Cloud's Rider

There was a muffled blast of shotgun fire below.

And for a moment the presence in the passages seemed to have split in four, behind them, ahead of them, under the church, under the row of houses—

Rain jumped sideways in startlement and Je

Playing games with them, dammit. And he daren’t leave his view of the edges to help Je

“All right?”

“Yeah,” she said. The lamplight showed tears smeared on one cheek. Je

And <enemy> was there, here, all over the place, and Je

“It lies,” Ridley said with a sense of desperation. Their trap hadn’t worked. They knew that by the simple fact that the thing hadn’t been sending for a moment, having conscious control of whether it did or didn’t: that was a larger brain at work, larger and ca

He wanted Je

He was relieved when Callie was by him again, the other side of their defense of Je

The ambient prickled then with <Randy Goss> coming outside the village hall in Peterson’s wife’s company, Randy and the wife and then the daughter all armed with shotguns, as the defense of the administrative buildings. Reverend Quarles came behind them, not so evidently a preacher in his snow-gear and carrying a rifle.

“Didn’t work.” Peterson said the obvious.

“It’s tricking us,” Ridley said. “It’s diverting us in what it sends.”

“Then move the horses back from us!” Peterson’s wife said.

“That won’t work,” Callie said. “This thing sends. Thisthing sends. You don’t need a horse near you to hear it—but it’s going to lie to you most when it isn’t sending at all. Hope it sends and we pass it to you, or you won’t know where it is.”

“That girltalks to it,” Je

“It’s the truth,” Ridley said, and an uncomfortable silence followed—broken by another young voice.

“She rode the rogue, down in Tarmin.”

“No,” someone began to say, but Randy’s voice overrode it.

“She’s my sister! She killed the whole village—but she couldn’t get the door open to get us!”

Shock followed. Deep, unsettling shock. And the thingseemed to ricochet around the street, here, here, here, with no settling point.

“Lord save us.” That from the preacher. “The child’s only thirteen.”

“So I’m fourteen!” Randy cried indignantly. “She blames us! She wants Carlo dead!”

“It is the truth,” Ridley said. “I think it isthe truth, preacher, as true as I can tell.”

There was, surprisingly, no panic about the matter, just a settling of a very uneasy regard toward that house with the large wraparound porch, with its shutters thrown, with, in the ambient— which he wasn’t sure anyone but Callie understood—a ravening hunger for presence, a hunger for the ambient it— she—couldn’t ever satisfy, because no sane horse would have her.

Dammit, he thought—it took a fourteen-year-old and an eight-year-old to understand the reasons behind what it did: it wasn’t adult desires they were fighting. It wasn’t a hunter after food or a beast after a lair. It was a thirteen-year-old kid supplying its ideas and playing damnable, bloody pranks down at the tavern and through the passages while it mapped the place, damned well mappedthe village the girl had never seen with her own eyes.

Thataccounted for the occasionally true and occasionally skewed direction-sense: it was frolicking around, exploring the village and getting the upper hand over everyone trying to stop it.

Never ask how Earnest Riggs had crossed the girl’s notice.

“Wait for daylight,” the marshal said into the silence. “Just let it settle down. We’ve got about—what time is it?—it’s got to be toward dawn.”

“I can go look,” his daughter offered.

“No!” Peterson said sharply. And more quietly, “No. Not a good idea.” Peterson didn’t want his family scattering out, and neither did Ridley.

“That thing is ru

All those things were true. But those things were only half their danger. The marshal was advising they wait for daylight—but Ridley didn’t think it was going to hole up, if he had his guess. It might go right over the wall again and come back for more mischief tomorrow night.

Which might give them time to do something about Brio

Which wasn’t a horse, wasn’t Carlo Goss, and wasn’t a rogue cat. This thingwas a better climber. It was smarter around structures, very fast—which might be human intelligence feeding images into it—but it also figured out the tu