Birthright Read Online Free PDF Page B

own time. She’s cultivated a certain…oh, I don’t know, an allure, I guess, a confidence and charm that makes it difficult for some men to resist her.”
    From the way she didn’t look his way, Elrik guessed she had seen some men who had been interested in her turning to her twin instead, in the past. “Kalasa, that’s your sister’s name, right?” Elrik asked. She nodded, checking her Wall-Finder again. “Kalasa means ‘sunlight’ in the Imperial tongue…and Arasa means ‘moonlight.’” He smiled, looking at the slowly approaching canyons in the distance. “I’ve always been more partial to moonlight, myself.”
    Glancing at him, Arasa caught sight of that smirk, and felt warmed by it. “Given how pale your skin is, it’s probably a good thing. Time to stop and rest the horses, I think.”
    Complying, he dismounted with her. While she tended to her Imperial Mares, stripping the saddle off the one she was riding, he removed the saddle from his own petite steed, allowing both of them to air-dry. When he set out the drinking pan for Juniper, filling it with water from one of the skins strapped to the saddle, his horse guzzled it eagerly, all but inhaling the liquid. A brief grooming with her curry brush was all she needed to smooth down the hairs of her brown hide, and when the water was gone, he added a double handful of grain and dried fruit to the shallow wooden bowl, allowing her to lip up the grains.
    Elrik moved to help Arasa water and feed her own horses, as he had during the length of their journey. Imperial Mares were known for their ability to fight as fiercely as any Flame Sea warrior, with an almost doglike loyalty to their riders. Yet after he was introduced to each of them by her guiding his hand to their nostrils for a whiff of his scent, they had seemed as tame as plow-horses.
    Given their normally fierce reputation, he thought it was little wonder he hadn’t made the connection. And it was true that they had stomped on the occasional snake or sand-demon, crushing them flat, but even a normal horse would do that. Even after he knew what they were, he couldn’t see a reason to be afraid of them.
    It did make him wonder how the courtiers of the Empire would view his presence, and that made him nervous. Firming his courage, he asked, “Are you sure you want to take me to your chambers, once we get to Ijesh? I don’t want to cause trouble with your father’s Court. The other Am’n might look down on you.”
    Arasa quirked one of her blond brows as she stroked her own currying brush down Lake’s golden limbs. “Elrik, you’re a mage. That automatically gives you a high status in the Empire. You don’t need to be born to a Noble Family to command a certain respect—if anyone gives you any trouble, just threaten to turn their nose into a sausage, or something.”
    The absurdity of the suggestion made him chuckle ruefully. “In the southern lands, the suggestion would be to ‘turn you into a toad,’” he mock-cackled, curling his fingers and wrinkling his nose. Relaxing, he shook his head. “But I wouldn’t turn anyone into a toad in the desert. That’s just too cruel.”
    “Then you’re a kindhearted man,” she observed, glancing at him. “How do you survive on such a volatile border?”
    “Oh, make no mistake,” Elrik corrected her, pausing in the middle of brushing Thunder’s hindquarters. Unclipping the metal-wrapped staff slung at his side like a sword, he watched an approaching lump wriggling its way toward them, forming a rill of disturbed sand in its wake. “I can and will defend myself. I have defended myself, in the past. I just prefer to be politely civilized rather than barbarically belligerent.”
    A stab of his arm and a jab of his thumb thrust the spring-loaded spike into the middle of the squirming bump. Something squealed, the sand shivered and twitched, and he planted his boot on the mound, extracting the spike without revealing the beige-scaled beast.