The White Road - Lynn Flewelling [20]
The unpleasant odor of the hut clung to her hair and clothes. Mounting her shaggy mare, she led the way down the trail and through the Retha'noi village, then took the steep, packed snow road beyond at a gallop, enjoying the rush of sharp, clean wind against her face.
Turmay sat staring into the fire for some time after Belan and the khirnari had gone, running his fingers around the journey band; the balance must be kept. The length of the journey between the doors of life and death was for the Mother to decide, 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 carry it 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 i 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 Aurenen, 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 Hazadrielfaie wore: blue for the sky, under which Hazadriel 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