Arrow on the String: Solomon Sorrows Book 1 by Dan Fish (no david read aloud TXT) 📕

of wood smoke filled the air. They walked past the tavern from the night before. Jace turned, but Sorrows shook his head.

“We’re not stopping?” she asked.

“Not hungry,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Bit further. There’s someone I need to talk to.”

The Quarry produces the stone used throughout Hammerfell. During the day, the sound of iron striking iron is endless. A constant staccato rhythm played by hammer and chisel. The sound is distant in the city. Soft, musical. They call it the laughter of the gods. In the Quarry it is loud, harsh, pervasive. The side of the mountain turns to lines and square angles, planes of light and shadow. Dwarves walk the ledges, working great slabs of stone down makeshift roads in steady procession. Stone dust fills the nostrils; the taste of it lingers on the tongue. It seeps into clothing, coats the skin.

They’d been walking for an hour and were deep into the noise and dust. Sorrows dropped a hand to his side, worked his fingers. Stay close. He tapped Jace on the shoulder, raised his voice over the ringing of iron on stone.

“There,” he said, pointing to a pile of scrap lumber.

Jace nodded, and they walked over. Up close, the planks showed more pattern and purpose. Walls on a diagonal; a roof of layered beams angled to the ground. Sorrows crept along the side until he reached a low, triangular entrance. He gave three heavy knocks, stepped back.

The point of a crossbow bolt appeared, followed by a crossbow, followed by two hands the color of snow. The hands belonged to a goblin, along with a pair of bright red eyes and an unusually low voice. The first of which glanced at Sorrows, the second of which said “Solomon.” The first of which then saw Jace, and the second of which then said, “Come inside.”

Sorrows met Bex Gellio a few days after he first met Mig. Bex had an eye for pretty things. Had a tendency to trail after those things long after those things had asked to be left alone. Maybe it was simple attraction. Maybe a more complicated fixation. Maybe it satisfied a mental itch that stemmed from Bex’s rare appearance. A sort of vicarious over-compensation: Goblins were known for their physical beauty, but Bex didn’t fit the standard. She had red hair, red eyes, white skin, crooked teeth, and was bone thin. More like a gnome than a goblin. She stuck out. An anomaly. Davrosh might accuse Sorrows of envy, but Bex knew it like a fish knows swimming. Knew it well enough to know it’d drive her to do things she didn’t want any part of. Not anymore. Not after the things she’d already done. So she’d moved to Hammerfell, scratched out a spot of land in the Quarry, and settled into hermitage. She was alone, armed, and drawn to beauty like an arrow to the string. She was paranoid and flawed, but she was one of four Walkers Sorrows knew, including Ga’Shel, and that made her just about perfect.

She took them inside, led them down eight stairs into a room that was three stairs too short for Sorrows to stand up in, but a good fifteen paces deep and seven wide. A table with cushions, a bed in one corner, glowstone fragments scattered throughout. Bex gestured and Sorrows sat on a cushion, laying his bow to the side. Jace sat down next to him, shoulder brushing his. Bex took a seat across the table and stared at Jace, eyes like holly berries in snow.

“You’re very… pretty,” Bex said.

Jace turned to Sorrows. “Who is this, Solomon?”

Sorrows ignored her, looked at Bex. “Can you do it?”

Bex nodded, stared at Jace. Jace started to stand.

“I don’t like this, Solomon,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on before I—”

“Easy,” Bex said, holding up a hand. She laughed, low and warm, looked at Sorrows. “I can do it.”

“Do what?” Jace asked.

Then she vanished.

✽✽✽

MIG APPEARED A heartbeat later. Sorrows nodded, and she slipped them out of the gods-stream. Sorrows stumbled into awareness a while later as the gravel turned to stone pavers. He glanced at Mig, and she met his gaze and smiled. They followed the main road past the tower, turned left and walked toward the open range. Dwarves moved with slow, plodding steps around them, unaware of the goblin Walker and her towering companion.

“You sure about this, Sol?” Mig asked.

It was the first time she’d called him Sol since she’d found out about Julia. Progress. He shrugged.

“You said I should help.”

“I know, but… if the family didn’t want her disturbed, maybe you shouldn’t.”

“I’m not going to steal her dress or jewelry,” Sorrows said.

Mig sighed. “I know, but still. It doesn’t feel right.”

“None of this does. I’m missing something. It’s right in front of me, and I’m not seeing it.”

“That’s why you want to see the daughter?”

“Yeah.”

“What if you don’t find anything?”

Sorrows shrugged. “Then we walk back to the Quarry. Between us going thin and Bex going thick, Jace will only think a second or two have passed. I’m out an hour of daylight, and you and I got to take a walk together. Seems a decent price to pay to eliminate some questions.”

Mig smiled. “I suppose. I hope it works.”

“It’ll work,” Sorrows said. It has to, he thought.

Chapter 18

THE TOMB OF House Valinor sits on the southeast corner of the Valinor estate. The land surrounding the tomb is flat, and the tomb rests beneath the ground, like Bex’s shack but on a grander scale. The entrance is inside a marble mausoleum with a peaked roof, columns, oak door stained dark. Perfect lines, perfect symmetry. Dwarf magic. Dwarves hunting stags in bas relief; an evergreen backdrop of pine and spruce; the Valinor family crest carved into each column. The mausoleum is an imposing structure, beautiful in design, solemn in purpose. The catacombs beneath are an expansive web of corridors to guide the living, and shelves to cradle the dead. Stone is cut and hauled away with the