YA Fantasy about a girl, (tarot?) cards, and a horse...

Ok, so I'm looking for a YA fiction I read in the mid 90's.

It's about a girl who goes on some kind of adventure and meets characters that correspond to cards in a tarot deck. (Actually I don't think it specifically says it's tarot, but some kind of magical deck of cards.)

And here's where my memory gets fuzzy, I'm pretty sure there was a horse in it, and an old lady who was some kind of a guide to the main girl.

Tried searching everywhere but I can't find anything!

I can't be more specific, but have you looked at Piers Anthony's books?His fantasies have lots of horses and magic.

It reminds me of a Mercedes Lackey book, I believe Phoenix and ashes, but I think that one is not old enough...

The first book of Joyce Ballou Gregorian's Tredana trilogy, The broken citadel, is based around tarot cards and has a girl as the main character.

I have two vague suggestions:

Labyrinth Gate (1988), featuring the split perspective of a young newlywed couple who got pulled into a fantasy world by a magic tarot deck. The cards explicitly identify certain characters as cards, but I don't know if any horses were involved. (I haven't read this one.)

The Raven Ring (1994), featuring a teen girl going on adventures, aided by allies she meets on the road, and loosely assisted by reading a tarot deck. She didn't directly meet the characters in the cards (they were more symbolic representations), but the pictures on the cards moved and acted when she looked at them. There weren't any horses in this, though.

Might it be The Hex Witch of Seldom by Nancy Springer? It was first published in 1988 and the main character is a girl with a horse. The horse is actually a shape-shifting supernatural being--it turns into a man later in the story. It also has an older woman named Witchie (I think) who uses a deck of circular cards to tell the girl's fortune. It's been a long time since I read it, but I thought of it instantly when I read your summary.

OH! Yes! It is the Hex Witch of Seldom!! Thank you so much everyone!

5> Good lord. I have never thought of Eleret as a teen girl. I mean, she is, I suppose, technically - (hmmm. Described as "perhaps twenty" in the first chapter). But boy does she not suffer from teen angst.

And she's been bugging me for days to get read (again). You just tipped me over.

The Labyrinth Gate is good too, but it hasn't been bugging me. I don't think I've ever read The Hex Witch of Seldom - I should. Sometime, when I find it.

8> Enjoy the reread! And I quite agree -- I had mis-remembered her at nineteen and didn't double-check my copy.