Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr Read Free Book Online

Don’t you think so? They’re
not really shaped like Earth antelope, not in the back. They’re more like
horses. Though the males with their horns might be a problem. They could put
your eye out.”
    “Not if you knew what you were doing,” he said.
    She had to agree with that.
    The old male’s herd moved on after a while, grazing its way
down to the river. A new herd wandered by. This was much smaller. Its male was
young, with horns barely longer than her arm. He had three wives, and just one
baby, which was red with a white foot. He was black, which told Aisha it was
probably some other male’s baby. Blacks didn’t sire reds out of red females.
    “Look,” she said. “He just won those ladies. He’s all proud
of himself.”
    She looked to see what Rama thought, but he was no longer
beside her. He was up and walking through the grass, not even trying to hide.
She opened her mouth to yell at him, but that would only spook the animals
sooner.
    The females were still grazing. The baby was bouncing around
its mother. The male had seen Rama: his head was up, his horns as straight and
sharp as spears.
    His eyes were ruby red. Aisha had only seen that once or
twice before, and never in a black. The others were normal brown or amber, and
the baby’s were blue.
    Rama walked right up to him. By the time Aisha realized what
he was doing, it was too late to move.
    He was talking to the antelope. She was too far away to hear
what he said. The rhythms weren’t PanTerran. They weren’t Old Language, either.
He sounded very polite.
    He reached out his hand and laid it on the male’s forehead
between the horns. The male’s head lowered. Aisha sucked in her breath.
    The male didn’t spit Rama on his horns and trample him to
death. He lowered his nose into Rama’s palm as if he had been a horse, and
blew. Rama’s other hand rubbed him around the base of the horns and behind the
ears, working his fingers into the thick mane that grew like a horse’s on the
long neck.
    Tears ran down Rama’s face. He pressed his forehead to the
antelope’s forehead and cried.
    And the antelope let him. He stood the way Jinni stood when
Aisha needed a hug more than anything.
    Then Rama did something completely, totally insane. He
caught hold of the hank of mane at the antelope’s withers and swung onto his
back.
    That was it. Aisha was done with him. She couldn’t watch him
die.
    She couldn’t stop watching, either. The explosion wasn’t any
worse than Lilith had given him. It was the same kind of thing: testing,
feeling him out, getting the balance.
    Just the same. Rama rode it the same, too. If anything he was
more comfortable with that big, long neck in front of him and those horns
spearing the sky. They couldn’t put his eye out unless the antelope aimed his
chin straight up, which he wasn’t built to easily do—any more than a horse was.
    This was a wild animal. Feral, Mother would say. Mother was
precise with her terminology. Domesticated once, but gone wild for thousands of
years.
    Aisha would never have known it to see this one. Rama didn’t
ride long. Just long enough to get the bucks out, get a sensible walk and a bit
of trot, then he slid off and smoothed the black mane and said in Old Language,
“Come.”
    The antelope came. So did his wives and his stepdaughter.
They followed the horses—and Jamal wide-eyed and as speechless as Aisha was—away
from the plain and into the city and straight to the corner paddock with the
shedrow shelter, that happened not to have horses in it at the moment.
    ~~~
    Nothing ever surprised Vikram, but Aisha thought he might
be as close to it as he ever got. He took in the new additions, checked that
they had water and hay, then found Rama in the tack room, taking apart one of
the old saddles.
    “Horse backs aren’t quite the same,” Rama said when Vikram
came in, as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation and not right at the
beginning. “We’ll need to rig the bridle