The White Road - Lynn Flewelling [38]
As soon as their horses had been unloaded, Rieser led his people away from the city. They camped in a small copse overlooking the sea. It was much warmer here than in the northlands; there was hardly more than a dusting of snow on the frozen ground.
The map showed this sea, but being beside it was far different. The water stretched west to the horizon, covered in whitecaps in the evening breeze, and was undrinkable, as they soon learned. The waves surged against the rocks below their camp, sending up clouds of white spume. It smelled different than lake water, too. There was a sweet tang to it, and he could taste salt on his lips as the wind carried the spray up to where he stood.
As soon as the moon was up, Turmay took his place by the fire and began to play. The song was rich and deep, nuanced with sounds like the calls of birds and croaking of frogs. Tonight it also growled like a mountain bear.
The witch stopped suddenly and looked across the fire at Rieser. "The tayan'gil has left the place where it was. It journeys west, with many companions. One of them is a ya'shel with your blood."
Rieser nodded. It made sense. The half-breed infant he'd pursued with Syall would be a young man by now. Somehow the dark witches had found him and made the tayan'gil. How they had gotten all the way back to Aurenen was as much a mystery as why the tayan'gil existed at all.
"Can you see their faces, Turmay?"
"Not yet. I just know that he and the tayan'gil are still together."
Rieser gave him a rare smile. "Thank you for your help, my friend. Without your visions, we would not have come so far so quickly."
"Thank the Mother," the witch replied with a grin.
Turmay lay awake after the other 'faie had gone to sleep. The tayan'gil Hazadrien did not sleep, and the witch suspected that Rieser had ordered it to watch him at night.
Turmay had not lied to Rieser. He just hadn't told him the whole truth.
Curled up by the fire, he clutched his oo'lu close and silently prayed to the half-moon above.
Beautiful Mother, giver of life and death, shine your face on me and guide me to this white abomination. Guide my hand to kill it before it acts again!
CHAPTER 9
Home
SNOW was falling gently as Alec and the rest reached the mouth of the home valley.
Seregil had tried to describe his home to Alec, but when they finally reached it just before sunset, Alec found it more vast and beautiful than he'd imagined. The lower end of the valley was rolling and broad, with plentiful water from several rivers. Acres of meadow promised lush hay in summer.
The valley was dotted with horse farms that reminded Alec of Watermead, and others raising sheep, goats, and chickens, and still others that looked like they were tilled for grain and vegetables in summer. Farther up, the valley narrowed and the sides grew steeper, but Alec could make out the dark shapes of herds there, too.
Seregil kept his hood up as they neared the final crossroad. His kin and the escort riders greeted friends by name. Four decades weren't a lot in a 'faie lifetime, and he recognized quite a few people. Some of them were his age, and it was bittersweet to see how young they still looked compared to him.
Though he kept up a cheerful facade, he felt an increasing inner turmoil as they reached the final turn onto the steep road that led up to the town of his birth. To their left he could already hear the roar of the lower river churning in the gorge below. The Bokthersan clan house and central town lay on the eastern shore of a large mountain lake. The Silver River cascaded down from the peaks to feed it, and then continued down the valley in a rushing torrent.
The sigh of the breeze in the boughs soothed him a little, as it always had, and the deep snow brought back happy memories of snowball fights and ice fishing on the lake, and hot drinks around the bonfires afterward as the feeling came back like pins and needles to cold fingers and toes.
To be riding up this road