Diamond Stained (Secret of the Jewels #1 ) - J.M.D. Reid Page 0,1
his bluff face an unsettling gaze. His words lisped, his S’s elongated. He snagged his yew longbow from where it leaned against skeletal bark.
“Just one?” Ust asked, glancing at the three tents. “That’s it? You’d think a scholar be smart enough to have more protection after pissin’ in the Brotherhood’s beer.”
Hook wheezed with laughter while chuckles echoed from the other bandits. Counting Ōbhin, they numbered thirteen.
“That’s right, Ust,” Hook said, a big grin on his face. His crooked nose and flat face gleamed with oily fervor. “Just go in ‘n grab him.”
Ōbhin stroked the emerald jewelchine.
“Glad for that,” Carstin muttered to Ōbhin. “Didn’t want to bleed on this one.”
“Just one? That’s strange,” said Stone, his words tumbling out. The big man gave a nervous look at the woods. “You sure there ain’t more hidin’ around?”
“Sure,” Baill grunted as he limbered his yew bow, his powerfully muscled right arm, twice as thick as his left, bent the stave to a taut curve so he could string it. Stone was the only other man in the band who could pull back the powerful weapon.
“But, I mean,” Stone continued. “Seems too easy.”
“Shut it,” Whiner Creg hissed, glaring at Stone. “Just three of ‘em. You could go ‘n brain them all with that big hammer. The rest of us could sit on our backsides and enjoy these beautiful woods.”
“‘Course you want to stay back,” Carstin said. “Can’t get stuck sitting on your arse, Colours no.”
Whiner Creg shrugged, the skinny man wiping at his runny nose. Snot stained his leather gauntlet in sticky lines.
Ōbhin grimaced, glancing down at his sable gloves. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Ah, the great and mighty Ōbhin has chimed in,” Ust said, his lips sneering, beard bristling.
“Great and mighty!” Hook said, then cackled as he capered.
Ōbhin fixed a hard stare at his leader, his thumb tracing a gold wire.
“I have half a mind to send you down there by yourself,” said Ust.
“Better than standing here listening to Hook wheeze himself to death.”
Ust grinned. “True. Shut up, Hook.”
“Right, right, sorry,” Hook said, his head bobbing, an unctuous grin spreading on his lips.
Handsome Baill nocked his first arrow.
“Still, what if they’re hiding?” Stone asked, the giant of a man squirming in his splint mail armor, the banded strips of iron creaking.
“Elohm’s Colours, find your balls,” Whiner Creg said. “Let’s go. My feet are gettin’ sore standin’ here.”
“Kill the strongarm,” said Ust, his lips parting in a grin, revealing brown-stained teeth. Bits of Tethyrian weed were stuck in the gaps. “Don’t touch a hair on the scholar and the woman.”
*
“How is this possible?” Avena asked for the dozenth time. The pair stood alone. The moment the artifact had been found that morning, Dualayn had sent the laborers, woodsmen recruited from a village on the edge of the forest, home.
“How indeed,” Dualayn Dashvin said.
Avena glanced up at the older scholar, her light-brown hair, wrapped in a mauve ribbon, falling in a braid down her back. She wore a plain, dark dress with a high neckline, the sober outfit a proper young woman should wear. Her skirt and petticoats rustled as she shifted her stance on her heeled shoes. Her red-painted lips pursed in a question beneath her dainty nose.
“It is two different gems grown as one,” she continued. “Have you ever seen anything like this, Father?”
“No, I have not, child,” Dualayn said, a tremble to his voice. “This may well predate the Shattering.”
A chill ran through Avena. The Shattering, when Elohm, the God of the Seven Colours, had confronted his nemesis, the Black. The cataclysmic clash of energies was said to have broken lands far to the east and almost destroyed the world.
“Elohm, let your Seven Colours polish us with your purity and cleanse the Black from us,” whispered Avena beneath her breath. Growing up in a church-run orphanage had stamped piety on the young woman. “Truly, Father?”
“Truly,” he said. A smile spread across the older man’s plump face. His soft hands grasped the strange jewelchine they had uncovered. Bits of dirt still clung to the entwined emerald and amethyst. The green and purple gems spiraled around each other in a helix pattern while threads of gold were embedded in the jewels.
It was like they grew around the metal wiring, thought Avena. She was familiar with jewel machines, commonly called jewelchines. One didn’t study beneath one of their greatest pioneers without picking up a thing or two.