Lark Rising (Guardians of Tarnec) (16 page)

Treasure—an apt image for Tarnec’s ruthless protection of its hills, I’d noted. Marc replied that Tarnec closely guarded its territory against Breeders, of course, and to stay free of any outside influence so that Balance would remain undisturbed. And, he’d added, looking at me for the first time with a serious expression, they could not let the extraordinary horses be discovered, pilfered, or used for ugly purpose.

“Imagine the dwellers of Tyre finding the source of horses. Desire to own them would lead to avarice, and as well to jealousy. They would be harnessed, collected, corralled; the creatures would not be able to choose their riders, and the bond
would be destroyed, diluted to a meaningless relationship of owner and chattel.”

“You determine rather harshly that people are greedy,” I’d said to him.

He’d laughed. “You are from Merith! Tyre is an unpleasant city of desperate and needy sorts, long a stronghold of the Breeders. I do not assume that greed controls us, but I do understand that the Breeders feed on people’s desires—and they work to brew the things in each of us that can lead us to ruin.”

I wondered if the Breeders would feed on my desires.

“Lark!” Marc was shouting loudly now, shaking me from my stupor. “Let go of your thoughts! Feel your horse; move with your horse.”

I took a breath and focused back on the present. Rune had walked me nearly in a full circle and I’d not noticed, other than gripping wildly with hands and legs. Taking another breath, I released the handfuls of mane that I was pulling at and wiped my palms on my buckskin leggings—another gift from Nayla’s store of clothing—surprised, then, that I did not fall. I patted Rune tentatively. He blustered and shook his head, inviting me to place my hands there, on the length of his neck. I slid them down slowly, and felt the warmth and strength and solidity of this horse—

And I did not fall.

His energy shot through me, strong and breathtaking. A memory flashed—of leaning my head against his shoulder that first night—and I felt suddenly safe. Reaching down, I wrapped both arms around his neck as I’d done the first time,
laid my cheek against his soft mane, and breathed. Rune began to move.

How we went, how fast we ran, I would never know the details. I think I heard Marc say, “Yes, Lark!” but then again that could have been my own voice, for I too was feeling
Yes!
My legs unclenched and simply held against the wide back. At some point, I lifted my head and unwound my arms so that I could hold his mane, gently this time, merely as connection, and so that I could see. But I did not need to see, for now I trusted he would see for me.

We passed once more by the grinning face of Marc, standing singly in that green field, and I shouted to him, “It’s glorious!” Then we were gone, streaming beneath limbs of trees, taking a stone wall in unbroken stride, and I laughed, swept away with the speed and thrill of motion. We left the clearing, the orchards, and climbed into the forest. Oaks and chestnuts swept over us, but we pushed higher, ascending the hill like a ladder into the pungent-needled pines. Up we climbed. I did not know, nor care, which way Rune chose; I let the power of momentum charge through me, and abandoned thought for pure exhilaration. Farther and farther up, Rune began to snort his breath in powerful bursts, pulling hard until at last we came to level ground.

He stopped then, ears flicking, and I sat back, glad for the pause, but not before throwing my arms around his neck.

“Thank you!” I was breathless with delight. I released him, flinging my arms wide, breathing deep, exhilarated and
alive
. Rocks, trees, creatures … “I feel you!” I shouted to what
surrounded me. And then I yelled it as loud as I could: “Guardian of Life!” and laughed. Even alone on this hilltop I blushed to voice what I’d accepted so quietly in my life: the energy of everything humming through my body. But there it was, done, aloud and owned, and maybe that was what being proved meant. And for the moment there was no burden, no dark quest, but only the brilliance of this sharing. “I am awakened!” I yelled, and leaned to hug Rune again.

Rune stood alert and poised, the way Rileg would at the scent of a badger, his neck strained and still with my hands resting there. He shifted once, I remember, changing his balance as if to charge forward. There was a call of a bird too—one sharp, alien caw that stood out from the muffled sounds of the forest. I sat up tall, alert now as well. I was not afraid, yet something was here, it seemed, and Rune was waiting.

“Rune—”

He turned suddenly, moving north some lengths, and stepped out onto a ledge laid bare to the sun. And then I gasped, seeing why we’d come this way, why he was cautious. The Myr Mountains exploded into view, imposing on all the senses. Ash-gray crags were etched in hard detail; I could see the brush of snow whitewashing the peaks, feel its cold breath on my face, taste, even, the icy sweetness. It seemed almost that I could reach out my hand and touch the slabs of stone that jutted from the earth, so heavy and so huge. My fingers tingled and the mountains pushed at me.

Tombs of rock. Desolate. Crushing. They swelled dark despite the daylight, and I heard nothing now but a small
whistle of wind. For a long while I sat motionless, listening to that hollow sound whisk over stone and bury itself in the trees.

And then, from somewhere in that weight of cold stone, I sensed a pulse, a little throb of light. The same small heartlike pulse I’d felt from the image of the orb glowing in my palm last night. Energy. Life. I knew what it was.

“That,” I whispered to Rune, “is where I have to go.”

At my voice, the horse turned his head, catching my gaze with his solemn eye. I looked back out, sighing, I suppose, wondering if the sky was indeed less blue at this height, or if the gray cast a pall over all. The Myr Mountains. I watched them, watched how the sun seemed to slam into the solid facets and lose strength, watched how everything was absorbed into this bleak surface, unreadable and forbidding. And as I stared long, the lifeless stone began to burn its gray into me. The wind whipped bits of the snow off the peaks and spiraled it wildly; the shadows lengthened and sharpened the blade edges of the mountains. There was an eerie whirring from far off.
Far off
, I repeated aloud slowly, feeling the hair on the back of my neck prick. Beyond those crags lay the doom of the Waste.

I dragged a breath in and out, and the Earth seemed to respond, answer my sigh with one of its own. There seemed some tremendous weight pulling me, toward and into the ground, drawing away my strength. And the sigh resolved into a whispering borne on the wind:

There you are. There you are. There you are.…

Rune reared, turned, and with one leap plunged back into the pine. The sharp scent of eucalyptus exploded in my nose
and dissolved the trance. I put my head down once more on Rune’s neck and closed my eyes. He raced, back through the trees, back toward the clearing. It was quickly over. He would take me home.

Home
. I shook awake, regathered my thoughts, disturbed by what I’d felt, at that strange whorl that seemed to drain energy from my body. I wondered at that. There had been no pain either. There had been nothing.

I rubbed my cheek a little into Rune’s sweating hide. The eucalyptus and pine were fading now, the rich smells of decaying leaves replacing them. We would soon be home—

I shook myself again at that word; how could it be so soon that such a sense had seeped into my bones?

Still, I was glad to see Castle Tarnec reappear in the distance. Marc was not in the clearing where I’d left him, but Rune knew that. We flew across the lawn, slowing only as we reached the main path to the stables. And there was Marc, leaning against a stone pillar of the stable entrance, speaking to one of the stable hands, a water flask in his hand. His surprise was not for our return, but I think what might have been my expression—that, and Rune’s sweating, panting sides. He took one look at me and threw the flask to the ground. In two strides he’d met the horse and, reaching up, let me fall right into his arms.

“Lark,” he said, not gently. “Lark, look at me.”

I looked up, disoriented, since only a moment before I’d been looking down. Mark helped stand me on my own feet, keeping a hand on my arm, asking, “What happened?” I sensed the energy from his hand; he was ready to spring to his own horse.

“The—” But I stopped. Clearly Marc had not felt what I had; he was only concerned at my behavior. “Nothing,” I said then, in all honesty. Perhaps it was enough.

Perhaps it was. There
was
nothing wrong. Marc looked over at Rune as if to judge my answer true. The stable boy had claimed the horse, was giving his wet sides a swipe of sleeve before nudging him toward the stable. Rune’s ears twitched away a fly.

Marc relaxed. He shook my arm, looking back at me, changing the mood. “And here I thought you’d come back exhilarated, putting a blush into your pretty cheeks. You left shouting with the most beautiful joy.” He smiled at me, cajoling my humor to return.

I pushed away the strangeness. “I am; I was. I don’t know. It was exhilarating, Marc, it was—I was … I was riding! Marc, I was riding! It was magic—!”

“She went up through the forest?”

Gharain was striding out of the stables, his hand fisted around a length of bridle and rein that dragged in the dirt, glaring at the two of us. His face showed white beneath the bronze of his skin. “She should not have been up there alone.” Gharain looked accusingly at his friend. “You know that.”

But Marc was not perturbed. “Reprimand her horse.” He shrugged with a nod at Rune’s retreating backside. “Lark was within the castle boundaries. In my opinion, she was well guarded.”

“Marc, it is dangerous for her to be alone!”

“Easy, man.” Marc’s calm voice held the subtlest note of
warning. “All is well. Rune brought Lark safely back. You have no need to race after her.”

I looked at the reins in Gharain’s hand, almost at the same time he did. He didn’t seem to remember he still held them.

“All the same,” Gharain said stiffly, embarrassed now, “it would be well if she were accompanied always—by a Rider. With weapon at hand.”

“Understood,” replied Marc softly, though Gharain had turned and was already striding back the way he’d come.

Absurdly, I ran after him.

“Gharain!” I called to his rigid back. He walked very quickly and his legs were long. “Gharain!”

I followed him through the stable and into the separate room where he’d stopped to rehang his tack. “You are back,” he stated flatly at my quick footsteps. “Nothing more needs to be said.”

“That was unjust,” I panted. “It was not Marc’s fault that I left the grounds.”

“It is not safe. He knows better, even if …”

He did not finish, so I offered it for him. “You mean to say, ‘Even if he didn’t feel what happened.’ You felt it too, didn’t you? That pull of Earth—you felt it when the others did not.”

Gharain stared at me, brief as it was, then looked away to busy himself with straightening the reins.

“Gharain!”

“I heard you.”

“Have you nothing to say?”

And he turned. “What would you like me to say? That, yes, I felt that pull? That it compelled me to come find you? Are you sorry that I was hard with Marc? Would you have preferred my anger to be with you?”

I flushed, but squared my shoulders. “If you must be harsh, then, yes, be harsh with me.”

“Very well.
Never
leave the near grounds without accompaniment. Is that understood?”

Not even Grandmama had been so fierce with me. He barely raised his voice, but his tone was like iron. I looked down, feeling like some naughty child under this young man’s remonstrance. My cheeks were hot.

“Lark.”

His voice had softened, but I didn’t raise my eyes, for I thought I might rage at him, and hostility would only lead to more hostility.

“Lark.” Gharain gripped my arm. His touch shot through my body, at once warm and powerful; he shook me, briefly, to force my gaze to his, and we looked at one another, guarded. Suddenly, and not gently, his hand slid from my elbow to grip my wrist. He turned my palm up, studying the underside of my wrist, holding it exposed and vulnerable for a moment, simply looking. My hand was shaking in his grasp, and there was warmth to his sun-bronzed cheek. I felt, suddenly, the terrible agony I’d first sensed in him pierce sharply through me. And yet, there was something more: hope or need or promise; I couldn’t quite tell, for his emotions ran like quicksilver, and
the charge that I felt at his touch overwhelmed it all anyway. Gharain turned my palm over, and his hand slid once more to catch mine, but his touch had changed—no longer a grip but a caress. He bent over our clasped fingers the way a nobleman might pay homage to a lady, lingering, but then he released my hand quickly, as if he could no longer bear to feel what I felt, whatever it was that traveled between us.

“If—” He muttered what else under his breath, to himself or to me I didn’t know, but then his voice was earnest. “Lark, they can make you feel things, and then they can find you. Claim you.”

They. The Breeders. “Rune knew what to do—”

“You’ve barely learned to ride. Rune is powerful, but what if you couldn’t stay on his back?” He paused and made a bitter noise. “Or do you imagine he’d protect you as well if you were standing—the way he protected you from me?”

It was enough. “I don’t know why I came after you,” I whispered, still shaking from the touch. “I suppose to ask you to apologize to Marc. But if you need to stay angry, then I will apologize instead. I am sorry I left the park.”

He nodded; if he meant to say anything, it was too late. I’d turned and gone back out of the stable.

Marc chuckled at me, at my red cheeks, and the way I stalked out of the wide doors. “Thank you for defending me, brave little Lark.”

“You do not take him seriously?” I asked, a little astonished. I’d been severely chastised; the same brushed off of Marc.

Marc shrugged. “I take him seriously, just not his ranting. He’s young, his passions dominate, but Gharain is also one of the most giving and loyal souls I know. He’s only being protective of you.”