White Road

their footprints. There was no telling how many of them there were, if they’d walked in lines.
    “How could we not have heard them?” Alec whispered, wondering how far their visitors had retreated, and if they could still see him and the others.
    “Do you think it was our friends in the masks?” Micum whispered.
    Seregil stared down at the brush marks. “If it was, then why didn’t they attack? It’s a lonely place, and they got close enough to shoot at us before we even knew they were there.”
    “Sebrahn didn’t react, either,” Alec pointed out.
    “It was someone who knows how to move around up here, and how to cover their tracks. They were on foot, too.” Seregil rubbed absently at his chin. “Which means that they’re probably from around here somewhere.”
    “There hasn’t been so much as a woodcutter’s shack since we started up here. Where would they have come from?”
    Seregil exchanged a look with Micum. “Hill folk?”
    “Damn!” Micum looked sharply around. “If so, then this might be exactly what they wanted us to do. I’ll go back to see if we still have horses.”
    Seregil and Alec circled the copse again, trying to discover where the tracks came together and which way they led, but each one snaked away into the darkness in a different direction. They cast out farther, but there was no sign of convergence.
    They gave up at last and returned to find their campsite untouched and the horses still tethered.
    “I think someone was just having a look at us,” said Seregil.
    “You’re probably right. They didn’t leave any sign in camp,” said Micum.
    Alec knelt down in front of Sebrahn. “You don’t feel anything like those riders who hurt me?”
    Sebrahn cocked his head slightly. “Aaaaal drak-kon.”
    “Another owl dragon.” Seregil ran a hand back through his hair as he looked up at the little saw-whet on a branch over his head. “Well, if that’s the only thing he’s concerned about, maybe we’re safe, after all.”
    The owl stayed with them, but no one slept again that night.
    Tense and bleary, they set off again at dawn in a light snowfall. Everyone kept an eye out for pursuers, but there was no sign of them, just a few game tracks and the broom-straw marks of sparrows and crows.
    Even after Rieser’s people were fit to ride again, it took several more days to pick up the trail. Once they had it, however, it wasn’t hard to follow: One of the men rode a horse with a crooked nail in its right front shoe.
    Turmay played that morning, and took longer at it than usual. When he was done, he looked puzzled.
    “Can you see them?” Rieser asked.
    “They want to go farther east, across the sea to the other great island on your map.”
    Rieser’s eyes widened. “Plenimar?” He pulled out the map and Turmay looked at it.
    “Yes, he said, pointing to Plenimar. “That is where they are going.”
    Every Hâzad knew that Plenimar was where the dark witches of old came from—the ones who’d enslaved Hâzadriël and others to make the first tayan’gils. The name was like a curse on their people. The ya’shel had already been used once, perhaps there; were his companions forcing him back there to be used again?
    Hâzadriën, too, seemed to sense something, as he had when they’d caught up with them in that disastrous ambush. When Turmay hesitated, or Rieser lost the track, the tayan’gil silently reined his horse in a certain direction and Rieser trusted him. He soon led them through wooded hills to the mouth of a track partially hidden in a small pass. Without Hâzadriën in the lead, they’d probably never have found it.
    As they followed it, Turmay suddenly reined in his horse and ran to the nearest tree. “What is it?” asked Sona, who was closest to the witch.
    “Look!” he said, pressing his hand to the trunk.
    Rieser dismounted and walked back to see what had excited the witch. Turmay took his hand away from the tree trunk, showing them a carved, partially overgrown shape: a handprint. Rieser had seen such marks dozens of times, up in the peaks where the Retha’noi lived. “I don’t understand. What is this doing here?”
    Turmay pressed his hand to the design again. “Your people aren’t the only ones who had to leave their rightful homeland.”
    “Retha’noi lived here?”
    “Maybe. It’s a very old mark.” Turmay touched it again, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps my own ancestors traveled this way when the lowlanders drove them out.”
    “I