Flesh Gambit Read Online Free PDF Page B

Caliph threw open the door to the Infantana’ s room.
    The Mistress of the Tiered City citadel looked up from where she squatted drunk on the floor. Pinned beneath her legs the serving girl squirmed for air. Slack with pleasure, the Infantan ’s face snapped into a snarl of fury at the interruption.
    “How dare you!”
    “Alyssa has taken a grimoire,” the Caliph interrupted.
    Instantly the Infantana was on her feet, screaming for her cohort. The Caliph shrank against the wall as the ruler’s bodyguards sprang into action. They were cold-eyed soldiers long used to suppressing slaves and policing civilian subjects. They could wield blade, club, and whip with equal skill. Mercy was as beyond their ability to comprehend as democracy.
    “Bring me that girl in chains!” The Infantana shrieked.
    The fear was on her now, as it was on the Caliph. Without the distraction of the serving girl’s quick tongue she could easily feel the electricity of thaumaturgy moving through her stronghold.
    The cohort spilled through the door as the Caliph began to ready his wards and weirds. He knew better than any there what it was possible to call forth from that book if one were willing to risk their soul.
     

Chapter Nine
Ritual Night
     
     
    Khat was cold. He opened his eyes and sat up. All around him was an impenetrable black. Beneath his body he felt cold, slick marble. Confused, he stood and goose bumps rose on his flesh. There was the sound of water dripping in the background. His eyes tried adjusting to the gloom.
    Khat caught a flicker of light and spun in that direction. What he saw filled him with a dread he could neither name nor fathom. There was a cave of cold, yellow light cut into the black. It backlit what looked like a castle porticos. Behind the bars he saw a crude lift, similar to something found in deep mines.
    He understood that somehow he was still in the hold of his sunship, but that the coven-whore’s poultice had allowed him to see into the nether realms of the mortal coil as he cast his spell of summoning. He existed in two places at once, and the danger to him was great.
    Khat understood intuitively and with a great strength of emotion that he did not want to get into that elevator. He did not want to approach that light. Yet, in all this vast plane of reachless dark, there was only that sound of dripping water and that grim cave of light.
    Clip-clop, clip-clop
    Khat gasped in surprise and fear. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere. It echoed around and past him so that the clamor seemed to come at him from every direction all at once. The single place he knew the noise did not come from was that frightening porticos and its elevator. Khat was too alarmed to tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing. His fear was unreasoning and overpowering. It was so different from his normal mien that it scared him all the more.
    He began mumbling in his fear, turning in all directions for some hint of succor or rescue. None revealed itself. He sank into a half crouch, overwhelmingly aware of his vulnerability because of his nakedness. His hands cupped his genitals as he turned, partly from shame and partly from the futile myth that it offered protection if he were attacked.
    He was naked and cold and alone in the dark.
    Clip-clop, clip-clop
    Now the staccato sound grew as whatever emerged from that sterile darkness drew closer. Yet, even as he felt his terror thicken, Khat still feared the promise of the elevator more and could not bring himself to run toward the one single place in all the dark he knew the sound was not issuing from.
    Then the darkness began to take form.
    Before his eyes Khat saw an outline darker than the darkness emerge, and his stomach dropped away in fear. It was a massive outline, a rider on a horse, at once huge and black as ink. Despite himself, Khat fell back a step.
    Still horse and rider approached, neither speeding nor slowing, but coming as inexorably as a river flowing. Khat gave