He stepped out of the alcove. He realized that it might not be a setup-that the dwarf rogue might indeed have suffered a blinding injury and then been subsequently abandoned by Vadyr. He ran in the direction the rogue had gone, and spotted him as he passed through slits of light emitted from a shuttered window.
The dwarf heard him coming. He whirled when Torrin was a pace or two away.
“Don’t come any closer!” he cried in a shrill voice. “I have the stoneplague!”
Torrin stared in horror. The light slanting through the shutter cracks fell across the rogue’s face. His eyes were as white as limestone-two shrivelled marbles in their sockets-and his face was as gray as slate.
Torrin steeled himself. There was no time for hesitation. He poked the fellow in the chest with the tip of his mace, jostling him. The man staggered, nearly fell.
“By Moradin’s beard, show mercy!” the fellow cried. “You wouldn’t steal from a blind man, would you?”
“That’s an odd plea, coming from a thief,” Torrin growled. “And as for your blindness, it looks like you got what you deserved. Your gold was the cause of it.”
“What?” the rogue asked, looking wildly around, one arm raised to defend himself. “What are you talking about?”
Torrin moved suddenly. He grabbed the rogue’s throat with his free hand and slammed him against the wall. He kept his mace ready, and one eye on the street. “Tell me who cast the curse,” he told the blind dwarf in a low growl, “and I’ll let you live.”
“Please,” the rogue gasped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Who are you? By all the Morndinsamman, please, have mercy!”
Torrin laughed as he said, “You didn’t show me any mercy, thief, that day outside the motedisc factory.”
The rogue’s face turned even grayer as that memory sank in. “I’m… no thief,” he wheezed. “Just… a sick man… desperate enough… to do anything… to raise enough coin… for a cure. For me and… my family.”
Torrin’s eyes widened. That wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. He eased up the pressure on the man’s throat. The words spilled out.
“I knew what I was doing was wrong,” the dwarf said in a quavering voice. “But the human offered so much gold, and for such a simple thing. Just to recite a few words to you, and clasp your hand. I didn’t realize he was going to hit you, to hurt you. And now I’m being punished for what I’ve done. The Morndinsamman have turned their backs on me, and my brother and his wife are dying.” He croaked out a bitter laugh. “All that gold… And the ‘cure’ it bought was worthless. Worthless!” The dwarf’s shoulders shook as he sobbed.
Torrin released him. “May the Dwarffather forgive me,” he said, ashamed at how he’d roughed up an innocent man. The anger that had flamed through him a moment before was gone, replaced by the cold ash of regret. “I’m… so sorry.”
The blind man said nothing. Torrin thought of how Kendril had flung himself from Needle Leap. The fellow looked likely to do something similar. Torrin wanted to say more-to do more. But he knew he could offer the man no solid hope, only promises.
“I forgive you,” Torrin said at last. “And so shall Moradin. Don’t lose hope.”
The dwarf nodded, but his head still hung low.
Torrin glanced around the plaza. So far, he’d been lucky; no one had responded to the altercation. But he didn’t want to press that luck. For all he knew, the people he could hear talking inside the building next to him had already sent out a runner to fetch a patrol.
Feeling like a rogue himself, Torrin slipped out of the plaza. He made his way out through the city’s southern gate, into the night.
Torrin surveyed the cavern where he and Eralynn had been trapped by the red dragon, near the slab of rock where they’d raised a cup in memory of her dead parents. It still smelled of smoke. Every surface was covered with the soot that also coated Torrin’s hands and clothes.
Getting back into the Wyrmcaves had been the easy part; the portal had opened as readily as before. Sneaking through the tunnels that led to the cave had given Torrin a few anxious moments, when he’d thought he heard the sound of slithering behind him. But if the red dragon was nearby, she hadn’t shown herself yet. Torrin had even peeked into the cave where she had made her lair, but nothing moved up in the nest. He hadn’t seen any sign of Baelar, either-although the air in the wyrm’s cavern stank of fresh smoke. As he’d made his way back to the cavern with the earth node, all had been ominously silent.
He took the runestone out of his pack and held it out in front of him. He waited, wondering when the spellfire would begin-praying that it would begin, that the runestone would work a second time. In order to see in the absolute darkness, he had to keep his right eye shut. He hadn’t had the time-or the coin-to get his magical goggles repaired.
“Take me to Vadyr,” he commanded.
Nothing. No spellfire.
He tried again, concentrating on the brief glimpse he’d had of the human with the missing front tooth. Yet his mind kept straying. Every time he thought of the rogue’s part in the affair, anger boiled inside him. Bitter anger, at the deaths of Ambril and her babes, and a boiling rage stirred by the realization that Kier might die, too.
“Vadyr,” he said again through gritted teeth.
Still no spellfire.
He at last realized it wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t about to succeed where the most powerful wizards in all Eartheart had failed. But that was all right. There was a second reason he’d returned to the Wyrmcaves.
Increasingly worried about where Eralynn had disappeared to, he’d been making enquiries. Mara had let slip that Eralynn had told her not to worry-that she knew where she’d go for healing if she succumbed to the stoneplague. She wouldn’t go to one of the clerics who’d already tried to cure the stoneplague, and failed, but to clerics of a goddess whose name, she said, she was certain Mara would never recognize. When Mara had pressed her for details, Eralynn had refused to say more.
Delvemaster Frivaldi, meanwhile, had revealed that Eralynn had borrowed his map of the northernmost reaches of the Deep Realm, showing the region surrounding Sundasz. It was a small dwarf city, but one with an unsavory reputation. Some whispered its wealth came as a result of a clandestine trade with duergar or even drow.
Torrin didn’t believe it. Likely, the rumors were fuelled by nothing more tangible than jealousy. The dwarves of Sundasz were not only secretive, but had always been very wealthy. Still, if Eralynn was headed to Sundasz, she could benefit from a friend to shield her back.
And if she knew of a cure that no one else had yet tried, Torrin wanted to hear about it-for Kier’s sake, and the sake of all Eartheart.
He raised the runestone again, and concentrated on Eralynn, on the details of her hair, her face. Despite the fact that no one had seen Eralynn in more than a tenday-which might very well mean she had succumbed to the stoneplague after handling the cursed gold bar-Torrin refused to imagine her as a corpse or even sick. He pictured her alive and well, rolling her eyes at his “wishful thinking” that the Soulforge was here on Faerun. She might consider his ideas foolish, but she’d always listened, and had, perversely, stood up for him when the other Delvers had called him ignorant or misguided. She’d been there for him, and he was going to return the favor for his shield sister.
“Eralynn,” he commanded. “Take me to her.”
Was that a tingle he felt in his hand? He closed both eyes, gripped the stone tightly, and repeated his command more forcefully.
He was certain he felt it-a rush of prickly hot and shivery cold energy that made his hand feel as though it was simultaneously in an icy pond and in a fiery blast of dragon’s breath.
Blue light flared against his eyelids. He opened his eyes and saw spellfire. It streaked across the walls and the ceiling, and shone upward through the gaps in the rubble on the cavern floor. “Praise Moradin!” Torrin cried. “It’s working!”
The spellfire crackled downward from the ceiling, upward from the floor, and inward from the walls, coalescing around the runestone in his hand. Something hot splattered onto the stone near Torrin’s boot. It was molten gold, he realized, dripping out of cracks in the ceiling above his head. With spellfire illuminating the cavern, he saw that the slab of stone he stood on was crusted with similar splatters: dribbles of gold, hardened like candle wax.
But he mustn’t let that distract him. He locked his gaze on the runestone, seeing it in livid blue and searing
