The Gilded Rune (forgotten realms)

by Lisa Smedman

  A hollow sensation gripped Torrin’s stomach. Any denials would have been futile. “I see,” he said.

  A mithril brooch seemingly materialized out of thin air as it sailed toward Torrin. It landed with a clatter on the stairs.

  “Put it on,” said the voice.

  Torrin glanced down at it, still not lowering his mace. The brooch was shaped like a mountain, encircled by a band of braided mithril, gold, and silver wire. A pebble-sized geode, cut in half to reveal the amethyst crystals within, was set into the center of the mountain like a gemstone.

  The mountain-and-gem motif was the symbol of Dumathoin, keeper of secrets under the mountain. A dwarf god. Even so, Torrin let the brooch lie there.

  A spark of magical energy leaped out of the space the voice had come from, stinging Torrin’s hand. He startled.

  “If my intentions were ill, you’d already be dead,” the voice told him. “Put on the brooch. I have something I want to say to you, away from scrying eyes and ears. They’re likely not listening-yet. But they will be, soon enough. The brooch will protect our privacy.”

  At last, Torrin relented. He tied his mace to his belt, then picked up the brooch.

  “Pin it to the inside of your shirt, said the voice.”

  Torrin did as instructed. He glanced up and down the staircase; still, there was no one in sight.

  “Letting the talismonger escape is just an excuse,” the voice said. “The real reason the order has gone out for your arrest is because the Deep Lords don’t want you revealing why gold is being confiscated. They’ve already arrested the alchemist you visited yesterday. You’re next.”

  “But we have to warn people!” Torrin said. “The gold bars won’t be the only source of contagion. Some will have already been melted down and-”

  “Poured into sacred pools, among other things,” the voice said wearily. “We know. But consider this. With our citizens already in a panic, is it truly wise to heap fresh coal upon the forge? An economic crisis is the last thing Eartheart needs. And it’s just what our enemies want. Moreover, there are always profiteers who seek to make the most of such a crisis. Gold being secretly stockpiled for more stable times is something we must avoid. Any cursed gold that’s hidden away won’t be cleared of its taint.”

  “Secrecy isn’t the answer,” Torrin insisted. “We dwarves are a sensible race. We won’t panic or riot. If the Council explains why-”

  “That argument failed to sway the Council,” the voice said, sounding older, more tired. “We’re doing what we can. Gold is being rounded up and examined, and any that isn’t cursed will be returned to its rightful owners once the crisis has passed. The stoneplague is being contained. Here in Eartheart, at least.”

  Torrin was shocked by what the words hinted at. “And the clans elsewhere in the Deep Realms?” he asked. “What about them?”

  “The vote was taken-the outlying communities were deemed at fault,” the voice replied. “They’ll be left to find their own solutions until we deem it the right moment to tell them. The vote passed by the narrowest of margins, despite my urging. But… it passed.”

  As the silence stretched, Torrin realized the subtext of what the invisible speaker was telling him. It was one of the Deep Lords he was speaking to, one of the dissenting voters.

  The voice sounded familiar, but not overly so. It was as if the speaker were deliberately disguising his voice. Even so, Torrin eventually placed it. When he did, his eyes widened. He suspected that, were he to touch the invisible dwarf’s beard, he’d feel three braids. If his guess were correct, it wasn’t just any Deep Lord, but the Lord Scepter himself!

  “Why are you warning me?” Torrin asked. “Why don’t you want me arrested?”

  “Last night I had a strange dream,” said the Lord Scepter. “I was standing in a foundry, in front of a melting pot that held molten gold, holding a star in my hands. A star made of black iron. I knew that it eventually had to go into the melting pot, but that the time wasn’t right. The fire was only hot enough to melt gold, not iron. I stood, wondering what I was supposed to do with it. Then a hand reached down from the sky-a hand attached to an arm that wore a gold bracer.”

  “Moradin,” Torrin breathed.

  “The Dwarffather,” the Lord Scepter agreed. “He wanted the star, but couldn’t reach me; something was preventing him from moving properly. It was as if he himself had the stoneplague, and had been crippled by it. I stretched as far as I could, but wasn’t able to place the star in that mighty hand. It was too far above me, lost among the stars. Then, suddenly, I realized what I must do. I let go of the star, and it sailed up into the sky.”

  Torrin was hanging on every word. The Deep Lord had also experienced a prophetic dream involving Moradin! And clearly, judging by that iron star, a dream about Torrin. Was the melting pot in the Lord Scepter’s dream the Soulforge that Torrin had dreamed about finding for so long?

  Torrin felt his heart pounding in his chest. A prickle of pure excitement shivered down the back of his neck. “You released the star and then… What happened then?”

  The Lord Scepter chuckled. “I woke up,” he said.

  Hope rushed out of Torrin like water from a punctured waterskin.

  “What do you think the dream means?” Torrin asked.

  “I have no idea,” the Lord Scepter admitted. “But I infer the ending to mean that you must remain free, for the good of the dwarf race. You need to leave Eartheart. At once.”

  Torrin bowed. He started to unbutton the brooch, intending to hand it back to the Lord Scepter, but he interrupted. “Keep it,” he said. “Whatever task the Dwarffather has in mind for you, I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Silence is golden.”

  Delver’s Tome, Volume VII, Chapter 2, Entry 305

  Torrin crossed Silvershield Bridge by night and headed for the city’s southern gate, his conversation with the Lord Scepter still echoing through his thoughts. He saw one of the Steel Shields coming toward him across the bridge. His helmet plume was bobbing, and his armor glinted in the starlight. As the knight approached, Torrin lowered his head so his hood shadowed his face, and slowed his pace. He didn’t want to enter the lantern light just yet. “Dumathoin, shield me,” he prayed. “Keep my secret this night.”

  The Steel Shield barely glanced at Torrin as he passed by. The knight’s boots thumped steadily against the stonework as he marched away into the night.

  Torrin sighed in relief.

  Ahead, at the spot where a lantern illuminated the apex of the bridge, he saw a dwarf walking slowly, one hand on the stone bridge rail and his back to Torrin. He seemed to be blind, feeling his way along. As Torrin watched, the dwarf’s hand bumped against one of the silver-plated shields that gave the bridge its name. Abruptly, he stopped and cradled his bruised hand against his chest.

  Like Torrin, the dwarf wore a hooded cloak. In itself that was nothing unusual; it was a chilly night. But as the dwarf stood nursing his hand, the hood slipped back, revealing a bald spot on the back of his head that shone in the lantern light. With a start, Torrin realized that it was the dwarf who’d waylaid him outside the motedisc factory.

  The rogue yanked his hood back into place, and continued walking.

  Immediately on guard, Torrin glanced quickly around. Aside from the rogue, the bridge was empty. There was no sign of Vadyr-although that didn’t mean the human rogue wasn’t invisible.

  Torrin drew his mace. Openly wielding a weapon would invite the attention of any other Steel Shields who happened by on patrol, but he was willing to risk that. He wasn’t about to get knocked out a second time. The balding dwarf was laying it on thick, moving even more slowly and stiffly than when Torrin had first had the misfortune of making his acquaintance. Putting on a show, for Torrin’s benefit.

  Torrin didn’t let it distract him. He stood, his mace ready, his back against the bridge railing. “Show yourself, coward,” he called out. “If you want the runesto
ne that badly, let’s see you try to take it.”

  Several moments went by. Nothing happened. Torrin started to feel foolish standing there with his mace raised. He suddenly sprinted across the rest of the bridge, in the direction the balding dwarf had gone. He reached the deeper shadows at the base of the bridge and ducked into an alcove that held a stone statue of Clangeddin Silverbeard. The god’s twin axes poked into Torrin’s lower back.

  Torrin waited. No footsteps approached. No second assailant attacked.

  He stepped out of the alcove. He realized that it might not be a setup-that the dwarf rogue might indeed have suffered a blinding injury and then been subsequently abandoned by Vadyr. He ran in the direction the rogue had gone, and spotted him as he passed through slits of light emitted from a shuttered window.

  The dwarf heard him coming. He whirled when Torrin was a pace or two away.

  “Don’t come any closer!” he cried in a shrill voice. “I have the stoneplague!”

  Torrin stared in horror. The light slanting through the shutter cracks fell across the rogue’s face. His eyes were as white as limestone-two shrivelled marbles in their sockets-and his face was as gray as slate.

  Torrin steeled himself. There was no time for hesitation. He poked the fellow in the chest with the tip of his mace, jostling him. The man staggered, nearly fell.

  “By Moradin’s beard, show mercy!” the fellow cried. “You wouldn’t steal from a blind man, would you?”

  “That’s an odd plea, coming from a thief,” Torrin growled. “And as for your blindness, it looks like you got what you deserved. Your gold was the cause of it.”

  “What?” the rogue asked, looking wildly around, one arm raised to defend himself. “What are you talking about?”

  Torrin moved suddenly. He grabbed the rogue’s throat with his free hand and slammed him against the wall. He kept his mace ready, and one eye on the street. “Tell me who cast the curse,” he told the blind dwarf in a low growl, “and I’ll let you live.”

  “Please,” the rogue gasped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Who are you? By all the Morndinsamman, please, have mercy!”

  Torrin laughed as he said, “You didn’t show me any mercy, thief, that day outside the motedisc factory.”

  The rogue’s face turned even grayer as that memory sank in. “I’m… no thief,” he wheezed. “Just… a sick man… desperate enough… to do anything… to raise enough coin… for a cure. For me and… my family.”

  Torrin’s eyes widened. That wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. He eased up the pressure on the man’s throat. The words spilled out.

  “I knew what I was doing was wrong,” the dwarf said in a quavering voice. “But the human offered so much gold, and for such a simple thing. Just to recite a few words to you, and clasp your hand. I didn’t realize he was going to hit you, to hurt you. And now I’m being punished for what I’ve done. The Morndinsamman have turned their backs on me, and my brother and his wife are dying.” He croaked out a bitter laugh. “All that gold… And the ‘cure’ it bought was worthless. Worthless!” The dwarf’s shoulders shook as he sobbed.

  Torrin released him. “May the Dwarffather forgive me,” he said, ashamed at how he’d roughed up an innocent man. The anger that had flamed through him a moment before was gone, replaced by the cold ash of regret. “I’m… so sorry.”

  The blind man said nothing. Torrin thought of how Kendril had flung himself from Needle Leap. The fellow looked likely to do something similar. Torrin wanted to say more-to do more. But he knew he could offer the man no solid hope, only promises.

  “I forgive you,” Torrin said at last. “And so shall Moradin. Don’t lose hope.”

  The dwarf nodded, but his head still hung low.

  Torrin glanced around the plaza. So far, he’d been lucky; no one had responded to the altercation. But he didn’t want to press that luck. For all he knew, the people he could hear talking inside the building next to him had already sent out a runner to fetch a patrol.

  Feeling like a rogue himself, Torrin slipped out of the plaza. He made his way out through the city’s southern gate, into the night.

  Torrin surveyed the cavern where he and Eralynn had been trapped by the red dragon, near the slab of rock where they’d raised a cup in memory of her dead parents. It still smelled of smoke. Every surface was covered with the soot that also coated Torrin’s hands and clothes.

  Getting back into the Wyrmcaves had been the easy part; the portal had opened as readily as before. Sneaking through the tunnels that led to the cave had given Torrin a few anxious moments, when he’d thought he heard the sound of slithering behind him. But if the red dragon was nearby, she hadn’t shown herself yet. Torrin had even peeked into the cave where she had made her lair, but nothing moved up in the nest. He hadn’t seen any sign of Baelar, either-although the air in the wyrm’s cavern stank of fresh smoke. As he’d made his way back to the cavern with the earth node, all had been ominously silent.

  He took the runestone out of his pack and held it out in front of him. He waited, wondering when the spellfire would begin-praying that it would begin, that the runestone would work a second time. In order to see in the absolute darkness, he had to keep his right eye shut. He hadn’t had the time-or the coin-to get his magical goggles repaired.

  “Take me to Vadyr,” he commanded.

  Nothing. No spellfire.

  He tried again, concentrating on the brief glimpse he’d had of the human with the missing front tooth. Yet his mind kept straying. Every time he thought of the rogue’s part in the affair, anger boiled inside him. Bitter anger, at the deaths of Ambril and her babes, and a boiling rage stirred by the realization that Kier might die, too.

  “Vadyr,” he said again through gritted teeth.

  Still no spellfire.

  He at last realized it wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t about to succeed where the most powerful wizards in all Eartheart had failed. But that was all right. There was a second reason he’d returned to the Wyrmcaves.

  Increasingly worried about where Eralynn had disappeared to, he’d been making enquiries. Mara had let slip that Eralynn had told her not to worry-that she knew where she’d go for healing if she succumbed to the stoneplague. She wouldn’t go to one of the clerics who’d already tried to cure the stoneplague, and failed, but to clerics of a goddess whose name, she said, she was certain Mara would never recognize. When Mara had pressed her for details, Eralynn had refused to say more.

  Delvemaster Frivaldi, meanwhile, had revealed that Eralynn had borrowed his map of the northernmost reaches of the Deep Realm, showing the region surrounding Sundasz. It was a small dwarf city, but one with an unsavory reputation. Some whispered its wealth came as a result of a clandestine trade with duergar or even drow.

  Torrin didn’t believe it. Likely, the rumors were fuelled by nothing more tangible than jealousy. The dwarves of Sundasz were not only secretive, but had always been very wealthy. Still, if Eralynn was headed to Sundasz, she could benefit from a friend to shield her back.

  And if she knew of a cure that no one else had yet tried, Torrin wanted to hear about it-for Kier’s sake, and the sake of all Eartheart.

  He raised the runestone again, and concentrated on Eralynn, on the details of her hair, her face. Despite the fact that no one had seen Eralynn in more than a tenday-which might very well mean she had succumbed to the stoneplague after handling the cursed gold bar-Torrin refused to imagine her as a corpse or even sick. He pictured her alive and well, rolling her eyes at his “wishful thinking” that the Soulforge was here on Faerun. She might consider his ideas foolish, but she’d always listened, and had, perversely, stood up for him when the other Delvers had called him ignorant or misguided. She’d been there for him, and he was going to return the favor for his shield sister.

  “Eralynn,” he commanded. “Take me to her.”

  Was that a tingle he felt in his hand? He closed both eyes, gripped the stone tightly, and repeated his command mor
e forcefully.

  He was certain he felt it-a rush of prickly hot and shivery cold energy that made his hand feel as though it was simultaneously in an icy pond and in a fiery blast of dragon’s breath.

  Blue light flared against his eyelids. He opened his eyes and saw spellfire. It streaked across the walls and the ceiling, and shone upward through the gaps in the rubble on the cavern floor. “Praise Moradin!” Torrin cried. “It’s working!”

  The spellfire crackled downward from the ceiling, upward from the floor, and inward from the walls, coalescing around the runestone in his hand. Something hot splattered onto the stone near Torrin’s boot. It was molten gold, he realized, dripping out of cracks in the ceiling above his head. With spellfire illuminating the cavern, he saw that the slab of stone he stood on was crusted with similar splatters: dribbles of gold, hardened like candle wax.

  But he mustn’t let that distract him. He locked his gaze on the runestone, seeing it in livid blue and searing white, through regular vision and through the single lens of his goggles.

  “Take… me… to… Eralynn!” he shouted.

  A sudden twist. His body felt impossibly thin, poised between one place and the next. For a moment, it seemed to stretch to infinity. Then he was borne along on a bright blue ribbon of spellfire that dazzled his eyes and filled his mind with a bright buzzing. Elation filled him. He’d done it! Activated the runestone!

  He landed with a jarring thud in knee-deep, icy water that filled his boots and soaked his trouser legs. He staggered sideways and nearly fell. His shoulder struck something hard. Whatever place he’d entered was dimly illuminated by a flickering torchlight that came from behind the enormous pillar into which he’d just staggered. Briefly, he caught a glimpse of a vast room awash with water and filled with dozens of other pillars, each as thick as a centuries-old tree. When he glanced upward, he saw a ceiling covered in stalactites of dark, gooey, dripping slime.

  Then the light went out.

  A hissing noise like the spray of a waterfall filled his ears, accompanied by a steady, rhythmic pounding. Each thudding beat vibrated his entire body. The air was cold and smelled of wet stone and mildew.