Mara held Ambril’s hand. She was the one who was crying. Sandor stood behind her, gripping her shoulders. He glanced at Torrin and grimly shook his head.
The Merciful Maiden bent over Ambril, praying softly. She held her hands over Ambril’s stomach, lacing her fingers together in a complicated pattern. The embossed silver disk that was her holy symbol swung slowly back and forth on its chain, like the pendulum of a clock winding down.
Haldrin sat on the ground, his back against one wall. He stared at the floor, his hands drooping between his knees. He didn’t even look up as Torrin entered.
Torrin approached the bed. As he drew closer, he saw a bloody knife on the floor. The Merciful Maiden had used it to performed a knife-birthing. The prayers she was using would knit Ambril’s stomach back together again, and ease the pain. The cleric’s face was pinched and pale. She had taken on most of Ambril’s pain during the cutting, something Sharindlar gave her clergy the strength to do.
Torrin suddenly realized what was missing: the sound of an infant’s cry. Two lumps lay on the bed, each wrapped in a bloodstained cloth. Neither was moving.
Mara caught his eye. “Dead!” she said in a strained voice. “Moradin has taken them both!”
Torrin halted as abruptly as if he’d been dashed with ice water. Then he remembered what everyone else seemed to have forgotten. The Merciful Maidens knew rituals that could raise the dead. The magical unguent needed for the ritual was terrifically expensive. Yet surely the gold bar in his hand would help cover the cost.
He stepped forward, trying to catch the Maiden’s eye. He held up the pouch. “This gold will pay for the unguent you need to resurrect these babes, and I’ll have more gold in short order. Thanks to the delves I’m planning, I should be able to raise several hundred Anvils, if not more …”
His voice trailed off as he realized the cleric wasn’t listening. Nor was anyone else. There should have been smiles and cries of relief. Instead, Mara whirled angrily on him.
“How dare you!” she cried. “Coming in here and bragging about your delves. Can’t you see it’s no use!”
“I …” Confused, Torrin turned to Sandor for an explanation.
Sandor stepped away from the bed and pulled Torrin aside. “They can’t be resurrected,” he said. He glanced back at Ambril and lowered his voice. “They’ve been dead too long. The Merciful Maiden says they’ve been dead for a tenday, maybe more.”
The Merciful Maiden finished her prayer. She touched Ambril’s head in a brief blessing and turned to the door.
Torrin hurried to her. “Merciful Maiden,” he said, “begging your pardon, but is there a chance you’re wrong about how long the babes have been dead?”
The cleric’s lips tightened. Her eyes were shadowed. “As I told the others, there’s nothing I can do.” She reached for the door.
Torrin caught her arm. He felt ridges under her sleeve, as if she were wearing chainmail beneath her robes. Strange. “Won’t you at least try?” he asked.
The cleric looked pointedly at her arm. Torrin hurriedly removed his hand.
“There is nothing I would like better than to save them,” she told him. “But … I can’t.”
She touched the disk that hung against her chest and turned briefly back to the bed. “May the gods bless this clanhold, and all in it,” she intoned. “A swift flight to the souls of the departed. May the gods greet them at Dwarfhome, where they will be forged anew.”
She left the room.
Torrin turned back to the others, still holding the pouch. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Sharindlar blessed this pregnancy—several times over. Ambril visited her temple every other day.”
“It’s the stoneplague,” Sandor said, his voice tense. “It’s here. In Eartheart.” His eyes fell to the bed. “That’s what killed them.”
Torrin felt as if he were going to be sick.
Ambril, still pale but healed, sat up suddenly. “My babies!” she wailed. “My babies!” She clawed for the bundles at the end of the bed. Mara grabbed her shoulders and yanked her back. “Don’t touch them!” Mara cried. “You’ll catch it too.”
“Show some sense, Mara,” Sandor retorted. “They were inside her. Touching them now won’t make a pebble of difference.”
Glaring back at him, Mara let go of her sister. Ambril grabbed the bundles and held them to her chest. A tiny foot, as gray and mottled as granite and covered in a froth of blood, peeked out of the end of one bundle. Ambril rocked back and forth on the bed, crying.
Torrin’s mouth felt dry. The stoneplague. Did the air in the bedchamber carry the disease? He fought down the urge to cover his mouth with his sleeve.
A second, even more chilling thought occurred to him. Was this all his fault? Had he somehow brought Kendril’s stoneplague back to Eartheart, despite his cleansing?
No, he told himself sternly. He’d been cleansed by Sharindlar. Unless … He glanced down at the gold bar in his hands. Was the one he’d used to pay for his third cleansing actually a worthless fake, as Eralynn had suspected? Had the goddess removed her previous blessings from him in retaliation for her tithe being paid in pyrite?
No, Torrin thought, staring at the dead babes. The goddess of mercy would never be so cruel. Long before she’d harm an innocent babe, she would strike Torrin himself down.
Sandar stood apart from the others, hands wringing the tip of his beard. “They’re going to quarantine us,” he said in a hoarse voice. “In this room. We won’t be allowed out.” His eyes were wide as he glanced around the room. He’d been in a cave-in, years before, and had lain a tenday with his legs trapped by fallen stone, surrounded by the groans of the dying and the reek of the dead. It had left him with a morbid fear of being closed in.
That, at least, was something Torrin could help with. “Ease yourself, Sandar,” he told Mara’s husband. “They may quarantine the clanhold, but they won’t lock us in just one room. And it will only be until the Merciful Maiden comes back to cleanse us.”
“She’s not coming back,” Haldrin spat.
The others all turned to stare at him. Haldrin still sat on the floor by the wall. Finally, he raised his head. His eyes were red with tears, and his laugh was bitter. “You heard what the Merciful Maiden said,” he continued. “She can’t cure the stoneplague. We’re all going to die.”
Mara visibly fumed. “Nonsense,” she said, hugging her sister’s shoulders. “That’s not what she said. She couldn’t resurrect the babes because they’ve been dead too long.”
“Weren’t you listening?” Haldrin said. His red eyes glared defiantly. “The Merciful Maiden never spoke those words herself. She just nodded when you asked if that was the reason. It’s not commonly known, but a cleric can raise someone who’s been dead a month—or even longer—if a Ritual of Repose is cast on the body. The Merciful Maiden wasn’t lying about being unable to save the babes, but she wasn’t telling us the truth about why. The truth is, Sharindlar’s clerics can’t cure the stoneplague.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Mara cried. “Sharindlar would never withhold her healing magic, especially from innocent babes. Moradin himself wouldn’t permit it.”
Haldrin’s laugh had a wild edge to it. “Just like he wouldn’t permit the collapse of the Rift, or the fall of Underhome?” he cried. He flung out a hand, pointing. “Moradin let my babies die! What kind of god countenances that?”
“Stop it!” Mara cried. “You’re sounding like Father now.”
“Maybe your father was right,” Haldrin spat back. “The gods care as little for us as we do for the ants underfoot.”
“I won’t hear it!” Mara screeched. “Stop this blasphemy! You’re going to bring the stoneplague upon us all!”
Sandor was breathing heavily. He edged to the door. “I won’t,” he gasped. “I won’t be trapped here. I won’t.” He yanked the door open and bolted from the room.
Ambril sat on the bed, rocking the bloody bundles. “Sunder and Sorn,” she moaned. “That�
��s what we were going to call you. Oh, my babies. My little ones.”
A part of Torrin’s mind registered the fact that they were boys’ names, and that he’d lost his bet with Kier. Not that it mattered any more.
“Their souls are with Moradin,” Mara said, trying to ease the dead babes out of her sister’s arms. “In his realm. Coddled and protected by the gods. They’ll return to the world again one day. Take comfort in that.”
“Your father didn’t find any comfort in that,” Haldrin said. “Why should we?”
Torrin turned, unable to listen any more. As he did, something crunched underfoot—a chunk of dried mud on the floor. He glanced down at it, wondering whose boot it had come from. Then he realized that the spot had been where the Merciful Maiden was standing when he grasped her arm—the arm that had felt so strangely rough. His mouth went dry as he realized what he was staring at. It was a chunk of calcified flesh, the same color and texture as Kendril’s broken finger.
The Merciful Maiden the temple had sent to aid Ambril with the birthing had the stoneplague.
He used his foot to scuff the chunk of tainted flesh into a corner, where it wouldn’t be stepped on by anyone else. Not that it really mattered. Everyone in the room had either touched the dead babes already, or had breathed in their taint.
Including him.
Ambril’s voice rose to a wail again. Her rocking grew more violent. “My babies!” she cried.
Mara and Haldrin were shouting at each other in a stupid, pointless argument about Moradin and whether he was truly merciful, about whether Haldrin echoing her father’s “blasphemous” beliefs had brought the curse of the stoneplague down upon their clanhold. If they weren’t careful, they would indeed prod Moradin into hurling a curse down upon them.
“For the love of the gods!” Torrin bellowed. “Haldrin, your wife needs you. Tend to her. And you, Mara. Go after your husband and stop him before he panics everyone in Eartheart!”
Both blinked, chastised. Without bothering to see if they did as he’d ordered, Torrin whirled and ran out of the door. His first impulse was to follow Kendril’s advice, to hurry those he loved out of Eartheart, as far from the city as they could run. Instead he ran past Kier’s room, in the direction the Merciful Maiden had gone.
He caught up to her in the Hall of the Fountain, a vast room that echoed softly with the sound of splashing water. During the day it would have been filled with people, coming to fill water kegs at the fountain’s brass taps. At that hour of the night, it was empty.
“Merciful Maiden!” he shouted.
She kept walking.
Anger flushed his cheeks. “I know you have the stoneplague!” he called.
She halted abruptly. Slowly, she turned. “That’s not something you should be shouting,” she said in a low voice.
Torrin moved in front of her, panting slightly from his run. “You admit it,” he said.
She touched the disk at her chest. “Sharindlar will not permit a lie.”
“What in the Nine Hells was your order thinking?” Torrin blurted out. “They sent a cleric who’s diseased—to a birthing!”
The Merciful Maiden raised a hand as if to touch his shoulder in sympathy, but let it fall to her side as Torrin glared her down. “I pose no danger,” she said. “The stoneplague isn’t spread by touch or by breath. Nor by spittle or by blood.”
Torrin bit back the urge to shout that she was lying. “How can you know that?” he asked.
“The woman who gave birth tonight wasn’t the first one afflicted,” the cleric replied. “Dozens of others, here in Eartheart, have come down with the stoneplague in the past few days. The family members who’ve tended them have all remained healthy, even without the benefit of a healing ritual. In contrast, the Merciful Maidens who have fallen ill—who continued in their duties, unaware that they were afflicted with the stoneplague—did not spread the contagion to those they ministered to.”
“You’re not the only Merciful Maiden with the stoneplague?” Torrin asked, horrified.
“No.”
“But why don’t you heal yourselves?”
The cleric sighed wearily. “We’ve tried. We can’t. Much as it pains me to admit it, Sharindlar appears to be powerless over this illness. But you needn’t worry. We’re not spreading the stoneplague. That’s the one thing we’re certain of.”
“What about … other gods?” Torrin asked as diplomatically as he could. “Couldn’t a cleric from Berronar Truesilver’s temple heal you?”
“When it seemed Sharindlar had turned her face from us, we tried just that,” she said. “We also took one of the afflicted to an elf healer, but it was no use. The cleric’s prayers to Corellon also went unanswered. Nor were magical potions effective.” The Merciful Maiden looked on the verge of tears. “There’s nothing any of us can do.”
Her words turned Torrin’s veins to ice. If the Maidens couldn’t even heal themselves, Haldrin was right.
Eartheart was doomed.
“More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.”
Delver’s Tome, Volume I, Chapter 3, Entry 683
KIER SAT AT THE TABLE IN THE CLANHOLD’S COMMON room, frowning down in concentration at the soft wax tablet. He moved the stylus with slow, deliberate strokes, copying the runes from the story tablet. Torrin stared over the boy’s shoulder, supervising the lesson, occasionally reaching down to rotate the round wax tablet so that the inscription would spiral inward correctly.
“That’s not bad,” Torrin commented. “But if you’d just take off those gauntlets, you’d have an easier time of it.”
Kier shook his head without looking up.
Torrin sighed. The gauntlets—toy replicas of those worn by the Steel Shields—were made of leather, but even so they hindered Kier as he tried to write. The boy insisted on wearing them all the time, even to bed. No one reprimanded him, however. The family was still grieving the death of the newborn twins, and Ambril herself had fallen ill with the stoneplague. It was as if the disease, no longer having babes to feed upon, had turned its attention to the mother instead. Ambril was too ill to rise from her bed, and Haldrin was run ragged caring for her, nearly frantic with worry he’d lose her, too. It had fallen to Torrin to watch over Kier, to keep some sense of order and routine in the boy’s life.
Torrin stared down at what Kier had just written. “It’s delvar, ‘to dig,’ ” he corrected. “You’ve scribed deladar, which means ‘to descend.’ Here, let me show you.” He tried to take the stylus.
“No!” Kier shouted. “I’ll do it.” He yanked the stylus back with such force that his hand knocked over a drinking mug that had been on the table beside him. Ginger beer spilled everywhere, splashing onto the tablets and soaking Kier’s sleeves.
“Now look what you made me do!” Kier shrilled.
Torrin kneeled beside the boy. “It’s all right, Kier,” he said. “We’ve done enough for today. Let’s stop.” He picked up the stylus rag and dabbed at the tablets. But when he tried to pat dry Kier’s gauntlets, however, the boy reared back. It was as if he didn’t want Torrin to touch his hands.
Torrin suddenly felt his face pale. “Kier,” he said in a low firm voice. “Take off your gauntlets.”
“No!” Kier cried as he shot to his feet, nearly knocking over the bench.
Torrin clasped his shoulder gently. “Kier, you can trust me. I’m your delving partner, remember? Your uncle. Whatever’s wrong, you can tell me.”
Slowly, jerkily, Kier took off his left gauntlet. Torrin knew, the instant he saw the first wince of pain, what he would see. The sight, however, still made him ill, made him feel as if he’d been punched in the stomach hard enough to make him vomit. Kier’s fingers were crooked and gray; the discoloration had spread up his hands, almost to the wrists.
The stoneplague.
“Oh, Kier,” Torrin said in a hoarse whisper. He held out his arms. Kier fell gratefully into them, allowing himself to be hugged. To
be touched.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Torrin asked.
Kier buried his face in Torrin’s shirt. “Everyone’s so scared,” he said in a muffled voice. “I worried what people would do to me. People are acting so … badly. I’ve seen what they do.”
Torrin felt his anger rise. He pulled back slightly so the boy would meet his eye. “Nobody’s going to hurt you,” he said. “If they try, I’ll—”
“Moradin is punishing me, isn’t he?” Kier whispered, an anguished look in his eyes. “I’ve offended the Dwarffather.”
Torrin grasped the boy’s shoulders firmly. “Nonsense,” he said. “You’re a fine boy. What could you possibly have done?”
“I … don’t obey my parents,” Kier whispered, his eyes locked on the floor. “I sneak out. And … I took grandfather’s griffon—and that gold bar. Now the gods are punishing me. The very next day after I flew to the earthmote, my fingers started to feel funny.”
“Kier, listen,” Torrin said. Gently, he lifted the boy’s chin. “That gold bar was yours by law. It was an honest find. You know what they say: ‘Delvers, keepers.’ I was there, too, and the stoneplague hasn’t touched me.”
“Of course not,” Kier said, meeting Torrin’s eyes briefly before glancing away again. “Because you’re …”
The unspoken word hung in the air between them for an uncomfortable moment.
“Human,” Torrin said at last, the word coming out as a sigh. In all those years, Kier had never once called him that.
Kier gave the slightest of nods, further twisting the dagger in Torrin’s heart. “Everyone knows the stoneplague only strikes dwarves,” he said.
Torrin opened his mouth to protest. But no words came. He was a dwarf, no question of that. Until that moment, he’d fully expected to eventually succumb to the disease. And yet, he was forced to admit, his body was indisputably human, and thus he likely would never have to fear the stoneplague. He …
“Moradin smite me,” Torrin cried as the implication struck home. “That’s why he did it!”
The Gilded Rune Page 12