The Artifacts Of Elios (Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and was quietly out the door.
    After leaving the Ox Horn, the man called Stafford looked up and down the street.  The rain had diminished to a sprinkle but was threatening to resume a downpour.  With a sharp whistle he hailed an approaching taxi.  Practically before it was stopped he opened the door jumped in and gave the driver an address. 
    Stafford traveled extensively, most often under the guise of grain broker.  He had found that most people didn’t really know what a grain broker was but assumed it was important and mostly harmless – which was fine because it provided the access and anonymity that he required for his real job.  Stafford had been traveling for years. There probably wasn’t a city in all of Infin that he hadn’t been to at one time or another.  He had grown up in a small farming community with four brothers.  Three of which had elected to stay on the farm and continue the family business but he and his youngest brother had decided to go out and see the world.  His little brother had attended business collegium and had become a very successful merchant.  In fact much of the visible financial success that the man called Stafford had accumulated over the years was due to the investments that he had made silently and unbeknownst to and with his brother’s businesses.  The man called Stafford thought with a rare wistful expression - Oh to be Ari again.
    Ruari Desmond or Ari as his family called him and his younger brother Gerard had set out to see the world.  His brother had leaned toward business and the possibilities of becoming a merchant.  Ari on the other hand had chosen the path of magic and studied magetech and glyphs.
    After graduation he discovered that a desk job duplicating and installing artifacts as a low tech glyph mage was not in the least bit fulfilling or interesting.  Hearing that the Infin Department of Ancient Discoveries had located a new artifact dig in the border country and that the Army needed magetech experts for a team being deployed to the dig and the Army was offering commissions to those with magetech degrees if they would commit to eight years, Ari signed on the dotted line.
    After a few months of basic combat training and then officer leadership school he soon found himself back at yet another desk, this time in the middle of nowhere cataloging and verifying anything and everything that came out of the ground.  Although he could read the glyphs and figure out how to operate many of the artifacts uncovered, he actively avoided the tasks that required him to be a desk bound researcher.  In the cause of maintaining his sanity a good portion of the discoveries he processed, he would simply catalog and have it shipped to Jehhet for further examination by the civilian magetechs.  It wasn’t long before he was so un-enamored with magetech and artifacts that he pretty much began to look for anything he could do to get away from his desk.
    Late at night Ari would often roam the dig looking at the ruins and wonder what the ancients had been like. How could a people so advanced have lost so much?
    He taught himself how to use the cover of the night and the shadows to hide his movement.  He learned instinctively where to step to not make any noise.  While no archeologist he soon found that through the use of rudimentary observation he had a knack to locate the more obvious places to look for artifacts; of which many were either very interesting or beyond his understanding.  Most of the artifacts that he found were still live or activated; the items that were active he kept the others, he had sent to Jehhet for activation. 
    On one of his nocturnal explorations; late after midnight, he was looking through a semi buried building that appeared to be a library.  It had been passed by the archeologists due to its level of destruction.  Ari, thinking that he had heard movement and thinking that it might be smugglers, chose to investigate.  He didn’t find any