Lark Rising (Guardians of Tarnec) (15 page)

It was late when I returned to my chamber. Sleep forsaken, I sat by the fire cupping a mug of tea between my hands, glad for its warmth though I was not chilled.

The king’s strength had failed after he’d presented the Riders. With something like a sigh, he simply stopped. Wilh, Evaen, and Laurent moved quickly to support him from the hall, Ilone carefully taking the book from his grasp and following them. We’d watched their exit somberly, yet the remaining Riders were not distressed; they seemed to expect this. It bothered me, though, his grave departure. I’d left too many questions unasked and knew that I had not long to learn from this man.

But now I sat with my tea, not thinking on the king, or the book he’d held in his hands, or how the amulets were stolen, or on the empty seat beside the king. I was not thinking on this crystal orb—small enough to cup in my hands—this symbol of Life. And I was not thinking that it needed to be found, needed to be placed back in the embrace of Tarnec, was not thinking even that the beautiful Earth and all people would suffer without the balance of the primal forces, the reclaiming of amulets. I suppose all of those thoughts hovered above, waiting to be introduced for brooding, but that time was not yet.

I was thinking of the burst of light I’d felt inside when Gharain had pressed his mark against mine.

The charge in my body remained, like a flare of light in a dark room. After all the experiences in these past days, this touch was an insignificant moment of time, and yet in its aftermath the light remained. And it still burned.

I set down my tea finally, having to stand—no, to move under this sensation, which propelled me nowhere and everywhere at once. I paced to each corner and back again, but the room was not large enough for this. And maybe I would have gone without prompting, but a sudden waft of air carried in the scent of the bell roses; I turned in my tracks and went out into the garden.

Enchanted, this heightened space of midnight. A hush first—a lull—then the crackling of the hearth fire disappeared, replaced by singing night things. Perfumed air slipped along my arms and neck, and I breathed it in, deeply. Dark overwhelmed the garden; the moon had passed the heights of the castle walls, leaving only gleaming bits of silver between long shadows. The windows behind the cloisters glowed with candles, some of them, but not bright enough to pass more than feebly between the leaves of ivy. I did not mind. This dark was beautiful; the garden was beautiful. I was barefoot, the grass wet with dew … and I ran. The energy buoyed me up, let me dance and leap and gulp in the lovely fragrances of night. I wished Rileg had been there to leap with me, the way we did at the burning of ghisane.

I collapsed at length to the ground, palms deep into the grass, laughing with exuberance.
Awakened
—I whispered it into the dark, rolled onto my back, hugging my arms close like I’d spilled some secret. I smelled the bell roses so sweet, felt the wetness of the dew seep into my skirts, and tasted the dark, almost, on my tongue.

And then I heard the splash from the pool—the sound made when an object is plunged in water. I rolled over with
a gasp, watched the body rise behind the pool’s edge, tall and dripping, gleaming in the night air.

Gharain pushed his hair back from his face with both hands, watching me.

I spoke, barely. “You? How are you here?”

He still watched me—I think it was the longest amount of time that his eyes had ever lingered. Finally he answered, “Usually I am the one to make use of the garden at night.”

It was simple clarification or outright hostility. Yet a tiny glimmer of humor laced his voice, and why not? I’d looked the fool leaping about the garden. I started to rise from my clumsy sprawl, but that made me taller than he standing naked and waist deep in the sunken pool, so I abruptly sat on my heels. I was glad that the darkness covered the fire in my cheeks.

“All that happened,” I said, a bit in defense, a bit in truth. “It’s racing through my bones. I needed to release it somehow.”

I waited, hoping for a response, anything that might show understanding or at least recognition of this feeling, but there was none; his eyes went elsewhere. I finished awkwardly, “Anyway, ’tis beautiful here.”

Gharain wiped his brow with a careless strength of hand. “You are staying, then.”

Stay. He’d already asked that of me. Or, not asked; he’d simply told me to do so, the way he told me now—as something already determined. I almost liked that I could refuse. “No. I return to Merith—”

“Merith!” I’d surprised him. Then, flatly, “It is not safe.”

“Nowhere is safe,” I said, likewise abrupt. That left us silent.

At length and without looking back, Gharain murmured, “How is the king?”

“Not well. Not …” I stopped. I was only repeating myself to fill the emptiness in this conversation. Somewhere a night thing rasped its wings in brittle song. I should want to get up; the dew had soaked cold through my gown. I shook my head. “I expect you already know.”

He stiffened immediately. “Why do you say so?”

“Because you were there. Even if you were gone when he faltered, you must know he is ill.”

“He
is
ill. He has little time left.” There was a deeper silence, and a slight release to Gharain’s shoulders—only slight. “I call him Grandfather. But he is greater, far older than my father’s father.”

Old indeed. “I saw,” I said carefully, “the eyes. Are you alone related to him?”

“Ilone is my sister.”

Sister
. How silly to be relieved by that answer. I’d already assumed she was paired with Dartegn, and what did it matter anyway? This Rider could barely look at me. I nodded to no one—Gharain’s focus was entirely on the boxwood at the far corner.

He moved a little then, his fingers brushing through the water. The ripple shuddered in sound, like musical notes piling together, and the little circle on my shoulder blade tingled. It had never done that before. The flame inside of me flared very bright.

And so I said on impulse, “What is our connection, Gharain? What happened when you touched my mark?”

It was direct, terse, and I’d used his name, but I did not anticipate the sudden rage that flashed in his gesture. He turned sharply, gaze piercing through like a blade. “Why ask? You’ve been awakened, Guardian. Why do you need to know more than that?”

This was all wrong, but I blundered on, “Because I was awakened by you. Why you?”

He was harsh. “As if that should matter more than your purpose, more than what the king has confirmed, or that the queen—”

“The queen!” The empty chair? “Where is she in all of this?”

“The queen is dead.”

Such a rigid, final announcement—not a good death, it was clear. The intent of malice, I remembered with a shiver, the Breeders. “I—”

Gharain cut over me again furiously, as if he’d heard my thoughts. “No, it was
not
a good death. It was violent, and brutal, and meant to inflict pain on all who loved her. We
all
loved her—”

“I’m sorry!” I cringed under his vehemence.

“—and yet you ask of our connection, as if that were of importance!” He’d ignored the condolence, his voice still harsh, challenging where I’d placed my interest. “You already know one exists. You saw, you felt, the charge of marks when they touched—that it should
matter
to you!”

I stared at him. “That it matters to me makes you bitter?” And then I could not help my own challenge, my own snipe
of bitterness, because I was humiliated that I’d cringed before him again, and that he saw through my need and rejected it so coldly. “You despised that touch.”

He bristled. “You know little.”

“I know
you
. I’ve seen your beauty and your rage in my dreams, Gharain. I did not understand that in between there is simply hostility.”

“Dreams! Dreams of what?” His laugh was raw. “You do not understand—”

“Understand?” I was angry now. “Of course I don’t understand! All of this came to me unbidden.
You
came to me unbidden!”

Now there was pure silence in the garden. Not even the night things dared sing. We stared at each other—I in defiance, he in shock. Whether it was shock that I’d scolded him or shock that I admitted he’d been in my dreams, I did not know. At first, a flicker of alarm crossed his gaze. And then there came a moment that I felt too intensely—a moment where, though he hadn’t moved, I sensed him reach out across the distance, brush my heavy hair back from my temple, and cup my face in his hands.

I felt his breath on my cheek, and I felt my eyes close.

“Don’t,” Gharain said sharply, painfully, from across the lawn.

I took a shaking breath, forced open my eyes. “What—?”

“Don’t do it,” he interrupted roughly. “
You
must be strong.”

“Strong for what? I don’t know what this is!” It was the second time I’d said that, and I said it loudly, but was ignored.
Gharain had already turned his back and pushed through the water up the far steps of the pool. It did not seem to matter to him that he was wearing nothing, or that I made a small, awed gasp at this. He strode a few feet into the dimness, reached for the linen sheet that lay tossed on a stone bench, and threw it around him.

“You will need to learn how to ride,” he said fiercely, inconsequential as it was in that moment. “Marc or Evaen can teach you. You will have to keep up.”

He was walking now, away into the night, starlight and shadow streaking over him, the bell roses closing their scent around his path.

And, ridiculously, I could not let him go like that. I called out before he disappeared, “I did not yet thank you, Gharain.”

That made him stop. He hung midstep; I could see his shoulders clench, and the harshness was shaken from his voice. “Thank me? For what?”

“For saving me. Last night. From the Troth.”

He turned slowly, looking at me fully for a moment, though we were now far apart and little could be seen. Then his voice came quiet and clear from across the way. “Save you? I meant to kill you.”

And he turned and walked away.

DESPITE LITTLE SLEEP, no appetite, and three previous falls, I still stood fairly bravely before my horse.

Marc was cupping his hands, bowing over—waiting for me to place my foot in his palms again and somehow throw myself onto Rune.

“It’s easy, little Lark.” He was laughing now; I’d been delighting him all morning with my ignorance of horses. “Step in; grab his mane for balance. There, now …”

I stood on tiptoe once more to catch Rune’s mane and put my weight into Marc’s hands. There was the sway and release of ground, and then finally I was high, scrabbling my legs over the horse’s side and sprawling full length on the broad back. Rune stood solidly in place with only a twitch of his tail as I worked my way up to a sitting position, spitting my hair from my mouth.

“There you are, Lark,” Marc called up. “Does it not feel better to be there than two-footed on the ground?”

“I—I’m not sure. I like the ground well enough.”

Marc laughed at me again. He had an easy way with laughter, a gentle way of teasing me into challenge. I remembered him well from the night before—he with the unkempt brown hair, standing at one end of the grouped Riders close to his pretty, soft-eyed wife. He’d smiled at me then, a little welcome grin when he—like everyone—returned my bow. For all the seriousness of what must be a Rider’s life of risk and danger, Marc seemed to let such slide off his shoulders, finding humor in the details. I’m certain, though, that teaching me to ride a horse would have been a laugh for anyone.

I yelped as Rune gave a little shake of his head, grabbing fistfuls of his mane. “I’m not steady! What do I hold? How do I stop him?”

“Find your seat, little Lark. Let him walk you a bit; you will discover how fluid it can be.” He made a little clicking noise and Rune started forward.

I swear I shrieked again. It is one thing to be awed by the beauty of a creature that one has only dreamed of; it is another to claim it, to climb on its back and to share its power.

“Trust, Lark. Trust.” Marc called this to me as Rune walked away along the edge of the clearing. Castle Tarnec hung out enormous over its cliff in the near distance, meadows and gardens and orchards spread around me, the forests beyond. It was beautiful—magnificent, like Rune.

“He’s waiting for you to give in!” Marc shouted across the lawn.

I heard him, but resisted, staying intent on my whirl of thoughts, cramming in all the things Marc had taught me since early this morning, all the things I’d tried to pay attention to. They flickered through my mind—the stalls of beautiful horses; the fresh, sharp smell of hay; the intricately woven leather reins and the rich gleam of dark saddles. I’d already forgotten how to strap them on, but Marc had said no matter, for what was important was the trust forged between rider and horse; accessories were merely accessories (or for maneuvering in battle, I interpreted). He explained that not all horses take a rider, but once a horse had chosen, there was no reason to break in the animal. “They wait,” he’d said, “until they know. No need to force a steed’s will to anyone else—such would destroy a most powerful bond with these treasures.”