The Gilded Rune

by Smedman, Lisa

  “Welcome home, Daffyd,” a voice beside him said. Torrin glanced to the side and saw his mother. She picked the cloth up from the bed, dipped it into a basin of ice water, and wrung it out. “We’ve seen you, what—twice?—these past ten years, and suddenly you decide to barge in on us out of thin air.” She shook her head and feigned a laugh. “Decided to test the shop’s protective wards, did you?”

  “You’ve added wards?” Torrin asked. “Business must be good.”

  “As it turns out, no,” his mother replied, suddenly serious. “The dwarves have sealed the gate to Eartheart. None of them are venturing out to Hammergate any more. They’re all trembling, right to the tips of their beards, about this new disease. The stoneplague, they call it. Thank goodness it doesn’t seem to affect … us.”

  Torrin’s mother had aged since he’d seen her last. The hair that was pulled up in a neat bun was a solid gray, and the lines beside her mouth had deepened. She was also heavier than Torrin remembered—the stool she sat on creaked as she leaned forward. But although her tone was as chiding as ever, her touch was gentle as she laid the cold cloth on Torrin’s scorched arm.

  “Where’s Eralynn?” he asked. “Is she all right?”

  “That dwarf woman you teleported in here with?” his mother replied. “The one with the strange hands?” Her lips turned down in a barely suppressed frown. “She’s spellscarred, you know.”

  “Really?” Torrin snapped back, falling back into his old habit of sarcasm. “How could you tell?”

  His mother ignored his retort. “She’s gone back to Eartheart, I suppose. Assuming she found enough gold for the cleansing. The temple is charging whatever the market will bear, I’m told.”

  Torrin winced, and immediately regretted it. The portions of his face that hadn’t been protected by the goggles or his beard stung from his burns. What stung worse was the news that Eralynn had just walked out on him. “When did she leave?” he asked.

  “Yesterday.”

  Torrin blinked. “I’ve been unconscious that long?”

  His mother’s lips tightened. “I was worried about you,” she replied. “But your dwarf friend said you’d be fine, once the backlash from the spellfire wore off. What were you up to? You didn’t blunder into a pocket of spellfire, did you?”

  “Nothing like that.” Torrin said, looking around the room. His toys and clothes had been packed away years before. All that remained of his childhood furnishings was the bed. Sunlight filtered through the room’s single grimy window—the one through which he’d snuck out onto the rooftop as a boy, to look down on the crowded streets below. Beyond the rooftops, he could see the high walls of Eartheart proper. There were more knights than usual patrolling the battlements. Making sure no one tried to slip past the quarantine, Torrin supposed.

  The attic was filled with crates and boxes. It had become a storeroom. But near the window was a crude drawing he’d done of himself, back when he was six—the year before he’d realized he was a dwarf born into a human family, and not a true human at all. The beardless boy that stared back at him from that drawing seemed as distant from the man he had become as the stars were from Faerûn.

  “Where’s the runestone I was holding when I teleported here?” he asked.

  “Your friend put it in your pack—which is over in the corner there. Safe,” his mother said reassuringly.

  “And my mace?”

  After a moment’s strained silence, she answered, “Also safe.”

  “Praise Moradin.”

  His mother stared at the silver hammers in his beard. “I see you’re still worshiping dwarf gods.”

  “Of course,” Torrin replied. “Why shouldn’t I worship my maker?”

  His mother closed her eyes and whispered something in a strained voice. Then she stared an age-old challenge into his eyes. “I’m your mother.”

  “I’ve never disputed that,” Torrin said.

  She held up a silencing finger. “For nine months, I bore you inside me,” she continued. “For seven years, you were a normal boy, with none of these flights of fancy. If I could only step back in time, I would never have taken that horrible weapon in trade.” She leaned forward, her eyes intense. “It was the mace that whispered its command word into your mind that day, Torrin. It had nothing to do with you. You’re not a dwarf.”

  Torrin sighed. Their conversation was familiar ground, so well trodden he could have been blindfolded and still followed the footprints of the words that would come. “The mace wouldn’t have spoken to me if I wasn’t of the Ironstar clan,” he said.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” his mother replied. “And if you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe one of those ‘longbeards’ you’re in such awe of. Your father consulted a loremaster, one you’ll have a great deal of respect for. According to Loremaster Indersson, it’s entirely possible for a human—a full human, not a whiff of dwarf anywhere about him—to use a weapon enchanted with dwarf magic. An enchanted weapon will speak to any who wields it, even a human, if his will is strong enough and the need is great. The loremaster assured your father that Moradin would never send a dwarf soul back to this realm in a human body.”

  “Yet it happened,” Torrin said, staring out of the window. “And it was done for a reason. I know it.”

  “You know nothing of the sort!” his mother said.

  He turned back to her. “I know you would have died that day, if I hadn’t killed that robber. I know that no seven-year-old human boy should have been able to do what I did.” He rose, stiffly, from the bed.

  “Torrin,” she said as she caught his hand. “Just tell me why. Did you need to be something more than the son of shopkeepers? Was that not enough for you? You’re a grown man now. It’s time to leave your childhood fantasies behind. Your father’s not getting any younger, you know. He could use your help.”

  Torrin gently removed her hand from his. “Where is Father?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “He didn’t want to speak to me?”

  “He has a shop to run. But he looked in on you, as you lay unconscious. He was just as worried as I was.”

  Torrin nodded. “And my bracers? Where are they?”

  His mother’s head drooped as she pointed at a corner of the attic room. “Over there.”

  Torrin gently patted her hand. “You’re still my mother,” he said reassuringly. “You still bore me. I’m just … not your son.”

  His mother made a choking sound and abruptly rose from her stool. As she hurried from the room, Torrin suddenly realized how those words must have stung. “Mother, I—”

  Too late. She was gone.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” Torrin finished. With a heavy sigh, he made his way over to the corner to collect his things.

  He was a dwarf. He was as certain of it as he was of the fact that he was alive. Yet one thing troubled him. “Home,” he’d told the runestone. The word had had come to him, out of nowhere—just as the command words for his mace had just popped into his head, those many years before. And he’d spoken it in Dwarvish. Faern, he’d said.

  Yet the runestone had brought him not to the Thunsonn clanhold, but to his parents’ shop, to his childhood home.

  “Torrin! Over here!”

  Eralynn waved to him from the long lineup that snaked its way back from the temple Torrin had visited upon his return from Needle Leap. The temple was an outreach to the tallfolk of Hammergate, and occupied what had once been a squat stone warehouse near one of the city gates. It was much lower than the woodframe shops on either side whose upper stories jutted out over the streets below.

  On each of the four corners of the temple’s rooftop, Sharindlar’s clerics had erected a steel needle like the ones used by lay healers to stitch wounds back together. But one in particular was as thick as a man’s arm and encased in perpetual flames—the goddess’s symbol. Magical mosaics on the walls below depicted Sharindlar, her arms raised and her dress flaring, giving the appearance that th
e goddess was dancing around the exterior of the temple.

  A knot of people clustered at the main entrance, demanding attention. A harried-looking novice did her best to reply to the crush of demands—the loudest of which seemed to be coming from a gray-bearded caravan master who kept shouting, over and over again, that he had a schedule to keep.

  Torrin pushed his way through the crowd, keeping an eye out for the two rogues who’d waylaid him, or anyone else who looked suspicious. But if anyone was following him, he was unable to spot them.

  There were two lines in front of the temple. A much longer one consisted of dwarves—most of them from settlements beyond Eartheart, judging by their dusty clothes. The other held a dozen or so humans, elves, and various other tallfolk races. Although there had been no reports of tallfolk succumbing to the stoneplague, the Deep Lords weren’t taking any chances. Everyone who entered the city had to be cleansed.

  Eralynn was near the front of the longer line, a few paces behind the bellowing caravan master and some husky dwarf bearers who were sitting on their packs, playing tumblebones. The caravan master was arguing that, since his bearers were only half human, they qualified as dwarves, and were entitled to have their tithe paid for out of the city coffers. Or at the very least, half of it.

  When he was even with the outdoor privies that had been set up to accommodate the needs of those in line, Torrin wrinkled his nose at the sour smell of excrement and unwashed bodies.

  “Eralynn!” he shouted, ignoring the grumbles of those who thought he was trying to butt into the wrong line. “I’m glad to see you’re all right. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  “Do you see this line?” she called back. Her eyes had dark circles under them, and she looked weary beyond words, he saw as he reached her side. “All day I’ve stood here, waiting my turn to go inside,” she continued. “You were in good hands, and I knew you’d catch up to me once you recovered, likely long before I made my way to the front of the line.”

  She peered up at him, frowning slightly. “The magic we invoked was strong,” she said. “It didn’t … leave its mark on you, did it?”

  Torrin glanced down at the hand that touched his. The magical energy that flickered across the back of Eralynn’s hands had faded to its usual dull glow.

  Torrin was touched by her concern. “No scars,” he said. “I’m—” He’d been about to say he was “clean.” He was glad to have stopped himself in time. “I’m fine,” he continued.

  Eralynn nodded. The line moved forward slightly as the bearers shouldered their packs and followed the caravan master into the temple. Some sort of agreement, it would appear, had at last been reached.

  “There’s a rumor they’re going to up the price for tallfolk,” Eralynn said. “There’s even talk they’ll fix a rate for the tithe for dwarves as well.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Gougers. Making a profit out of the stoneplague.”

  “Don’t say that!” Torrin said, warning her. He glanced nervously at the main entrance to the temple, where the priestess stood. “Even if the Merciful Maiden doesn’t hear you, the goddess might!”

  “It’s not Sharindlar I’m criticizing,” Eralynn whispered back fiercely. “For all you know, the goddess is thinking the same thing.”

  Torrin doubted it, but he didn’t want to continue so potentially blasphemous an argument. He changed the subject instead.

  “At least I know how my new trinket works now,” he told Eralynn, keeping his voice low in case anyone was listening. Elation filled him. “At long last, I can complete my quest!”

  “Please tell me you’re not going back to the Wyrmcaves,” Eralynn said.

  “No need,” he replied. “I’m sure there are other earth nodes I can use. I’ll just need to find a guide who can take me to one of them. To a safe node, this time.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?” Eralynn asked. “What if you say, ‘Take me to the Soulforge,’ and nothing happens? Or worse yet, the runestone takes not you, but your soul, straight to Moradin’s realm?” She glanced down at her hands. “Playing around with earth nodes can be a dangerous business, you know.”

  “I’m not asking you to come.”

  She glared up at him. “I’m not offering.”

  Torrin shifted uncomfortably. Had he insulted her? As he pondered that, his eye fell on a boy carrying fresh roasted mushrooms on a stick, one of the street vendors selling food and drink to the crowd. The boy was scrawny—barrel chested when compared to a human of a comparable age, but small compared to other dwarf boys his size—with hands stained yellow from mushroom picking. His clothes were poor and ill-fitting, but the coin pouch at his hip bulged. Business had obviously been brisk. Eralynn licked her lips and reached for her coin pouch, but Torrin wrinkled his nose at the smell.

  “What’s the matter?” Eralynn asked.

  “I visited Araumycos once,” Torrin explained. “Ever since then, the smell of mushrooms has made me sick.”

  “Oh,” she replied with a laugh. “For a moment there, I thought that maybe the boy had the stoneplague.” She waved at the mushroom seller. “You there, boy. Wait a moment!”

  Torrin noticed that he was suddenly no longer being jostled by the others in the line. A gap had opened around where he and Eralynn stood. A buzz of voices broke out all around them.

  “The stoneplague,” someone ahead of him whispered. “Did you hear? The boy has the stoneplague.”

  A moment later, the word rippled up and down the line.

  “The stoneplague!” a man just behind them shouted in a shrill voice. “The mushroom seller has the stoneplague!”

  Eralynn’s eyes widened. “No!” she insisted. “He doesn’t. I was just—”

  It was too late. The line surged backward, people tripping over one another in their haste to escape. Men shouted, one woman screamed, and an elderly man several paces away broke into a loud, quavering prayer. The once orderly line suddenly descended into a milling mob, people running to and fro. Eralynn, caught up in the surge, was swept away from Torrin’s side. Above it all, Torrin heard the temple cleric’s shrill voice, shouting for order. And, much closer at hand, the metallic snick of steel being drawn. It was the man who’d shouted that the boy had the stoneplague—a black-bearded dwarf with a dagger in his hand and a malicious look on his face. He bore down on the mushroom seller, his hard eyes firmly fixed on the boy’s coin pouch.

  Torrin didn’t have time to unfasten his mace from his belt. Instead he dove at the would-be thief’s back, tackling him. The rogue was tougher than Torrin had expected. He didn’t go down, but whirled, spinning Torrin off his feet. Torrin clung to the man, his feet scrambling for purchase, and finally managed to bring him down. The rogue twisted in Torrin’s grip like a greased eel, and Torrin felt a flash of pain as the blade of the knife nicked his ear. He flung himself sideways, both hands on the rogue’s knife hand now. They struggled, pitting strength versus strength, the rogue sputtering curses. From several paces behind him, Torrin heard Eralynn shouting to hang on, that she was coming. Then the rogue looked at Torrin. Torrin saw that the rogue’s eyes had a touch of the same dull, glassy look that Kendril’s had shown, and he felt an icy rivulet of fear course through him. The rogue’s eyes weren’t clouded enough yet to blind him, but the skin at the corners was the same: deeply cracked and as dark as mud.

  “Yes,” the thief hissed up at him. “I’ve got it.”

  He spat in Torrin’s face.

  Torrin let go of the man and flailed back, frantically rubbing the rogue’s spittle from his forehead. Had it run into his eyes? Was he going to catch the stoneplague and go blind?

  “That man has the stoneplague!” he screamed, pointing at the thief who was already several paces away and running hard. “Stop him!”

  It was the wrong thing to have said. The crowd, whipped into an even greater hysteria by the second mention of the stoneplague, elbowed, shoved, and screamed at each other in their increased urgency to get away from not one, but two possible sources
of contagion. One or two fell, and were nearly trampled as the mob surged back and forth. Torrin floundered to and fro as dwarves crashed into him, sending him staggering. By the time he had fought his way to where Eralynn stood, the street in front of the temple was rapidly emptying.

  Soon everyone was gone, except for the mushroom seller, who lay face down on the cobblestones, blood trickling from his nose. Mushrooms lay scattered about the street all around him, stamped into a slippery mush by the feet of the fleeing crowd.

  Eralynn’s eyes widened. “Moradin have mercy,” she said in a strained voice. “What have we done?”

  Torrin ground his teeth as he saw that the boy’s coin pouch was gone. Ordinarily, he’d have assumed that one of the tallfolk had taken it. He liked to think that dwarves had more honor than to steal from their own kind. But that didn’t seem to be the case.

  He glanced around but saw no sign of the rogue. He rubbed his stinging ear. Despite the attack, he didn’t think the fellow was connected to the two who’d jumped him. The theft from the mushroom seller had appeared spontaneous, prompted solely by greed.

  The cleric from the temple hurried forward to examine the fallen boy. She knelt beside him and gently lifted his head.

  Eralynn kneeled down beside her. “Is he—”

  “He’s alive,” the red-robed cleric said.

  “Praise Sharindlar.”

  “But he’ll need healing,” the Merciful Maiden added. “And soon. His skull is cracked.”

  Torrin, meanwhile, was thinking of the spit that had struck his face. He reminded himself that no human had yet succumbed to the stoneplague. Yet he wondered if that were also true of a human with a dwarf soul. In any case, a cleansing would take away whatever degree of illness the dwarf’s spittle had held. That was one thing Torrin could be certain of.

  He walked toward the cleric and the injured boy, feeling sick at the thought that his reaction to the stench of mushrooms had caused the situation. Eralynn must have felt equally guilty. He saw her open her coin pouch.