Cloud's Rider

“It’s attracted to the girl in Darcy’s house,” he said. “It’s concentrating its mischief up at this end. But never there—because it’s being elusive and that would give it away. That’s what I’m thinking. The girl’s attracted it and the girl’s guiding it, consciously or unconsciously. She’s got to be silenced. Stopped. Put out cold.”

“That’s pretty hard-minded,” John Quarles said. “That poor child, rider-boss, —”

“I don’t say do her any lasting harm, but if we quiet Brio

“You can’t even tell us what it is,” the marshal’s wife said.

“I can tell you it’s not from this side of the mountains. I can tell you it’s damn smart. I can tell you while we’re arguing, it’s picking up our intentions in the ambient and telling a thirteen-year-old girl what we’re apt to do, and it’s only begun to do its work on this mountain if we don’t stop it here, Lucy. I’ll swearthat to you.”

“I’ll go put it to Darcy,” John Quarles said. “She’ll listen to me.”

“Not alone,” Ridley said. “Line of sight. Rifles lined up and us watching.”

“I’m aware the beast is dangerous,” the preacher said. “But if your theory is right, diminishing the threat to the girl andthe beast might actually lessen the danger.”

“I’ll have that porch in my rifle sights. —Listen to me, preacher. I’m asking you, don’t endanger anybody including that girl. Trust mygood wishes and if you hear anything untoward on that porch, drop flat instantly and I’ll shoot right over you. Don’t confuse our aim. Trustus. All right?“

“I’ve every confidence,” Quarles said, and handed his shotgun to the marshal. “But most of all, I’ll trust in the Lord.”

Quarles walked out through the falling snow, then.

Brave, Ridley gave him that, as he slid down from Slip’s back and lifted his rifle—not the only one drawing a bead on that area.

“Stay still,” Callie was saying to Je

“She’s just real mad,” Je

Je

Then he knew something else—a wider ambient than had existed. It had direction. Distance. Outside the wall.

Horses. On the road.

<Da

<Da

He thought then of calling out to the preacher to come back. But he thought if a preacher could ever bein the ambient, John Quarles was there right now, and if ever they had the chance to reach Darcy, they had it now. Quarles knew something had changed just now, surely. He hadto be aware of the arrival.

<Danger flared through the nerves, and Da

They wanted, too. They wanted to be there, and around the next turning of the road, obscured in a thin veil of snow, Da

He ran, he told the ambient <riders coming> as he stumbled down the last of the road. Cloud wanted <taking him up,> Cloud wanted <Shimmer and Slip and Rain, inside the wall, sensing danger. Horses listening to them as they came. Riders aware of them. Danger present—>

They reached the lesser gate through a trampled space that said that this gate at least had opened—but not in hours, Da

Bad business. And the pull-cord wasn’tout.

“Damn it!” Tara said, and with her knife through a gap in the timbers tried to raise the heavy bar inside. Da

They were atEvergreen, there was all hell broken loose inside as they listened to it, and nobody could let them in the gate.

He let off a rifle shot. It echoed off the mountain and into the ambient in a massive wash of <fear> and <hope> as everyone in Evergreen, deaf to the ambient or not, realized there was someone outside.

<Anger> came, too. Someone else—was fiercely <angry.>

They were shooting again, and Darcy flinched, though this shot was far away. “Listen to me,” John Quarles was saying through the closed front door. “Darcy? Darcy, —just for safety, I want you to find a sedative. I want you to find a strong sedative and get the girl calm. I know you want to protect her. You have a sedative, don’t you, Darcy?”

“Yes,” she admitted. But she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to lose the girl’s trust. Brio

She knew it was true, though. She knew the way she knew that people were outside and that they had designs on Brio

He— dared—leave her—that unspeakable sight to remember. It was his anger. It was his spite. It was his blame. It was Mark saying again as he’d shouted at her the day before he died, Damn you, Darcy, shed a tear! Yell! Blame me out loud, don’t just look at me like that!

She wasn’t sitting on the couch, with John talking about God’s mercy, she wasn’t rocking back and forth like a fool, and still not able to cry, and John talking inanely about what colors to use at Mark’s funeral, as if anyone gave a damn. She was standing at the front door, and John was on the other side, begging her to drug the child senseless, when Brio