The Gilded Rune (forgotten realms)

by Lisa Smedman

  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 the 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 l
oud, 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.

  “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 th
e 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.