assembled Morndinsamman with a steely eye. “We Morndinsamman must work harder to keep our chosen people within the fold,” he said. “I will not have the fruits of my labors stolen from me!”
“I must point out that only a small fraction of souls are lost to other gods,” Dugmaren hastily amended. “The greater number are lost because so many are dying in battle. There are simply too many dwarf souls wandering the Fugue Plain for us to collect them all.”
“We must smite the enemies of the dwarves!” Clanggedin suddenly shouted. “Lay waste to those who are decimating the clanholds. Permit me to manifest on Faerun, Lord Moradin, and I shall lead the dwarf armies to victory!”
“Fool,” Abbathor spat. “Leading the dwarves into battle will only cause them to die in even greater numbers. And then where will we be?” He pointed his dagger at the Soulforge. “Even more souls will be lost to the perils of the Fugue Plain. And those souls that do find their way here will be lined up at the Soulforge a thousand deep. There won’t be any dwarves left alive to worship us.”
Clanggedin whirled to face Abbathor, his face red with wrath. “Since when do you care about the souls of the dead?” he shouted. “All you care about is how many offerings the living can heap upon your altars.”
Clanggedin raised his paired axes. Dull red forge light glinted off their mithril blades. Abbathor roused from his slouch, his dagger at the ready.
“Clanggedin! Abbathor!” Moradin shouted, his voice pealing like thunder. “I must remind you of your sworn oaths. Lower your weapons, the pair of you.”
The two lesser deities held their glares a moment more. Then each did as Moradin had bid.
Sharindlar broke the silence that followed. “It is not death we should be contemplating, but birth,” she said in a melodious voice. One hand strayed to her belly and caressed it, like a pregnant woman feeling for the life within. “The more dwarves who are born, the more worshipers we shall have.”
“And how will we manage that?” Vergadain countered, leaning, somewhat irreverently, on the arm of Moradin’s throne. He strode over to the line of souls who waited before the Soulforge, approaching one near the front of the line-a graybeard whose ghostly form held a hand to the small of his back, as if he could still feel the aches a lifetime of toil had produced.
Vergadain pretended to tap the graybeard on the shoulder; his fingers poked into the waiting soul. “Excuse me, good sir, but could you hurry up and be reborn?” he asked. “We Morndinsamman would appreciate it. Come to think of it, we’d appreciate it even more if you could find a way to be reborn twice over!”
Vergadain laughed at his own joke. The other deities joined in the merriment. Even the normally dour Clanggedin laughed so hard he had to transfer his paired axes to one hand, so he could wipe the tears of mirth from his eyes with the other.
Moradin suddenly leaned forward, his attention rapt as he stared at the identical axes Clanggedin held. His eye wandered to Sharindlar, who still had a hand on her belly, and he broke into a smile.
“My thanks, gods of the Morndinsamman,” he said. “You have given me my answer.”
Heads turned.
“They have?” Berronar asked.
Moradin rose from his throne. The graybeard who’d been the butt of Vergadain’s joke was at the head of the line. In a moment more, his soul would step into the Soulforge and be reborn. Moradin took the ghostly greybeard’s arm, and turned him. The soul, feeling the Dwarffather’s hand on his elbow, startled and turned. Then his eyes widened, and he trembled. A look of rapture flushed his face, and his eyes leaked tears of joy.
“Dwarffather!” he exclaimed.
Moradin held out a hand. “Clanggedin,” he demanded. “I have need of one of your axes.”
Clanggedin didn’t hesitate. He extended the weapon.
Moradin took the axe and raised it. The soul of the graybeard glanced up at the blade, not in fear, but in puzzlement. “Dwarffather,” he said in a voice as soft as mist. “Have I displeased you?”
“Quite the contrary,” Moradin answered. He looked into the graybeard’s soul and saw much that pleased him: a lifetime of hard work, honest words, and respectful worship. “I am going to reward you. Your soul will be reborn not once, but twice.”
Moradin released the graybeard’s arm. “So be it!” he cried, bringing the axe down in a powerful swing. It cleaved the graybeard in two equal, identical parts-two halves of the same mold.
Before either could fall to the ground, Moradin dropped the axe and caught each half of the soul in a hand. Like a father lowering a babe to bed, he gently placed them into the Soulforge, one at either end of it.
“Be reborn,” he intoned, his breath fanning the fires of the forge. “Not as one, but two. As twins.”
The souls disappeared from the forge, already on their way back to Faerun. As they streaked like bolts of lighting toward the realm where mortals dwelled, thunder rumbled through the skies above a dwarf clanhold. In that clanhold was a dwarf woman whose womb would quicken not with one life, but with two.
The Thunder Blessing had begun.
Chapter Seven
“Gold is tried by fire; men by adversity.”
Torrin dreamed.
In the dream, he sat at one end of a massive feast table in the great hall of Underhome, a place he’d heard the bards sing about. In his dream, it was still whole, not yet in ruin and overrun by drow. The walls were intact, and the furniture and chandeliers were unbroken. The intricate tapestry against the far wall, depicting the Morndinsamman grouped around Moradin’s throne, was vibrant and unfaded.
A host of dwarves was gathered around the table where Torrin sat, feasting and chatting. Though he spoke Dwarvish fluently, Torrin couldn’t make out a word they said. Their voices were muffled, indistinct. Nor could he see them clearly. Their bodies wavered like candle flames seen through thick, wavy glass.
His own body was clear enough, though. Glancing down at himself, he saw that his chest was thicker, his legs shorter. The fingers that gripped his feast cup were short and blunt.
He was a dwarf!
Before he had time to rejoice at that, someone tugged at his sleeve. He glanced to one side and saw- clearly-a dwarf whose white beard trailed so far behind him that it stretched out of the door. The longbeard wore a blacksmith’s leather apron and leggings, and bracers of solid gold. The smell of charcoal smoke clung to him. He placed a wooden strongbox on the table in front of Torrin.
“What’s inside?” Torrin asked, nodding at the box.
“A puzzle,” the blacksmith said.
Torrin opened the box. Inside was the runestone he’d purchased from Kendril-except that it was made not of stone, but of gold.
Torrin lifted it out.
Suddenly, the runestone turned red hot. Torrin gasped and dropped it on the table, where it turned into a puddle of molten gold. The chest and table became an enormous pile of kindling, which went up in flames. The dwarf revelers who had been seated around it likewise burst into flame and melted in an instant to glowing heaps of slag.
Torrin turned to the blacksmith, seeking an explanation, but the longbeard had turned into a statue. He stood, stiff and gray, with cracked-mud skin and eyeballs like chipped white marbles. Soon his statue crumbled into a heap on the floor, leaving only the apron, leggings, and bracers behind. A moment later, the bracers melted into twin puddles of molten gold, just as the runestone had.
Curiously, though the blacksmith was gone, he still could speak.
“You must help me,” the statue dwarf pleaded in a voice like cracking stone. “No one else can.”
“How?” Torrin said. “How can I help you?”
