The Gilded Rune (forgotten realms)

by Lisa Smedman

  “What duergar?” Torrin asked, his mouth suddenly as dry as rock dust.

  “The ones in Drik Hargunen,” the half-elf replied. “The place where Cathor-”

  Tril’s face suddenly went white. Several things happened then in rapid succession. Tril clutched himself as something sticky and wet-blood? — sprayed onto Torrin’s knee, soaking his trousers. Cathor lunged out of his seat and tried to grab the runestone. Before he could reach it, a wristbow bolt, shot by the invisible Val’tissa, thudded into his hand and pinned it to the table.

  Cathor grabbed at the runestone with his other hand, but Torrin dived across the table and grabbed the front of his shirt, shoving him back.

  Cathor was shorter than Torrin, but stronger. He forced himself forward. His hand closed around the runestone. He shouted something in a language Torrin didn’t understand.

  Waves of blue spellfire erupted out of the floorboards and streaked toward the runestone. Terrified, the inn’s other patrons scrambled to get away. Shouts and screams filled the inn.

  Torrin’s jaw dropped. Cathor had activated the runestone! How was that possible?

  Val’tissa, now visible, raced to their table. “Torrin!” she shouted.

  Torrin felt a sudden, familiar wrench. Still clutching the front of Cathor’s shirt, he was yanked sideways by the magic of the runestone. As the pair of them twisted into the space between the inn and wherever they were teleporting to, tumbling end over end together with the table, Cathor’s hand tore free of the bolt that had pinned it. His howl of pain echoed eerily as he and Torrin spun through space. Torrin saw a flash of steel. Despite his injured hand, Cathor had drawn his second dagger! Torrin’s mace was at his hip, but he couldn’t reach for it. He had to keep hold of Cathor or the Morndinsamman only knew where he’d wind up.

  “Moradinnn!” Torrin screamed, his wail drawing out the way that Kendril’s had, that terrible day at Needle Leap. “Aid meee…”

  Torrin and Cathor landed in darkness, crashing in a heap onto a rough stone floor. An eyeblink later, the table landed on them. Smashed prone, Torrin lost his grip on Cathor’s shirt. Something clattered away in the darkness. Cathor’s dagger? The runestone?

  Torrin clambered to his feet. He couldn’t see! Damn his human eyes! He heard a faint noise, down and to his left where the table had landed. He yanked his mace from his belt and smashed downward, shouting the word that activated the weapon’s magic. Thunder boomed, echoing off the walls of wherever they’d teleported to. Torrin felt his weapon strike something that gave way with the crunch of breaking bone. Belatedly, he realized that Val’tissa also might have been caught up in the teleportation. He prayed it wasn’t her he’d just killed.

  Torrin stood, panting, and straining to hear any sound. But all he heard was his own harsh breathing. Every muscle in Torrin’s body tensed. He anticipated a dagger thrust at any moment. He swung his mace back and forth and turned abruptly to and fro. One foot bumped something on the floor, and he stumbled and nearly fell. Despite his vulnerability, the attack he anticipated didn’t come.

  Cautiously, Torrin shrugged out of one of the straps of his backpack. Another shrug and the pack was hanging against his chest. Holding his mace ready with one hand, he fumbled open the pack and reached inside. “Goggles,” he commanded. They rose to find his hand. He dragged them over his eyes, and suddenly he could see out of his left eye.

  He stood in a natural cavern about a dozen paces wide and a hundred long. The floor was littered with stone molds, iron tongs, and stone dippers with long wooden handles. Rough flash-the solidified spill left over from casting-was splashed everywhere on the floor, and was so soft that it bent when he trod on it. A neat slit had been cut into one wall of the cavern. More solidified metal hung from the bottom of it like icicles from the edge of a roof. A warm breeze blew in through this gap.

  The table from the inn lay nearby, partially covering a body with a staved-in head. Torrin recognized Tril by his blood-soaked doublet. He was dead. What Cathor had started with his dagger, Torrin had finished with his mace.

  The “bodyguard”-who Torrin realized must be yet another rogue in the hire of whoever had cursed the gold, if not the wizard himself-lay a pace or two away, his wounded hand just shy of the runestone in a smear of blood, his other hand slack around his dagger. Torrin heaved a sigh of relief, realizing the sleep poison on Val’tissa’s bolt had done its work just in time. Had Cathor remained conscious a heartbeat or two longer, he might have activated the runestone a second time and teleported away.

  Torrin shook his head, amazed at what had just happened. He’d been wrong. It wasn’t necessary to be in an earth node to activate the runestone. Its teleportation magic, it would seem, could be commanded from anywhere on Faerun.

  Torrin crossed the cavern and picked up the runestone. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. He tucked it away in his pack.

  He picked up Cathor’s dagger and sword and put them in his pack as well, for good measure. Then he stripped the rogue naked-there was no telling what form a magical amulet might take-and bound his wrists behind his back, using rope from his Delver’s pack. He tied Cathor’s ankles as well. Finally, just in case the rogue was capable of magic, Torrin stuffed a gag in his mouth.

  All Torrin had to do next was wait for the sleep poison to wear off. Meanwhile, he prayed that Cathor didn’t have accomplices nearby. The cavern they’d teleported to, however, was as quiet as a crypt. And, Torrin saw as he walked its circumference, it had no visible exits, aside from the narrow fissure in the wall, which was too narrow for a person to squeeze through. No matter. The runestone was Torrin’s way out-assuming he could figure out how to use it.

  Torrin nudged Cathor with his foot. The dwarf was still unconscious, but alive. “Don’t claim him yet, Moradin,” Torrin prayed. “Not until I’m done with him.”

  He pulled a lantern from his pack and lit it, then slid his goggles up onto his forehead. He turned his attention to the objects littering the floor. The flash was solid gold, as he’d expected from the way it bent under his boots. The molds were the ones used to cast the cursed gold bars. He inspected the slit in the wall and saw that it led to an almost perfectly round tunnel, perhaps a pace wide, whose walls were coated with a crust of hardened gold. Torrin sniffed and caught the faint scent of molten metal.

  “The River of Gold,” he breathed.

  He glanced around, shaking his head in wonder. A fortune lay at his feet, splashed all around him like waste slag. Even though he knew its role in spreading the stoneplague, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pure greed at the sight of it. All that wealth made his heart pound. His people had a name for what he was feeling: aetharn or “gold lust.” With that much gold, he could go anywhere, do anything. Fund the most exotic delves anyone had ever dreamed of.

  Then he thought of Eralynn, Kier, Ambril and her stillborn twins, and the hundreds of other dwarves who’d succumbed to the stoneplague, and the taste of his fantasies soured. He’d trade all the gold in the cavern-all the gold in the world-for them to be alive again.

  He heard a faint movement behind him. Cathor had woken up. He was feigning sleep, but his shivers betrayed him.

  Torrin squatted next to the dwarf. His anger banked as he stared at him. Rather than fan it red hot, Torrin let it smolder. The time for vengeance-for justice-would come later.

  Cathor’s eyes opened. He strained at his bonds and shivered violently, either from the feel of cold stone against naked flesh or from fear. He shook his head and tried to say something. But all that got past the gag was a moan.

  Torrin stared down at his captive. He pulled a tiny glass vial from his pack and showed it to Cathor. “This potion is the same as the one that forced your half-elf friend to talk, back at the inn,” he said. “One way or the other, you’re going to drink it. If I have to, I’ll kneel on your forehead and slice your lips open with my dagger. Or we can do it the easy way, and you can just swallow it.”

  Cathor stared up a
t him, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. Perhaps he believed Torrin would free him once he had talked, or perhaps he thought he might yet use the runestone to escape. Whatever the reason, he grunted his assent.

  “Good,” Torrin said. He took the gag from Cathor’s mouth. Cathor opened his mouth, and Torrin poured in the potion. Just in case Cathor was lying about being cooperative, Torrin immediately pinched the rogue’s lips shut.

  Cathor glared, but swallowed down the potion. Torrin released his hold on the fellow’s lips and stood up.

  “And now,” Torrin told his captive, “we’ll talk.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Truth comes to us from the past, like gold washed down from the mountains.”

  Delver’s Tome, Volume III, Chapter 9, Entry 100

  Torrin stared down at his captive.Since the truth potion would only last so long, he decided to ask Cathor the most important questions first. He folded his arms across his chest. “How, exactly, was the gold cursed?”

  “I don’t know,” Cathor said.

  Torrin silently fumed, then realized he needed to back up a step. Cathor might be nothing more than a minion, after all. He might not know the details. Torrin had to take this step by step. “All right, then, let’s try again,” he said. “Let’s start with this: who cursed the gold?”

  That, it seemed, was a question his captive could answer. “The duergar,” Cathor replied.

  “The one who was trying to find Vadyr? What’s his name?” Torrin asked.

  Cathor shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “Perhaps I should be more clear,” Torrin said. “What I want to know is this: What’s the name of the duergar who invoked the curse?”

  “Perhaps I should be more clear,” Cathor said mockingly. “I don’t know.”

  Torrin grit his teeth. He tried again. “Where can I find the duergar who cursed the gold?” he asked.

  Cathor’s jaw muscles bunched as he tried to keep himself from speaking. The potion, however, forced the words out. “In Drik Hargunen,” he said.

  “That’s better,” Torrin said. It took him, however, a few moments to place the name. He at last remembered there was a duergar city by that name, somewhere in the Underdark. Torrin had stumbled across the name once, when researching rune magic. He dredged the phrase up from memory: the runescribed halls of Drik Hargunen.

  Torrin reframed the question he’d asked earlier. “What did the duergar use curse the gold?”

  “Rune magic,” Cathor said.

  That much, Torrin might have guessed. “How can the curse be broken?”

  The dwarf glared. “No idea,” he said. “Why don’t you go ask the runescribes yourself?”

  Torrin balled his fists. He reminded himself that the rogue was answering his questions truthfully. He could see Cathor struggling not to speak, yet being compelled to. Yet the answers weren’t nearly as informative as Torrin had hoped they would be. He decided to dig in a different direction. He gestured at the gold-crusted slit in the wall. “Who used the runestone to call the River of Gold to this cavern?” he asked.

  “We did. Me and Kendril,” Cathor replied.

  “Who tapped it and cast the gold bars?”

  “The same: me and Kendril.”

  “Whose idea was it to distribute them in Eartheart?” After a moment’s silent struggle, the word popped out. “Mine.”

  “And the other two rogues? Vadyr and Tril? What part did they play in this?”

  “They were hired to distribute the gold. Tril, in the smaller settlements. And Vadyr, in Eartheart.”

  That fit. Only tallfolk could safely handle the cursed gold. Torrin stared down at Cathor’s gray-tinged skin. The two dwarf rogues must have been careless, to let themselves be afflicted by the stoneplague.

  Time to get back to that line of questioning.

  “Whom did the four of you take your orders from?” Torrin asked. “Who told you to make the gold bars?”

  “No one,” said Cathor. “It was my idea. Mine… and Kendril’s.”

  “So you and Kendril hired the duergar to curse the gold?”

  Cathor shook his head. “No. They’d done it already. We just mined it.”

  Torrin frowned in confusion. He looked at the cut in the wall. “So the duergar cursed the River of Gold,” he ventured, “before you mined it?”

  “Yes,” said Cathor.

  “And you knew it was cursed, yet mined it anyway?”

  “I… Yes.”

  Torrin felt as though a hollow had opened inside him. It took all of his self-control not to strike his captive. He stared down at Cathor in disgust. A duergar might have cast the curse, but Cathor and Kendril-two dwarves — had spread the stoneplague. They’d knowingly afflicted their fellow dwarves with a fatal disease.

  Torrin no longer felt sorry for Kendril. The fellow had deserved his affliction, had deserved to die. He was pure dross. So was Cathor.

  Torrin spat on the dwarf.

  Cathor’s nostrils flared. He stared defiantly up at Torrin, as if he was still worthy of looking a fellow dwarf in the eye. It was all Torrin could do to not stamp out that smug look with his boot.

  “Where did you get the runestone?” Torrin asked instead.

  Cathor once again tried to clench his jaw shut, and failed. “I stole it,” he said.

  “Where from?”

  “Drik Hargunen.”

  “Be more specific.”

  A smug smile crept into Cathor’s eyes. “Right out of Laduguer’s temple. From its library.”

  “Laduguer,” Torrin breathed. God of the duergar. Enemy of the true dwarves, who would see them all enslaved.

  “A foul god,” he continued. “Deserving of his banishment from the Morndinsamman.”

  “That may be,” said Cathor. “But Laduguer will be avenged, soon enough.”

  “What are you talking about?” Torrin asked.

  “Moradin,” Cathor said, jerking his head at the slit in the wall. “The River of Gold is his vein. His life blood. The duergars’ rune magic has poisoned it. Moradin is dying.”

  Torrin felt the blood drain from his cheeks. A shiver of dread coursed through him. He remembered how it had been in his dream, the way the Dwarffather had turned gray with the stoneplague, then crumbled. Could it be true? Could Moradin actually be dying?

  “That’s right,” Cathor said, the gleam back in his eye. “It will all be over, soon enough. The dwarves are going to lose their patron god. You can kiss those hammers in your beard goodbye, human.”

  “Blasphemer!” Torrin shouted. He kicked Cathor in the ribs and revelled in the man’s grunt of pain. With all of his heart, Torrin wanted to believe the truth potion had worn off, that Cathor was lying. Or, at the very least, that his captive was wrong, and only thought he spoke the truth. Surely Moradin could not die! But other gods had died, in Faerun’s long history. And other gods would yet die, as the millennia marched on.

  Torrin didn’t want to believe what he’d just heard, yet Cathor’s words had driven an ice-cold spike of doubt into Torrin’s very soul. And that spike was being driven deeper with each chuckle his captive uttered.

  Everything Torrin had ever learned by reading scripture fit with what Cathor had just told him, like a casting fit a mold. According to the holy texts, Moradin and all the other Morndinsamman had sprung from the stone of Faerun itself, back when the world first formed. The scriptures went on to say that it wasn’t blood that ran through Moradin’s veins, but noble metal. Gold.

  Torrin had always thought that to be a metaphor for the god’s purity of purpose, but he realized it must be truth. It made sense that Moradin would be bound to the land in some way, that he would choose to stay rooted in the stone his people worked and drew their livelihood from. If the River of Gold were part of the Dwarffather, it explained why the molten river was constantly shifting. The Dwarffather manifested throughout Faerun, wherever there was rock to be mined.

  And his life’s blood had been poisoned. Cursed, by the
duergars’ foul rune magic.

  That was why the cursed gold continued to spread the stoneplague, regardless of whether it was melted or subjected to magical ritual. Until Moradin himself was healed, the gold would remain tainted. It also explained why no cleric-even those who served the gods of the tallfolk-could cure the affliction. The blood of the Dwarffather flowed not only throughout Faerun, in the form of the River of Gold, but also, indirectly, through the blood of the race he’d fashioned in his forge.

  The meaning of Torrin’s prophetic dream was suddenly as clear as a gem from which the surrounding rock had been chipped away.

  Moradin, lord of the Morndinsamman and patron god of the dwarves, was dying. Until the god himself was cured, there would be no cure for the spellplague.

  And if the god died…

  Torrin couldn’t bring himself to contemplate what that might mean. He shuddered, and struggled to pull himself together. “Moradin…” he began to pray. Then he realized the futility of his prayer. The Dwarffather had been trying to tell him, all along, that no help would be forthcoming from him. Torrin was on his own.

  He stared down with righteous fury at Cathor. He wasn’t the one who had poisoned Moradin using rune magic, but by Cathor’s own admission, he’d committed a crime even more vile. He’d knowingly afflicted his own race. And for the most base of reasons: simple greed.

  “How could you?” Torrin said through gritted teeth. “You’ve killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of your own people.”

  Cathor sneered as he said, “They deserved it.”

  “No one deserves this,” Torrin said, pointing at Cathor’s gray skin.

  Cathor broke into wild laughter. “You idiot!” he cried. “You think I’ve been afflicted, don’t you?”

  Torrin suddenly questioned what he saw. “But… you’re a dwarf,” he said. “And… you are afflicted, just like Kendril was. Just like everybody else. Aren’t you?”