The Black Stallion and the Lost City (17 page)

The Black replied and stepped into the center of the glade as the mares retreated. He sensed more than saw the albino who stared at him from the far end of the glade. An aura completely unknown to him surrounded her, and the Black stood spellbound, his gaze
fixed upon her. She switched her tail, but that was the only part of her that seemed to be alive. Her legs and even her mane were as still as lifeless stone. She stood silent, not even seeming to breathe.

The stallion gazed at the vision before him. Her ruby eyes were open, yet they were not focused on anything. It was an unseeing gaze, as if turned inward. The other mares clustered to one side, nickering to each other and content to stand by and watch the confrontation between the two silent, motionless figures locked in their moonlit reveries.

Finally the albino broke from her pose and noticed him. The stallion caught the look and cried out. The mare replied with a fierce neigh of her own, a high, defiant cry let loose upon the night. It was not a call for solace or a cry for understanding, but a claim of dominion.

Rising up on her hind legs, the albino pawed the air, as if trying to claw her way up into the starry sky, into the lonesome depths of night. When at last she came down again, she glared at the stallion. Her eyes seemed to burn like red-hot coals. Then she was off and running over the moon-splashed grass. With a playful whinny, she taunted the stallion to follow.

The Black raced after her, but cautiously. Somehow he felt as if he had been here before, as if he had returned to some long-lost place that now welcomed
him home after a long, weary journey. All was quiet in his ears. Even his hoofbeats sounded muffled and distant to him now. Ahead of him, the mare seemed to float over the dark ground as she dashed away.

With blowing breath, the stallion accelerated after her, and the speed broke the spell that had been holding him back. All at once, his nostrils caught new smells in the air, scents that spoke of others, and of danger, but he did not stop or slow his headlong charge. All his senses were focused ahead as he closed to within a length of the mare. Just as he was about to overtake her, the pair of horses reached the end of the field.

The mare swung hard to the right. Suddenly they were sprinting along a line of fence and toward a narrow passageway opening into the adjacent pasture. The mare squeezed through the gap in the high fence. The Black followed a step behind.

The two horses burst into the pasture. Immediately they were running neck and neck toward a cluster of moonlit shadows in the center of the field. It was a herd of grazing horses, mares and their foals. The startled herd burst into motion, sprinting for a dark line of trees looming in the distance. Leading them was the young gray stallion who had challenged the Black the day before. The herd raced ahead in a mad frenzy. The smells from their steaming bodies told the Black they were running out of blind panic.

The Black and the albino rushed ahead to join the others, and in an instant the herd was racing as one. The horses’ fear pushed them to frightening speeds. An overpowering instinct drove the stallion’s headlong rush to lead them. Heaving bodies rolled beside him, plunging forward, matching him stride for stride.

The pasture narrowed. Suddenly there was a loud clamor, and a new smell fueled the air—fire, the element the two-legged beasts held so sacred. There was a burst of light, and in front of the herd stood a line of men. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, shouting and waving torches and long, pointed sticks. The horses careened to a jumbled stop.

The appearance of the men made the mares scatter. Before the Black could join them in their flight, the young gray stallion wheeled and struck out at him. The Black turned to face his attacker. He rose on his hind legs, and the gray reared to meet him. Their heavy bodies collided with a terrible impact. They hung together in the air a moment and then crashed to the ground.

The Black was moving forward to renew the fight when the pack of men came toward him. Distracted by his arrogant pursuit of the mare and the attack of the gray, the Black was caught by surprise. The stallion reared as the men formed a circle around him. He had known their kind before, two-legged creatures
who would rather fight than run. A long, snakelike rope flew through the air suddenly. It opened its mouth and coiled around his neck. Another flying snake hissed overhead and wrapped around him.

Soon the rest of the herd was gone, and the Black was left fighting the snake ropes and the men who held him. The stallion boldly threw off one of the ropes, but another caught his hind leg. More men came to join the others. The Black could see the albino running off behind the men. She paused to look back. Lifting her proud head, she uttered a high-pitched, almost sorrowful neigh, then turned and bolted into the night.

After watching the
Black race off with Celera, Alec had run inside the cottage, pulled on his sweater and jumped into his shoes. Nicholas and Xeena followed him as he dashed back outside.

“It’s that mare again,” Alec said. “She’s lured him off, just like she did at the river.”

“We’ll help you find him,” Nicholas said. “Wait a moment for me to get some shoes on and—”

“I can’t wait,” Alec said. He looked at the broken door and a deep crack that had formed in the wall. “What happened? Was that really an earthquake?”

“I am afraid so,” Nicholas said. “We have had tremors before but never anything like this.”

Without another word, Alec turned and ran out into the night to search for his horse. A stiff wind was blowing away the last few clouds, and a full moon brightened the landscape. To one side he could see the tower of Tarta was still standing, but he could also
hear the distant sounds of voices shouting. Smoke was swirling up into the sky, and there was the glow of light as if a building had caught fire.

Alec turned away from the town and jogged off into the night, quickly picking up the trail of the two horses. He followed the tracks to the road leading down to Acracia.

Everywhere along the road were signs of devastation from the earthquake that had shaken the mountain. Fences were down and stray sheep and goats gathered in the road bleating. A giant cedar tree had been lifted out of the ground and lay toppled on its side. A barrier wall next to the road had collapsed. Alec ran along, trying to stay focused, following the trail the stallion and the mare had left in the wet dirt.

All at once, Alec heard the drumming of hooves behind him. He turned, thinking it was the Black, but it was not the stallion or Celera. Charging down upon him was the shoe-stealing mare he and the Black had met on the road earlier that day.

Alec held up his hands. “Whoa,” he called to her. The mare splashed to a stop in a mud puddle only a few feet away. As before, she wore no tack whatsoever, not even a halter. The mare beat her forehooves on the wet ground.

“What are you doing here?” Alec said.

The mare bounced back and forth on her hooves, then side to side.

“Sorry, girl,” Alec said. “I don’t want to dance right now, and your boyfriend already took off.”

The mare lowered her head and came to Alec. She stopped jigging and stood still before him, as if inviting him to mount up and go for a ride. Alec didn’t need to think about it long. If he was going to catch up with the Black and Celera, he would do better on horseback than on foot. Alec trusted he could handle this unfamiliar horse as he had so many others, green ones to mean ones, at the farm and on the track.

Alec spoke to the mare, then touched her and leaned his forearms on her warm, wet back. Her coat felt coarse, almost like rough fur. She did not move away from him.

“Okay, Shoe Thief,” he said. “You behave now. That’s it. You’re a good girl.” The mare looked over her shoulder at him, listening to his soft words as if she’d heard them a thousand times before. Then she straightened her neck and waited for him to make his move.

In one swift step, Alec pivoted his body and vaulted onto the mare’s short back. The instant his legs wrapped around her, she was off and running, not in the direction the Black and Celera’s trail was leading
but in the opposite direction, back toward Tarta. Using soft pressure from his legs, hands and voice, Alec finally managed to get her slowed down and turned in the right direction.

Soon they were splashing ahead through the puddles and loping along the road back to the citadel. The mare moved willingly, but Alec was not fool enough to believe he had much control over her. Even the best riders could be unseated while riding bareback, even on a horse they knew well. And this horse was unlike any Alec had ever ridden. He gripped the white mane and pressed himself closer to her neck. There was a strange, heavy smell about her, a wet muskiness more akin to some wild forest animal than a horse. He tried to stay in rhythm with her shuffling strides. At least he was covering some ground, he thought. He shifted his weight in response to the mare’s action, trying to keep his body centered and his legs ready to answer any sudden change in direction or speed. The wet mane whipped back into his face as the mare broke into a gallop. She was not fighting him, but there was something more than untamed about this petulant mare who had stolen his shoe earlier that day. Had she ever carried a rider before? Alec wondered. Through his legs and seat, he could feel shudders of pleasure running through her like intermittent waves of electricity. To Alec it was almost like a purring sensation, as if he
were seated atop a contented mountain lion rather than a mare. The shoe thief glided smoothly along, barely seeming to notice the human clinging to her back like a giant bug.

Alec had no idea where she was taking him but could only hope that her instincts led her to the other horses and that the Black was with them. Her ears were angled back, and she bounded ahead, not like a flight animal but with all the intense focus and grace of a predator on the hunt.

The muddy ground passed beneath him in a blur as the mare carried Alec past the sacred pastures to a place where the road forked, one fork descending to the acropolis, the other leading farther up the mountain. Alec wondered if the Black and Celera had come this way.

The mare barely slowed as she swung her body hard to follow the fork climbing up the mountain. She careened forward along the moonlit road, running fast and close to being out of control.

A cloud covered the moon, and too late Alec saw what looked like a dark wall ahead. It was a fallen tree stretching from one side of the road to the other. Alec could tell the mare wasn’t going to stop, and he had no time to prepare for the jump. The mare took off without hesitating, soaring into the air, her legs brushing through the tops of the branches. She staggered only
slightly as she touched down, but it was enough to bounce Alec forward and unseat him from her slick back. Jarred loose from his mount, Alec was launched into the air. He just managed to pull his legs up under him before he slammed into the ground, rolled and came to a stop.

Alec lay motionless for a minute, gasping for breath as the mare continued flying up the road. He crawled to his feet and for a moment could not even remember who he was or how he came to be here. Then the buzzing between his ears slowly subsided, and he recalled the wild ride on the mare and his search for the Black. He tried to keep his mind focused, but his thoughts remained as scattered as windblown leaves.

Alec stared into the night, trying to get hold of himself. He’d had the wind knocked out of him and was scraped up and covered with mud, but otherwise he was unhurt. He took a cautious step forward, testing each leg before putting weight on it. Satisfied that everything seemed to be in working order, he immediately began searching the road for tracks. After a minute, he found one set of hoofprints, then another, then a third. One set Alec felt fairly certain were those of his horse. In spite of the moonlight painting the muddy road, it was still too dark to be positive.

Alec continued on, not sure of where he was
going. At least there were still tracks on the road, Alec thought. If the trail had broken off into the woods, it would have been almost impossible to follow. He hurried along the route up the mountain, again asking himself how in the world he ever ended up here.

The road wound through the forest, and soon he came to a long row of neat, orderly houses that seemed to be leaning into each other for support. The dwellings were made of white stone and built in low two- and three-story stacks against the base of a cliff wall, like small apartments. The arched shadows of their doorways stood out against the white walls in the pools of bright moonlight. Not a single light shown in any of the windows. There were none of the ornate fountains or plazas here as in the city below, or even the lush but overgrown gardens of Tarta. Here all was simplicity itself, white and clean-looking but humble. Smoke rolled out the chimneys, and there was a smell in the air Alec could not identify. All was still except for the sound of his own footsteps. Just keep moving, he told himself.

The trail of fresh hoofprints led straight down the center of the village. Alec saw no signs of collapsed walls or buildings here, or anything that even looked damaged. Perhaps the earth tremors had not reached this high up.