Depths of Betrayal by James E. Wisher

Author:James E. Wisher [Wisher, James E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781685200305
Publisher: Sand Hill Publising

Chapter 15

Samaritan’s shoulders burned as he lugged another of the stone tablets back to his far-too-short table. And despite how bad his shoulders ached, his eyes weren’t much better. The translation spell, when held for long periods, gave him double vision and a splitting headache. After three days of constant reading, he had certainly held the spell for too long.

At least no one had bothered him. The drunk dwarf he assumed worked as some sort of librarian staggered off the first morning without so much as a word of acknowledgment. No way had the dwarf been drunk enough not to notice the hourly thuds of tablets hitting tabletop. He appeared to simply not care. Not the sort of attitude Samaritan had expected from the person in charge of the archive, but he had no intention of complaining. The fewer people who knew what information he sought, the better.

Now for his most recent effort. Turning his gaze on the tablet he let the magic flow through his eyes, winced as what felt like a needle stabbed him in the left temple, and started reading. He’d been focused on the narrative of a dwarven historian who made recording their time held captive to the Back Iron Empire his life’s work. Samaritan had started at the end and worked his way back. So far he’d read through the last fifty years of the empire and figured he had to be getting close to what he sought.

With only two days remaining until Grub left him to his own devices, he’d better be.

Samaritan read for the next hour and his excitement grew. While the description of the location was vague, this had to be what he sought. Now, where was it?

He bore down, ignoring the growing discomfort, and read every word lest he miss some vital clue. At last, he found it three paragraphs from the end. The dwarves had been ordered to dig a pit five hundred feet deep and a hundred feet across. Thousands of slaves had worked on the project and scores died in the process.

When at last the masters were satisfied, they brought a bubble of darkness so big it nearly didn’t fit through the opening. The bubble dropped out of sight and the slaves got to work filling the pit back in. Every few feet an imperial wizard would fuse the broken rock into solid stone. When at last they finished, it looked like the pit had never existed. The weary slaves began the long walk back to Dwarfhome.

Three days from the pit, every slave save one ended up slaughtered. The surviving dwarf played dead for two days to make sure the masters wouldn’t return. He lived just long enough to share his story with the person that told the story to the author of this history.

Samaritan had read something about a memorial to the slaves’ murder on that first tablet. If he found that spot, it shouldn’t be too hard to locate the buried beast. Waking it would be another matter, but he refused to contact the archbishop until he’d found exactly what he sought.

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