Lark Rising (Guardians of Tarnec)

by Sandra Waugh

  The moon was rising full, an enormous sphere of silver already paling the sky and sweeping back the shadows. I watched the light spread and took a relieved breath of the cool air. I could find a hiding place in these rocks. Troths might not see so well under the moon’s bright beams; this close to the trees they might not smell me. At dawn, when my eyes would be as sharp as theirs and I still had the advantage of the forest’s scent, I’d begin my trek back to Bren Clearing and to the rowan.

  “Thank you, foxes,” I whispered. A faint breeze bore the grateful words away.

  I walked a little farther, keeping close to the trees, and climbed to a grassy ridge that dropped in a dizzyingly straight fall. There was a lip of rock near its edge I could use for cover as I waited for the sun. Troths were no more than the size of a man, but neither would fit easily there. I dropped to hands and knees and crawled to the hollow, then stopped—hair hanging over the edge and gaze riveted to the valley floor—at the sound of a distant rumble.

  Ponies. The wild gallopers came streaking out of the valley shadows into the brilliance of moonlight. I was high, and the silver light played tricks; they seemed long of leg and spine. I squinted to see better, wriggling belly-flat to hang farther over the edge, then froze once more, prone and vulnerable, for I heard a new sound.

  Something was moving up the ridge, something large. A ringing step against stone, a thudding upon the grass, and the little gusts of air through nostrils. I went to spring for the overhang, then froze again, too late, for he was up over the ridge already. I clenched for the strike, barely breathing.… But nothing. My head turned stiffly to look.

  “Oh!” was all that came out.

  The stuff of make-believe was glowing there against the night sky, with the sparkle of stars like little bursts of celebration surrounding him. A horse. A white horse.

  My gaze whipped back to the valley. Not ponies. Horses. All of them. I, who had never seen a horse, was suspended now above a hundred or more—was confronted by this singular, stunning one. I turned back slowly, blinking, to see if this horse would disappear like some apparition, but he stood solidly before me, watching as I pushed to my knees, mouth still open, and choked out inanely, “Oh, but you’re beautiful!”

  He did not reply, of course, but I thought he shook his head for my benefit. A tiny shake, just to fluff the forelock from his eyes. The light of his coat flashed. I had to crane my neck to meet his stare; his eye was solemn, deep and dark, utterly passive and yet totally alive. He waited. I stood up slowly, transfixed, coming barely to the top of his shoulder, tentatively offered my hand just beneath his velvet nose. He blustered into my palm. I stepped closer, brushed my fingers along his powerful neck and smooth swath of cheek, and he turned and brought his soft muzzle to touch my own cheek, just at the edge of my jaw. Then my arms went around his neck and I leaned into him, breathing the wonderful smell of hide and mane, feeling his calming energy run through me—feeling, for a blessed time, safe.

  The horse let me stand there for I don’t know how long. We both faced the valley, witnessed the herd running freely, all colors of hide and hair made silver-dark under the moon. A toss of mane, a whisk of tail to catch the light; a prance, a buck, a gallop across the open grass. Muscle and bone melted into a singular grace of motion. I was utterly still, hardly breathing, drinking my fill of beauty. An enchanted place. No wonder the Riders protected these hills.

  Finally and almost ruefully, I lifted my face and released my arms.

  I suppose that I expected him to turn away then, and leave as he had come. But the white horse touched his muzzle to my cheek again and blew through his nostrils right against my hair. Then he turned, exquisitely graceful despite his size, and started down the ridge.

  A signal to move if I’d ever understood one.

  He nimbly picked his way among the rocks and I scrambled behind, but when we turned to what was a sliver of path precariously winding down toward the valley, I stopped, disappointed.

  “I cannot follow you.” I had to return to Bren Clearing. Back through the forest. Back to the Troths.

  The horse’s ears twitched.

  I reached once more to touch his bristled coat. “Go on, then.” I was speaking softly; even so, my voice vibrated against the rock surrounding us. “Thank you for this. I won’t forget.” The horse shook his mane and watched me with those deep eyes.

  “Rune,” I said suddenly with a grin. “I would call you Rune.”

  The horse shook his head again as if he accepted, and then he stepped away, leaving my hand open against nothing.

  I watched Rune disappear through a tight crevice, a last gleam of his milk-white coat under the moon. No dark fears from the past days could have any hold in this place. I turned my face up and smiled at the sky, and then climbed awkwardly back up the rock.

  The hair on my neck pricked.

  Two things happened at once. I heard the harsh snort of the Troth somewhere above my head, higher up on the ridge, and then I heard a step that was much closer—a soft, leather-shod step that I was not meant to hear, as if the foot was versed in creeping quietly to the attack. I felt my shoulders hunch protectively in surprise, and as I started to turn toward the noise, a voice roared in fury so loud that it echoed through the whole valley.

  “Trespasser!”

  I knew who it was. I knew it was my final breath. Even so, I could not help that my body pulled back, and my head whipped around in shock and fright, so that I caught his eyes with my own. And there was the timeless moment of my dream hanging suspended between us, eyes locked. Half a breath was all it was, yet it lasted an eternity. His beautiful, beautiful face was contorted by rage melting into some sort of frigid horror. My own expression, I know, was the shock of recognition. I was unbalanced. I fell hard back onto the ground, and over me he seemed impossibly huge.

  “Trespasser!” The voice was hoarse this time, and I saw him close his eyes.

  Yet he lifted his enormous sword in a graceful arc, and there was no hesitation as it struck down.

  I WAS NOT dead. I could not be dead. I heard my struggle to take a gasping breath and my heart thudding wildly against my ribs. I heard roaring in my ears and the strangest sensation that I was underwater, or at the very least under a tremendous weight pressing me heavily into the earth.

  And, I felt pain.

  Yet all of that was insignificant against the shock that it was not over. My mind ran frenzied: the dream was not wrong—the sword had come down; my mind dissolved into that blissful white—but I was not dead.

  He was swearing, I think. Harsh, sharp words were falling from above as the roar in my ears resolved into sound. “She is to die! She is supposed to die!” he shouted into the clear sky. And he cursed for this, I supposed, error.

  Time is fickle. Moments we wish to hold are gone in an eyeblink; things to be agonizingly endured seem to last forever. And sometimes, the space between breaths yawns open into a cavern—a great suspense of nothingness and everything at once. There is clarity in the tiniest detail. Mine was in my hearing. My ears were so attuned in that space, I swear I heard the stars burning. The curses falling from those beautiful lips, the echoing clang of sword against rock, the soft brush of the leathered step and creasing of woven tunic and braided belt. Then powerful snorting surrounded me, above, behind. They merged, split. Rune was whickering; beyond that was the Troth’s harsh slurp of air. I heard a grunt from the dream man as he sprang from the ridge and ran lightly across the boulder, a sharp squeal from the Troth, a thud.… And all I could think was how could the Troth die before I did?

  Then my hearing softened and was funneled from a place far away, and thoughts swirled to another distance so that nothing seemed to matter anymore. My vision floated away too, and suddenly I was looking down at my body sprawled on the grassy ridge like a cloth doll, hair and cloak tossed every which way. And I saw that the pressure pinning me was Rune. He lay over me, his great forelegs pawing at the dirt as he worked to keep himself from crushing me,
to bring himself upright. His great haunches flexed and pulled, and then he was up, standing over my limp body, with his muzzle against my cheek, nudging at me. And the dream man was striding back down to the ridge, sheathing the sword he’d just wiped against the grass, glaring at Rune and coming to pause by my head, staring hard down at my face for a moment with an unfathomable expression. Abruptly, he reached an arm back in a wide sweep and sent his palm slamming down hard into my shoulder.

  I gave a great gasp of breath, felt my lungs fill with cool air, and I was suddenly looking up into his painfully beautiful face.

  My shoulder ached.

  “Your breath was knocked from you,” he said, as a curt and by no means apologetic explanation for his action.

  I didn’t speak, disoriented and dumbfounded. Three moments ago he’d stabbed his sword down on me. Now he’d brought my breath back.

  And for no purpose. There was no attempt to include me in conversation. He was turned, staring at Rune now with incredulity. He opened his mouth as if to ask the horse a question, and then shut it, lips clamped tightly over whatever thought he’d had.

  “Get up.” He ordered that of me without looking.

  I stayed motionless, and he swore again angrily: beautiful voice, beautiful face, beautiful smile—hostility piercing all, like little stabs from his sword. How old—nineteen years or twenty, perhaps? His anger aged him.

  “Get up!” he demanded again, still without looking at me. He was busy with something tucked into his belt. A cloth.

  I did not wait for a third command. I sat up and pushed into the grass to rise, then groaned as pain seared through my ankle. “I cannot—”

  “Don’t say a word!” He whirled on me, exclaiming with fury, “I will kill you if you do.”

  My eyes were wide, waiting for him to take his sword. He turned back, the anger now making him clumsy. He fumbled, not for the sword but for the cloth, finally pulling it free with another oath. He turned back in my direction. “I said to get up!”

  But I was frozen in place, unblinking. To my right I heard Rune pawing at the sod.

  The dream man caught, then fought my gaze. Whipping his head away, he muttered something under his breath. Then he reached down and, taking the cloth, wrapped the thing around my eyes and knotted it at the back of my head. The moonlight disappeared. Rune snorted. A leather braid was lashed around my wrists next. It was not his belt, I noted with odd detail. It was too thin, too cutting.

  Not gently, he pulled my arm to drag me up, and I yelped at the warm shock of his touch, dangling there in his strong grip, caught by the force of it. Maybe my ankle was broken and the dark and the unbalance made me dizzy, but his touch was what truly stunned—an energy both delicious to my senses and fraught with a terrible pain.

  “What—?” The man was ready to shake me into standing straight; his hand trembled with the impending force of it. But suddenly he stopped. He must have looked at my foot, for I sensed him stoop over. Then he straightened. In a heartbeat, I was off the ground and tossed over his shoulder like a sack of barley. My hood fell over my head. The pack I wore slipped and banged against his back, but he didn’t flinch. The young man merely brushed my cloak away from his face, gathering it along in his grip, and started to walk.

  I wish that I could say I struggled. Or that I argued. I wish, even, that I could say it was my Merith upbringing that inspired some sort of silent dignity in the face of trauma. But there was nothing noble in my action; I merely lost consciousness. I remember sensing from his grip a piercing anguish, and a fleeting glimpse of a cup of spilled wine—remnants of some terrible story. Then exhaustion, pain, hunger, fear, and the simple act of hanging upside down brought blood rushing to my head too fast. It seemed to boil in my ears, and then there was nothing.

  It was very quick. I should have told him he’d no need for the blindfold.

  Jarred awake, laid back down on solid earth, something soft between me and a wedge of rock—a blanket, or my cloak. I remembered the cloth being knotted around my eyes and the man from my dream, but little else. I could not feel sun on my face. My mouth was dry; taste was nothing. I could smell moss and stone and good, dark earth. I smelled a fire burning low. Yet that described every place I could think of. I could as well be in Merith.

  But were I in Merith, I would not be blindfolded and bound, nor would I hear so rapid and heated a conversation as the one that fired just above my head.

  The dream man had companions—angry companions. This was no Merith.

  I was scared. Nay, panicked. The desire to be home, for this to be unreal, burned with sudden, terrible fierceness. I clenched my teeth hard against it, against any groan, any movement, and pretended unconsciousness to be invisible.

  “We take no prisoners, Gharain!”

  “I know.”

  The dream man’s name: Gharain. He—the one in terrible pain.

  “You should have put her to death already,” the deeper voice filled in with a horrifying pronouncement. “Dragging her with you has only prolonged her misery. And yours, it seems.”

  Gharain was sharp. “What mean you by that?”

  “Look at you!”

  He snorted. “I cannot.”

  “I’ll look for you, then.” This was a different voice, mild and amused, and younger, like Gharain’s. There were three men here. “Your eyes stare hard and wild. You breathe heavily—”

  “I carried her, Wilh.”

  The first man laughed. “As if you could be winded by that!”

  True. He’d lifted me as if I had no weight.

  “—and you pace like a wolf!” Wilh continued, but seemed to lose his smile. “On all accounts, Gharain, this has shaken you. Why bring this on? It should have been over immediately. With no look back.”

  “Then let’s be done and quickly.” The first voice was brusque and emotionless. “This brings no pleasure.”

  “Aye,” said Wilh. “Gharain, it was your charge. You must do the task.”

  “I cannot.”

  I closed my eyes behind the blindfold, grateful for those words, but relief was sinkingly brief. Wilh ignored his refusal. “Our law, Gharain. Trespassers must be killed.”

  “I know that well,” Gharain returned fiercely. “And I—I cannot.”

  The first voice broke in, angry now. “Gharain, for you to do this again—”

  Gharain swore at that. “I will not repeat my error, Brahnt, and do not think I do this for myself! Look! Look there, beyond the circle of firelight. Law or no, look at what stopped me!”

  There was a pause, a rustling, the turning of heads and bodies to witness something. Two sharp intakes of breath, then Wilh and Brahnt stumbled over one another’s words in surprise.

  “The white one—!”

  “Is it he? How?”

  “He prevented me, Wilh. He leaped between my sword and her body. I swear, had I not jumped back, he would have struck me dead with his hooves or I’d have killed him in her place.”

  “What?” Brahnt scoffed, unwilling to believe. “He leaped from nowhere?”

  “ ’Twas no accident,” Gharain said flatly. “ ’Twas protection—he protected her. He’s still protecting her; he’s followed me here.” A pause, and then a sigh almost. “As if he’s … chosen. I could not ignore this.”

  The other men were considering this. I was too. The flash of white in my dream had not been the moment of death. It had been Rune saving me.

  “Chosen of white,” Wilh seemed to quote. “This makes for a unique dilemma. We should hold Council—”

  “Wilh!” Brahnt interrupted. “Do you not smell Troth on him?” He must have turned to Gharain. “You found Troths?” he demanded.

  “Yes. One. He was quickly dead.”

  “She brought the beast, then. White stallion, or no, the girl has trespassed; she must be done away with here. Now.” Brahnt was adamant. “If you will not do this, Gharain, then I will in your place. The horse will not be harmed. I will not miss.”

  I ha
d no time to react. There was shuffling of footsteps, nearer to me suddenly, and the rasp of metal sliding from leather. And just as suddenly Rune neighed harshly. A clatter of hooves sounded by my head.

  Wilh said, “Put your sword away, Brahnt!”

  “What is this?” Brahnt swore under his breath. “The elusive one—guarding like a dog!” I did not hear him resheathe his weapon. I dared not breathe, biting the inside of my lip to hold steady.

  “Like it or no, Brahnt, there is reason in this,” answered Wilh. “If the steed has indeed chosen her.”

  “Chosen is but a word. Our laws are to safeguard these horses,” Brahnt stressed. “And leave no trespassers to tell tales.”

  Gharain made a hard sound, but Wilh exclaimed with frustration, “But it is the white steed. And this but a single girl!”

  There was a terrible pause at that, as if a single girl could do much harm. Wilh offered instead, “If we are uncertain, let’s unleash her wrists and leave her pointed toward Tyre.”

  “And if she brings the dark city dwellers back?” Brahnt demanded. “If she shows them the way? Or what if the horse follows her? Would you have him appear in Tyre? Never mind his fate there; consider the poachers who would soon invade our hills to steal them all.”

  The voices stopped. My blood went to ice. It took no special gift to know what they were thinking: put out her eyes, and she cannot find her way back.

  “Then there are only ugly choices.” Wilh’s words sank like stone.

  Silence followed until Gharain said hollowly, “I should have done the deed. I have brought distress upon us again.” His voice was turned to me. “I am sorry.” Kind words that were cold.

  But it was Brahnt who swore again and walked away. “No. We are done. I have no stomach for this anymore. I understand you, Gharain. The horse, a girl. It makes us no better than Troths.”

  “So? Cut her loose and, what, blind her? You have stomach for that?” Reprieves were fleeting. I swallowed back a whimper, held my breath—

  “Nay, Wilh, that is neither my aim. She cannot leave.”