Read Online The White Road by Lynn Flewelling - Free Book Online

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 Aurënen, 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 Hâzadriëlfaie wore: blue for the sky, under which Hâzadriël 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 in Aurënen, but I think it more likely that you are right.”
    Rieser shook his head with a grim smile. “If I am, what should I do with the ya’shel?”
    “Bring him back if possible. If not, then kill him.”
    Rieser rose and bowed with a hand to his heart. “I’m honored to ride again, Khirnari.”
    Seneth smiled up at him. “You have never failed me, Rieser í Stellen. I wish you a safe journey and a successful hunt.”
    For as long as the followers of Hâzadriël had lived in this valley, there had been Ebrados—the Hunters of the White Road—and for the past fifty-eight years Rieser í Stellen had been one of them. The Ebrados weren’t called upon often anymore; the generation that had settled this valley was long dead, and most of the people now didn’t look past the mountains that guarded them for anything they wanted. Occasionally a few adventurous youngsters tried to sneak out through the pass. If the guards didn’t see them, the Ebrados went to bring them back. There had been only a few serious cases in the last hundred years, and all but one successfully hunted down.
    Ireya ä Shaar had been the exception; her name was a bitter taste on the tongue of the clan. She had lain with a Tírfaie, a fact revealed at the child’s birth; no ’faie child had yellow hair and eyes the color of dusk on a winter’s night. No one knew how she’d met the man, or why she had betrayed her own people to bear a forbidden half-breed son, only that she had given him to his father to save. Her own brothers had killed her, and the Tír man had killed them. He and the child had never been found.
    Syall í Konthus had been captain then, and they’d spent the whole summer trying to track down the mysterious Tír and the baby, but to no avail. Month after month, Syall rode out, even after the khirnari called off the hunt and none of the other Ebrados would go with him, until one spring day when his horse found her way back to the clan stables riderless. The dried blood crusted on her withers and the saddle were evidence enough to guess that he might have found his quarry, after all, or some other misadventure in the outerworld. Whatever the case, he never came back. Scouts went out periodically, but none had found a trace of him, or the half-breed child, who must be nearly man-grown by now, in the way of mixed bloods.
    Rane and Thiren, Syall’s eldest sons, had been elected to the Ebrados for this trip, and they were the only ones among all his riders about whom Rieser had any concerns, suspecting that theirs was a duty born of vengeance. Emotion had no place in this work.
    The rest—Nowen, Sona, Taegil, Morai, Relian, Sorengil, Kalien, Allia, and Hâzadriën—had ridden with him for years. They were among the best riders, swordsmen, and archers of the clan, chosen for their prowess and bravery. Hâzadriën was the exception,