebrahn. “Do you think he could do something for this game leg of mine?”

  “Probably,” said Alec. Someone had left a cup of water on the righted night table. He handed it to Sebrahn. “Show him the scars, Micum.”

  Micum stripped down his leather trousers, showing him the ropy mass of scar tissue the dyrmagnos had made of the back of his thigh and calf.

  “Go help him, Sebrahn,” Alec coaxed. “Can you heal his leg?”

  Sebrahn slipped from the bed and squeezed blood from his cut finger into the cup. It took a lot of flowers.

  “I wonder why he didn’t try to heal him sooner?” said Seregil.

  “I don’t think he notices old wounds,” Alec replied, holding out his left palm, the one with the round shiny scar in the middle. “He’s never paid any attention to this. That first girl he healed had an infected foot, and you were covered in blood tonight. I don’t know—maybe he knows by smell. Is it working, Micum?”

  Sebrahn sat back. Micum flexed his leg, then stood up. “By the Flame, sprout, that’s a damn sight better!” The scars remained, but it was clear that Micum had more use of that leg than he had before. He picked Sebrahn up and kissed him on the nose, then put him back in bed with Alec. “Well, I’m past sleeping tonight. If you two don’t mind, I’d like to sit here for a while.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” Seregil said with a yawn. “I’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

  The following day Seregil and Micum went out with Riagil’s men to continue the search along the waterfront. Just after midday they found an abandoned longboat at the far end of the beach to the west of town. It was of Skalan make. Leaving the Gedre men to make inquiries in the area, Seregil and Micum walked back to the clan house, sunk in thought and frustration.

  “Well, what do you think?” Micum asked as they neared the house.

  “The boat could have drifted off from any Skalan warship or trader that’s dropped anchor here. Or it could be like the clothing—something to throw us off.”
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  “I still think the assassins are from Plenimar.”

  “So do I, but how did they get here? Fly?”

  “Never mind that. Who sent them?”

  “Someone who knows about Sebrahn, obviously. The alchemist’s kin? The Overlord?”

  “The Overlord? If that’s true, my friend, you’ve really put your foot in it this time, and deep!”

  “Then let’s hope I’m wrong. Still …” He rubbed at the healing wound on his side. “Yhakobin knew the secret of making them. What if he’s not the only one?”

  “And that person would know what Sebrahn really is.”

  Seregil walked on in silence, hands clasped behind his back. It looked like they hadn’t quite escaped, after all—which made their presence here a continuing danger.

  CHAPTER 4

  Visions

  IT TOOK Seneth ä Matriel Danata Hâzadriël, khirnari of the Hâzadriëlfaie people, and her escort several hours’ steep riding to reach the Retha’noi witch man’s hut, which stood in an ash grove near the edge of his mountain village. Seneth had started after an early breakfast, and now the midday sun was glinting harshly on the distant crags framing Ravensfell Pass.

  The hut was a small, round structure made from sticks and withy, and covered in stretched deerhide. There was no sign of Turmay, except for a thin plume of smoke rising from the hole in the center of the roof.

  “Stay here,” Seneth ordered the other riders. Going to the low door, she pulled the long fronts of her coat and tunic back from her trousered legs and crawled on hands and knees into the dimness of the witch’s hut. The change from light reflecting off snow left her nearly blind for an instant, except for the column of light shining through the smoke hole and the glow of the fire beneath.

  “Welcome, Khirnari,” the witch greeted her, and now she could make him out, sitting cross-legged on the far side of the fire, wearing nothing but a crude loincloth.

  “Thank you for word of good news, my friend.” It was hot and close, too. She shrugged off her fur-lined coat and sat down on a pile of furs across the fire from the witch. Turmay’s eyes were closed, his stooped body so still that he appeared not to even be breathing. His grey curls hung motionless over his shoulders.

  She’d seen the witch marks on his hands and face the night that her friend, Belan ä Talía, had brought him to her after both had seen visions of a tayan’gil—or “white child,” as he put it—far away in the south. Someplace where a tayan’gil had no business being made.

  Half naked as he was, she could see the elaborate witch marks that covered his shoulders and chest. Other marks circled his shins like the patterns on the oo’lu lying silent across his lap. Seneth had known generations of Retha’noi over the course of her long life. Only the male witches used the oo’lu—a long, intricately decorated horn made from a hollowed-out sapling. Each had a unique pattern of decoration, except for the black handprint somewhere along its smooth polished length. Turmay must have been playing it quite recently; the tingle of Retha’noi magic hung in the air, enveloping her like a scent.

  Which was better than the smell of the hovel: sweat and hides, sour milk, pungent smoke-dried meat, and a body that would not see a proper bath until spring.

  “Did you find the ride difficult, Khirnari?”

  Seneth started as Belan ä Talía leaned forward into the circle of firelight. “What have you learned, my friend?” she asked them both. Belan was a seer, a rarity among their kind and probably due to her mixed blood. The rare intermarriage with the Retha’noi had gradually become tolerated, since the hill folk had proven to be staunch allies and kept to the valley as jealously as the ’faie, if not more so. Breeding with an outsider, though? That was unthinkable, and strictly prohibited.

  “The tayan’gil is in Aurënen,” Belan replied. Belan and Turmay had been searching together ever since they’d had their first visions of the tayan’gil.

  “Aurënen? Are you telling me that the Aurënfaie would create such a creature?”

  “Who can say, Khirnari? We only know that one is there.”

  “Where in Aurënen?”

  The witch opened his eyes at last, and she saw that they were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “I can show you, though I don’t know the name of the place.”

  He lifted the wax mouthpiece of the oo’lu and settled his lips inside it. Puffing out his cheeks, he began to play. This horn was almost four feet long, and he had to shift to keep the end of it out of the fire.

  It was not music, though the strange buzzing, hooting, booming drone produced by the oo’lu was not unpleasant. If you listened attentively, you could hear the sawing song of summer cicadas, the bellow of a bull, the peeping of tiny marsh frogs, and birdcalls. The patterns were complex, when played by an expert. It was impossible for those not trained to it to get more than a breathy farting sound out of it.

  Turmay played a soft song this time, with the hiss of wind over snow and owl calls mingled with the slow drone.

  “Close your eyes and touch the oo’lu,” Belan told her.

  Seneth did so, and the horn, smooth and warmed by the witch’s breath, vibrated against her palm.

  Light flared behind her closed lids as if she’d stepped outside again, then she had the dizzying sensation of flying up through the smoke hole.

  Confused images tumbled across the surface of her mind—the blurred glimpses of brown steppes, mountains less jagged than those that protected her fai’thast, and the flash of sunlight across a great broad expanse of water.

  The Great Lake, near the Tírfaie town called Wolde. Years ago she’d ventured from the valley as an Ebrados rider, and they’d stolen through the sleeping town. She could still remember the reek of the place, and the filth. But that lake! Standing on the shore under a full moon, she’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  Yet Turmay’s magic carried her on, farther and farther from anything familiar, over forests and grasslands, and over a body of water that made the lake seem no more than a puddle.

  The sea, the witch whispered in her mind through the droning of the oo’lu. My people once lived all around its shores, until the light-skinned people drove us into the mountains. We were fishermen and sailors, and the cries of the gulls are still in our bones. The oo’lu song shifted to a strange, high-pitched call, like that of the white birds she’d seen circling the lake. Beyond, and beyond again lies your true homeland, Seneth, daughter of Matriel.

  They passed over a mountainous island, and then over the sea again to a land unlike her own except for the spine of mountains bleak against a dark blue sky.

  “Aurënen,” Belan told her, sounding very far away.

  The swath of land between the mountains and the sea was pale and dry like a bone. Turmay’s magic carried her to a town on the shore. The tiny houses along the water looked like nubs of white chalk set in sand, with familiar domed roofs.

  The white child is here.

  Can you show it to me?

  I cannot see it, but I feel its presence like a canker in my mind.

  “I can’t see its face in my dreams, Khirnari,” whispered Belan. “It has some magic about it that I can’t break through. But it is small like a child, and it has no wings.”

  “But you’re certain our blood runs in its veins?” Seneth murmured. The blood of the First Dragon, the one from whose blood the ’faie had sprung, ran deeper in her people, giving them strong magic. Since coming here and marrying among themselves, a few children had even been born with tiny appendages like wings on their backs, or eyes the color of moonlight on steel. Somehow the Tírfaie dark witches in Hâzadriël’s day had discovered the secret of their blood and found a way to use it to make tayan’gils, whose powers of healing surpassed anything seen before. Rumor had come down through the centuries of other uses the witches made of the creatures and their white blood—the White Road, as they called it—to create elixirs with great powers, though no one knew what, exactly.

  “Yes, there is no doubt,” Belan told her. “But
it’s not pure. It’s not right.”

  Not pure. Seneth’s heart quickened at the possibility that those words embodied.

  “It will take months to reach Aurënen,” Seneth mused, concerned. Who knew what disasters might happen by then? There was no way of knowing what the power of this strange tayan’gil would be, but the uneasiness that had plagued her since Belan had first come to her was stronger now. If a tayan’gil born of impure blood somehow harmed an Aurënfaie, the shame would rest with her and her clan. The gulf of centuries that had opened between them and their Aurënfaie ancestors could not change that. Atui could not be circumscribed by time or place.

  This tayan’gil must be reclaimed and so the Ebrados would ride—no matter how long the trek, no matter what the risk. It was the way of her people—one that had preserved them down all the centuries since Hâzadriël had brought the chosen to safety in the north. It was the honor and the burden of the Ebrados, guarding the White Road and there was no other way.

  Slowly, the vision faded, and the hot, heavy air closed in around her again.

  “Thank you, my friends,” she said, anxious to get outside again. But something had been niggling at the back of her mind since the first night Belan had brought the witch to her.

  “Turmay, why did you see this ‘child’? It’s nothing to do with the Retha’noi.”

  The old man shrugged. “The Mother sends the visions. I follow them.” His fingers moved over the oo’lu, tracing a patterned band. “It’s written here, in the journey path. So I will go with your seekers.”

  Seneth regarded him in surprise. As far as she knew, the Retha’noi never left the valley. Then again, they kept to themselves and did not answer to her. Who knew their comings and goings? Moreover, she reasoned, a witch with such powers would certainly be an asset for the search. “Thank you, my friend.”

  Emerging from the hut, she pulled on her mittens and shielded her eyes for a moment against the glare off the snow, inhaling deeply. The sun had moved less than an hour across the sky.