Read Ghostland for Free Online

female.
    Zurael’s penis throbbed. His lips pulled back, a silent snarl in defiance to the heat that rose upward, spiraling through his chest and neck and face. There was no hiding the erection pressed against the front of his trousers.
    He nodded stiffly when the student stopped at a doorway and bowed him into a small room. “I will tell the one you seek that you wait here.”
    The room was bare of influences. The walls were painted the gray of the ghostlands. Three large gray pillows served as seating around a wooden table only inches above the floor. Three teacups waited in a cluster at the table’s edge. Nearby, a ceramic teapot sat on a brazier, the glow of hot charcoal a symbol of the Djinn, whose prison kingdom was surrounded by the cold spiritlands.
    In four strides Zurael was next to one of the cushions. The smell of jasmine tea teased his nostrils. He contemplated the teacups and felt the stirrings of uneasiness in his chest. He had never been one to frequent this house.
    He turned at the sound of the door opening. Malahel en Raum stood in the doorway. She wore the concealing robes of a desert dweller, though like the room, they were gray. In deference to her position Zurael bowed slightly and said, “I thank you for attending me.”
    “Another would attend you as well,” Malahel said, entering the room.
    Zurael’s pulse spiked at the sight of the Djinn who stepped into the doorway. Like Malahel, Iyar en Batrael of the House of the Raven was dressed in the concealing robes of a desert traveler. His skin was as black as the material covering all of his body and much of his face. Only the gold of his eyes was easily seen.
    “Enter,” Zurael said, acknowledging Iyar with a bow of equal depth to the one he’d given Malahel.
    The three of them seated themselves on the cushions.
    “You wish to pour?” Malahel asked, indicating the waiting teacups with a small flick of her fingers and giving Zurael the choice as to whether to lead the conversation or not.
    Zurael picked up the teapot and filled the ceramic cups. “I was summoned.”
    Both Malahel and Iyar freed the lower half of their faces from the concealing material. Iyar’s dark fingers stroked the handle of a teacup. “The Prince has given you permission to pass through the gates in order to kill the one who summoned you?”
    “Yes.”
    Iyar nodded and took the teacup to his lips.
    Malahel set her teacup down. Her irises were as black as Iyar’s skin.
    “Tell us about the summoning,” she said.
    Zurael repeated what he’d told his father, hesitating for an instant but finally including the oddity of the summoner’s ability to call him in her astral state with little more than his name. Where his father hadn’t shown interest in the humans who’d been killed, Malahel and Iyar leaned forward as he described the black mass and the woman whose sacrifice he’d prevented.
    “Where were the sigils written?” Iyar said.
    Zurael conjured up the scene, focusing on an aspect that had been insignificant at the time. He’d barely glanced at the woman on the altar, and yet with Iyar’s prompting he was able to answer, “Her eyes, mouth, the palms of both hands.”
    “The soles of her feet?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Iyar shrugged. “What you saw was enough.”
    “Enough for what?” Zurael asked, uneasiness returning with the look that passed between Malahel and Iyar.
    Malahel placed her teacup on the low table and settled her hands on her knees. “What is it you wish from the House of the Spider?”
    What did he want? What impulse had made him take the path that led here?
    Zurael sipped his tea as his thoughts danced from one scene to another, always returning to the female who’d summoned him and the fear that he would be bound in service before he could ensure his freedom by killing her. Divination was one of a Spider’s gifts. “I would know what power the human holds over me that she was able to summon me the way she did.”
    Malahel’s head