Nighthorses

Nighthorses (so-called because of their jet-black coats) are the largest and most intelligent animals the colonists discovered. They are similar in stature to Earth horses, but are omnivorous, have three-toed hooves, are more intelligent than their Earth counterparts and are telepathic. Nighthorses will eat most things they can catch and kill, but failing that, grass and other vegetation.

Cloud's Rider (U.S. hardcover edition). The cover artwork depicts a Nighthorse (Cloud) and his Rider (Danny Fisher).

When humans first arrived on the planet, the wild nighthorses were immediately drawn to them because of the humans' unconscious sendings that were rich in images and emotion. Once a nighthorse has experienced such sendings, it becomes addicted to them and will not leave humans alone. Sifting through these human emotions, a nighthorse will eventually select the human whose sendings it likes best and will adopt him or her as its companion. It will follow this person around, and if he or she is in a village or town, it will remain close to the walls and "call" by flooding the person with images of itself for days and weeks on end until either that person relents and goes to the horse, or withdraws to the centre of the town (if this is possible) where sendings from the Wild generally do not reach.

Those who answer a nighthorse's "call" become riders. Over a short period of time a relationship is formed that is mutually beneficial to both nighthorse and rider: the rider has transport and protection in the Wild (a nighthorse will protect its rider to the death), and the nighthorse receives the comforts of the rider camps in the villages, food, the rich emotional human sendings it craves, and "memory". On its own, a nighthorse does not have a good memory, but with a rider the ambient is filled with memories and the nighthorse can remember things!

The role of the nighthorse on Finisterre is pivotal: without them there would be no riders and without riders the human settlements would vanish.

The range of a typical Finisterre creature's sending is "a stone's throw", but a "rogue" can send much further. A rogue is an animal that is sick or injured and pollutes the ambient with images of its distress. A nighthorse can also go rogue when it loses its rider and sends out desperate longings for companionship. Rogue nighthorses are a serious problem to humans on Finisterre because they can send their distress over entire valleys and this often spreads to other creatures like a contagion, making their behaviour unpredictable and dangerous. Humans are not immune to rogue sendings either. Riders and truck drivers have gone over cliff edges because a rogue horse has tricked them into seeing things that are not there. Rogue nighthorses have to be tracked down and destroyed.

Riders

A rider does not pick a name for the nighthorse that has adopted him. All nighthorses have an image of how they see themselves and that is the image they will respond to. The rider quickly identifies that image and will always use it to communicate with the horse. Danny Fisher referred to his nighthorse as "Cloud" because it saw itself as a cloud drifting peacefully across the sky.

Riders and nighthorses communicate with each other, consciously or unconsciously, by sending images. In the novels Cherryh depicts such "sendings" as text enclosed in "< >". For example, <Cloud running> is an image sent out by Fisher to his nighthorse Cloud persuading him to run. A nighthorse anticipating a snow storm may send <cold, frosty breaths, feet crunching snow> to her rider, who in turn will try to calm her horse by sending an image of <melting drops on green needles, sun shining, road free and clear>.

But riders have to be wary of unconscious sendings. Almost all thoughts, emotions and anxieties a rider experiences are translated into images and sent to the ambient. Nighthorses are easily "spooked" and careless human emotion can be destructive. Riders therefore have to control their emotions in the presence of nighthorses. In addition, nighthorses generally cannot distinguish between past, present and future: they interpret and act on whatever they pickup literally. So a rider recalling an accident that happened last week will be seen by his horse as happening right now and will take evasive action. Riders quickly learn to quieten their minds so as to not excite their horses. Riders have to be particularly careful of rogue nighthorses. Wanting something intently, for example, a rider-shelter in a storm, can be picked by a rogue and sent back to you, making you believe, sometimes to your peril, that a shelter is right in front of you.

Riders don't have complete control over their nighthorses and often have to negotiate with them to get them to do what they want. Riders don't saddle or rein their nighthorses (they will not tolerate that). Instead, when riding, they will hold onto the horse's mane and, when necessary, clench their knees against the horse's sides.

In the Wild a rider is totally dependent on his or her nighthorse for protection against predators and scavengers. Riders quickly learn to trust their horse because the horse always knows the Wild better than even the most experienced rider. Very few animals will approach a nighthorse, and if they do it will broadcast <fierce nighthorse, angry, mayhem> as a warning before attacking. A rider's loyalties are therefore always to his horse first, then his partner, and then his partner's horse.

Riders, of course, cannot read each other's thoughts and emotions directly, but they can indirectly if a nighthorse is present. The "mechanics" of sendings to and from the ambient on Finisterre work as follows:

• Nighthorses and other local fauna send telepathic images to the ambient.
• Humans send non-telepathic images to the ambient.
• Nighthorses and other local fauna can receive both telepathic and non-telepathic images from the ambient.
• Humans can only receive telepathic images from the ambient.

Nighthorses generally relay what they receive from the ambient back to the ambient, giving riders in the vicinity access to what other riders are thinking or feeling. While this is useful as it enables riders to communicate quickly with each other without the need for words, it can be problematic when a rider does not want his feelings to be known to others. Riders quickly learn how to make themselves "invisible" to the ambient by sending images like <wind in the grass, wind bending the stalks, gently waving grass>.

All riders start out as junior riders and their first jobs are often simple tasks like watching over livestock in pastures outside the town walls. Senior riders take on more dangerous assignments in the Wild, such as escorting truck convoys between towns and villages, and protecting road repair crews. Borderers, or border riders, are rider-guides who are born to live in the Wild and only come into the villages and towns during the winter months when the mountain passes are closed.

Settlements

The colonists explored and settled in a tract of lowland west of an inland sea and up the east face of the Firgeberg, a steep mountain range. Three large towns were established in the lowlands: Shamesey in east, the largest with over 50,000 people; Anveney in the north, an industrial town that refines and processes raw materials; and Malvey in the south, another industrial town that drills for natural gas and oil. Smaller villages and settlements in the highlands, such as Tarmin village, on Tarmin Height, and Evergreen village, halfway up Rogers Peak, were created for mining and logging activities. Evergreen sat at the edge of the known world; the other side of the mountain had never been visited.

Every town and village has a rider camp inside its walls for the riders and their nighthorses. Generally the rider camp sits between the outer walls of the town and the inner walls surrounding the town proper. Large towns like Shamesey split the town proper into an outer ring that borders the rider camp for the workers, and an inner ring for the wealthy merchants. These merchants are thus shielded not only from sendings from the Wild, but also from sendings from the nighthorses in the rider camps. One notable exception is the industrial town of Anveney. It has no rider camp and no protection from riders. The reason for this is that Anveney and the surrounding areas are so polluted that no local fauna venture near it.

During the winter months contact between the towns and villages is limited. The winters on Finisterre are severe with heavy snow falls making the mountain passes impassable. Telephone lines do link the towns and villages, but they are often down due to storm damage. Radio communication is not used except in extreme emergencies as it attracts predators and scavengers.