The Gilded Rune (forgotten realms)

by Lisa Smedman

  Torrin felt his strength flagging. His clothing was full of holes now, the fabric falling away in puffs of ash. Sharp crystals poked into his thinning boot soles. Spellfire consumed his beard and eyebrows, turning them to clouds of ash that drifted into his eyes and clogged his nose. The skin on his arms and cheeks was starting to flake away. The pain was almost unbearable. The spellfire that had blossomed around the hand that held the runestone was a bright blaze that engulfed his arm from fingers to shoulder. His fingers felt like dead things.

  He quickly transferred the runestone to his left hand, awkwardly gripping both it and the magical feather. “By blood and earth, ae-burakrin,” he gasped, “take me to the rune.”

  Nothing happened. The runestone, like the teleportation boots, wasn’t working properly. Wasn’t working at all, in fact. The teleportation boots had at least shifted Baelar around a little when he’d tried to reach the rune, but the runestone was completely failing to activate.

  Why?

  Torrin’s left hand and arm were also ablaze with spellfire from within. If he survived it, he’d be spellscarred on both sides of his body. He shifted his grip on the runestone, and cried out in dismay as the magical feather slipped from his fingers. He tried to catch it, but then suddenly the runestone activated. Torrin felt a wrench, and an instant later found himself standing several paces away from where he’d just been. The blue glow was so fierce that he could barely see his feet, yet a dim gold-green glint beside his right foot told him where he’d landed-directly beside the gold-filled rune.

  The spellfire so close to the rune was even more intense. Torrin felt it sear into his lungs, felt more of his skin burn away. In a few moments more, he’d be nothing but bones cloaked in ash. He realized, in that instant, what had been keeping Baelar from reaching the rune. The duergar must have placed wards that prevented the approach of any magical device capable of dispelling the rune’s magic. The feather was no use. It was impossible to bring it close enough to the rune to activate it. All of their efforts, everything they’d been through so far-Baelar’s death, Torrin’s imminent death-all had been for nothing.

  Torrin would have wept, except that his eyes were as dry as sun-hot stone. “Moradin,” he prayed as he sank to his knees. So great was his agony, within and without, that he barely felt the crystals on the floor spike into his flesh. “Forgive me.”

  He raised the runestone and squinted, trying to see the wall of the cavern. There was one last thing he might try-to teleport to the spot where Baelar and his squad had entered the cavern. If any of the other squads made it that far, and found the runestone, there was the faintest of chances they could-

  Torrin screamed as a fresh agony forced itself upon him. His knees were on fire, flaring with the most intense pain he’d ever felt!

  He glanced down and saw a shiny puddle. The gold filling the rune had overflowed the edge closest to him and was touching his knees. Burning them. Still more gold was flowing out of the rune toward him.

  No. To the runestone clenched in his left hand. He moved it to the side, and saw the puddle of gold follow it. A hysterical laugh bubbled out of him.

  “By Moradin’s beard!” he cried. “That’s it! That’s how it can be undone!”

  The agony of his knees and shins reached a point beyond comprehension. The pain was so intense that his mind was no longer capable of registering it. He collapsed, halting his fall by slapping his right hand onto the cavern floor, directly into the flowing gold. The skin was immediately charred-a fragment of white knuckle bubbled to the surface-but Torrin didn’t care. With something between a laugh and a scream, he turned and hurled the runestone toward the hole that had been bored into the floor. Spellfire sped after it as it landed with a splash inside the well, and molten gold from the rune followed, flowing past Torrin in a wave that sealed his doom. He saw the hole in the floor begin to close, to scab over the molten metal that was flowing back into it. Then he fell onto his side, splashing down into the last of the flow leaving the rune. The last sensation he had was the smell of charred flesh and hot metal. He sighed in contentment as he died, knowing his work was done.

  The rune was empty, the gold flowing back into Moradin’s vein. The Dwarffather would live.

  The stoneplague would end.

  The first sensation was a white radiance. Cooling. Soothing. Pure.

  He felt it more than saw it. The glow surrounded him. Sustained him.

  Slowly, the radiance dissipated. A second sensation replaced it-the sound of metal on metal. Each blow reverberated slightly. A hammer, striking forge-heated steel on an anvil.

  How he knew that, he could not say.

  He realized he was standing. A massive, calloused palm was the floor on which his feet rested.

  No. That wasn’t quite right. He had no feet, no legs, no body. Just… self.

  Where am I? he asked.

  Then a more pressing question. Who am I?

  “You were known, in your last lifetime, by two names,” a voice that boomed like thunder said. “You preferred your dwarf name.”

  I am Torrin Ironstar, he realized. But no, that was slightly wrong. I was Torrin Ironstar. A delver, of Eartheart. I am he no more.

  “Yes,” said the voice.

  The clang of hammer on steel continued, as steady as a heartbeat. Sights joined that sound. The soul that had been Torrin could see around itself. The palm that supported him was joined to an arm, and that arm to the shoulder of a figure seated on a throne-a dwarf, with a gleaming white beard that flowed down onto his chest, across his apron-covered lap, to touch the floor between his boots.

  A god, seated on his throne.

  Moradin.

  The soul that had been Torrin bowed low. Silver tinkled, reminding him that he’d once worn the Dwarffather’s hammers braided into a bright red beard. Flashes of memory returned, as fragmentary and as glittering as shards of broken glass. Recollections of dwarves, their faces gray and stiff, dead of a curse masquerading as a plague. One of these faces evoked an especially sharp pang-a boy’s face, twisted with pain. Eyes closed, thin body covered with a blanket. Kier.

  Does he live? Did I save him? The clamor of the hammer strikes sped up a little, like an anxious heartbeat.

  “You did,” said the voice. “Observe.” Moradin’s other hand lifted. The gold bracer around the god’s left wrist shone as brightly as a mirror. Reflected in its gleaming gold depths was the image of a father embracing his son. The boy was healthy, healed. Awake and alive, and free of the stoneplague. Just behind him stood a cleric, her hand rising and falling in a healing blessing. Maliira, also healed of the stoneplague. The sight of them filled the very air with joy. The soul that had been Torrin felt his cheeks and beard grow wet with tears.

  Kier asked a question of his father then. The boy’s lips moved, but the reflected image conveyed no sound. Haldrin’s face grew grim, and then he answered. Kier burst into tears and pulled something across the bed-a boy-sized pack with the letter D embossed upon it. An imitation Delver’s pack. Kier clutched it to his chest, sobbing.

  He mourns me.

  “You two will meet again.”

  But will he know me?

  “Perhaps one day. While your mace still lies in the cavern where the duergar inscribed their foul rune, your bracers remain in the Thunsonn clanhold, where you left them. If the boy you will become stumbles across them, he may recognize them. But what truly matters is that Kier will call you ‘Son.’ He will love you and protect you, just as you loved and protected him.”

  The soul that had been Torrin should have been comforted, yet a tinge of sorrow tainted the good news. That will be many years from now, he observed, perhaps decades.

  “Yes.”

  I’ll miss what remains of Kier’s childhood.

  “It is as it must be.”

  A second memory drifted to mind, causing a lump to form anew in Torrin’s throat: a heart-shaped lump, as smooth and as cool as glass. He remembered a woman’s face. In his memory, she
was laughing, one hand brushing back unruly hair. The hand crackled with a blue spellscar.

  Eralynn.

  “She, too, passed through my halls,” Moradin said. The god’s breath was as warm as a coal fire, as cool as quenching water, all in one. “An impatient one, she was; she couldn’t wait to be reforged anew. Even now, her soul quickens in the days-old body of a child who will not be born for many months yet.”

  A dwarf child?

  Moradin smiled. “Of course.”

  The question was an important one. Vitally important. Or so the soul that had been Torrin believed. And… what of me? he asked. Am I to be cast a dwarf, this time?

  Moradin’s flinty eyes stared down at Torrin, peering into the very heart of him. “That was your most heartfelt wish, was it not? Why you sought so desperately, throughout your past life, for something you hoped could be found where mortals dwell?”

  I sought… He paused, grasping at the memories that flitted about like wayward candle flickers. I sought your Soulforge.

  “And there it lies,” Moradin said, gesturing in the direction of the hammer-on-steel sound.

  Torrin turned and stared at a dull red glow he hadn’t noticed before. It emanated from a massive forge a few paces distant from the Dwarffather’s throne. A long line of ghostly shapes stood behind it, some larger, some smaller. The souls of dead dwarf adults and children, waiting patiently to be reforged. Torrin recognized one of them, farther back in the line, as a man he’d known in the life that had just ended-an older dwarf carrying a plumed skyrider’s helm.

  Baelar, he breathed.

  The soul that had been Baelar glanced up at him and smiled.

  The soul closest to the forge-a woman Torrin didn’t recognize-ghosted into it and lay down amid the glowing red coals. Her soul wavered a moment, then melted away into a bright puddle of glowing mithril. Moradin waved his free hand, and the molten metal rose into the air. The god caught it and clenched his hand around it like a mold. He blew onto his fist, and steam escaped from his fingers with the bubbling hiss of forge-hot steel plunged into a bucket of water.

  After a moment, Moradin’s fingers opened. Inside them was a diamond that sparkled myriad colors in the light of the forge. Moradin lifted the diamond to his mouth and blew a second time, releasing a gust of warm breath that smelled of rich, life-sustaining blood. The diamond tumbled off his palm and vanished-a soul, seeking its next lifetime.

  The soul that had been Torrin watched, awestruck. So beautiful, he breathed.

  “What you sought never did exist on Faerun,” Moradin told him, at last answering the question he had asked earlier. “There is only one Soulforge-here, in my realm. Yet you were correct, in one regard. There is a place on Faerun that is the equivalent of my forge, a place from which the dwarf race emerged onto that world. A navel, through which the first dwarf people passed.”

  Where?

  Moradin chuckled. “Always the curious soul, weren’t you?” he said.

  Always the Delver. And as he said it, Torrin realized it was true. He’d been a Delver in his last life-and would be in his next, thanks to Kier. Like his “Uncle Torrin,” Kier would choose a Delver’s life. And he’d pass along that love of adventure to his son, who one day would teach it to his own son. And around and around the wheel would go.

  Tell me, he cried, his excitement building as he imagined the delves to come. Where is the place the dwarves emerged onto Faerun?

  “You won’t remember.”

  Tell me anyway.

  “It’s in the Yehimal Mountains. From it, the dwarves spread across all of Faerun, in the days long before the founding of Bhaerynden.”

  Had the soul that had been Torrin still had a heart, it would have quickened at that revelation. A portal? he guessed. Leading where?

  Moradin’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “That may take you many lifetimes to discover,” he said. “Or, if you’re as determined to get on with your quests as your friend Eralynn proved to be, perhaps only one more lifetime.” The god shrugged. “That remains to be seen.”

  Moradin’s face settled into a solemn expression as he stared down at Torrin. “You’ve done me a great service,” he intoned. “A service beyond price. I might have died were it not for your valiant actions. I will thus watch over you for all of your lifetimes and aid you whenever you call.”

  Torrin bowed again. And I will honor you, in all of my lifetimes.

  “I know.” the god said, smiling. “There are many things a god can foresee, and that is one of them.”

  Moradin rose from his throne. He moved toward the soulforge, still carrying the soul that had been Torrin on his palm. The souls waiting in line at the forge paused, all eyes turning upward. “And now the time has come for you to be reborn,” Moradin said.

  Torrin startled. Had he heard correctly? But you said I would be Kier’s son. Has that much time really passed? Is he a grown man already?

  The god’s eyes twinkled as he said, “Time is flexible here.”

  The soul that had been Torrin breathed a long, slow sigh of relief. In his next lifetime, he would be a dwarf. Kier’s son. Although the boy would never know him, that was something. My thanks, he said.

  “No thanks needed,” said Moradin. “It is as it should be.”

  It was indeed.

  As the god lowered him to the forge, the soul that had been Torrin was bathed in sustaining warmth. Then the hand closed, and he saw only a dim red glow through the cracks between Moradin’s closed fingers. The pounding of the hammer on metal dulled to a muffled thud, thud, thud of a heartbeat heard through sustaining blood and cushioning water. Torrin felt himself squeezed, compressed, crystallized down to his soul’s essence. Then he felt the closed fist rise to the god’s mouth, and heard the rush of Moradin’s exhaled breath. The gust of warm air pushed him tight against the god’s clenched fingers.

  What will I look like, this time? he wondered.

  The breath at last forced the fingers open. He was carried along with it in a rush of sensation and sound.

  Wet, shivering-yet cradled in loving hands-he opened his eyes on a new lifetime.

  Kier, a grown man, peered over the midwife’s shoulder at the newborn babe the midwife had just placed in his mother’s arms. “Look at that red hair,” he observed. “And he’s a stout one, too. Just look-he’s not even crying.”

  For just a moment, the soul that had been Torrin remembered its last life. There had been a woman he’d loved as a shield sister, a boy he’d loved as a son, a family who’d taken him in when all others had ridiculed him…

  As the midwife wiped the bloody afterbirth from his face, the sharpness of those memories dulled, then fled.

  The newborn babe nuzzled against his mother’s breasts, found the milk he’d been searching for, and suckled, content at last.

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