The Haunted Pasture
D arys couldn’t help himself. He had to keep peeking out at the pasture to ensure he wasn’t imagining the magical horses whose silver- white coats shone with an otherworldly light beneath the moon.
They munched grass like ordinary horses, and a couple of them raised their tails to poop, so they weren’t entirely enchantments cast by the Eletians, but he wasn’t quite convinced he wasn’t dreaming.
“Darys!”
Darys grimaced and hurried back into the stables where his Uncle Hep stood with a broom in his hand.
“Aye, sir?” he asked.
“I’m going into the city now to collect Condor.”
“His Rider all right?” Darys had been apprenticed as a groom to his uncle just long enough to learn that the king’s messengers did a lot more than carry around letters, which often led them into hazardous situations. It couldn’t be good news if Condor was separated from his Rider.
“Nothing to worry about,” Uncle Hep replied. “She came in on one of those Elt horses and left Condor at a stable down in the middle city. Someone has to fetch him.”
His response raised more questions than answers, but it was a relief to hear Rider G’ladheon was all right.
Darys saw her around Rider stables often enough as she helped the Chief Rider see the others off on errands, and she liked to help with stall cleaning and feeding.
She was friendly and pleasant, and seemed ordinary enough, but his uncle and the others made certain comments that indicated she had a knack for running into trouble.
Maybe he’d ask Anna about it. He liked Anna.
She called him “Dare” and always went out of her way to make him feel welcome.
He couldn’t help but wonder how Rider G’ladheon ended up riding one of the Elt horses and what it was like to mount up on one of those beauties. Perhaps he would ask her sometime.
He accepted the broom from his uncle and began sweeping.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as his uncle tacked up Clover, his old gray mare, then led her out.
He waited a while to make sure his uncle was well away before setting the broom aside and stepping outside to watch the Elt horses again.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but there the horses were, still pulling at grass or dozing with their heads low and tails softly swishing, all very horselike. How could such luminous creatures be so ordinary in behavior?
He stepped through the big doorway and over to the pasture gate.
Maybe if he got a closer look? He knew he should just leave it alone, but he couldn’t resist. He opened the gate and slipped into the pasture.
They were a bit of a distance away and did not appear to notice his presence, but as he waded through the dry autumn grasses, one or two angled an ear in his direction but otherwise ignored him.
What did their hides feel like? he wondered.
Spun silk? Velvet? Or perhaps they were made of no more than moonlight and fairy dreams. Darys had not been one for horses.
He was much more interested in tracking through the woods and hunting with his da, and honing his archery skills, though there wasn’t much call for hunting here on castle grounds.
Horses, to his mind, were useful for farming and pulling carts, but he’d never gotten excited by bloodlines or riding, nor had he spent much time with them until now as an apprentice to his uncle.
His parents had insisted he learn a trade in the city and thought that once he finished his apprenticeship he’d find a permanent position in the king’s service or with some big estate.
If he’d his druthers, he’d be back home, stalking game and helping in the fields of their little homestead.
He realized now, working at Rider stables, that horses could be more interesting than he’d originally thought.
The messenger horses had a lot of personality and sometimes he swore they’d talk to him if they could.
It was all in their eyes, ears, and whickers, and sometimes the stomp of a hoof or whisk of the tail.
The Elt horses were on a whole other order of interesting.
They stood like gleaming statues in the night. He’d never seen creatures so beautiful.
Darys approached slowly and was nearly halfway across the pasture when the four lifted their heads as one, and flickered their ears as though listening to something he could not hear.
He turned in the direction in which the horses pointed their ears and caught a wisp of a sweet sound, almost like the lilting flute of a winter wren, but more ephemeral. A thrill shivered through his body.
One of the horses snorted and he and his fellows stepped into an easy trot moving away from Darys.
As they approached the far fenceline, they did not slow down.
A warning was on his tongue when suddenly they picked up their pace into a canter and effortlessly glided over the fence.
On the other side, they casually trotted onto the pathway that led to the castle. They were running away!
He panicked—prepared to run after them. If they escaped, everyone would blame him.
But then he stilled. No, no. They weren’t running away.
They were answering a summons, he was sure of it.
That sound he’d heard, that sweet whistle, had been a call.
He pursed his lips and blew in an attempt to mimic it, but he fell far short.
No mere human, he thought, could make that sound.
Their departure was a letdown, like a light extinguished, for the pasture darkened without their presence.
He wondered if he’d see their like again.
He shook his head and strode through the pasture in the direction of the stables where he’d attend to his decidedly unmagical chores.
When he reached the gate, however, he heard soft hoof falls behind him.
He whirled thinking the Elt horses had returned, but there was nothing there.
He scratched his head. All the messenger horses were in for the night, but might he have missed a horse or two?
There was a small copse of trees that provided shade in the summer. Maybe one of them had hidden there.
He hesitated, recounting who was in their stall.
The only one he could think of who was missing was Condor, and he was down in the city.
There shouldn’t be any horses left out, but he decided it was best to be cautious and take a look just in case.
He did not want his Uncle Hep thinking he’d shirked his duty, so he set off again across the pasture toward the copse.
“Horse! C’mon, horse,” he called. “Time to get in. C’mon, horse.”
He paused and neither heard nor saw a thing. He trudged on but halted when he heard a soft whuff behind him and felt a warm breath on the back of his neck. He turned with an admonishment on his lips for the horse who had not gone in to supper with the rest, but none was there.
“Hello?” His voice was absorbed into the silence of the dark.
No answer. He trembled. He’d been sure he sensed something out there, but couldn’t see it. An invisible horse, maybe, or a ghost? He wasn’t interested in finding out and wasted no time in setting off toward the gate.
If there really was a horse out there and it was playing tricks on him, it could go without supper for all he cared. But as he walked, he had the strange sensation he was not alone. He was almost afraid to look, but when he glanced over his shoulder he saw nothing .
He hastened his steps and sometimes thought he heard hooves plodding behind him, but every time he stopped to look, he saw nothing.
A clammy, cold sweat dripped down his sides and he was practically running by the time he reached the gate.
When he paused to unlatch it, something tugged on the work gloves he’d tucked over the back of his belt. He cried out and whirled.
And again, nothing was there.
He was through the gate in an instant and ran into Rider stables. He scrambled up the ladder into the hayloft. He hid himself beneath loose hay and shook until his uncle returned and climbed up to see what was the matter.
“What’re you doing up here, lad?”
“The pasture—it’s haunted.” Darys hadn’t wanted to say anything because no one would believe him, but it had just tumbled from his mouth anyway. At least it was to his uncle, and no one else was around to overhear except the horses.
At first Uncle Hep just stood there as if digesting his words. Darys braced himself for a tongue lashing accusing him of being a stupid boy afraid of his own shadow, but then his uncle’s posture eased and he nodded. “You’ve felt it, too, eh?” was Uncle Hep’s surprising response. “A, er, presence?”
“Like a horse,” Darys replied. “It followed me around and tried to snag my gloves.” He started shivering again.
Uncle Hep rubbed his chin. “Aye. I have heard hoof falls and have felt that presence more than once.”
“It’s a ghost horse,” Darys whispered.
“Well, I dunno.”
“What else could it be?”
Uncle Hep slowly lowered himself to sit on a hay bale and gave Darys a very direct look. “Remember what I said about working in Rider stables the first day you were here?”
Darys thought back to that early fall day, leaves alight with color in the hills, the lower city crawling with laborers to rebuild after the fire, and the grim looks of those who had to take account of the dead from the war with Second Empire.
There had also been some optimism in the air with the enemy’s defeat and that Sacor City would come back better than ever.
Still, he had not been pleased to be dragged from home to work for his uncle in the city. He’d been terribly homesick—still was.
He recalled Uncle Hep placing his big hands on his shoulders before the open door of the stables.
Now, Darys, he’d said in a subdued voice, the king’s messenger corps is not like other military units.
The Riders, they are not as regimented. Doesn’t mean they aren’t disciplined, but it’s a different kind of discipline, and I’m going to warn you that you might witness certain oddities.
You are not to speak of such things to anyone but me or the other hands, or to the Riders themselves. Understand?
Darys, of course, hadn’t really understood, and he still did not, but he had nodded as if he had.
“Is this one of the oddities you meant that day?” he asked.
“Looks like,” Uncle Hep replied. “I don’t know what that is out there, but at least it seems friendly. Curious and friendly, and not mean or bad. You’ll notice the horses are not bothered by it. But let me know if it happens again, eh?”
Darys nodded. Hearing that his uncle thought the spirit, or whatever it was, was curious and friendly helped a lot.
“I will.”
“Good lad.” Uncle Hep clapped him on the shoulder and rose. “It was time we went home. Your auntie will be cross if we’re too late. Jamien will have the night watch.”
Darys stood, relieved he hadn’t had to stand night watch yet. Even if it was a friendly spirit roaming the pasture, he didn’t relish the thought of being alone all night in the stables.