To Ride the Gods’ Own Stallion Read Online Free

colt dove for the grain, but Soulai used his own head to block the way. He guided the horse’s muzzle to his face until nostril touched nostril. Slowly he exhaled his greeting. The animal responded by standing stone still and taking in the scent. Then his wide nostrils fluttered as he blew back a greeting of his own. The magic lasted only an instant. In the next breath the horse tossed his head and nickered impatiently for his grain. Soulai scooped two handfuls into the stone trough that ran the length of the stable and grinned as the soft muzzle tore into it. As he walked around the chestnut to the next horse, he carefully ran his eye over the animal’s body, checking for any cuts or swellings that could mar perfection.
    In this manner he worked his way from one horse to the next, petting, feeding, appraising. His heart began to beat faster as he fed the seventh and eighth horses. But he forced himself to take smaller and slower steps. He fed the ninth, taking the time to tentatively rub the broad forehead and watch the grain dribble through his fingers into the trough. Only then did Soulai lift his eyes.
    His throat caught. The tenth horse, a young stallion named Ti, was staring at him. Staring right through him, really, as though he didn’t exist. But, as always, Soulai was mesmerized. The horse embodied everything he had ever tried to mold from clay: flightiness blended with fieriness, graceful beauty disguising explosive power. When Ti swelled his neck and shook his mane and split the air with his defiant whistle, Soulai was filled with such awe that in that moment he could almost forget his own slavery.
    Ti. The name was Sumerian, meaning arrow or life . He, too, was new to the stable, having just been purchased from the famed horse breeders of Lake Urmia. Three years of age, Soulai had been told, and, while the stallion accepted a rider on his back, he had yet to learn to pull a chariot or to stand quietly while the arrow was let loose—though he could certainly gallop as swiftly as the arrow’s flight. Soulai remembered with a grimace how on his first day at the palace, on the way to the drinking trough in the crowded stable courtyard, Ti had pulled the lead rope from his inexperienced hands. To Soulai’s churning mix of embarrassment and admiration, Ti had careered around and around the walled enclosure, diabolically evading all outthrust arms. The excited horse had even challenged an older stallion, and a stouter one at that, by rearing up and striking at him with his hooves. When Soulai had finally managed to snatch the dangling lead, Ti had halted immediately. Then Ti had trumpeted his triumph to the hills. No one would question his bravery!
    A nearby lamp cast flickering light across Ti’s croup as Soulai moved alongside him. Even dimmed by the stable’s smoky atmosphere, his sleek coat shone. Soulai ran his hand along the taut flank, the muscled shoulder and back, remembering with a smile how Ti had attracted all eyes on that first day. Splashed with large patches of both silver and gold, the stallion fairly shouted the promise of good fortune to anyone skilled enough to ride him. His silky mane and tail waved in a fitful breeze; his nostrils flared so wide as to show crimson in the light. But it was the horse’s eyes that enchanted: one a milky blue that echoed the sky’s endless depths, the other a gleaming yellow that challenged the sun’s radiance.
    The head charioteer to King Ashurbanipal had strode across the yard and chastised Soulai after he’d regained the lead rope. “You’ll be duly warned to keep two eyes and two hands on the lead to this one,” he had scolded. “Do you know?”
    â€œKnow?”
    â€œWhat you have here?”
    Intimidated by both the man and the horse, he’d shaken his head.
    â€œA parti-color,” the man snapped, and Soulai felt as ignorant as a small child. “A parti-color stallion fed on the grasses