White Road

crooked grin. “Then I guess we all stand here and starve.”
    The masked man turned to the archers and said something. They lowered their bows. “That won’t suit any of us. Will you parley?”
    Seregil looked at the others. “Anyone have a better idea?”
    “We’ve got no weapons and no food, and someone up there is taking aim at us where we stand,” said Micum.
    “I just want Sebrahn back!” whispered Alec, his dark eyes burning with anger and betrayal. “Why did he go to them like that?”
    Seregil squeezed his arm apologetically. “I’m sorry, Alec. I think he’s been trying to all along. Stay here.”
    “No! He’s my—”
    “I said stay!” Seregil ordered, then, more softly, “I don’t want you within arm’s reach of any of them. If they get you, then Micum and I are as good as dead.”
    Alec quickly stepped back.
    “Thank you. Stay close to Micum.” With that, Seregil walked halfway up the trail toward the others and stood waiting.
    After a moment the man in the wolf mask came to meet him. Drawing his sword, he leveled it at Seregil’s heart.
    “If we’re going to talk, then we should probably exchange names,” said Seregil. “Mine is Seregil í Korit Solun Meringil.”
    “I am Rieser í Stellen Andus Orgil. You wear no sen’gai.”
    “And I don’t recognize yours. Blue and white?”
    “We are the North Star people. Do you have a clan?”
    “Bôkthersa.”
    “My grandmother was a Bôkthersan.”
    Seregil grinned. “That makes us kin. Can’t kill me now, can you?”
    “Don’t presume too much.”
    “I won’t, I assure you. So, what do we do now?”
    “Do you know why we’ve tracked you down, Bôkthersa?”
    Seregil pointed to the two rhekaro, watching placidly from a small distance. “I assume it has something to do with them.”
    “And with your talímenios. If you have a tayan’gil, then you must understand already.”
    “That it takes Hâzadriëlfaie blood to make them? Yes, and I’ve also heard it said that your people hunt down half-breeds and kill them. I’m afraid I just can’t allow that. Look, could you take off that mask now? I feel ridiculous talking to a wolf.”
    Rieser gave him a humorless smirk and lifted the mask from his face. It was a grim visage, to be sure, but now that Seregil could look him properly in the eye, Rieser struckhim as a man who might be reasoned with. “So, what shall we do?”
    “You say you are going to stop more tayan’gils from being made. How do you intend to do that?”
    Seregil saw no point in lying. “The dark witch who made Sebrahn used a book, some sort of alchemy magic text.”
    “You mean to destroy this book?”
    “Certainly.” It was one option, though probably not the one Thero would prefer.
    “How will you get it?”
    “The usual way you get something someone else doesn’t want you to have.”
    “Steal it?”
    “Yes.”
    “You are thieves?”
    Seregil grinned. “Something like that, and we’re very good at it.”
    “As you are at escaping. Two of my riders are nursing sore heads.”
    “I could just as easily have killed them,” Seregil replied, and he could tell the man believed him.
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “You may be strangers, and damn troublesome ones, too, but you’re still ’faie. Is that why my friends and I are still alive?”
    “No.”
    “Let me ask you something, then, before you try to kill me again. Why aren’t you all dead? Our rhekaro—tayan’gil, that is—sang. People usually die when he does that.”
    “Sang? Is that what you call it? One of my young riders did die, so you have that blood on your hands. It made me and the others very sick, but we share the same blood as the tayan’gil, so it does not affect us the way it would the Tír or other ’faie.”
    “You got off easy, then.” He masked his concern as he looked back at Sebrahn in the other rhekaro’s arms. He looked perfectly content, the little traitor!
    “They’re like that,” said Rieser. “Yours is different than the others, but alike enough to feel the bond.”
    Seregil raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Others? How many others?”
    “That’s no concern of yours, Bôkthersa.”
    “So you make them, too? How are you any better than the ‘dark witches’?”
    “We don’t make them! We gather in those that are made and keep them safe. This little one can never be safe in your world. You must know that by now.”
    Seregil nodded slightly, glad Alec wasn’t hearing all this. “They can kill