She sliced the two ribbons off his wrist. “Your debt is absolved,” the priestess said.
Torrin rubbed his bare wrist. “But… I promised to pay for the previous two cleansings,” he said. “And I always keep my oaths.”
Maliira didn’t seem to be listening to his protests.
“I was told what you said in the Council chamber,” she said, sheathing her dagger. “You were very brave.”
“I was merely doing my duty as a citizen of Eartheart,” he replied.
“Yet you’re not a citizen. You’re human.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. As I told you the first time we met: I’m a dwarf.” He thumped his chest. “Here. On the inside.”
“Regardless of whether that’s the truth or a pretty fantasy, you have the honor and the courage of a dwarf. It seems unfair you should pay when you’ve already done so much.”
“Nevertheless, I will pay,” Torrin insisted. “As promised.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Is your insistence on payment just an excuse to dance with me on Midsummer Night?”
Torrin grinned as he replied, “Does the coal in a forge glow red?”
Maliira smiled. “Off you go, then,” she said. “Get cleansed. That way, they’ll have no excuse to haul you before the Council again.”
“Until Midsummer then,” Torrin said.
“Until Midsummer.”
Torrin entered the temple, still grinning. He might have lost all of the gold in the earthmote, but somehow, ironically, his footsteps felt all the lighter. The weight of the gold had lain upon his shoulders, filling him with anxiety and guilt. In truth, he was glad to be rid of it. And he had something much, much better to look forward to.
He still had to raise the hundred Anvils he’d stubbornly insisted on paying, but as a result of his foray into the Wyrmcaves, he realized the solution to that problem was already at hand. Once the other Delvers learned that the runestone was capable of taking them anywhere they wanted to go, they would pay Torrin whatever price he asked to transport them to their delves. Dorn, for example, would pay a pretty price to find the lost tomb of Velm Dragonslayer-and he was just the start.
Whistling cheerfully, Torrin made his way to the temple’s lower level. After seeing Maliira again, a plunge into an ice-cold sacred pool was just the thing he needed.
Interlude
1306 DR THE YEAR OF THUNDER
“A babe is more precious than gold. And twin babes, twice as precious.”
Moradin sat upon his throne, his warhammer resting across his knees, his bracers gleaming redgold in the light of the Soulforge. His long white beard lay against his chest and lap, hiding his smith’s apron and leather leggings. His expression was grim as he stared down upon the face of Faerun.
“My children,” he observed. “They are diminishing.”
Berronar Truesilver, matron of home and hearth, sat on her own massive stone throne beside her husband. She stared down at the clanholds of the dwarves, a hand stroking one of the four neat plaits of her beard. Her lips moved in silence as she counted. “I am saddened, my husband,” she noted. “Not since the fall of Bhaerynden to the drow have we seen so many empty clanholds.”
“Many souls have been lost,” Moradin observed. He gestured toward the Soulforge, at the ghostly dwarves who stood in line behind it, awaiting their turn to be reforged. “Fewer of them return to us each year, and thus fewer each year are reborn. Something must be done.”
He raised a clenched hand. A shield appeared in it. Moradin lifted his warhammer, and struck the shield. It rang like a gong, summoning the lesser deities who served him. Clanggedin Silverbeard was the first of the Morndinsamman to appear. He materialized at the right hand of Moradin, garbed for battle in blood-splattered chainmail, with a matched set of mithril axes in his hands. His eyes darted back and forth. “Am I summoned to battle?” he cried with a ferocious scowl. “Where is the enemy?”
Moradin lowered his hammer and shield. “Stand easy, Lord of Battle,” he told Clanggedin Silverbeard. “I call you not to a contest of arms, but to a conference.”
Clanggedin heaved a great sigh, disappointment etched plain on his face. He lowered his axes. “Very well, my Lord.”
Dugmaren Brightmantle came hurrying in next, a heavy, leather-bound book tucked under one arm, his bright blue cloak fluttering behind him. The god of scholarship wore round-lensed spectacles, although, being divine, he had no real need for them. His long hair was thinning on top, and recessed at the temples. “You have need of my knowledge, my Lord?” he asked. His voice was a contradiction: a whisper that carried clearly.
“Or my gold?” another voice asked. The speaker was Dumathoin, god of buried wealth, and the patron deity of those who mined and worked the earth’s noble metals and precious gems. Dumathoin was barrel-chested, with earth-brown skin and eyes that gleamed like silver. His arms were as well-muscled as those of a miner or a smith, and he carried a mattock in one hand. Rock dust smudged his face.
“Indeed I do!” boomed a voice that was a duplicate of Moradin’s own. “Give it to me; I command you!” A hand thrust out from behind Moradin, pushing between his right arm and his side, pretending to be Moradin’s own.
Moradin turned, and saw Vergadain crouching behind his throne. The trickster god let out a peal of laughter as he pulled his hand back.
Moradin would have chastised Vergadain, but was distracted as Sharindlar danced lightly into view. The goddess of healing and mercy was seductive in every movement, from the slightest toss of her flame red hair to the twitch of her delicate fingers. Desire rose in Moradin as his eyes lingered upon her curves-desire that he only just managed to quench as Berronar cleared her throat to remind him that his wife was seated next to him.
Moradin turned and gave Berronar a rueful smile. Out of the corner of his eye, however, he continued to watch Sharindlar’s dance, as smitten as any mortal by her beauty.
Abbathor was the final deity to respond to Moradin’s summons. He strolled in languidly, seemingly more interested in cleaning his fingernails with the point of his diamond-bladed dagger than in whatever the Lord of the Morndinsamman had to say. He would likely be of little assistance; Abbathor was well known for only being of aid when there was something he could gain in return.
“I have summoned you on a matter that is vital to us all,” Moradin told the assembled gods. “Behold Faerun. The dwarves who dwell upon it are fewer in number than ever in their history. Our worshipers are diminishing. Should they decline too dramatically, it could spell our doom. For what are we gods, without mortals to pay us homage?”
With that, he had even Abbathor’s attention.
“I have done an accounting,” said Dugmaren. He opened his book and pushed his spectacles up with a finger so that they sat a little more firmly on his nose. “The trouble lies in the fact that not every dwarf soul reaches our realm. A certain portion are lost each year from the Fugue Plain. Some are snared by demons before we can claim them; others are lacking in faith and so stray from the path and lose their way. Still others are lost because they have sworn their allegiance to other deities, and thus are claimed by those gods.”
“It fills me with such sorrow,” Berronar said, “to think that there are dwarves who lose their way back to hearth and home.”
Moradin’s mind, however, was fixed on the latter point Dugmaren had raised. He stared down at the
