Skyfall by Catherine Asaro Read Free Book Online Page A

Garlin, who was riding up ahead. “You feel when he has anger, yes?”
    “Always.” Now he sounded amused.
    “You feel my mind at port, yes?”
    Silence.
    “Eldri?”
    “No! I am not different!” His thoughts surged, erratic and upset—and his mind opened to her. For one moment she felt the deep-seated pain that caused his reaction. Then his natural barriers snapped back into place. Roca didn’t understand what had just happened. She wanted to know more, but she held back, afraid if she persisted, she would alienate him.
    They had been riding toward a line of needled mountains in the northwest. Looking back, she saw clouds of bubbles floating in the air, released by the riders as they crossed the plains. Glitter dusted the animals and people. It made her hair and Eldri’s eyelashes sparkle.
    “We go back to port,” she said.
    He spoke with reluctance. “Very well.”
    Relief washed over her. “Now, yes?” She didn’t want Eldri to leave, though. “You stay a little, yes? We visit with Brad.”
    Eldri snorted. “He is too busy for visits. His flying machine broke again. He must fix it.” He shifted her in his arms. “Come visit my home in the mountains.”
    “Why mountain? Village closer.” Also safer.
    Sadness came over him. “It is only a ride.”
    His response puzzled her. She picked up no more from his mind except his conviction that he couldn’t reveal the truth. She didn’t think it had anything to do with Brad or his flyer, but that was her only lead. “You no help Brad’s flying machine?”
    “We don’t know how.” Eldri brushed her hair back from her face. “But we would if we could. He is a friend. Besides, he lives in Dalvador. That makes him my responsibility, even if he thinks he belongs to this Allied Skolia of yours.”
    She blinked at his tangle of misunderstandings. “Brad come from Allied Worlds of Earth. I am Skolian. Is different.” She checked her node for the words she wanted. “And if you are his liege, why you bedevil him?”
    He chuckled. “We don’t. We just play with him.”
    Roca doubted it amused Brad to have a Skolian citizen hauled out of his port. “Eldri. Tell this animal take us back.”
    “Lyrine.”
    “Say you again?”
    “The animal. It is called a lyrine.”
    “Tell lyrine take us back. Brad worry.”
    To her surprise, he reined the lyrine to a stop. She twisted around to look at him, maneuvering her leg over the animal so she was sitting sideways. That would make it easier to jump down if he started up again. She was aware of the other riders gathering around them, milling among the drifting bubbles, but she couldn’t stop looking at Eldri. Nor did he disguise how much she unsettled him. Or maybe she knew it from his mind; she was becoming so sensitized to him, she had trouble separating his moods from his behavior. She told herself it was pheromones, but she suspected her response went deeper than chemicals.
    “Why stare you so?” she asked.
    “I am sorry.” Eldri brushed her cheek. “I have never seen a woman with gold skin or gold eyes.” His touch on her eyelash was so tender she barely felt it. “They glitter. But they are soft. Not hard like metal.”
    “We shouldn’t—” She broke off. He looked as if he could take her into him, mind and body.
    “Nor have I ever seen a woman so beautiful,” he added, as if it were the most original compliment ever uttered instead of one she had heard too often. She knew she should discourage him, but it was hard to remember that when he gazed at her this way.
    Roca cleared her throat. “Pheromones.”
    “What?” His smile lit his face. And he did have freckles across his nose.
    “We go to port.” She felt like a repeating audio loop. “In two day, I leave on ship.”
    He touched a tendril of hair curling around her face. “Why?”
    “A meeting of my people comes. I need be there. If not, we have war.”
    He didn’t look surprised. “I too would go to war for you.”
    “Eldri, no.”