Free Witchbreaker (Dragon Apocalypse) by James Maxey Page B

down, and held out his torch.
    “Look at this,” he said, sounding excited.
    Sorrow welcomed the distraction and walked to the pit. To her surprise, Brand doused his torch on the broken ground as she neared. She held her hands before her as her eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness.
    Now she saw what Brand saw. The pit was glowing faintly. She carefully crept across the uneven ground to gaze into it. Thin beams of pale light seeped up through cracks in the slate lining the bottom of the grave.
    “I got so swept up in the fight and saving the mystery man’s life that I never stopped to think there might be something else in the hole,” said Brand. “I mean, I glanced in here while I was gathering firewood, and all I saw was rock. But what if that thing was meant to guard something?”
    Sorrow slid down the dirt wall into the pit. She grunted as she pushed one of the large flat stones aside. More light seeped up from below. She kept moving stones until she nearly fell through the widening gap. Carefully removing more stones, she revealed the opening to a set of spiral stairs. She was looking down the center of the spiral, and though this was the source of the glow, she couldn’t make out anything beyond the stairs.
    Brand asked, “Should we wait until daylight to—”
    Sorrow didn’t wait for him to finish. She swung her feet forward, then slid into the gap.
    “Let’s think this through,” said Brand. “We’re both exhausted. I don’t have it in me to fight another dragon.”
    “I’m just going to peek,” said Sorrow, placing a hand on the stone wall as she stepped gingerly down the stairs. She knew Brand was right. The smart move would be to wait until she could build a new golem and use it to explore the space. But she’d come to the Witches’ Graveyard expecting her life to change forever. She felt certain she’d arrived at a pivotal moment of her quest.
    The steps opened into a circular chamber twenty feet across and six feet tall, the walls, ceiling and floor hewn from a single piece of slate. A glorystone was set into the center of the slate floor, no bigger than a pea yet sufficient to fill the chamber with light. Alas, the chamber appeared to be completely empty. There wasn’t even any dust. Her heart sank, disappointed that such a promising lead had come to nothing.
    She clenched her fists. This couldn’t be all there was. There must be some hidden passage. She moved to the nearest wall and rapped the stone with her fingers, then turned when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Brand crept down, with a dagger drawn.
    “It’s safe,” she said. “Give me your knife.”
    “This was worth guarding with a dragon?” he said, crouching as he entered the room to hand her the dagger. “I mean, the glorystone will bring a good price, but—”
    “This isn’t about treasure,” she said, tapping the wall with the hilt of the dagger as she held her ear close to the stone.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Checking for hollow spaces,” she said.
    “Right,” he said, drawing another blade. He started tapping the ceiling as she worked the walls.
    They worked for ten minutes, not speaking, just tapping.
    “Wait,” she said, holding up her hand.
    “You got something?” he asked.
    She tapped the wall, pressing her ear to it. There was a definite hollowness to the sound. “I think so.” She ran her fingers across the slate. “This stone is perfectly smooth. No mason could have finished it to this precision. It has to be the work of a weaver with command over stone.”
    “How do we open it?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve never even heard of a slate weaver. It must be a lost art. A witch with power over slate could simply will the stone to move aside.”
    “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” said Brand. “Wait here.”
    He darted up the stairs. Sorrow scraped at the slate with her dagger blade, marring the finish, then began to hunt for another space behind the stone. Three minutes later,