Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) by Joseph Turkot Page A

Wiglim. How great was our luck to catch the poor fool creeping down the Enoan Road, as if traveling by nightfall would be as surreptitious as his now depleted magic once enabled him!” smiled Terion, and the guards rejoiced at seeing the first good mood in many days fall upon their King. “Come, all of you,” he beckoned his armored men. “The torture and killing of this one will be a conclusion we must share together, as a reconciliation of the Oreinen!”
     
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    “By order of the King, the evil wizard traitor, known as Merol, is hereby to be executed on this ninety-third day of our Great Seclusion,” boomed the voice of an elaborately dressed woman dwarf, speaking from the middle of the grand hall, nestled deep inside the walls of the Blue-Grey Mountains.
    “Yea!” cheered a great multitude of the city’s inhabitants, all looking forth with eager anticipation. The new Oreinen Vapour—it being customary for the dwarves to always have a chief Vapour among their otherwise brute forces—prepared to execute the former one; Wiglim stepped up beside King Terion, patiently awaiting his turn to go to work. He would finally destroy the evil dwarf who’d become the bane of dwarven pride.
    “How is it you drew him in from the outside?” whispered young Wiglim.
    “The blessed Wereverns, whom I mustn’t forget we owe a great thanks,” replied King Terion, speaking of the reptile creatures his dwarven race had befriended—and in recent times the Oreinen dependence upon Wereverns for news from the outside had increased dramatically, but only Terion knew the full extent of the partnership with those lizard spies: the fact that the dwarves were not completely cut off from the outside world could make their seclusion appear to be a front. The Wereverns had earned Terion’s trust through many decades of intense secrecy.
    “Dwarves of the Blue-Grey,” projected Terion to the multitude, “your moment has come! We will unbind this prisoner and hear his last words, and we shall see him silenced forever. Together we will sate our thirst for the pride we have lost!” The crowd cheered together with Terion, and all those dwarves who’d remained in seclusion felt bad for the ones who’d left the mountains; each felt as though it was suddenly worth it, and that in the hours of doubt when they’d questioned their choice, it was all a price to be paid for the moment of finality they were about to receive.  “Go, newest Vapour of the Blue-Grey, and cement your honor among us!”
    Wiglim cautiously approached the giant slab against which Merol was shackled. The traitor was bound at the feet, arms, torso, neck, and mouth. Wiglim had been an apprentice under Merol, and a violent stir of feelings trembled through his heart as he paced forth, executioner of his former master. Wiglim was young and talented, if not unwise—he had always shown much promise, and Terion’s decision had been easily made in letting Wiglim become the new Vapour of the Oreinen—though by some standards, Wiglim might not have warranted the title, being not yet as proficient as the title usually required.
    Merol trembled. His eyes bugged wide, darting around, from his erect slab of schist centered in the middle of the grand hall for all to see—he appeared frozen with fear, stricken by the shackles dug into the stone. All he could do was watch fervently as his former apprentice approached him to the great roar of a grand audience. As Wiglim came close he pushed aside his old affections and any goodwilled feelings he still harbored, deciding he would have to bend his entire thought on the deeds of Merol himself, rather than the person he once knew. It was the cost of his deeds that he faced this course of consequences. Anger at the old greying dwarf built within Wiglim as he finally stepped within reach of Merol’s shackles. The uproar of the onlookers died down instantaneously, as if they knew it was