Fires of Scorpio Read Online Free PDF

black basalt slab.
    I looked away. High over the altar reared the shape of the leem — silver, glittering, rampant, ferocious. The image, I judged, was formed of beaten silver over a wooden core. The sculpture was not of the first quality; but it captured the sheer ferocious impact of a leem. Leems have wedge-shaped heads equipped with fangs that can strike through solid oak. They have eight legs and two hearts and they are feral beasts who kill and joy in the killing.
    A normal weasel-shaped leem is of the size of a full-grown large leopard; this image was over one and a half times life size. The torchlights glittered from its ruby eyes. I looked away.
    The sacrifice was not crying. She was eating sweets of some kind, trifles of sugar and honey and candy in brilliant sticky whorls children love to buy from the local banje shop. Sticky goo ran down her chin.
    I tapped the heel and then the toe of the sandal I wore, a simple enough artifact suitable for hot climates. The fellow, now tied up in the bushes, from whom I’d taken the sandals favored solid leather soles, with rope thongs. The sole made a sharp tap through the sand strewing the floor.
    These people had used the deck of the ship, then, as their floor, interesting.
    Priests with golden decorations superimposed upon the colors of Lem moved about, preparing the knives and flails. The congregation talked in hushed tones, at ease, the incense stank and the torches and cressets burned brightly. I kept the hood of the brown robe half across the silver mask.
    A vivid, a scarlet, lightning bolt of memory hit me. I could see just such a scene as this, out in the open air with the priest about to plunge his knife into the body of the sacrifice. And then a flier swooping in with me whirling a Krozair longsword and Barty Vessler leaping out and severing the child’s bonds. An elegant, refined, very proper young man, Barty Vessler, the Strom of Calimbrev, a man with high ideals of honor and duty. A fine young man now dead, struck down by the cowardly blow of a kleesh whose come-uppance had been too long delayed. Vengeance is for fools. But some redress for Barty’s death was long overdue.
    Moving slowly, head half-bent, I approached the iron cage. Chains lapped the stone slab. The light threw contorted shadows from the bars across the girl child within the cage. The sweet stickiness ran down from her mouth and shone.
    She had to be freed. Also, to perform this duty properly, another act must be done. I eyed the priests.
    One of them, bulky in his robes, wore more gold than anyone else. He would be what they called the Hyr-Prince Majister, or some such nonsensical title. I marked him. Keys swung at his waist, and he wore a sword.
    An under priest approached.
    “Not too close,” he warned.
    “I would have words with the Hyr-Prince Majister—”
    “Who?”
    “I said—” Then I stopped. I saw that I had blundered. That was not the title of the chief miscreant.
    A cresset flared in its bronze cage hard by my left shoulder. Another stood a few paces to the right. Between them stood the cage. The basalt slab under the idol stood to the side of the cage, at the center of attention by the altar. I moved forward, striking like a leem.
    I kicked the priest twixt wind and water. The left hand cresset went over backwards from a single sweep of my arm. Without pausing I slashed across to the right-hand cresset and knocked that flying. Live coals hissed out to scatter across the floor. The stink of smoke thickened.
    I took the chief priest’s neck in my left hand and I stuck a finger in his eye.
    “Open the cage, rast! Move quickly and quietly, or you are dead.”
    He could not gobble his fright because his air was choked off in my fist. He scrabbled at the keys. He was useless. I dumped him down, raked off the bunch of keys and selected the largest. It did not fit the lock.
    Now shocked shouts burst up in the confines of the ship’s hull. People were running and screaming. I