White Road

and those journeys—like a river—flowed in only one direction. The white child changed this. The Mother was angry.
    He regarded the oo’lu sadly. It was a fine instrument. He’d woven many healings with it, many births, as well as other, less kind magic when necessary. He’d had this one almost ten years, and waited for the time its patterns foretold.
    No witch made his own oo’lu. No, you searched for a hollow branch or sapling large enough to play well, preferably one hollowed by ants. Then you took it to the oldest witch you could find, for him to make it and sing it into being. It was the old one who had the visions and painted them into the rings of the oo’lu, and he who sang the fire song and tossed the new horn across the campfire for you to catch and mark the part of your destiny that would happen next. When the destiny of that oo’lu had been fulfilled, the instrument cracked. Then it was time for a new oo’lu, a new path. On this oo’lu, the old witch Rao, long dead now, had painted one ring that had never been painted before in Turmay’s lifetime, perhaps never before ever. This was one of the ones his handprint had spanned, together with Wanderer, Uniter, and Father of Many. Not even Rao had known what this other ring was called, or why the Mother had put it into his dreams.
    “You will know when you know,” the old witch had said with a shrug.
    So far only Father of Many had come to pass; not only his own, but the babies he played into men’s loins and women’s bellies at the moon festivals. He had not wandered nor united anyone in a way that had cracked this oo’lu, but ever since he’d dreamed the white child, he didn’t expect to carryit much longer. But the Mother had not yet shown him how to accomplish her purpose—to destroy the white child.
    Seneth arrived home to find the captain of the Ebrados riders waiting for her in the hall. Rieser í Stellen, who was also a carpenter when the Ebrados were not needed, rose from his seat by the hearth and bowed respectfully. Tall Rieser he was called, for the fact that this lean stork of a man stood half a head taller than anyone else in the clan, and favored dark clothing, which made him look even taller. He was also known as Rieser the Grim, for reasons just as obvious; he was not a joyful man. All the same, his keen grey eyes betrayed his anticipation as she handed her coat to a servant and sat down by the fire to pull off her boots.
    “What news, Khirnari?” he asked.
    “It’s time to gather your riders, my friend. I know where you must go.”
    “We can be off at dawn.”
    Seneth leaned forward to warm the chill from her hands. “Sit with me, and I will tell you the route. And you’ll have a guide, one whom I think will prove most useful. Do you know a Retha’noi named Turmay?”
    “I do. He’s an honorable man—and a powerful witch, by all accounts. But how will he guide us?”
    “He and Belan have worked out where the tayan’gil is. It is in Aurënen, in a town on the northern coast.”
    “Really?” He looked at once surprised and uncharacteristically pleased. “It will be good to see that land. I still have my grandmother’s green
sen’gai
.” He absently touched the blue-and-white sen’gai all Hâzadriëlfaie wore: blue for the sky, under which Hâzadriël and her people had wandered for so long, banded with white for the White Road they’d traveled, and which ran in their veins. It was time to follow that road again.
    He paused, then said, “Could it be
her
child who’s behind this?”
    “Or the White Road blood has appeared again in Aurënen, but I think it more likely that you are right.”
    Rieser shook his head with a grim smile. “If I am, what should I do with the ya’shel?”
    “Bring him back if possible. If not, then kill him.”
    Rieser rose and bowed with a hand to his heart. “I’m honored to ride again, Khirnari.”
    Seneth smiled up at him. “You have never failed me, Rieser í Stellen. I wish you a safe journey and a successful hunt.”
    For as long as the followers of Hâzadriël had lived in this valley, there had been Ebrados—the Hunters of the White Road—and for the past fifty-eight years Rieser í Stellen had been one of them. The Ebrados weren’t called upon often anymore; the generation that had settled this valley was long dead, and most of the people now didn’t look past the mountains that guarded them for anything they wanted. Occasionally a few adventurous youngsters