The Gilded Rune

by Smedman, Lisa

  “Please,” Eralynn said, insisting. “Let me pay for his healing.”

  As Torrin drew closer, he was surprised to see that it wasn’t coins Eralynn had inside her pouch, but a bar of gold, exactly the same size and shape and color as those he’d seen in the earthmote!

  The Merciful Maiden waved it away. “No need,” she said. “We can afford to extend a little charity.”

  As the priestess carried the boy into the temple, Torrin caught Eralynn’s eye. “Where did you get that?” he asked, nodding at the pouch.

  Eralynn, he noticed, had taken a step back from him, probably uncomfortable with the fact that he’d just wrestled with someone who had the stoneplague. “Why do you ask?” she said.

  She sounded evasive. Torrin could guess why. She’d obviously explored the earthmote herself and found the gold. Just as he had, she’d kept quiet about it, not even telling her best friend. Instead, she’d taken the gold for herself. And Torrin would be left, cap in hand, begging for a portion of what they might instead have shared equally, if only he’d told Eralynn about his find.

  “Did you take all of it?” he asked in a defeated voice.

  “All of what?” Eralynn asked. “The rope?”

  “What rope?” he asked.

  One of Eralynn’s eyebrows rose. “Are we talking about the same thing?”

  “The earthmote,” Torrin said. “You found it, right?”

  “What earthmote?”

  Torrin felt his eyes widen. “The … Ah …”

  Eralynn waited, tapping her foot. “What earthmote?” she repeated. “Or is that some secret delve of yours you’re not going to tell me about?”

  “Not my delve—Kier’s,” Torrin replied.

  “What?” Eralynn hissed.

  Dropping his voice to a whisper, Torrin quickly told her the story of Kier’s flight to the earthmote, and what they’d found inside. He didn’t get far, however, before she halted him.

  “Oh, Torrin,” she said. “You didn’t hear. The Peacehammers found your gold yesterday. Uncle Baelar said they claimed it for the city coffers, in the name of the Lord Scepter. It’s helping to pay for the cleansings.”

  Torrin opened and closed his mouth, unable to speak. “It’s … gone? All of it?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it sooner?” Eralynn asked.

  “It … I …” He hung his head and gave a rueful sigh. “Greed. And now the gods have punished me for it.”

  She stared at him in silence for several moments. Then she surprised him by laughing. “I’d have done the same.”

  “Really?” he asked, meeting her eye.

  “Really. That much gold would tempt anyone.”

  “So … where did you get that gold bar?”

  “I got it in change, when I purchased the rope we used to descend to Wyrmtrap portal. Mercuria said he didn’t have any gold coins, and he gave me the gold bar instead.”

  “Mercuria?” Torrin echoed. “You bought that rope at Mercuria’s store?”

  “Now just a moment,” Eralynn retorted. “Don’t go lecturing me about dealing with a tiefling. I know full well where his merchandise comes from, and I don’t care. He’s got the best prices in town. All of the Delvers buy from him.” She glanced down at the gold bar. “But you’re right. I should have been more cautious. The exchange rate was a little too favorable.”

  She glanced up again as she continued. “I wasn’t a complete babe in the wolf’s den, however. I figured the talismonger might be trying to pass off gilt over dross. But when I scratched the bar with a nail, it was soft as butter—solid gold, all right. Or at least, I think it was.”

  She stared down into the pouch. “You’re going to tell me this is really lead, aren’t you?” she said. “That Mercuria used magic to trick me.”

  “Let me see it,” Torrin said. Keeping the gold bar inside the pouch, where it wouldn’t attract so much attention, he examined it. He spotted something amiss right away. “See this rune, next to the purity stamp?”

  She peered at it. “What of it?”

  “It’s been carelessly done,” he replied. “One of the lines in the ‘one hundred’ rune is shorter than the others. And the horns on the crescent that marks it as being from the Waterdeep mint have the wrong curve. This might be gold, but the minter’s mark is a forgery. I’ll bet someone shaved the original bar down, then recast it with just enough of another metal in the mix that a casual observer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

  Eralynn raised an eyebrow. “How do you know so much about currency?”

  “I used to help my human parents tend the store, remember?” Torrin replied. “We had to be careful what we took in trade.” He yanked the pouch’s drawstrings tight. “The real question is, how did one of the bars from the earthmote wind up in Mercuria’s possession?”

  “That’s easy enough,” Eralynn said. “You said yourself how alluring gold can be. One of the skyriders pocketed it, then used it to buy something at Mercuria’s shop.”

  “No skyrider would do such a thing!” Torrin said in protest.

  Eralynn shook her head. “You may be a dwarf at heart, Torrin, but there’s much you’ve yet to learn about the hearts of dwarves.”

  Torrin tried to hand the pouch back to her, but Eralynn refused it. “Keep it,” she said.

  “But it’s valuable!” he said.

  “You need to pay for your cleansing,” she replied as she shook her head. “If your mother had given me a chance, I would have left the gold with her to pass along to you. But she wasn’t very polite.” She glanced down at her hands and sighed. “Not that I’m unused to that.”

  “It wasn’t your hands,” Torrin told her. “She just … has a bit of trouble talking to dwarves, sometimes. She blames the stout folk for … Well, for this.” He gestured at his beard.

  “Ah,” Eralynn said, looking somewhat mollified. “Still, even if the bar isn’t full value, it’s enough to pay your tithe. So keep it.”

  Torrin opened his mouth to thank Eralynn, but his eyes fell, just then, on the Merciful Maiden who had just appeared at the entrance. Maliira. Torrin held up his left hand to display the ribbons, and waved. Maliira nodded back at him. Was she smiling? He couldn’t tell. She crooked a finger, beckoning him closer.

  “You know her?” Eralynn said.

  “A little. Not as well as I’d like,” he replied.

  Eralynn suddenly turned and walked away.

  Torrin was taken aback by her abrupt departure. “Wait!” he called after her. “I wanted to thank …”

  But Eralynn had turned the corner. Torrin scratched his head. If he hadn’t known better, he might have guessed that she felt affection for him. But she’d made it clear many times in the past that they were just friends. Fellow Delvers, nothing more.

  He shrugged, then strode to the spot where Maliira stood. “You wanted to talk to me?” he asked her.

  “It’s your turn for a cleansing, it would seem,” Maliira told him. “Since you’re the only one left in line.”

  Torrin smiled. “Will you administer the blessing?”

  “No,” she replied, waving a hand at the people who were starting to venture—albeit timidly—back to the street in front of the temple. The line was beginning to reform. “I’m needed here, to keep order until the Steel Shields arrive. Some idiot, apparently, accused someone else in line of having the stoneplague, and nearly started a riot.”

  Torrin was thankful his beard hid the flush of his cheeks. “Ah. Yes. Stupid thing to do,” he said.

  “What he should have done was quietly pull the afflicted person aside and bring him to the front of the line, so we could heal him,” Maliira continued.

  “Yes, yes, of course. That’s exactly what he should have done,” Torrin agreed.

  Was it just his imagination, or was she giving him an accusing look?

  He needed to change the subject. “This time, I’ll be able to pay my tithe,” he said. He lifted the pouch Eralynn had given him and ope
ned it with a flourish, drawing out the gold bar.

  Maliira took it from him and stared at it thoughtfully. For a moment, Torrin thought she was going to reject it as payment. She further alarmed him by glancing around somewhat furtively, and drawing her dagger.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is my tithe … insulting in some way?”

  “Quite the contrary,” she said. “It’s very generous. Now hold out your left hand.”

  Torrin did as he was bid.

  She sliced the two ribbons off his wrist. “Your debt is absolved,” the priestess said.

  Torrin rubbed his bare wrist. “But … I promised to pay for the previous two cleansings,” he said. “And I always keep my oaths.”

  Maliira didn’t seem to be listening to his protests.

  “I was told what you said in the Council chamber,” she said, sheathing her dagger. “You were very brave.”

  “I was merely doing my duty as a citizen of Eartheart,” he replied.

  “Yet you’re not a citizen. You’re human.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. As I told you the first time we met: I’m a dwarf.” He thumped his chest. “Here. On the inside.”

  “Regardless of whether that’s the truth or a pretty fantasy, you have the honor and the courage of a dwarf. It seems unfair you should pay when you’ve already done so much.”

  “Nevertheless, I will pay,” Torrin insisted. “As promised.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “Is your insistence on payment just an excuse to dance with me on Midsummer Night?”

  Torrin grinned as he replied, “Does the coal in a forge glow red?”

  Maliira smiled. “Off you go, then,” she said. “Get cleansed. That way, they’ll have no excuse to haul you before the Council again.”

  “Until Midsummer then,” Torrin said.

  “Until Midsummer.”

  Torrin entered the temple, still grinning. He might have lost all of the gold in the earthmote, but somehow, ironically, his footsteps felt all the lighter. The weight of the gold had lain upon his shoulders, filling him with anxiety and guilt. In truth, he was glad to be rid of it. And he had something much, much better to look forward to.

  He still had to raise the hundred Anvils he’d stubbornly insisted on paying, but as a result of his foray into the Wyrmcaves, he realized the solution to that problem was already at hand. Once the other Delvers learned that the runestone was capable of taking them anywhere they wanted to go, they would pay Torrin whatever price he asked to transport them to their delves. Dorn, for example, would pay a pretty price to find the lost tomb of Velm Dragonslayer—and he was just the start.

  Whistling cheerfully, Torrin made his way to the temple’s lower level. After seeing Maliira again, a plunge into an ice-cold sacred pool was just the thing he needed.

  1306 DR

  THE YEAR OF THUNDER

  “A babe is more precious than gold. And twin babes, twice as precious.”

  Dwarven Proverb

  MORADIN SAT UPON HIS THRONE, HIS WARHAMMER resting across his knees, his bracers gleaming redgold in the light of the Soulforge. His long white beard lay against his chest and lap, hiding his smith’s apron and leather leggings. His expression was grim as he stared down upon the face of Faerûn.

  “My children,” he observed. “They are diminishing.”

  Berronar Truesilver, matron of home and hearth, sat on her own massive stone throne beside her husband. She stared down at the clanholds of the dwarves, a hand stroking one of the four neat plaits of her beard. Her lips moved in silence as she counted. “I am saddened, my husband,” she noted. “Not since the fall of Bhaerynden to the drow have we seen so many empty clanholds.”

  “Many souls have been lost,” Moradin observed. He gestured toward the Soulforge, at the ghostly dwarves who stood in line behind it, awaiting their turn to be reforged. “Fewer of them return to us each year, and thus fewer each year are reborn. Something must be done.”

  He raised a clenched hand. A shield appeared in it. Moradin lifted his warhammer, and struck the shield. It rang like a gong, summoning the lesser deities who served him. Clanggedin Silverbeard was the first of the Morndinsamman to appear. He materialized at the right hand of Moradin, garbed for battle in blood-splattered chainmail, with a matched set of mithril axes in his hands. His eyes darted back and forth. “Am I summoned to battle?” he cried with a ferocious scowl. “Where is the enemy?”

  Moradin lowered his hammer and shield. “Stand easy, Lord of Battle,” he told Clanggedin Silverbeard. “I call you not to a contest of arms, but to a conference.”

  Clanggedin heaved a great sigh, disappointment etched plain on his face. He lowered his axes. “Very well, my Lord.”

  Dugmaren Brightmantle came hurrying in next, a heavy, leather-bound book tucked under one arm, his bright blue cloak fluttering behind him. The god of scholarship wore round-lensed spectacles, although, being divine, he had no real need for them. His long hair was thinning on top, and recessed at the temples. “You have need of my knowledge, my Lord?” he asked. His voice was a contradiction: a whisper that carried clearly.

  “Or my gold?” another voice asked. The speaker was Dumathoin, god of buried wealth, and the patron deity of those who mined and worked the earth’s noble metals and precious gems. Dumathoin was barrel-chested, with earth-brown skin and eyes that gleamed like silver. His arms were as well-muscled as those of a miner or a smith, and he carried a mattock in one hand. Rock dust smudged his face.

  “Indeed I do!” boomed a voice that was a duplicate of Moradin’s own. “Give it to me; I command you!” A hand thrust out from behind Moradin, pushing between his right arm and his side, pretending to be Moradin’s own.

  Moradin turned, and saw Vergadain crouching behind his throne. The trickster god let out a peal of laughter as he pulled his hand back.

  Moradin would have chastised Vergadain, but was distracted as Sharindlar danced lightly into view. The goddess of healing and mercy was seductive in every movement, from the slightest toss of her flame red hair to the twitch of her delicate fingers. Desire rose in Moradin as his eyes lingered upon her curves—desire that he only just managed to quench as Berronar cleared her throat to remind him that his wife was seated next to him.

  Moradin turned and gave Berronar a rueful smile. Out of the corner of his eye, however, he continued to watch Sharindlar’s dance, as smitten as any mortal by her beauty.

  Abbathor was the final deity to respond to Moradin’s summons. He strolled in languidly, seemingly more interested in cleaning his fingernails with the point of his diamond-bladed dagger than in whatever the Lord of the Morndinsamman had to say. He would likely be of little assistance; Abbathor was well known for only being of aid when there was something he could gain in return.

  “I have summoned you on a matter that is vital to us all,” Moradin told the assembled gods. “Behold Faerûn. The dwarves who dwell upon it are fewer in number than ever in their history. Our worshipers are diminishing. Should they decline too dramatically, it could spell our doom. For what are we gods, without mortals to pay us homage?”

  With that, he had even Abbathor’s attention.

  “I have done an accounting,” said Dugmaren. He opened his book and pushed his spectacles up with a finger so that they sat a little more firmly on his nose. “The trouble lies in the fact that not every dwarf soul reaches our realm. A certain portion are lost each year from the Fugue Plain. Some are snared by demons before we can claim them; others are lacking in faith and so stray from the path and lose their way. Still others are lost because they have sworn their allegiance to other deities, and thus are claimed by those gods.”

  “It fills me with such sorrow,” Berronar said, “to think that there are dwarves who lose their way back to hearth and home.”

  Moradin’s mind, however, was fixed on the latter point Dugmaren had raised. He stared down at the assembled Morndinsamman with a steely eye. “We Morndinsamman must work harder to keep our chosen
people within the fold,” he said. “I will not have the fruits of my labors stolen from me!”

  “I must point out that only a small fraction of souls are lost to other gods,” Dugmaren hastily amended. “The greater number are lost because so many are dying in battle. There are simply too many dwarf souls wandering the Fugue Plain for us to collect them all.”

  “We must smite the enemies of the dwarves!” Clanggedin suddenly shouted. “Lay waste to those who are decimating the clanholds. Permit me to manifest on Faerûn, Lord Moradin, and I shall lead the dwarf armies to victory!”

  “Fool,” Abbathor spat. “Leading the dwarves into battle will only cause them to die in even greater numbers. And then where will we be?” He pointed his dagger at the Soulforge. “Even more souls will be lost to the perils of the Fugue Plain. And those souls that do find their way here will be lined up at the Soulforge a thousand deep. There won’t be any dwarves left alive to worship us.”

  Clanggedin whirled to face Abbathor, his face red with wrath. “Since when do you care about the souls of the dead?” he shouted. “All you care about is how many offerings the living can heap upon your altars.”

  Clanggedin raised his paired axes. Dull red forge light glinted off their mithril blades. Abbathor roused from his slouch, his dagger at the ready.

  “Clanggedin! Abbathor!” Moradin shouted, his voice pealing like thunder. “I must remind you of your sworn oaths. Lower your weapons, the pair of you.”

  The two lesser deities held their glares a moment more. Then each did as Moradin had bid.

  Sharindlar broke the silence that followed. “It is not death we should be contemplating, but birth,” she said in a melodious voice. One hand strayed to her belly and caressed it, like a pregnant woman feeling for the life within. “The more dwarves who are born, the more worshipers we shall have.”

  “And how will we manage that?” Vergadain countered, leaning, somewhat irreverently, on the arm of Moradin’s throne. He strode over to the line of souls who waited before the Soulforge, approaching one near the front of the line—a graybeard whose ghostly form held a hand to the small of his back, as if he could still feel the aches a lifetime of toil had produced.