Cloud's Rider

Panic in the ambient ebbed.

But <dark> was out there. The horses had forgotten all about fish, and lovemaking. They stood stock-still, heads lifted, nostrils straining for smells that were only in the ambient,

<Snow and cold. Evergreens.> And something—

Something that was <hunger> and <threat> and <bite.>

Guil didn’t think about the pain. He was on his feet with his hands on Burn’s neck. Tara had done the same with Flicker, wanting <snow. Quiet snow falling.>

Guil wanted the same from Burn. There was no cabin here. There was just <evergreens and snow.>

<Evergreens with branches laced and snow-blanketed. Deep, deep peace on this hillside.>

For a long time they stood like that, not letting the ambient go, not letting anything but those images into the night. There were no humans or horses here, there was no fire, there was no shelter, there was nothing but forest and snow.

When they let go, carefully and little at a time, the ambient was quiet. Itwasn’t there, either.

Darcy drifted, almost asleep when a terrible wail broke through the dark of the upstairs.

Then a sudden shriek, a thump and a second thump.

Darcy leapt up in a tangle of blankets, fought her legs free and ran for the balcony, thinking of the stairs and the chance of the girl turning toward them in the dark and unawares.

“Faye!” she cried, and intercepted the girl on the balcony, held her in her arms as she gasped for breath.

“Mama,” the girl cried. “Mama, mama, mama, he shot my horse, he shot my horse—”

“Shot your horse— What are you talking about, honey?”

“They shot him, they shot him, and I hatehim—I hate her!”

“Who?”

“I’ll find them— I’ll find them! I’ll make them sorry,”

“Hush, hush, child.” Darcy hugged the trembling body against her own, shivering in the winter cold, and guided her back to the safety of her own room, holding her arm, talking to her gently. “I was afraid you’d fall. There’s stairs to watch out for. You’re on the second story. You mustn’t get up and walk in the dark. Call me if you’re want to get up in the dark.”

“It was my horse!” the girl sobbed. “I want them dead!”

“Hush.” Darcy set her frail charge down on the edge of her bed and sat down herself on the edge of the mattress, tucking the girl up in the quilt. “There’s a love. You’re safe. There’s no one to hurt you here.”

“I hate them! ”

“Hush.” Darcy combed the soft, tangled curls with her fingers. “Hush. You mustn’t talk like that.” She didn’t know about horses. She didn’t understand what the child was dreaming about, but it scared her, it was so unexpectedly off the map. “You were dreaming, honey. It was just a dream. You mustn’t talk about horses. It makes the preacher worry. And we shouldn’t worry the preacher, should we, honey?”

“I prayed to God for my horse! And he was mine!”

“Hush, hush, it’s not a thing to say. You’ll scare people. They won’t understand it.”

There was a shaky sob. “I want my mama.”

“Yes, honey. I know, I know. But your mama’s gone, honey. I’ll take care of you.” She stroked Brio

“I’ll find a horse,” Brio

Now that the panic was past, she was only halfway appalled: some children didfantasize about horses. Occasionally they listened to bushbabies or hung about near the rider camp trying to pick up images—a spate of curiosity at about age seven or eight, a spate of trying to pick up sexual images around adolescence. Shocked parents came with fair regularity asking what to do—and Brio

Or even escape—from the very dreadful events down at Tarmin.

She’d done her own daydreaming, at such an age. She didn’t believe in the preacher’s God, never had, from hermother’s knee, and her wish for escape had been from an apprenticeship rigorous and humorless. If a horse hadever called her in her youth she supposed she’d have gone out the gates without a qualm.

So she resolved to deal with the child’s fantasies with far more humor and heartfelt understanding than her own mother had had for anyone.

To begin with she didn’t call the girl a fool, or depraved.

“That’s just all right, honey. Maybe you’ll call a horse for me, too, and we’ll ride all over the mountain.”

“You’re not scared of me?”

“Nothing scares me.”

The girl’s arms hugged her tight, tight a moment. “I love you.”

She hadn’t expected that. It was very difficult to get the unaccustomed words out of her throat, but she did.

“I love you, too, honey.”

They sat like that a while. Darcy’s feet went numb from cold. She didn’t mind. Her arms were warm.

At last the girl heaved a vast sigh. “It’s so quietnow. It’s gone away.”

“What’s gone away?”

“The horse out there. Now I can’t hear anything. It’s scary, everything’s so quiet. Can we light a lamp?”

“Sure. Sure, honey. You want to come with me? I’ll light the lamp in your room.”

There was a young horse in the rider camp. She didn’t remember. She thought there was. She didn’t know the status of it. She just hadn’t hung about for gossip because she hadn’t wanted the reciprocal questions into herbusiness.

But if imagining horses and being scared of the dark were the only complaints the girl had after the climb up the mountain she’d done very well indeed.

A normal, natural little girl.

That was all.

Chapter 16

The curiosity in the tavern had died down. It was a weekday night, and a crowd even so—in Tarmin it had been only Saturday-night crowds of this size and noise level, but Tarmin hadn’t had the winter influx of miners and loggers who had the credit to spend, no kitchen to cook in, and no families to restrain the consumption or the spending. There was music, a ring of tolerable guitar players among the miners in from one of the camps, who were leading a still suitable for youngers singalong interspersed with soulful ballads.

Most of all, native to Evergreen, there was good food: the miners had high standards, that was a famous and dependable fact; and the guy who ran The Evergreen in the winter months had to be a good cook or he wouldn’t have lasted the week.

Carlo and Randy picked up dishes of the nightly buffet and went hunting for a table. The snowfall was getting thick outside, and when Carlo would have thought that families would have been home on such a night, the place was crowded not only with miners, but with Evergreen villagers, including Van Mackey andMary Hardesty, andRick, plus a number of other village families and folk looking for society.

The end nearest the door was family territory, the left end nearest the fire was miner’s territory, the right was loggers’ district, the liquor was flowing from the bar that divided the room—except that there was between the town and both miners and loggers a no-man’s-land of kids deeming themselves old enough to drink, both too old and not old enough to sit with their parents, not welcome either (Carlo understood the unspoken rules) in the outsiders’ section where the almost entirely male village transients congregated for serious winter-break drinking.

Having a fourteen-year-old brother in tow, he’d generally taken a table near the bar, where the bartender and the cook maintained order, except there wasn’t a table at the moment. Randy found a table instead on the border between the young folk and the miners and having his hands full of plate, bread, and pint of ale, he was willing to risk it and sit down—hoping that Da