Fifteen miles northwest of Dry-Wells, the limestone hills broke into jagged outcrops of dark stone and gray pink rock granite known as the Black Crag. The abandoned quarry sat like an open wound in the mountainside, its upright rock faces scarred by the chisel marks of three ages of royal stonemasons.
Tomas Reed and Sile Rook rode in a light two-wheeled baggage cart driven by young Jarek Brant, one of Kaelen’s grandsons. The cart rattled over the dry gravel wash, the iron-rimmed wheels groaning as they climbed the steep incline toward the old quarry building boss’s shack.
The shack was built of dry-stacked granite blocks, chinked with moss and roofed with split slate. Sitting on a stone bench outside the door was an ancient man wrapped in a sheepskin cloak, his white hair whipping across a face as cracked and grey as the granite benches around him. A heavy two-pound dressing hammer lay on the bench beside his withered knee.
“Master Garek?” Tomas asked, stepping down from the cart. His boots crunched on the quarry chips. He didn’t rush forward. He approached with the deliberate, respectful gait of a working man entering another craftsman’s yard.
The old man raised his head slowly. His pale blue eyes were clouded with clouded eye film. But his large, swollen-knuckled hands were still those of a master mason. “If you came to buy paving slabs, the quarry has been dead for twenty winters. The Trade group shut down the high cuts when they stopped…
