Blue Diamonds (Book One of The Blue Diamonds Saga) Read Online Free PDF Page B

over time. Much about this energy is still a mystery, like why it doesn't like to be looked at.
    It’s a bittersweet situation that most newcomers to the dark arts learn well after they've taken the life-changing plunge into the Mystic Academy. By that age they'd probably dreamed about conjuring snowstorms and lightning bolts for as long as they could remember. Nobody informs these dreamers why wizards live out most of their lives in isolation, or that they will inevitably live the same hermit life.
    Baymar was no mageling, in fact he had an aura that could fill the room twice over, and he was fully tuned into the eyes on him now. In one shady corner of the room Baymar saw, as well as felt a group of card dealing dwarves sneaking peeks. In the opposite corner a sitar-strumming bard was distracted enough to stutter in rhythm. Baymar balled his fists, and it was all he could do not to shrink down into his chair.
    Speaking out was a careless mistake on Baymar’s part. He knew perfectly well that the gloomy watering hole was a haven for outlaw and thief alike. He was one of the older patrons in the private tavern, so by default his robbery and murder had probably been plotted several times over long before his outburst.
    “Lower your voice, or would you rather I save these thugs the time and rob you myself?”
    The sarcastic grin behind the remark did little to diffuse the threat. Baymar didn’t take threats lightly, even the ones made in jest. If it were twenty years ago he might have put a fist to the young man’s mouth just to make a point of it, but Baymar knew him and knew better. Even through the failure of a disguise he recognized his face, and a fist to the young man's mouth wouldn't work.
    The young man sitting across Baymar was Shomnath, prince and heir to the throne of Somerlund, the city they were currently sitting in the middle of. The prince had mysteriously gone through pains to conceal his identity. He was unshaven, wore clothes littered with patches, and even stank a little. Even the weathered stain on his cloak seemed genuinely old, but after all the effort it was wasted on Baymar. He recognized the prince the moment they met the prior evening. The prince appeared at Baymar's home late in the evening promising a job that he would not be able to pass up. The prince didn’t know, but the failure to hide his identity worked out in his favor. If Baymar hadn’t recognized him he would never have left the comfort of his home for this hall of cretins.
    The Black Cauldron, a pub hidden within Somerlund’s poorest district, was not the type of tavern Baymar frequented. In fact, it wasn’t the type of pub any respected man could find. From outside, a ragtag structure revealed no clue of the steady business within. Literally a pile of log, scrap iron, and brick, the walls and roof seem about as architecturally sound as a pile of firewood, but the effect was the desired one, perfectly blending it in flush with the shanty homes surrounding it. A door that was thoroughly warped by time hung from a single hinge at the center of the mess, where several squatters could regularly be found contributing to the ambiance.
    It was all an illusion, quickly realized once you passed through the entrance, when you found yourself walking down an intricately shaped stone stairway that twisted deep below ground. The passage spiraled twice, stopping abruptly at an open, massive iron door that judging by the way dirt piled up to it's base hasn't been shut in many years. Just within the doorway a sentry waited on an ancient wooden stool, with one hand extended for a door fee and the other hand perpetually closed around a mug of mead.
    Once you've dropped some coin, you get to pass by the real door to the Black Cauldron, as well as a more fit guard, sporting a smile full of holes and an axe covered in notches. Then, all that is left is a short stroll down an arched, tiled hallway fit for a rich cathedral. At the end of the out-of-place