White Road

accoutrements of her art. She led him through to a pleasant room overlooking the valley. He caught a glimpse of a tidy kitchen through an open door and smelled something sweet baking there.
    “May I look at the wounds you received in Plenimar?” she asked.
    Alec pulled down the neck of his tunic, showing her the faint scars on his chest and throat where the slave takers’ arrows had struck.
    She ran her fingers over them, feeling carefully through his skin to the vessels and throat beyond. “You have no trouble swallowing or talking?”
    “No.”
    “Weakness in your limbs?”
    “No, I’m fine, really!”
    “I’m glad to hear it.”
    “So, what do—”
    “Not so fast, little brother. This is a civilized house. Tea first.” Leaving him, she went to the kitchen.
    Alec sat down in a rocking chair. Sebrahn went to the window overlooking a snowy herb garden and gazed out. Mydri returned a few moments later with a tray loaded with a steaming pot, mugs, a cream pitcher, and a plate of round spice cookies, still warm from the oven.
    She set the tray on a little table between his rocker and a sagging armchair and poured for them both, adding creamwithout asking. Alec sipped his tea and was glad of the slaking; she brewed it even stronger than her brother did.
    She popped a cookie in her mouth. “Go on,” she urged when Alec shyly kept to his tea. “They’re not poison.”
    Alec took one, wondering why he was always so nervous around the women. The cookie was delicious, laced with anise and honey, and he took a second more eagerly.
    “That’s better. Now, I want to talk to you about Sebrahn, and I want you to listen closely.”
    “Of course, older sister.” He still felt awkward using the title, but knew it pleased her.
    “I use magic in my healing,” she told him, running a finger over the lines under her right eye. “But I also rely on my simples and tinctures, and a hot knife when necessary. It’s a skill, healing, not a trick.”
    “Sebrahn’s healings aren’t a trick.”
    “Of course not. But you must understand that they are nothing but magic, and sometimes magic doesn’t last. Why do you think I keep checking your wounds, and Seregil’s?”
    That had never occurred to him. He thought of the first person Sebrahn had healed, revealing his power. What if that girl’s leg had gotten worse again, after they left? What if the gash high up on the inside of Seregil’s thigh opened up? And what about his own wounds? “So do you understand now, Alec Two Lives?”
    “You think the healing will wear off, and I’ll drop dead?”
    “We don’t know that it won’t.”
    She set her cup back on the tray, then reached into a basket beside her and took out some knitting—a half-finished mitten like the green-and-white pair she’d given him, but blue this time. She set to work, wooden needles clicking swiftly. How could she just sit there and calmly knit after that?
    “I think you’re wrong,” he managed at last.
    “And why is that?”
    “If his magic doesn’t last, then why would the alchemist go to such trouble to make one? Yhakobin didn’t know Sebrahn could kill, but he knew their bodies and blood could be used to make some elixir. And maybe he knew Sebrahn had the power to give life, as well.”
    “And wouldn’t that be worth any risk to recover Sebrahn and you? And all the more reason to think that whoever is left in Plenimar who knows the secret of his existence will not let you go so easily.”
    “That’s not going to happen again,” he vowed, meeting her gaze without wavering this time. “I’ll die first. And this time for good.”
    She looked up from her knitting. “Don’t say that lightly, little brother, in case one of your gods is listening.”
    Mydri’s words haunted him, and he kept them to himself, even when Seregil asked why he looked so serious that night at supper.
    Over the next few days he managed to fill his time with other things, which wasn’t that hard to do. He’d never had so many people treat him as kin. Micum’s family had been the first, but now that feeling was multiplied by dozens. He especially enjoyed the young friends he’d made, and it saddened him to wonder when—or if—he’d see them again.

CHAPTER 13
Making Use of the Useless
    U LAN Í S ATHIL’S SPIES sent word that Seregil and the other had indeed gone to ground in Bôkthersa, and that there was a child with them, one with yellow hair and silver eyes—one never seen to eat. To kidnap