The Gilded Rune

Chapter Three

Torrin nervously stroked his beard as he waited outside the Council chamber. The murmur of deep voices came from behind heavy oak doors embossed with the crossed axes of Clangeddin Silverbeard. To either side of the closed doors stood a Steel Shield guard, one of the thousands-strong contingent of dwarf knights who patrolled and protected Eartheart. Each stared with cold eyes at Torrin, openly suspicious of the “human” who had been summoned to Eartheart’s inner sanctum.

Two more Steel Shields flanked Torrin, their plumed helmets level with his chest.

Torrin had been forced to leave his Delver’s pack behind, together with his mace. He was, however, permitted to keep his wrist bracers, after a thorough inspection proved them to be non-magical. He’d polished them until the iron shone, and made sure they were turned so that the star embossed on each was visible. The Deep Lords could think what they might of Torrin, but he wore his bracers with pride. He was a true reincarnation of the long-vanished Ironstar clan.

A knock sounded from inside the doors-the signal that the Council was ready for him. Torrin squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. “I am your tool, Dwarffather,” he whispered. “Temper my heart. Give me courage, so that I might speak bravely.”

The doors opened, revealing a large, circular chamber. Ringing its periphery were the Deep Lords who governed Eartheart. The benches they occupied were raised from the floor, three rows high, with a spot directly opposite the door for the Lord Scepter Mariochar Bladebeard. Every seat was filled, and every eye was on Torrin as the Steel Shields escorted him through the doors.

The Deep Lords wore black silk hoods that hid their faces and beards-a means of protecting their identities from the likes of Torrin. They stared at him through eye holes in the hoods. The Lord Scepter was the only one whose face was bare. He scowled down from his seat; his dark eyes as hard as flint, and his steel grey beard plaited in three braids like a pitchfork. His thread-of-gold official robe all but engulfed his stocky body, but his breastplate was visible beneath it-polished mithril reflecting the light from the massive chandelier that dominated the ceiling. The sweet smell of beeswax candles filled the chamber. The room echoed with the whispers of the assembled Deep Lords.

Torrin halted on the spot where he’d been told to stand during his briefing. He bowed deeply. Below his feet was an enormous sigil whose tightly contained magic, he’d been warned, would burn him to ash in an instant, were he to make any threatening moves. Had the Deep Lords been able to see into his heart, they’d have realized how unnecessary that warning was. His appearance before them was his duty, one he took as seriously as would any other dwarf of Eartheart. It was yet another reminder of how hard Torrin had had to work every day to earn the trust of his own people.

As Torrin rose from his bow, the Lord Scepter raised a gauntleted hand. The whispers stopped. “You are the human Daffyd Raltin, who now calls himself Torrin Ironstar?” he said.

“I…” Torrin hesitated, wary of giving offence. It wasn’t his place to correct the Lord Scepter, but he would speak the truth. He had sworn an oath to Moradin to do just that, no matter what the cost. Feeling the eyes boring into him from every side, he carried on. “I am Torrin Ironstar, a member of the Delvers, an order in the service of Dugmaren Brightmantle.”

A buzz of whispers followed. Once again, the Lord Scepter silenced them. “Delvemaster Frivaldi said you had some information about the plague that you wanted to share with us.”

Nervous sweat trickled down Torrin’s sides. He resisted the urge to touch the silver hammers in his beard. “It’s about the quarantine you imposed yesterday,” he said. “A few days ago I had… dealings with a fellow dwarf who was suffering from the illness that the proclamations described.”

Angry shouts filled the air.

“Why was this human permitted into our chambers?”

“He brings plague among us!”

“How dare he!”

“Plague!”

“Arrest him! Lock him away!”

“Execute him, before it spreads!”

The knights on either side of Torrin stepped back a pace, at the same time distancing themselves from him and flanking him, their axes at the ready. They glanced at the Lord Scepter, waiting for orders. Torrin stood utterly still, careful not to even twitch a finger, acutely aware of the magical symbol under his feet.

“Enough!” the Lord Scepter said. The word sliced through the angry shouts like a blade through ripe fruit, reducing them to a splatter of mutters and whispers. “We will hear what this human has to say, then decide his fate.”

Torrin shivered, the sweat on his body suddenly as chill as ice water. “Thank you, Lord Scepter.”

“Don’t thank me yet, human,” the Lord Scepter said. “If you have brought plague among us, your life will be forfeit.”

Torrin met his eye. “If I have carried plague to Eartheart, I will gladly bare my neck for the blade,” he replied in a steady voice. “If it is established that I have caused harm to my friends and family, death will be a mercy. Moradin willing, I will be reforged anew, and receive a second chance to atone for any suffering I might have caused them.”

The Lord Scepter’s eyebrows rose. He likely hadn’t expected that reply. “Tell your tale,” he ordered.

Torrin nodded, and began the story of his meeting with Kendril, a recitation he’d been going over and over in his head, ever since the quarantine had been imposed.

Immediately following the meeting to which Delvemaster Frivaldi had been summoned, a proclamation had been carried throughout the city by the Steel Shields. The Lord Scepter had decreed that the city would close its gates in a bid to protect Eartheart from a strange new illness that had broken out in the smaller settlements scattered through the Deeps to the east and north of Eartheart. Those who wanted to leave were permitted to do so, but no one would be let back inside the city without first being cleansed by Sharindlar’s clerics. As an added precaution, Berronar’s clergy were carving protective sigils into the walls and the streets, as well as wards preventing teleportation, to keep the city safe.

As soon as he’d heard the proclamation, Torrin had felt a hollow open inside him. He’d known, without asking, what the illness was: the horrifying affliction that had led Kendril to kill himself. Torrin immediately went to Delvemaster Frivaldi and told him the rest of the story-the part he should have told the Delvemaster before.

According to Frivaldi, similar afflictions had been reported in Velm’s Brace, Wildstar, Sundasz, Magkstok-even as close as Daunting and Tarnhall. Just a handful of cases, but the descriptions were enough to make the boldest dwarf’s beard turn gray. The illness even had a name already: the “stoneplague.”

And so Torrin was standing before a hastily convened meeting of the Council of Deep Lords, telling them the little he knew of the sickness.

They questioned him at length, wringing out every detail of Kendril’s affliction. They seemed particularly interested in the part where Kendril had told Torrin that the stoneplague wouldn’t affect him, probing for clues as to what that statement meant. Torrin was at a loss, and could only venture a guess: that Kendril seemed to feel his illness was a punishment from the gods, for having either abandoned or been excommunicated from his faith.

Kendril’s brother-Jorn, son of Balund, a sergeant in the Steel Shields-was called to the Council chamber and questioned. He shot an angry look at Torrin, no doubt remembering Torrin’s attempt to have Jorn heed his brother’s warning to leave Eartheart. The twin brothers had both been sworn servants of Clangeddin Silverbeard-Jorn as a knight, and Kendril as a battle cleric. They had parted ways, decades before, after a bitter dispute over a point of faith.

The Council prodded, wanting to know more. Was Kendril’s supposed heresy the cause of the stoneplague?

“My… brother believed that Moradin’s breath ‘fired’ the Soulforge,” Jorn explained. “When clearly the scriptures say it ‘cooled’ the noble metals from which our race was forged. The lowliest novice of any of the Morndinsamman can tell you that the first dwarves were in solid, immutable form before being tipped from the Soulforge; yet Kendril insisted that they were tipped out of the mold while still warm, and acquired imperfections during the cooling process. It was heresy!”

“I see,” said the Lord Scepter. The other Deep Lords began talking quietly to each other, clearly no longer interested in what must have appeared, to them, to be a relatively minor point of doctrine.

Torrin, however, hung on every word, wishing he’d known earlier that Kendril had been so knowledgeable about the Soulforge. Kendril might have been, it would seem, a kindred spirit, also expressing opinions about the Soulforge that strayed beyond the narrow bounds of conformity. Torrin wished he could have met him under better circumstances, found out which texts the former cleric had read. What else might they have revealed?

Jorn explained that he and his brother had eventually come to blows over whether the Dwarffather’s breath had heated or cooled the noble metals from which the dwarf race was formed. And the brothers had refused to speak to each other after that. As a result, Jorn had no idea of what had become of his brother after Kendril had departed the main temple in Eartheart to pursue his “heretical” studies in Sundasz. Nor did he show any emotion as Torrin was called upon to describe, for the second time that night, the circumstances of Kendril’s death.

Jorn was then dismissed, and took his leave from the chamber. As he did so, he glared at Torrin and muttered just loud enough for him to hear. “Thought I would abandon my post, did he?” he said with a snort. “Kendril was a fool to the end, I see.”

Torrin said nothing. Fortunately, Jorn hadn’t been present when Torrin had told the Council about the nature of his dealings with Kendril. Nor had the Deep Lords asked what Torrin had paid for the runestone. If they had, Torrin would have been forced to choose between two oaths: his promise to Kendril not to reveal the source of the gems Jorn’s wife had been given via an intermediary, and his sacred vow to Moradin to speak the truth before the Council.

Delvemaster Frivaldi was summoned next. He spoke about how Torrin had shown him a runestone the other night in the Delver’s Roost. The runestone, he added, had since been examined by Dugmaren Brightmantle’s clerics, and declared free of contagion.

Torrin listened avidly, temporarily forgetting the dire circumstances he was in. He had hoped the clerics’ examination might have revealed some clue as to the runestone’s function, but Frivaldi made no mention of whether the clerics had probed its magic. Nor did he so much as glance at Torrin, even when he turned to leave. There was no encouraging nod, no sympathetic look.

But Torrin understood why. If a member of the order had indeed brought plague to the city, the Delvers would be disgraced, even reviled. The fact that Torrin was a second-rank member, a mere “human,” would have little bearing.

Torrin’s shoulders slumped. He’d hoped Frivaldi would support him. But it was as if the Delvemaster had mentally closed the door on Torrin, no longer recognizing him as a member of the order. That stung. One day, assuming he survived the Council meeting, Torrin would prove to Delvemaster Frivaldi that he was, indeed, still worthy of being called a Delver.

Maliira was the next one called to the Council chamber. Questioned by the Deep Lords, the priestess confirmed that Torrin had sought a cleansing at the temple in Hammergate before entering Eartheart proper. She assured the Council that the cleansing had been properly performed, and that Torrin had been free of any contagion when he left the temple.

“And did he pass directly through the city gates afterward?” asked a Deep Lord in the front row who wore a red doublet.

“That I cannot say,” Maliira admitted. “I was busy with another supplicant.”

The Deep Lord nodded behind his hood, as if that was significant. “So for all we know,” he continued, “he may have had dealings with others who carried the stoneplague during his walk between the temple and the city gates?”

“My Lords,” Torrin protested. “I assure you, I did not. I came directly-”

“You will speak only when bid, human!” another Deep Lord thundered back. He shook his finger at Torrin, his sleeve falling back to reveal an elaborate silver bracer.

Torrin’s jaw clenched in frustration. Seething inside, he bowed his head. “My apologies.”

The Deep Lord who’d just spoken glanced around at his fellows, his eyes glittering from behind his hood. “It will shock you to learn that yesterday, a man believed to be suffering from the stoneplague was reported within Hammergate itself,” he said. “A suspicious looking dwarf with a gray tinge to his skin. Could he have been another of this human’s companions, I wonder?”

“More to the point,” a Deep Lord seated just to the left of the Lord Scepter added, in a quavering voice that betrayed his age, “the human admitted having had dealings with this Kendril fellow long before his misadventure at Needle Leap. It’s entirely possible these ‘negotiations’ carried the stoneplague to our doorsteps a tenday ago!”

Torrin opened his mouth to protest that his earlier negotiations with Kendril had been through a third party, not in person. Then he realized that, no matter what he said, the Council wouldn’t listen. Not at the moment. He closed his eyes to steady himself as whispers of suspicion chased each other around the room. When they stopped, he tried to gauge the reaction of the Lord Scepter, but the head of the Council was glaring off into space, not looking in Torrin’s direction.

The Council had no further questions for Maliira. She, at least, met Torrin’s eye as she left, but with so fleeting a glance that he couldn’t tell if it was meant to express sympathy-or sorrow.

As the doors closed behind her, the Lord Scepter raised a hand. Silence fell upon the room. “By show of hands,” he said, “who believes this human to be at fault, to have brought the stoneplague to our city?”

Torrin glanced quickly around the room and saw more than one Deep Lord-in fact, most of them-shifting slightly in their seats, starting to raise their hands. Torrin could contain himself no longer. “Lord Scepter!” he cried. “If you’re going to sentence me to death, I must know how to reply to Moradin, when he asks me to list my sins! I invoke the Treaty of the Hammer, which allows a condemned man-no matter what his race-to ask a single question, and have it answered.”

Silence fell. Heads turned.

“And your question?” the Lord Scepter asked.

Torrin drew a deep breath. “ Is the stoneplague in our city?”

Several Deep Lords gasped behind their hoods. The two knights flanking Torrin bristled, their weapons ready. But, Torrin noted wryly, they seemed as interested in the answer as he was.

The Lord Scepter patted the air. “At ease, knights,” he said. His chuckle surprised Torrin-and more than a few of the Deep Lords, judging by the way the hooded heads turned. “He may be human, but he knows our laws. And more to the point, there is no harm in answering him.”

He stared down at Torrin. “The quarantine has done its work. Not a single case of the stoneplague has been reported in Eartheart. Nor has it been confirmed, I might add, that the man spotted in Hammergate yesterday actually had the stoneplague. That, as far as I am aware, is mere rumor.”

Torrin nodded. “Thank you, Lord Scepter,” he said with a bow. “Do with me what you will.”

Lord Scepter Bladebeard stared down at him for several moments. Then he spoke. “By show of hands-Who believes this human to be innocent?”

Torrin’s eyes widened. Had he heard correctly? The change in the Lord Scepter’s question was subtle, but significant. “Innocent,” he’d said. Several of the Deep Lords also appeared startled by the shift in emphasis.

“I might also point out,” the Deep Lord continued, “that if this man’s dealings had resulted in contaminated objects entering our city, we would surely have seen evidence of the stoneplague within our gates by now. As well, we have heard how he sought out a cleansing in Sharindlar’s sacred pool. Does that sound, to any of you, like the action of a man who cares nothing for our welfare?”

Lord Scepter Bladebeard’s eyes swept the chamber, lingering momentarily on the hooded face of each of the Deep Lords present. Slowly, a smattering of hands rose. Then more, and still more, until the majority of the Deep Lords had their hands in the air.

Torrin let out a relieved sigh. He wanted to laugh aloud, but that would be unseemly. Instead he assumed a suitably dour expression-but inwardly he wore a beard-splitting grin.

“Delver Torrin,” the Lord Scepter said. “You are absolved of any wrongdoing. Your sole fault is for not coming forward sooner. We bid you now to leave our Chamber; we have much to discuss.”

The knights on either side of Torrin snapped to attention. They barely allowed Torrin to bow his thanks-low and deep, until the silver hammers in his beard brushed the floor-before grabbing his elbows and hustling him from the Council chamber.

Torrin walked down the hallway with a newfound confidence. The Deep Lords had the matter in hand. The stoneplague would not spread to Eartheart, despite Torrin’s tardiness in coming before them.

“Praise Moradin,” Torrin whispered. “We’re safe.”

It was only after he was back on the city streets that he realized something. Lord Scepter Bladebeard had called him by his dwarf name. Not Daffyd, the name Torrin’s human parents had given him, but Torrin.

Moradin had indeed bestowed a blessing today.

“Uncle Torrin!” Kier cried, leaping up from the breakfast table and nearly tripping over the bench in his excitement. “I heard you were ordered before the Council last night. Tell me all about it! What happened?”

“Kier!” his father Haldrin chided. “Mind your manners. Torrin may not want to speak of it.” But from the way Haldrin leaned avidly forward, peering at Torrin from behind his spectacles, he was obviously hoping to hear Torrin answer the question.

Torrin chuckled to himself and tousled Kier’s hair. “He’s still a boy, Haldrin.”

“He’s old enough to know his manners,” Haldrin replied. “Being summoned by the Council is no light matter. Are you all right? Did they…” As if suddenly realizing he too was asking questions, he changed the topic abruptly. “Sit down. You look exhausted. You must be famished.”

Torrin did so. He was grateful to be sitting down, despite the fact that his knees knocked the underside of the table. He accepted a bowl of cinnamon-scented oat porridge from Gimrick, the gnome who served Clan Thunsonn.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Torrin answered. “They met to discuss the stoneplague. They were worried that I…”

Just at that moment, Ambril entered the room. She settled herself on the bench beside her husband, her pregnant stomach making her awkward and unbalanced.

Torrin quickly amended what he’d been about to say. “They knew I’d recently had dealings with a fellow from Helmstar,” he continued. “The stoneplague is as thick as fleas in an unwashed beard there, and they wanted to ensure I’d been properly cleansed before entering Eartheart.”

“Were you?” Ambril asked. She leaned back from the table, staring in wide-eyed alarm at the spoon Torrin had just taken a mouthful of porridge from, as if it were a venomous serpent.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Torrin assured her, even though he knew it would make little difference. “The Deep Lords themselves decreed that I posed no danger.”

Haldrin patted his wife’s shoulder. “There,” he said. “You see? Nothing to worry about, dear.”

Kier settled himself on the bench beside Torrin, ignoring his mother’s frantic hand signals to sit somewhere else. “Were they all wearing hoods, Uncle?”

“All except the Lord Scepter,” Torrin replied.

The boy shook his head. “Ridiculous! What did they think you were-some sort of drow assassin?”

Torrin lowered his spoon with a sigh. “It’s what they thought I wasn’t,” he said.

Kier nodded as his eyes gleamed with boyish indignation. “You should have taken me along,” he said. “I would have told them you’re no human.” Just eight years old, Kier was a long way off from sprouting the first hairs of a beard like his father’s, yet Torrin often caught glimpses of the boy’s grandfather in him. Kier had the same daring that had made Baelar Thunsonn one of the most renowned of the knights colloquially known as “skyriders.” No doubt Kier would become a Peacehammer and ride a griffon himself, one day.

Torrin noted the uncomfortable silence that had descended upon the other side of the breakfast table. Ambril and Haldrin were suddenly very interested in their porridge.

Torrin sighed. The Thunsonn Clan had taken him in and given him a home within the city. But that had been an act of charity, prompted by his friendship with Eralynn and cemented by his acceptance into the Delvers. To most of Clan Thunsonn, Torrin might act and dress and pay fervent homage to the Morndinsamman, but he was just a peculiar human.

“Thanks, Kier,” Torrin said. “I’d have been proud to have you by my side.” He grinned across the table at the boy’s parents. “Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary.”

“You’re not being banished, then?” Haldrin asked, finally looking up.

“You’re not rid of me yet,” Torrin said jokingly.

“That’s good,” Haldrin replied, his voice equally deadpan. “If we did lose you, we’d have no one to reach items down from the highest shelves. Poor Gimrick would have to resort to his ladder again-and we all know what a fright that would put into him.”

Everyone around the table chuckled-even Ambril, who at last seemed to have reassured herself that Torrin was not, indeed, a danger to her unborn babes. The family resumed their breakfast in companionable silence.

As they ate, Torrin eased his pack from his shoulders and set it on the bench beside him. The runestone, having being thoroughly examined by the clerics, had been returned to him, and was back inside his pack.

“I do have other news,” Torrin told them. “Soon enough, if the gods are willing, I’ll be setting out on my quest for the Soulforge. I finally have what I need to find it.”

Ambril and Haldrin nodded, only partially listening. Ambril’s twin sister Mara had just come into the room, and was enquiring about the pregnancy. Fair enough-the Thunsonn Clan had heard Torrin go on more than once about his quest.

Kier, however, was all ears. “What, Uncle Torrin?” he asked. “What have you got? Tell me!”

Pleased by the boy’s interest-and understanding how hard it was to be a singleton, in a race where Moradin’s thunder blessing consistently produced twins-Torrin dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “A magical runestone,” he confided. “Want to see it?”

Kier’s rapid nod was all the encouragement that Torrin needed.

“It’s going to be the greatest delve of all,” Torrin told him as he undid his pack. “And this-” he took the runestone out and unwrapped it “-is going to lead me straight to it.”

Kier studied the runestone. “How?”

Torrin shrugged. “I still have to figure that one out.”

“Can I hold it?” Kier asked.

“Why not? Here you go.”

“I’ve planned a delve of my own,” Kier said as he avidly examined the runestone.

“Oh really? Where to?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Even from me, your favorite delving partner?” Torrin chided, humoring the boy.

“You can’t come, Uncle,” the boy said. “I have to do this one solo. There… isn’t room for you.”

Torrin chuckled, wondering which unwatched pantry or dusty storeroom was going to be the subject of the boy’s “delve.” Gimrick had better count his carving knives, lest some “ancient dagger” be plundered. “I hope you’ve made all your preparations,” he told Kier.

“I’m ready,” the boy assured him.

“And that you’ll show me what you’ve delved, once you’re back.”

“Of course. You’ll be the first to see whatever I find!”

Torrin smiled. If only the Delvers would show as much enthusiasm! Yet despite Torrin’s fervent prayers, the gods had yet to convince anyone from the order to join Torrin’s quest for the Soulforge. Likely, he thought ruefully, he’d have to wait for Kier to become a man, in order to finally have a delving partner.

He shook his head. “Moradin grant it,” he said to himself, “that my quest is complete before the boy is as old as that.”