were in good hands, and I knew you’d catch up to me once you recovered, likely long before I made my way to the front of the line.”
She peered up at him, frowning slightly. “The magic we invoked was strong,” she said. “It didn’t… leave its mark on you, did it?”
Torrin glanced down at the hand that touched his. The magical energy that flickered across the back of Eralynn’s hands had faded to its usual dull glow.
Torrin was touched by her concern. “No scars,” he said. “I’m-” He’d been about to say he was “clean.” He was glad to have stopped himself in time. “I’m fine,” he continued.
Eralynn nodded. The line moved forward slightly as the bearers shouldered their packs and followed the caravan master into the temple. Some sort of agreement, it would appear, had at last been reached.
“There’s a rumor they’re going to up the price for tallfolk,” Eralynn said. “There’s even talk they’ll fix a rate for the tithe for dwarves as well.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Gougers. Making a profit out of the stoneplague.”
“Don’t say that!” Torrin said, warning her. He glanced nervously at the main entrance to the temple, where the priestess stood. “Even if the Merciful Maiden doesn’t hear you, the goddess might!”
“It’s not Sharindlar I’m criticizing,” Eralynn whispered back fiercely. “For all you know, the goddess is thinking the same thing.”
Torrin doubted it, but he didn’t want to continue so potentially blasphemous an argument. He changed the subject instead.
“At least I know how my new trinket works now,” he told Eralynn, keeping his voice low in case anyone was listening. Elation filled him. “At long last, I can complete my quest!”
“Please tell me you’re not going back to the Wyrmcaves,” Eralynn said.
“No need,” he replied. “I’m sure there are other earth nodes I can use. I’ll just need to find a guide who can take me to one of them. To a safe node, this time.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” Eralynn asked. “What if you say, ‘Take me to the Soulforge,’ and nothing happens? Or worse yet, the runestone takes not you, but your soul, straight to Moradin’s realm?” She glanced down at her hands. “Playing around with earth nodes can be a dangerous business, you know.”
“I’m not asking you to come.”
She glared up at him. “I’m not offering.”
Torrin shifted uncomfortably. Had he insulted her? As he pondered that, his eye fell on a boy carrying fresh roasted mushrooms on a stick, one of the street vendors selling food and drink to the crowd. The boy was scrawny-barrel chested when compared to a human of a comparable age, but small compared to other dwarf boys his size-with hands stained yellow from mushroom picking. His clothes were poor and ill-fitting, but the coin pouch at his hip bulged. Business had obviously been brisk. Eralynn licked her lips and reached for her coin pouch, but Torrin wrinkled his nose at the smell.
“What’s the matter?” Eralynn asked.
“I visited Araumycos once,” Torrin explained. “Ever since then, the smell of mushrooms has made me sick.”
“Oh,” she replied with a laugh. “For a moment there, I thought that maybe the boy had the stoneplague.” She waved at the mushroom seller. “You there, boy. Wait a moment!”
Torrin noticed that he was suddenly no longer being jostled by the others in the line. A gap had opened around where he and Eralynn stood. A buzz of voices broke out all around them.
“The stoneplague,” someone ahead of him whispered. “Did you hear? The boy has the stoneplague.”
A moment later, the word rippled up and down the line.
“The stoneplague!” a man just behind them shouted in a shrill voice. “The mushroom seller has the stoneplague!”
Eralynn’s eyes widened. “No!” she insisted. “He doesn’t. I was just-”
It was too late. The line surged backward, people tripping over one another in their haste to escape. Men shouted, one woman screamed, and an elderly man several paces away broke into a loud, quavering prayer. The once orderly line suddenly descended into a milling mob, people running to and fro. Eralynn, caught up in the surge, was swept away from Torrin’s side. Above it all, Torrin heard the temple cleric’s shrill voice, shouting for order. And, much closer at hand, the metallic snick of steel being drawn. It was the man who’d shouted that the boy had the stoneplague-a black-bearded dwarf with a dagger in his hand and a malicious look on his face. He bore down on the mushroom seller, his hard eyes firmly fixed on the boy’s coin pouch.
Torrin didn’t have time to unfasten his mace from his belt. Instead he dove at the would-be thief’s back, tackling him. The rogue was tougher than Torrin had expected. He didn’t go down, but whirled, spinning Torrin off his feet. Torrin clung to the man, his feet scrambling for purchase, and finally managed to bring him down. The rogue twisted in Torrin’s grip like a greased eel, and Torrin felt a flash of pain as the blade of the knife nicked his ear. He flung himself sideways, both hands on the rogue’s knife hand now. They struggled, pitting strength versus strength, the rogue sputtering curses. From several paces behind him, Torrin heard Eralynn shouting to hang on, that she was coming. Then the rogue looked at Torrin. Torrin saw that the rogue’s eyes had a touch of the same dull, glassy look that Kendril’s had shown, and he felt an icy rivulet of fear course through him. The rogue’s eyes weren’t clouded enough yet to blind him, but the skin at the corners was the same: deeply cracked and as dark as mud.
“Yes,” the thief hissed up at him. “I’ve got it.”
He spat in Torrin’s face.
Torrin let go of the man and flailed back, frantically rubbing the rogue’s spittle from his forehead. Had it run into his eyes? Was he going to catch the stoneplague and go blind?
“That man has the stoneplague!” he screamed, pointing at the thief who was already several paces away and running hard. “Stop him!”
It was the wrong thing to have said. The crowd, whipped into an even greater hysteria by the second mention of the stoneplague, elbowed, shoved, and screamed at each other in their increased urgency to get away from not one, but two possible sources of contagion. One or two fell, and were nearly trampled as the mob surged back and forth. Torrin floundered to and fro as dwarves crashed into him, sending him staggering. By the time he had fought his way to where Eralynn stood, the street in front of the temple was rapidly emptying.
Soon everyone was gone, except for the mushroom seller, who lay face down on the cobblestones, blood trickling from his nose. Mushrooms lay scattered about the street all around him, stamped into a slippery mush by the feet of the fleeing crowd.
Eralynn’s eyes widened. “Moradin have mercy,” she said in a strained voice. “What have we done?”
Torrin ground his teeth as he saw that the boy’s coin pouch was gone. Ordinarily, he’d have assumed that one of the tallfolk had taken it. He liked to think that dwarves had more honor than to steal from their own kind. But that didn’t seem to be the case.
He glanced around but saw no sign of the rogue. He rubbed his stinging ear. Despite the attack, he didn’t think the fellow was connected to the two who’d jumped him. The theft from the mushroom seller had appeared spontaneous, prompted solely by greed.
The cleric from the temple hurried forward to examine the fallen boy. She knelt beside him and gently lifted his head.
Eralynn kneeled down beside her. “Is he-”
“He’s alive,” the red-robed cleric said.
“Praise Sharindlar.”
“But he’ll need healing,” the Merciful Maiden added. “And soon. His skull is cracked.”
Torrin, meanwhile, was thinking of the spit that had struck his face. He reminded himself that no human had yet succumbed to the stoneplague. Yet he wondered if that were also true of a human with a dwarf soul. In any case, a cleansing would take away whatever degree of illness the dwarf’s spittle had held. That was one thing Torrin could be certain of.
He walked toward the cleric and the injured boy, feeling sick at the thought that his reaction to the stench of mushrooms had caused the situation. Eralynn must have felt equally guilty. He saw her open her coin pouch.
“Please,” Eralynn said, insisting. “Let me pay for his healing.”
As Torrin drew closer, he was surprised to see that it wasn’t coins Eralynn had inside her pouch, but a bar of
