The White Dragon Read Online Free

rhythmic chanting that filled the salty air. The singing women guided the boats skillfully, weaving a pattern on the sea's surface which defined the shape of the maze in its depths.  
    The ritual chant entered Zarien's blood, became part of his heartbeat, matched its pace to his breath. He no longer had to concentrate to ensure that he set the nets in time to the singing that blessed them. He moved and the movement was right, he breathed and the breath was song and prayer, he sweat and the sweat became the sea.  
    This was what it was to be sea-born, to marry these glimmering azure waters at the moment of your birth, to carry the sea's mystery within your veins for the rest of your life. To work in pure harmony with the rest of your kind, afloat on a bit of bobbing wood amidst the endless wave and roar of the Middle Sea. To know your course based on the slightest touch of the wind against your skin, to smell the silent approach of land even in a fog, to shift your weight with currents and waves even in your sleep... There was no other life worth living.  
    Arms trembling with exhaustion, Zarien helped his father lower the final iron weight into the water. The women's chanting ceased at the exact moment the weight slipped below the shimmering surface. Zarien's ears rang in the sudden silence. The weight sank to the bottom, carrying their hopes and prayers with it.  
    " Aiola !" Zarien cried, and everyone on the boat followed his lead, shouting the guttural cheer in sea-born dialect that marked the end of setting the nets. Aiola! May they die!  
    Above their own shouts and the gleeful cries from the other boats, they heard the clan leader blow the dragonfish horn again. This was their signal to salute the eight winds, turning on deck to honor each god as the horn wailed eight times in succession.  
    Each of the eight gods was consort to one of the nine goddesses of the sea. The ninth goddess, Sharifar, had no consort. According to legend, she had been betrayed by the god who had been her consort, the ninth wind, and had cast him off. In his bitterness, he became the whirlwind—whom the sea-born folk loved no better than they loved the dragonfish. Ever since then, Sharifar had sought a new consort, but she had yet to find a man who satisfied her. If she ever chose one (which Zarien thought seemed unlikely after all this time), he would become the king of all the sea-born folk—their first acknowledged leader since before the Moorlanders had conquered Sileria a thousand years ago.
    Concluding his salute to the eighth wind, Zarien looked over his shoulder to meet his father's gaze. Sorin's dark face was creased with smiles now. His green eyes—a souvenir of the Moorlanders' long-ago Conquest not only of Sileria, but of many of its women—glowed with pride as he clapped Zarien on the back.  
    "The nets are set well, son," he said, his grin broadening in response to Zarien's. "Perhaps I shouldn't have waited, perhaps I should have gone ahead and got you a stahra ."
    Zarien smiled to himself, having already spotted the stahra in the exact same hiding place Sorin had used for Orman's coming-of-age gift two years ago. Neither Sorin's habits nor his teasing were original, but they were as much a rite of passage aboard this boat as was the bharata itself.  
    "You didn't get me a stahra ?" Zarien feigned outrage. "Don't you have faith in me?"
    His father shrugged. "Well, the dragonfish are not even here yet. We shall see, we shall see..." His eyes met those of his wife, Palomar, sharing the joke.  
    "Yes," Zarien said, letting them enjoy what they fondly imagined was their secret. "You shall see. And then you'll be sorry you didn't get me a stahra before we left port."  
    Now the Lascari floated their boats away from the bharata maze they had constructed with such care. When the first dragonfish was sighted tonight, the men would row into the maze in small oarboats, armed for the slaughter. Until nightfall, though, clan