Darkvision Read Online Free PDF Page A

all the way to the Golden Water. Then, on to Vaelan.
    The answers to his questions lay in Vaelan.
    Despite his past vows, the time had come to return to the family business. Datharathi Minerals stood for all the rules and family expectations he’d left behind when he’d fled five years ago. He didn’t have a head for business, or a desire to acquire one. All the scheming between businesses to get the absolute best price on every wooden nail; the constant worry about whether Datharathi Minerals could retain its high standing from year to year; the making of less-than-honest deals with other businesses, trade guilds, and private regulatory councils, in pursuit of the almighty coin … it all turned Warian’s stomach.
    He had his own way of making a living—gambling. Well, he supposed that some folk might see a parallel. But everyone knew the risks when they sat down at a table for a game of chance. In business, the risks were mostly those raised by underhanded dealings.
    Warian sighed and patted Majeed. He didn’t want to return home, but something terrifyingly strange had happened with his artificial arm, the arm that had been a gift from his family. The prosthesis was carved from crystal mined from a secret lode that Datharathi Minerals jealously guarded. The proprietary crystal had an affinity for taking enchantment. The family business had made a handsome profit by selling small quantities of the substance to powerful and rich nobles and merchants in Vaelan and beyond. To Warian’s knowledge, no piece of so-called Datharathi crystal had ever before exhibited as startling a transformation as what had happened to him in the tavern.
    Warian sighed as he weighed his decision. After he had lost his arm in a rock fall while inspecting one of the family mines, his will to fly in the face of family demands temporarily crumbled. The trauma of losing a limb shattered his confidence. Against his better judgment, he allowed Grandfather Shaddon to give him an experimental prosthesis. To Warian’s surprise, the false limb, the first of its kind, served him well, almost as well as a real arm.
    Accepting the prosthesis was the only time he’d done as his family asked and found that the result was good.
    Warian had been so overcome with relief after receiving the arm that he almost changed his mind about the business, and nearly accepted a position under his Uncle Xaemar, who sat at the head of the family council. If not for his sister Eined, who talked sense into him, Warian might have been sitting on the family council at that very moment.
    After conferring with Eined late into many nights, Warian had skipped town. Eined had convinced her kid brother that he needed to see what the world was all about before becoming another cog in the Datharathi empire, however highly placed.
    Thank the gods for Eined’s counsel. Free of Uncle Xaemar’s decrees, Grandfather Shaddon’s schemes, Uncle Zel’s unscrupulous deals, and Aunt Sevaera’s crazy impositions, Warian realized life was a far more wonderful and wide stage than he’d previously imagined. Eventually, he cut his ties with the family permanently. He never returned to Vaelan. In all the time since, the only thing he’d missed was Eined.
    Warian shuddered. And now someone lay hurt, maybe even dead, because of his arm. Had he killed Yasha? He’d never before taken a life. For a moment, he comforted himself with something his old sword instructor had told him: To kill a person is far more difficult than is commonly believed.
    But what about when mortal strength was overcome by crazy bursts of potency and perception?
    “Why did you wake up?” Warian addressed his arm, as he had done before. His prosthesis remained dull and barely responsive, offering no clues. He tried to will it back to life, yet nothing happened, as if nothing had ever happened. All his attempts to elicit a response from his arm since he’d fled the tavern had proven equally fruitless.
    “It must be