Lark Rising (Guardians of Tarnec) (18 page)

YET—

Something was happening. It was the air, so dry and dead-smelling. It brought me awake with sudden force.

I lay blinking into the darkness, not remembering that I’d fallen asleep, trying to take a breath in this deadness. Heavy-headed, I looked to the fireplace, knowing already that the embers were suffocated. There was no light from the fire; there was no light anywhere.

The little whirring in my ears started, that strange sound from the hill yesterday. The weight, the drag into earth, was repeating too. I could not breathe—there was nothing to breathe—and the hair on the back of my neck pricked like needles. Panting, I forced back the comforter; worked to my knees against invisible hands that pushed me down, then to my feet, but swayed there, a lodestone riveted to its place. Finally I
leaned into the mantel, sweat breaking on my forehead, unable to propel myself somewhere, anywhere.

I heard the horses then, a hideous sounding from the stables. They neighed as one voice, one body, raising alarm in a swelling force of sound. Dogs too were barking somewhere. They sensed what I did, this fearful drag of energy, this suffocation, this utter darkness; the animals and I were frightened and calling the warning to all.

No, I was not calling. I’d opened my mouth to yell, scream, shriek, but my voice fell away, evaporating before it could sound, the dead air sucking life from each breath. The cold of the mantel stone was seeping into my palms, taking away warmth and strength; I was fast losing the will to move. I turned my head, tried to pull it once more from the mantel, but then I simply stared, suspended in an endless moment. The dark overwhelmed and began to absorb, to drink the room slowly in. The chair, the bed, and I was next—

“Lark!” Gharain’s voice came from the garden door, harshly urgent above the shriek of animals. “Lark! Are you there?”

“Gharain!” Immobile, no air, the word died a whisper. I screamed his name again and again until I was hoarse. Each time his name was swallowed by the dark.

“Lark?”

He would not hear me. He would pass by the door—

But suddenly his presence filled the room. I heard him swear at the shock of force that hit him. Then, gloriously, he shouted out of the doorway, “I have her!” and pushed into the room. In two strides he had his hands around my arms, then
my waist. Breath burst into the space, like the gasp of lungs, and Gharain was pulling me from the mantel and propelling me outside, where the dark faded under a night sky rich with stars. He stopped us in the cloister, holding me close, listening, senses alert, while I gulped in the newly sweet air.

“What was that? What was that?” I panted, still clutching his sleeves. The animals had ceased their alarm, and my voice was suddenly loud.

“They took it. The air,” he muttered against my hair. “They play to frighten us.”

They.
Breeders
. Small rifts of Nature to frighten, the king had said. A cold flick of terror sliced down my spine. “They’re here?” I whispered. The only warmth was Gharain.

He was shaking his head, his gaze somewhere else, searching out the night. “They can’t be here—they don’t need to be here. They have the amulets.”

“That was but
play
? Tarnec suffocates? Gharain, I swear the dark would have swallowed me!” I tugged his sleeve, pulling his focus back.

“You saw their emptiness.” Gharain turned and looked down at me. He was so very close, his arms a strong brace. “They mean to frighten, but they cannot destroy Tarnec unless the amulets are destroyed. Look about you. There is no damage. Fires and candles can be relit.”

“You say that as if there was something worse.”

There was. Gharain said it in a low murmur: “As a Guardian senses, so can the Breeders sense a Guardian. You sense things more keenly, hear things, see things, feel things more
deeply than others. That sensitivity helps the Breeders to track a Guardian.” He brushed a strand of hair back from my face. “They’ve found you.”

Never mind sensitivity, I’d shouted my name to the world on the hilltop. And the Breeders had whispered back,
There you are.…
 I looked up at him: his slice of jaw etched against the midnight blue of the sky, and how the air still seemed to shimmer in upheaval around it. “I brought them here. From my ride yesterday.”

“I told you it was not safe.” Gharain seemed to suddenly remember he should assist the others. He released his embrace, pulling me over to the cloister wall. “Stay there,” he ordered, and disappeared into the garden. I could hear him speaking a moment later to others across the lawn—Brahnt, I think, and Laurent. The words were unclear, but the tone was urgent and I imagined the meaning well enough: I was found and now everyone was at risk. The king had said the Breeders would use the people and things I cared about.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them close, holding in the awful thought. Around me the rooms glowed again with candlelight. I smelled a fire rekindled on a hearth—

As if concern inspired some terrible prophecy, flames suddenly leaped across my gaze, harsh in bright sun. There were screams and pounding feet across a cobbled square. I was cold, even as the flames burned around me. They danced and shifted, then parted to show me a well in the center of the square. I knew that well; I knew it, though its familiar stones were blackened by smoke. Merith—

The vision was extinguished abruptly as Gharain squeezed my shoulder signaling his return. I looked up at him, stunned at the sudden evaporation of those wild flames. His beautiful eyes were dark.

“Are you all right? You were—” He released my shoulder to gesture, and I gasped as a second vision flooded in.

Damp cold and terrible pain seeped through my bones. It was blacker than night; there was but a single light far ahead. I crawled toward it in slow agony until at last I saw that the glow was a sphere, luminous and isolated, suspended in some swirling dark cloth. Closer still, and the sphere revealed tiny gold, blue, and green threads spiraling along its surface. The Life amulet, the crystal orb. My hand lifted to take it. Suddenly, a pitch-black streak broke its light in half, and then another and another dark streak slashed at its surface, crossing and recrossing in that hourglass brand of the Troths, the Breeders, ensnaring it in a web of darkness. And it was dimming, losing strength, and my body hurt so and I could not breathe—

“Lark!” Gharain’s hands once more were gripping my arms, holding me upright as I slid from the cloister ledge. My eyes opened and I looked up at him stupidly.

“Where were you?” he exclaimed, half shaking me. “You called it by name! The orb!”

“You stopped them.” I dragged in a ragged breath. “How did you stop them?”

“Stop what?” He was impatient.

“You! You affected the visions!” I cried, sick from the Sight.

Gharain’s eyes widened and their sage color flared light. He
stared at me for a moment, then at his hands, which encircled my arms.

“I affect
you
,” he said very softly. And he let me go.

I slumped against the stone ledge. Gharain’s hands dropped to his sides, though his fists stayed clenched. He said, very carefully, “You said you saw the orb. You said they are trying to destroy it.”

I dragged in a breath. “Streaks of black slashed across it; it dimmed—”

“Hukon,” he interrupted.

I nodded, which only made me dizzy.

“Where was it? Where was the orb?” Gharain was brusque, unable to contain his eagerness at this supposed clue.

I shrugged, disoriented and irritable from the swell of nausea. “How am I supposed to—?”

“What did you see?”

“I don’t know! It was black, and cold. A cloth. The light was dimming—”

“What else?” He was desperate. “Lark, think! What else did—?”

“I did not see her!” I put my hand out to brace against a pillar. “If that’s what you want to know, I did not see Erema.” The ivy was spiraling around me. “I feel sick.”

Hard-jawed, Gharain took my arm again, hustled me out of the cloister right to the pool. “Sit down,” he said without ceremony, and I did, heavily, on the stone rim. He took the cloth that he’d used as my blindfold, dipped it in the water, picked up my hand, turned it over, and pressed the wet thing against the
inside of my wrist at my pulse. “Hold it here for a moment, and then do the same to the other hand.” He turned and stalked over to one of the borders and returned, crumbling fistfuls of plucked bell roses.

“Breathe this,” he said, opening his hands right beneath my nose.

“Let me help, Gharain.” Ilone, walking with Dartegn, appeared from out of the dark. If I’d paid attention, I would have realized that the cloisters were bustling with activity. There were people everywhere.

Gharain deposited the flowers in her palms and stepped away, murmuring something about my vision. Ilone’s pretty face filled my gaze, and she said kindly, “Close your eyes, Lark.” I did, and her hands came to my temples, like Grandmama’s. And just as with Grandmama, the sickness seeped out from my head and into her rose-filled hands. In a moment, she’d released my head and brushed her hands free of the tainted things.

I looked up, grateful. “You are a Healer,” I whispered. It should not have surprised me as it did. “Thank you.” I felt better, though the whirring noise was still there, a tiny humming boring through my temple like a pinprick. It must have been what Ilone was reacting to, for her hand moved inadvertently to cover her ear before she forced it down and placed it on my head.

Gently, she smoothed my hair back and asked Gharain, “They know she is here?”

Gharain nodded, and Dartegn, in his deep voice, said, “There is not much time.”

“Then we go.” Gharain looked down at me. “Not you, Lark. The Riders.”

Ilone gave me a little smile. Her eyes were sweet, but there was tension in her face, as if she were holding against some pain. Dartegn touched her shoulder, saying to both of them, “We’ll ride south from the western route. Maybe we can draw their attention.” He turned as someone shouted his name and strode away.

I looked at his disappearing figure. The Riders were leaving. “You are going to Merith after. I know it. I am coming with you.”

“You will not,” Gharain said immediately. “It is not safe.”

How irritating these oft-repeated words! But Ilone broke in before I could respond, saying tightly, “He is right, Lark. Better you stay here. The Breeders are attuned—” She took a sharp breath.

I looked quickly at her and then at Gharain. He was watching his sister, standing tensely ready, like a coiled spring. “The king said he could not refuse my request,” I countered.

Gharain did not take his eyes from Ilone. “But I can. It is safer to stay in Tarnec.”

I stood up, angered by Gharain’s refusal and that terrible, insistent whirring. “Nay, I was promised!”

Ilone murmured, “Think with a clear mind, Lark.”

I whirled to her, anxious, nearly shouting over the noise.
“If I stay, Merith is sure to be attacked! The Breeders will harm those I love to draw me out! Let me be out, then! Let them come for
me
!” I spun to Gharain. “Please!”

“Lark—”

Turning back to Ilone, I begged,
“Please.”
But Ilone had forgotten me. Her hands were over her ears, her face ashen, staggering as the buzzing became a roaring shriek of sound. I looked up.

Hundreds of darting black shapes were streaking toward us—shapes that others recognized. There was a collective gasp of shock.

“Get down!” Gharain shouted.

I was on the ground before I realized that Gharain had grabbed my arm, and his sister’s, and thrown us both to the earth. The shapes dived toward us, coming but a breath away from collision. These were not birds, I saw, as they swooped close, but something horrible. Twice the size of a heron, grizzled black-feathered things, with the beak of an eagle and the eyes of something human. The buzzing noise was piercing in intensity—a cacophony of low-pitched shrills that swarmed through my head. My hands could not block it out. I turned my head to Gharain and Ilone—Ilone was in terrible pain.

I screamed, “What are they?”

Gharain looked over from where he was shielding his sister. “Swifts!” he cried. “Stay close to the earth, for they cannot touch it!”

The bombardment was over, momentarily. They had
skimmed the ground and were sweeping back up toward the sky. Gharain seized the opportunity.

“Now! Run!” And he dragged Ilone up and half carried her through the cloister and into a room, with me right behind him.

All of those in the garden had run for the castle. We crammed into the first room we found and spilled into the hallway. The buzzing of the swifts increased in strength as they turned and dove once more for the earth. The stones rang with their noise. There was a sudden explosion—a swift had brushed the wall and burst into flame.

Gharain shouted over the sound as he clasped Ilone’s contorted body, “They explode at the first touch with anything earthbound. We are safe inside. But they are persistent; they will pin us to a spot where other enemies can attack, and if we run, we can be badly burned or killed.”

“Gharain!” It was Dartegn, pushing through the others. Gharain gave Ilone over to him, and Dartegn pulled her toward the fireplace, sinking to the hearth to hold her close.

“Healers have little resistance to the swifts,” Gharain said to me, though I had not asked.

“Will she be all right?”

“The noise does something terrible to their minds—the longer it lasts, then—” He snapped at another crash of sound and light: “The creatures are relentless!”

I looked about the crowded room—faces determined to remain calm despite the piercing shrilling, the sudden
explosions, the smell of the swifts’ burned flesh. But there too was Ilone convulsed and white in Dartegn’s arms, his own face drawn and hard. This was what Tarnec would face should I stay. Merith, Ruber Minwl, the foxes, Ilone—everywhere I went something suffered in order to protect me, to help me on my way.
Regardless of the sacrifice …

So the king had said.

Without a word, I turned and pushed my way out of the room and ran down the corridor. The swifts had pulled up, preparing for another dive. There was a momentary lull in which I ran to my room and threw off my nightdress, then tugged on the leggings and tunic that were folded neatly by the bed.