White Road

think we should go to Watermead. You don’t want us leading trouble to your doorstep. Not after all these years of being so careful.”
    “I know,” Micum said, regret clear on his face. “Let’s find the damn inn before it gets dark, and see if Thero has any news for us.”
    They cast around for nearly an hour before they found the road again, and Seregil was glad to find it well traveled. The frozen mud and trampled snow were marked with hundreds of other hoof prints; even Micum would have trouble tracking them here. Hopefully if their pursuers had survived, they’d have given up on them by now. Somehow, though,Seregil couldn’t shake off the feeling that someone was right behind them, even when a look over his shoulder across the flat terrain showed that there was no one there.
    Rieser came to slowly, aware at first of nothing but the stabbing pain in his head, snow on his face, and the taste of blood at the back of his throat. Someone was shaking him and that only made everything worse. He grabbed for the hand and opened his eyes. Hâzadriën was leaning over him, and the sky beyond was full of sunset color. It had been afternoon when they’d found their prey. And lost them.
    “Stop it, my friend. I’m alive.” He sat up and felt blood run down over his lips from his nose. Hâzadriën reached back for something and presented him with a yellow healing flower.
    Rieser pressed it to his face gratefully and the bleeding stopped, but the pain in his head did not. Using the tayan’gil’s shoulder to steady himself, he climbed to his feet and looked around for the others.
    They lay where they’d fallen, covered with a thin layer of fresh snow. Turmay lay next to him in a crumpled heap, his oo’lu trapped awkwardly under his left shoulder. Two horses remained, pawing in the snow for grass; the others were nowhere to be seen.
    Nowen sat up, holding her head in both hands. “What in the name of Aura was that?”
    “I don’t know,” Rieser told her. “Help me check the others.”
    She appeared to be in as bad shape as Rieser, and they moved like invalids as they slowly went from one to another, shaking them awake.
    All of them were hurt to some degree. Rieser came last to young Thiren lying facedown in the snow. When he didn’t stir, Rieser rolled him over and found the boy’s eyes fixed and his face dark with settled blood. His bow lay broken beside him.
    Nowen came to Rieser and rested a hand on his shoulder. Her voice was thick with grief and pain as she whisperedhoarsely, “Why didn’t the witch know, if his ‘Mother’ is so—”
    “Mind your tongue,” Rieser cautioned, covering her mittened hand with his own.
    Rane staggered over and sank to his knees beside his dead brother, blood trickling from both ears, and began the death keen.
    “Not here, Rane,” Rieser said, wrapping an arm around the boy’s shaking shoulders. “There’ll be time later to mourn, when we’ve found some safe place for the night.”
    Rane wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve.
    Rieser found his eyes stinging, too. He had lost riders before, but Thiren was his mentor’s son. He was glad Syall í Konthus wasn’t alive to know this.
    Turmay was on his feet now, white and unsteady. He hands shook as he tried to warm himself in his frozen clothing.
    “You didn’t know that one of them was a wizard?” Rieser demanded.
    “Because none of them are,” Turmay replied, sinking down beside him, looking very green and ill. “I—I would have seen such a one. That was not magic; it was—power. This must have come from their tayan’gil.”
    “That’s impossible. They don’t kill.”
    Turmay gestured weakly back at the dead boy, and at the other riders staggering around holding heads and stomachs. Several were vomiting into the snow. “This one can. And your own tayan’gil was the only one of us not stricken by its power.”
    “A lucky thing for us,” said Rieser, watching Hâzadriën minister to the others. “Sona, Taegil, go look for the other horses. Turmay, you come with me. Nowen and Hâzadriën, you take care of the others here.”
    Mounted on the two remaining horses, he and the witch set off to see what direction the ya’shel and his tayan’gil had gone. Three distinct lines of shallow hoof marks dimpled the fresh snow, heading southeast. The horses had been running at a gallop. They were probably miles away by now, but he kept going.
    “What was that sound?” Rieser asked as they rode