Torrin whispered a heartfelt prayer of thanks. “The rune that cursed Moradin’s vein,” he told Baelar, nodding at the center of the cavern. “It’s under that dome of spellfire.”
Baelar nodded too. “I guessed as much,” he said. “Dangerous stuff. Still, it’s only necessary to survive long enough to dispel the rune’s magic.”
“With what?” Torrin asked.
Baelar pulled out a coin pouch that hung around his neck under his shirt. From inside it, he took a feather with a golden shaft and mithril vanes. Baelar held it near the base of the shaft, as if it were a quill pen. “Eartheart’s mages crafted this,” he said. “It can dispel even the most powerful magic. One flick of the wrist, and the rune will be erased.”
“But we can’t even reach the rune,” Torrin protested. “We’ll be reduced to ash before we’re even halfway there.”
Baelar stared at the dome of spellfire for a long moment. Then he turned and walked back to the duergar Torrin had killed. Torrin, following, heard the captain grunt in satisfaction. Baelar squatted and began pulling off the duergar’s boots. “Teleportation magic,” he said. “With these, I’ll be able to reach the rune in a heartbeat. By the grace of the Morndinsamman, I’ll live long enough to work the feather’s magic.”
Torrin’s fingers were still tingling. He glanced down and saw that his entire hand was wreathed in spellfire. Even as he watched, the bright blue glow crept past his wrist.
“Baelar, wait,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
Baelar, still tugging at the duergar’s boots, shook his head. “No. It’s my duty,” he replied. “Besides, you don’t know how to use the feather.”
“It sounds simple enough,” Torrin said. “Just a ‘flick of the wrist,’ you said. And I know you’re no wizard. That means any dwarf could use it.”
Baelar rose, holding the teleportation boots. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it again. “No,” he said firmly. “I’m old. If it’s my time to be reforged, then so be it. You, on the other hand, are still a boy—by dwarf standards, that is. And you have no guarantee of living again. If anything were to happen to you, Kier would miss you terribly. And we both know how angry Eralynn would be if I ‘sent you to die.’ I’d never hear the end of it.” He started to chuckle, then noticed the anguished look on Torrin’s face.
“What’s wrong?” Baelar asked suddenly. “What happened?”
Torrin pulled Eralynn’s pendant out from under his shirt. “She’s dead,” he said. “There was no time to tell you before now.”
For several moments, the two men stared at each other in silence. Then a tear slid down Baelar’s face, into his beard. “How?” he whispered.
“The stoneplague,” he replied.
“I see.”
Torrin turned to stare at the dome of spellfire, giving Baelar a moment of privacy to grieve. Still not looking at Baelar, he spoke. “Long ago, back when the stoneplague first came to Eartheart, Moradin spoke to me in a dream. ‘No one else can help me,’ he said.” He stared at the dome of blue fire. “This is my destiny.”
“No, Torrin,” Baelar said. “It’s not.”
Torrin turned and saw Baelar with the metal quill in hand and the duergar’s teleportation boots on his feet. “Raise a glass for me, won’t you, at the next Festival of Remembering,” he said. Then he blinked out of sight.
Torrin whirled to face the spellfire and lifted his hands to shade his eyes from its harsh glare. He spotted Baelar at once, a black silhouette against the blue blaze. And he immediately realized something had gone wrong. Baelar hadn’t teleported into the dome of spellfire; he wasn’t even close to the spot where the rune had been inscribed. As Torrin stared, tense with worry, the dwarf vanished from sight and reappeared a few paces from where he’d been standing, no closer to the rune. Baelar blinked away a third time—trying once more to teleport to the rune—and reappeared almost exactly where he’d started, once again.
“By Moradin’s beard,” Torrin breathed. “He can’t reach it. Something’s preventing him.”
Baelar’s shout of frustration echoed back to Torrin across the cavern. Giving up on teleportation, Baelar hunkered over. Like a man battling his way forward against a hurricane, he began to march. Torrin, watching, clenched his fists and counted Baelar’s steps. One … two … three …
Baelar wavered. Then he sagged to his knees. Blue spellfire raged around his silhouette, feeding like flames on his hair, his clothes.
“No!” Torrin shouted. He plunged a hand into his pocket and yanked out the runestone. Sparks of spellfire immediately leaped from the crystals at his feet, streaking up to the runestone like bright blue fireflies. “By blood and earth, ae-burakrin. Take me to Baelar!” Torrin cried.
Fuelled by spellfire, the runestone activated so quickly that Torrin barely managed to complete Baelar’s name. With a twist that left him dizzy, he landed next to the fallen man. Torrin stumbled sideways, crystals crunching underfoot. The rune was still several paces away, yet Torrin was deep inside the dome of spellfire. Baelar was a barely visible heap at his feet, obscured by zigzagging streaks of crackling blue. The spellfire washed over Torrin like heat from an over-stoked forge as streams of smoke erupting from his smoldering clothes. The hole the duergar had bored in the floor was several paces ahead and to the right, adding its own heat to the air. He bent over and grabbed Baelar with his free hand, but saw that he was already too late. Baelar was dead. His hair and clothes were gone, his skin already turning to blue-tinged ash.
The sight sent a sharp pang of dismay through Torrin. Yet there was no time to grieve. Leaving the body where it lay, he scooped up the magical feather instead. The metal shaft was so hot it glowed and burned his fingers. He hoped it wasn’t about to melt.
Torrin squinted his eyes almost shut, peered into the blazing inferno, and spotted the rune that had been carved into the cavern floor between the growth of crystals. It was enormous, perhaps five or six paces long, and filled with molten gold through which tidal ripples flowed, bulging its surface as they flowed first in one direction, then another, as if seeking an exit.
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. Mor
adin 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 Faerûn,” 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 Faerûn 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 Faerûn?
“You won’t remember.”
Tell me anyway.
“It’s in the Yehimal Mountains. From it, the dwarves spread across all of Faerûn, 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.”
The Gilded Rune Page 28
