A Bait of Dreams Read Online Free PDF

into Gleia’s back. She gasped.
    Grunting in a fury that showed no sign of abating. Habbiba lashed at Gleia again and again, screaming her rage at Gleia for all the times the girl had successfully defied her. For all the lovely coins the girl had milked from her. Finally, shaking, eyes bloodshot, face flushed, Habbiba dropped the bloody whip and went away.
    Gleia hung from her wrists, her legs too weak to support her weight, the crystal dream cleaned out of her system by the pain that turned her body to mush.
    Slowly she began to feel stronger; though as the shock passed, the pain bit deeply into her. She pushed against the stone floor with stiff numb feet and took the punishing weight off her wrists. Standing face to the wall, she came to the humbling conclusion that she was a fool. To be trapped by a Ranga Eye when she knew better. To be trapped by dreams like any giggling girl. Dreams!
    She felt the crystal press against her leg, sending warmth through the material of her cafta into her flesh. She jerked the leg back, disgusted at herself as she trembled with the memory of the beauty she’d seen in the Eye, longing intensely (at the same time shuddering with revulsion) for the freedom of soaring on the air with the butterfly people of the dream. Though she knew better in her waking time, she couldn’t help feeling that they were real and not mere phantoms of a drugged mind. That their world was real. Somewhere. She couldn’t comprehend how the crystal could serve as a gateway to that world, but as she shifted to reduce the pain in her legs she felt she could pass through the gate into a gentle world unlike the rough, unfeeling one she’d been born into.
    â€œI’m not going to touch you again,” she muttered, resting her forehead against the cold damp stone. “I’ll sell you. I will I’ll find a way.” The crystal bumped hard against her thigh, sending a stab of pain through her already aching body. “We’ll see who wins once I get out of this.”
    Her feet were cramping. She couldn’t put her heels flat and the strain of her arches was beginning to be more than she could endure. Her arms ached, stretched without respite over her head. Fatigue and the effort of fighting off the insidious invasion of the crystal brought her close to fainting, the thought that Habbiba intended to leave her there all night in a final attempt to break her spirit made a cold knot in her stomach. She knew that if the old bitch did, the crystal would have her.
    She smashed her hip against the wall, letting out a scream of anger and pain when the crystal ground into her muscle, striking hard against nerves. Sweating and breathing raggedly, she hung in the wrist cuffs, tears of pain streaming down her face, struggling to regain a measure of control over her body.
    When she could think again, she shook her head. “No good,” she muttered. She couldn’t shatter it, maybe she could ease it out of her pocket. Pinning the material against the stone, she pressed herself to the wall, counting on the pain to keep the crystal from charming her. Wriggling, contorting her body until she was bathed in a film of sweat, she struggled to work the Eye out of her pocket.
    It fought back. Whenever she managed to squeeze it an inch or so from the bottom of the pocket, it wriggled like a thing alive and eeled away from the pressure.
    She kept trying until she was exhausted, shaking too hard to control her body any longer.
    It was dark in the room when Abbosine shambled back. The huge mute unfastened the cuffs and watched with massive indifference as she crumpled to the floor. Stolidly he wound his thick fingers in her hair and dragged her through the building and out into the alley where he dropped her in a heap beside the workers’ entrance.
    Gleia pushed herself onto her feet and stood swaying, supporting herself with a hand pressed against the side of the building. Then the anger that