by Lisa Smedman
“Maliira,” the cleric said, as if trying to place the name.
“Maliira of Clan Gallowglar,” Torrin said. “She’s a devotee of the Lady of Life. Here, at this temple.”
The cleric shook her head. “She’s ill. The stoneplague.” She started to close the door.
Torrin groaned. Not Maliira, as well.
“I think I know what caused the stoneplague,” Torrin insisted.
“Oh you do, do you?” the cleric said, weariness weighting each word like a stone. “Tell me then, human. What is it the most learned dwarf clerics and sages and loremasters have thus far overlooked?”
“I can’t tell you that yet. Not until I’m certain.”
She sighed. “Just as I suspected.”
Torrin wedged his foot in the door. “Please!” he cried. “I need to talk to Maliira for a few moments. Then I’ll know if my guess is correct. In return, I’d be happy to assist the temple in whatever way I can.” He gestured at the silver hammers in his beard. “I’m a devout follower of Moradin. I pay homage to all of the Morndinsamman; I’ll do nothing disrespectful. Surely the temple can use an extra pair of hands.”
The cleric at last relented. “That we can,” she said.
She led him to the sickroom where Maliira lay, after stopping at the kitchen where Torrin, at her order, collected a tray with soup and bread. When they reached Maliira’s room, the older cleric hurried away. Obviously, she was needed elsewhere. And just as obviously, she was uninterested in his theories.
Torrin hesitated in the doorway, shocked at how ill Maliira looked. Her hair was disheveled, and her cheeks looked gray. A faint odor like damp clay-the distinctive smell of the stoneplague-filled the air. Maliira rose slightly from her bed, propping herself up on an elbow. Her beautiful dark eyes had turned nearly solid white. “Who’s there?” she asked, her voice faint. “Have you brought supper?”
“I…” Torrin said, swallowing hard. “I have.”
He glanced away. He wanted to look anywhere but at those marble white eyes. A wardrobe held robes and other personal belongings. A portrait of an older dwarf couple, likely Maliira’s parents, stood in a silver frame on the bureau. A jumble of scrolls and rune tablets on a nearby desk suggested that Maliira liked to read. Torrin felt a pang-the pleasure had been stolen from her.
“Torrin!” she said. “I thought I recognized your voice. I just wish you didn’t have to see me like…” she gestured at her face. “Like this.” She looked embarrassed. She struggled to a sitting position as Torrin placed the tray on a table next to her bed. “If you’ve come to dance with me, you’re too late.”
Torrin straightened. “What do you mean?”
“Midsummer Night was last night,” she replied.
“Oh… Yes. I’m sorry. I should have remembered. With all that’s been happening…”
“Not that it matters. I’m in no condition to dance. And I’m… not exactly pleasing to look at any more, am I?”
“It’s what’s inside that matters,” Torrin answered truthfully. “Believe me-I know. But that’s not what I came to talk about. I came to offer you an apology.”
“For what?” she asked, a hint of bitterness creeping into her voice. “Have you offended the gods, as we seem to have done?”
Gently, he guided one of her hands to the bowl of soup and handed her a spoon. “I think I know why you came down with the stoneplague,” he said.
“Then tell me what Sharindlar cannot,” Maliira responded angrily, her soup as yet untouched. “Why is the goddess punishing us?”
“I don’t believe it’s a punishment,” Torrin said. “There’s another reason why the Merciful Maidens are coming down with the stoneplague.”
Maliira sipped her soup quietly. But she was still listening.
“Tell me when you first felt ill,” Torrin prompted. “When did you notice the first signs of the stoneplague?”
Maliira thought a moment. “It was just after you came to the temple for that third cleansing. The day that poor boy was beaten by the mob. A day or two afterward, I noticed my eyesight was dimming.”
Torrin nodded. Her answer was exactly what he’d expected and exactly what he’d dreaded. He wanted to slam a fist into the wall, to rage around the room shouting. Instead, he gently touched Maliira’s hand. “It’s as I feared,” he said. Your illness was… my fault.”
“Your fault?” Maliira shook her head. “How? You weren’t unseemly during your visits to the temple. I noticed your desire, but you gave no offense to Sharindlar. You even paid the tithe that third time, despite my absolving you from payment.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. The tithe,” Torrin said. He rose to pace the room, too restless to stand still. “The stoneplague is only affecting some of the Merciful Maidens. Is that right?”
Maliira nodded.
“It’s striking down those of your order who handled the tithes paid by the city, isn’t it?” he continued. “Those who touched the gold bars that were identical to the one I gave you.”
Maliira stared up at him with unseeing eyes. “How do you know this?”
“Clues. Observations. Dreams.”
“Dreams?”
“Never mind,” Torrin said. “The point is, the vast majority of those in Eartheart who fall ill are wealthy-people who handle a lot of gold. Several Peacehammers are also ill, I’m told-those who recovered the gold bars found in the earthmote. And then there’s Kendril. I wondered why he wanted his clanfolk paid in gems, why he seemed so certain I wouldn’t catch the ‘illness’ from him. Now I know.”
Torrin continued to pace. “I could list other clues: the fact that, for example, the stoneplague almost never strikes down children because they aren’t typically entrusted with gold. But it doesn’t matter. The stoneplague isn’t a disease; it’s some sort of necrotic magic at work. Those gold bars were cursed. They’re what we need to quarantine. Lock them away and never let anyone near them. They’re the source of the contagion.”
He heard a loud crash behind him. Maliira was standing, the table and soup overturned on the floor. She was trembling, a stricken look on her face.
“I’m so sorry,” Torrin said. He wondered if he should go to her side and comfort her. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
“We didn’t know,” she said in an anguished voice. “We didn’t know!”
“Of course you didn’t,” he replied. “Nor was it your fault. It was mine. I was the one who caused that gold to be found by the skyriders.” Kier and I, he thought, but he didn’t say that.
“That’s not what I meant!” she said, her face wild. She clenched her fists, tears streaming down her face. “You’re not an initiate in the mysteries, so you can’t know. The tithes we’ve been collecting… We use the gold in our rituals. Every full moon, we sacrifice a portion of what we take in. The tithes are melted down and poured as offerings.”
“Poured? Where?” Torrin asked.
“Into the sacred pools,” Maliira replied. “Here, at this temple. At the temple in Eartheart.” She sagged onto the bed. “No wonder our healing rituals haven’t worked. We haven’t been cleansing people-we’ve been cursing them. Sharindlar have mercy. We’re the cause of this!”
Torrin felt as if he were going to be ill. So that was how Ambril and her stillborn twins had become infected.
His thoughts turned to Eralynn. He hadn’t seen her since the day they had stood in line outside the temple. Surely she’d succumbed already-she’d had one of the gold bars in her possession and had, presumably, gone for a cleansing in the temple later that day. Or had she? Eralynn hadn’t returned to the clanhold, and no one seemed to know where she was. Maybe she lay ill somewhere, slowly dying?
The thought was too much for Torrin to bear.
“Forgive me for asking this,” he said. “Shouldn’t pouring the gold into the sacred pools have removed its curse?”
“Normally, yes,” Maliira said, shaking her head sadly. “I can only guess that the tainted off
erings must have deeply offended the goddess. She has turned her face from us until we reverse our blunder.” She fumbled her way across the room. “We need to alert the High Maiden. Tell her what you just told me. We must drain the sacred pools, recover that gold, and perform rituals over it that will purge whatever curse it holds. Then we’ll be able to cure the sick!”
Though Torrin nodded, something still nagged at him. He knew he was treading on dangerous ground by even thinking it, but Sharindlar was the goddess of mercy. Punishing her worshippers for an error her clerics had made didn’t seem like the sort of thing she’d do.
Then again, who was Torrin to know the minds of the gods? Perhaps Sharindlar had been commanded by Moradin himself to withhold her healing. The Dwarffather was powerful. His command might have been heeded by the other gods, whose clerics’ rituals had also proved ineffectual in removing the curse. But soon penance would be done, and the stoneplague would end.
Or… would it?
Putting the contaminated gold from the earthmote under lock and key would halt the spread of the stoneplague within Eartheart. Yet Torrin had a gnawing suspicion that those bars weren’t the only source of the contagion. Dwarves in communities outside of Eartheart had fallen ill long before Kier had discovered the gold bars; there had to be more cursed gold out there, somewhere. That gold was likely still circulating and still spreading its fell curse. Like the gold that was poured into the temple pools, it wouldn’t necessarily be in its original form. It might have already been melted down and made into jewelry, or recast into coins. The cursed gold might be spread across the length and breadth of Faerun. Finding it and rounding it all up would be a near-impossible task. Some of it would always be out there somewhere.
For the moment, though, there was one gold bar Torrin knew about-the one that had spread its foul curse to Kier. At least Torrin could do something about that.
Torrin handed Wylfrid the gold bar Kier had taken from the earthmote. A tall, thin man with thick white brows that came together in a furrow over his nose, Wylfrid was not only an alchemist, but was also skilled at casting magical rituals. More to the point, he was human, and thus immune to whatever curse the gold held.
Wylfrid placed the bar on the pitted marble slab of his workbench and peered at it through his thick-lensed spectacles. Then he picked up a small vial of acid and opened it, letting a drop of the acid fall onto the bar. The gold sizzled, and an acrid stench rose.
“Well?” Torrin asked. “Has the gold been contaminated? What else is in it?”
“Patience,” Wylfrid said. With a rag, he wiped the froth of acid from the bar. Then he cleaned his fingers on the bottom of his shirt, which already bore holes and stains from his alchemical experiments.
Wylfrid’s home, just a few doors down from Torrin’s parents’ shop, looked equally ill-kempt. Scraps of moldy food dotted the plates and cups stacked in the sink next to the hand pump. In a corner, dust covered an untidy heap of sacks and crates. The ceiling was black with soot, and something sticky and sweet-smelling was smeared on the floor where Torrin stood. Torrin shifted away from it, hoping it wasn’t going to eat through the sole of his boot. Then again, he thought, it was likely spilled wine, judging by the smell.
Wylfrid liked his wine.
Though untidy and sometimes unsteady, Wylfrid was a highly competent alchemist. He picked up a fragment of unglazed porcelain and scraped a corner of the gold bar against it. The bar scritched against the porcelain, leaving a gold streak. He compared that streak to one on another piece of porcelain that he’d pulled from a drawer, then picked up a beaker of acid and poured it over the streak the gold bar had made. “No color change,” he noted.
Wylfrid set the porcelain aside and picked up a fist-sized dark chunk-a lodestone. He touched it to the gold bar, crouched so he was eye level with the workbench, and slowly lifted the lodestone.
“No other metals,” he said. “It’s not an alloy, either.”
“Are you certain?” Torrin asked. He’d expected the curse to be on some base metal that had been added to the gold.
Wylfrid sniffed. “I know my business,” he said. “This is pure gold. But there’s one more test, yet.”
Using a fine-bladed saw to cut a vellum-thin slice from one end of the bar, he then placed the slice between two sheets of fine cotton and used a mallet to pound the flake of gold even thinner. After several loud thumps, he lifted the top layer of cloth and used wooden tweezers to carefully lift the small sheet of gold foil he’d created. He pressed it against one end of a metal tube the thickness of his thumb and creased the edges over the end of the tube. Then he aimed the foil-covered end of the tube at a grimy window and peered through it.
“Interesting,” he said. He handed the tube to Torrin.
Torrin lifted the metal tube to his eye. “What am I looking for?”
“You understand how prisms work?” asked the alchemist.
Torrin nodded. “They split light into its constituent colors.”
Wylfrid gestured at the tube. “Light that passes through gold leaf normally assumes a greenish tinge,” he said. “The gold acts like a filter, blocking all of the colors of light except green.”
It took Torrin’s eye a moment to adjust to the dim light inside the tube. It wasn’t green at all. It was dull red, veined with black lines. And pulsing.
“So why is this gold passing red light, instead?” Torrin asked.
“It must be the curse,” Wylfrid replied.
Torrin lowered the tube, shuddering. Carefully, he placed the tube back on the workbench, beside the gold bar. “Can you remove it?”
Wylfrid sniffed, as if Torrin had just asked if he could drain a beaker of wine in one draught. “Of course,” he said as he rubbed stained his fingers together and smiled. “If you have the coin. Seven hundred Anvils is the going rate for a ritual to remove curses. Expensive, but I’m sure you’ll find it.” He eyed Torrin’s mace. “Somehow.”
Torrin barely suppressed his anger. He’d hoped Wylfrid, who’d known Torrin’s human family for many years, would be motivated by sympathy alone to perform the necessary rituals. But Torrin saw how the ground lay. Wylfrid was just like the rest of the tallfolk, grasping greedily for whatever profit the stoneplague could bring. Torrin should have expected as much from a human.
Torrin glanced down at his mace. It was everything to him. Not just a powerful magical weapon, but a link to his true past. Solid proof of who he was- what he was. But he’d pinned his hopes on Wylfrid. The gold bar that lay on the workbench was what had spread the curse of the stoneplague to Kier. If Wylfrid could remove the curse from that particular bar of gold, Kier could be healed. Torrin was certain of that.
With Kier’s life hanging in the balance, the decision was easy. Torrin started to untie his mace from his belt.
Then he paused, as an idea struck him. He glanced up at Wylfrid. “How about seven thousand Anvils-or better yet, seven hundred thousand?” he asked. “Would you be willing to defer payment, if that was the amount of coin you’d make?”
Wylfrid snorted. “What nonsense are you spouting now?”
Torrin nodded at the gold bar. “The Steel Shields are confiscating gold,” he replied. “So much gold it’s going to take dozens of wizards, casting rituals morning, noon, and night, to purify it. Those wizards won’t be expected to perform their rituals for free. Just as they paid the tithes for Sharindlar’s cleansings, the Council will pay for the rituals.”
Wylfrid’s eyes glittered behind his smudged lenses. He was probably already performing the calculations in his head.
“You may have heard that I was summoned before the Council the other night, to speak to them about the stoneplague,” Torrin continued. “I spoke with the Lord Scepter himself. If I were to mention your name to him, I’m sure he’d take heed. Especially if I were able to tell him you’d already demonstrated the ability to perform the necessary ritual.”
Wylfrid smiled. “Even if I were to charge a pittance above the actual
cost of the ritual’s ingredients, I’ll turn a tidy profit.”
Torrin returned his smile, though it galled him to do so. “You certainly will,” he replied. Kier, he reminded himself. This is for Kier. He made a show of starting to retie his mace. “So we have an understanding?”
“We do,” replied the alchemist. “Let’s get started.”
It took Wylfrid some time to set up the necessary paraphernalia. He shoved the clutter off his workbench, drew patterns on it with greasy chalk, and sprinkled those with powdered herbs that smelled like the inside of a bat-infested cave. Then he poured a dusting of what looked like white ash and smelled like sulfur between the lines. All the while, he kept consulting a thick, leather-bound book. When Torrin tried to glance at the page Wylfrid was reading, the alchemist waved him away. Wylfrid continued his preparations, interrupting his work from time to time to quaff a glass of wine from a grimy goblet. He didn’t offer any to Torrin. For that, Torrin was thankful.
When all was ready, Wylfrid placed the bar of gold and the metal tube at the center of the patterns he’d drawn. Then he pushed up his frayed sleeves. “Stay out of the way,” he warned.
Torrin did.
Wylfrid picked up a vial and tipped it, letting just a single drop of silvery liquid fall from it. As the drop struck the pattern, he spoke a word. The pattern flashed white, so bright it dazzled Torrin’s eyes. He blinked furiously, and slowly the room came back into focus.
He saw Wylfrid holding the tube to one eye, staring through it at the window. The alchemist didn’t say anything. He moved closer to the window, and threw it open with one hand, still peering through the tube.
“Did it work?” Torrin asked.
Wylfrid hurled the tube onto the workbench. It rolled off, clattering onto the floor. He scooped up his goblet, slopping wine on the ash residue the ritual had left, and skulked over to an armchair in the corner. He sank into it, raising a cloud of dust, and drained his goblet.
He stared up at Torrin accusingly. “I should have guessed it,” he said, shaking his head. “The curse is as stubborn as the stoneplague itself. It can’t be removed.”