“Really?” Torrin snapped back, falling back into his old habit of sarcasm. “How could you tell?”
His mother ignored his retort. “She’s gone back to Eartheart, I suppose. Assuming she found enough gold for the cleansing. The temple is charging whatever the market will bear, I’m told.”
Torrin winced, and immediately regretted it. The portions of his face that hadn’t been protected by the goggles or his beard stung from his burns. What stung worse was the news that Eralynn had just walked out on him. “When did she leave?” he asked.
“Yesterday.”
Torrin blinked. “I’ve been unconscious that long?”
His mother’s lips tightened. “I was worried about you,” she replied. “But your dwarf friend said you’d be fine, once the backlash from the spellfire wore off. What were you up to? You didn’t blunder into a pocket of spellfire, did you?”
“Nothing like that.” Torrin said, looking around the room. His toys and clothes had been packed away years before. All that remained of his childhood furnishings was the bed. Sunlight filtered through the room’s single grimy window-the one through which he’d snuck out onto the rooftop as a boy, to look down on the crowded streets below. Beyond the rooftops, he could see the high walls of Eartheart proper. There were more knights than usual patrolling the battlements. Making sure no one tried to slip past the quarantine, Torrin supposed.
The attic was filled with crates and boxes. It had become a storeroom. But near the window was a crude drawing he’d done of himself, back when he was six-the year before he’d realized he was a dwarf born into a human family, and not a true human at all. The beardless boy that stared back at him from that drawing seemed as distant from the man he had become as the stars were from Faerun.
“Where’s the runestone I was holding when I teleported here?” he asked.
“Your friend put it in your pack-which is over in the corner there. Safe,” his mother said reassuringly.
“And my mace?”
After a moment’s strained silence, she answered, “Also safe.”
“Praise Moradin.”
His mother stared at the silver hammers in his beard. “I see you’re still worshiping dwarf gods.”
“Of course,” Torrin replied. “Why shouldn’t I worship my maker?”
His mother closed her eyes and whispered something in a strained voice. Then she stared an age-old challenge into his eyes. “I’m your mother.”
“I’ve never disputed that,” Torrin said.
She held up a silencing finger. “For nine months, I bore you inside me,” she continued. “For seven years, you were a normal boy, with none of these flights of fancy. If I could only step back in time, I would never have taken that horrible weapon in trade.” She leaned forward, her eyes intense. “It was the mace that whispered its command word into your mind that day, Torrin. It had nothing to do with you. You’re not a dwarf.”
Torrin sighed. Their conversation was familiar ground, so well trodden he could have been blindfolded and still followed the footprints of the words that would come. “The mace wouldn’t have spoken to me if I wasn’t of the Ironstar clan,” he said.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” his mother replied. “And if you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe one of those ‘longbeards’ you’re in such awe of. Your father consulted a loremaster, one you’ll have a great deal of respect for. According to Loremaster Indersson, it’s entirely possible for a human-a full human, not a whiff of dwarf anywhere about him-to use a weapon enchanted with dwarf magic. An enchanted weapon will speak to any who wields it, even a human, if his will is strong enough and the need is great. The loremaster assured your father that Moradin would never send a dwarf soul back to this realm in a human body.”
“Yet it happened,” Torrin said, staring out of the window. “And it was done for a reason. I know it.”
“You know nothing of the sort!” his mother said.
He turned back to her. “I know you would have died that day, if I hadn’t killed that robber. I know that no seven-year-old human boy should have been able to do what I did.” He rose, stiffly, from the bed.
“Torrin,” she said as she caught his hand. “Just tell me why. Did you need to be something more than the son of shopkeepers? Was that not enough for you? You’re a grown man now. It’s time to leave your childhood fantasies behind. Your father’s not getting any younger, you know. He could use your help.”
Torrin gently removed her hand from his. “Where is Father?”
“Downstairs.”
“He didn’t want to speak to me?”
“He has a shop to run. But he looked in on you, as you lay unconscious. He was just as worried as I was.”
Torrin nodded. “And my bracers? Where are they?”
His mother’s head drooped as she pointed at a corner of the attic room. “Over there.”
Torrin gently patted her hand. “You’re still my mother,” he said reassuringly. “You still bore me. I’m just… not your son.”
His mother made a choking sound and abruptly rose from her stool. As she hurried from the room, Torrin suddenly realized how those words must have stung. “Mother, I-”
Too late. She was gone.
“I never meant to hurt you,” Torrin finished. With a heavy sigh, he made his way over to the corner to collect his things.
He was a dwarf. He was as certain of it as he was of the fact that he was alive. Yet one thing troubled him. “Home,” he’d told the runestone. The word had had come to him, out of nowhere-just as the command words for his mace had just popped into his head, those many years before. And he’d spoken it in Dwarvish. Faern, he’d said.
Yet the runestone had brought him not to the Thunsonn clanhold, but to his parents’ shop, to his childhood home.
“Torrin! Over here!”
Eralynn waved to him from the long lineup that snaked its way back from the temple Torrin had visited upon his return from Needle Leap. The temple was an outreach to the tallfolk of Hammergate, and occupied what had once been a squat stone warehouse near one of the city gates. It was much lower than the woodframe shops on either side whose upper stories jutted out over the streets below.
On each of the four corners of the temple’s rooftop, Sharindlar’s clerics had erected a steel needle like the ones used by lay healers to stitch wounds back together. But one in particular was as thick as a man’s arm and encased in perpetual flames-the goddess’s symbol. Magical mosaics on the walls below depicted Sharindlar, her arms raised and her dress flaring, giving the appearance that the goddess was dancing around the exterior of the temple.
A knot of people clustered at the main entrance, demanding attention. A harried-looking novice did her best to reply to the crush of demands-the loudest of which seemed to be coming from a gray-bearded caravan master who kept shouting, over and over again, that he had a schedule to keep.
Torrin pushed his way through the crowd, keeping an eye out for the two rogues who’d waylaid him, or anyone else who looked suspicious. But if anyone was following him, he was unable to spot them.
There were two lines in front of the temple. A much longer one consisted of dwarves-most of them from settlements beyond Eartheart, judging by their dusty clothes. The other held a dozen or so humans, elves, and various other tallfolk races. Although there had been no reports of tallfolk succumbing to the stoneplague, the Deep Lords weren’t taking any chances. Everyone who entered the city had to be cleansed.
Eralynn was near the front of the longer line, a few paces behind the bellowing caravan master and some husky dwarf bearers who were sitting on their packs, playing tumblebones. The caravan master was arguing that, since his bearers were only half human, they qualified as dwarves, and were entitled to have their tithe paid for out of the city coffers. Or at the very least, half of it.
When he was even with the outdoor privies that had been set up to accommodate the needs of those in line, Torrin wrinkled his nose at the sour smell of excrement and unwashed bodies.
“Eralynn!” he shouted, ignoring the grumbles of those who thought he was trying to butt into the wrong line. “I’m glad to see you’re all right. Why didn’t you wait for me?”
“Do you see this line?” she called back. Her eyes had dark circles under them, and she looked weary beyond words, he saw as he reached her side. “All day I’ve stood here, waiting my turn to go inside,” she continued. “You
