Free The Balborite Curse (Book 4) by Kristian Alva Page A

the order to close the labor camps permanently, Druknor grumbled a bit, but the camps closed without incident. Druknor even sent some of his own men to help clean up after the closure. Druknor never complained—not formally, anyway. Remember, Druknor’s labor camps weren’t illegal—even the king sent prisoners there to work.”
    “Perhaps Druknor isn’t involved at all,” said Tallin. “Maybe the prisoner is lying—about everything. Beyond the prisoner’s confession, we don’t have any hard evidence linking Druknor to the Balborites, or even to the smuggling. It’s all circumstantial.”
    “But then how do you explain the blood raven? Those birds are native to Balbor; they aren’t seen on the mainland unless they’re delivering messages for the priests.”
    “That’s true,” Tallin agreed. “Blood ravens are only used by the Balborites. I’ve never seen one on the mainland unless there also happened to be an assassin nearby—usually trying to kill me.”
    “I spoke with Druknor last spring when I visited Miklagard. He was there, petitioning the High Council about some trivial issue—logging on his territory or something like that. He was polite but rather crude. I thought him a bit odd, but he seemed harmless enough. To be honest, I found him a bit slow. Maybe it was all an act.”
    “He’s smarter than we realized, apparently. Look, Druknor dabbled in smuggled merchandise, but so do half the other magistrates in the north. A little smuggling really doesn’t surprise me—but secret alliances with Balbor? Slave trading? Murder for hire?” said Tallin. “It sounds unbelievable. How did we miss all this?”
    Sela was quick to respond. “It's unfortunate, but we can't change that now. We have to deal with the problem. I don’t know how all the pieces all fit together—there’s no clear pattern yet. Once we find out who’s behind all this, we will have a better idea of what’s going on. We should start looking in the north. The scroll was real; I know that for sure. It sounds silly, but it was the quality of the writing that convinced me—it was too sloppy to be a fake. The glamour was remedial, at best. The runes were barely legible. A first-year mage would have done a better job. The message I intercepted was written by a spellcaster with no formal training, and it was a response to an earlier message. Of this, I ’m certain.”
    Tallin sighed. “No Balborite priest would ever transcribe a messy scroll. Druknor doesn’t have any powers, but he has enough money to afford a personal spellcaster. Plenty of low-level mages are peddling their services these days. You can thank the Shadow Grid for that—their guilds accept any mageborn, no matter how marginal their powers, and take a cut of the profits in exchange for training. Even so… it’s unlikely the Balborites would form an alliance with Druknor.”
    “What other explanation could there possibly be? For whatever reason, the Balborites have allied themselves with Druknor. Now we need to find out why.”
    Tallin’s expression turned dark. “This is our fault, Sela. If all this information is true, we should have taken care of Druknor long ago.”
    Sela considered for a moment. “There’s no sense in arguing over what we should have done.”
    “What should we do now? Even if Druknor is involved in this treachery, I’m not convinced that he’s smart enough to be the mastermind.”
    “You’re probably right. Druknor’s the key—he’s merely a puppet in this stage play, not the puppeteer. I need to investigate this further,” said Sela. “I have friends on the High Council in Miklagard. I’ll contact them and do some digging. I need to find out Druknor’s connection to Balbor. As for you and Duskeye—I want both of you to leave the Death Sands until I give notice for you to return.”
    “How long should I remain outside the desert?” asked Tallin, somewhat surprised. “I know almost nothing of the countryside.” He