The_Complete_Chronicles_of_Narnia_(volumes_1-7,_in_order_of_publication)

"Question him no more; Darrin," said King Lune. "I see truth in his face. We must ride
for it, gentlemen. A spare horse there, for the boy. You can ride fast, friend?"
For answer Shasta put his foot in the stirrup of the horse which had been led towards him
and a moment later he was in the saddle. He had done it a hundred times with Bree in the
last few weeks, and his mounting was very different now from what it had been on that
first night when Bree had said that he climbed up a horse as if he were climbing a
haystack.
He was pleased to hear the Lord Darrin say to the King, "The boy has a true horseman's
seat, Sire. I'll warrant there's noble blood in him."
"His blood, aye, there's the point," said the King. And he stared hard at Shasta again with
that curious expression, almost a hungry expression, in his steady, grey eyes.
But by now -the whole party was moving off at a brisk canter. Shasta's seat was excellent
but he was sadly puzzled what to do with his reins, for he had never touched the reins
while he was on Bree's back. But he looked very carefully out of the corners of his eyes
to see what the others were doing (as some of us have done at parties when we weren't
quite sure which knife or fork we were meant to use) and tried to get his fingers right. But
he didn't dare to try really directing the horse; he trusted it would follow the rest. The
horse was of course an ordinary horse, not a Talking Horse; but it had quite wits enough
to realize that the strange boy on its back had no whip and no spurs and was not really
master of the situation. That was why Shasta soon found himself at the tail end of the
procession.
Even so, he was going pretty fast. There were no flies now and the air in his face was
delicious. He had got his breath back too. And his errand had succeeded. For the first
time since the arrival at Tashbaan (how long ago it seemed!) he was beginning to enjoy
himself.
He looked up to see how much nearer the mountain tops had come. To his
disappointment he could not see them at all: only a vague greyness, rolling down towards
them. He had never been in mountain country before and was surprised. "It's a cloud," he
said to himself, "a cloud coming down. I see. Up here in the hills one is really in the sky.
I shall see what the inside of a cloud is like. What fun! I've often wondered." Far away on
his left and a little behind him, the sun was getting ready to set.
They had come to a rough kind of road by now and were making very good speed. But
Shasta's horse was still the last of the lot. Once or twice when the road made a bend
(there was now continuous forest on each side of it) he lost sight of the others for a
second or two.
Then they plunged into the fog, or else the fog rolled over them. The world became grey.
Shasta had not realized how cold and wet the inside of a cloud would be; nor how dark.
The grey turned to black with alarming speed.