Cathor’s jaw muscles bunched as he tried to keep himself from speaking. The potion, however, forced the words out. “In Drik Hargunen,” he said.
“That’s better,” Torrin said. It took him, however, a few moments to place the name. He at last remembered there was a duergar city by that name, somewhere in the Underdark. Torrin had stumbled across the name once, when researching rune magic. He dredged the phrase up from memory: the runescribed halls of Drik Hargunen.
Torrin reframed the question he’d asked earlier. “What did the duergar use curse the gold?”
“Rune magic,” Cathor said.
That much, Torrin might have guessed. “How can the curse be broken?”
The dwarf glared. “No idea,” he said. “Why don’t you go ask the runescribes yourself?”
Torrin balled his fists. He reminded himself that the rogue was answering his questions truthfully. He could see Cathor struggling not to speak, yet being compelled to. Yet the answers weren’t nearly as informative as Torrin had hoped they would be. He decided to dig in a different direction. He gestured at the gold-crusted slit in the wall. “Who used the runestone to call the River of Gold to this cavern?” he asked.
“We did. Me and Kendril,” Cathor replied.
“Who tapped it and cast the gold bars?”
“The same: me and Kendril.”
“Whose idea was it to distribute them in Eartheart?” After a moment’s silent struggle, the word popped out. “Mine.”
“And the other two rogues? Vadyr and Tril? What part did they play in this?”
“They were hired to distribute the gold. Tril, in the smaller settlements. And Vadyr, in Eartheart.”
That fit. Only tallfolk could safely handle the cursed gold. Torrin stared down at Cathor’s gray-tinged skin. The two dwarf rogues must have been careless, to let themselves be afflicted by the stoneplague.
Time to get back to that line of questioning.
“Whom did the four of you take your orders from?” Torrin asked. “Who told you to make the gold bars?”
“No one,” said Cathor. “It was my idea. Mine… and Kendril’s.”
“So you and Kendril hired the duergar to curse the gold?”
Cathor shook his head. “No. They’d done it already. We just mined it.”
Torrin frowned in confusion. He looked at the cut in the wall. “So the duergar cursed the River of Gold,” he ventured, “before you mined it?”
“Yes,” said Cathor.
“And you knew it was cursed, yet mined it anyway?”
“I… Yes.”
Torrin felt as though a hollow had opened inside him. It took all of his self-control not to strike his captive. He stared down at Cathor in disgust. A duergar might have cast the curse, but Cathor and Kendril-two dwarves — had spread the stoneplague. They’d knowingly afflicted their fellow dwarves with a fatal disease.
Torrin no longer felt sorry for Kendril. The fellow had deserved his affliction, had deserved to die. He was pure dross. So was Cathor.
Torrin spat on the dwarf.
Cathor’s nostrils flared. He stared defiantly up at Torrin, as if he was still worthy of looking a fellow dwarf in the eye. It was all Torrin could do to not stamp out that smug look with his boot.
“Where did you get the runestone?” Torrin asked instead.
Cathor once again tried to clench his jaw shut, and failed. “I stole it,” he said.
“Where from?”
“Drik Hargunen.”
“Be more specific.”
A smug smile crept into Cathor’s eyes. “Right out of Laduguer’s temple. From its library.”
“Laduguer,” Torrin breathed. God of the duergar. Enemy of the true dwarves, who would see them all enslaved.
“A foul god,” he continued. “Deserving of his banishment from the Morndinsamman.”
“That may be,” said Cathor. “But Laduguer will be avenged, soon enough.”
“What are you talking about?” Torrin asked.
“Moradin,” Cathor said, jerking his head at the slit in the wall. “The River of Gold is his vein. His life blood. The duergars’ rune magic has poisoned it. Moradin is dying.”
Torrin felt the blood drain from his cheeks. A shiver of dread coursed through him. He remembered how it had been in his dream, the way the Dwarffather had turned gray with the stoneplague, then crumbled. Could it be true? Could Moradin actually be dying?
“That’s right,” Cathor said, the gleam back in his eye. “It will all be over, soon enough. The dwarves are going to lose their patron god. You can kiss those hammers in your beard goodbye, human.”
“Blasphemer!” Torrin shouted. He kicked Cathor in the ribs and revelled in the man’s grunt of pain. With all of his heart, Torrin wanted to believe the truth potion had worn off, that Cathor was lying. Or, at the very least, that his captive was wrong, and only thought he spoke the truth. Surely Moradin could not die! But other gods had died, in Faerun’s long history. And other gods would yet die, as the millennia marched on.
Torrin didn’t want to believe what he’d just heard, yet Cathor’s words had driven an ice-cold spike of doubt into Torrin’s very soul. And that spike was being driven deeper with each chuckle his captive uttered.
Everything Torrin had ever learned by reading scripture fit with what Cathor had just told him, like a casting fit a mold. According to the holy texts, Moradin and all the other Morndinsamman had sprung from the stone of Faerun itself, back when the world first formed. The scriptures went on to say that it wasn’t blood that ran through Moradin’s veins, but noble metal. Gold.
Torrin had always thought that to be a metaphor for the god’s purity of purpose, but he realized it must be truth. It made sense that Moradin would be bound to the land in some way, that he would choose to stay rooted in the stone his people worked and drew their livelihood from. If the River of Gold were part of the Dwarffather, it explained why the molten river was constantly shifting. The Dwarffather manifested throughout Faerun, wherever there was rock to be mined.
And his life’s blood had been poisoned. Cursed, by the duergars’ foul rune magic.
That was why the cursed gold continued to spread the stoneplague, regardless of whether it was melted or subjected to magical ritual. Until Moradin himself was healed, the gold would remain tainted. It also explained why no cleric-even those who served the gods of the tallfolk-could cure the affliction. The blood of the Dwarffather flowed not only throughout Faerun, in the form of the River of Gold, but also, indirectly, through the blood of the race he’d fashioned in his forge.
The meaning of Torrin’s prophetic dream was suddenly as clear as a gem from which the surrounding rock had been chipped away.
Moradin, lord of the Morndinsamman and patron god of the dwarves, was dying. Until the god himself was cured, there would be no cure for the spellplague.
And if the god died…
Torrin couldn’t bring himself to contemplate what that might mean. He shuddered, and struggled to pull himself together. “Moradin…” he began to pray. Then he realized the futility of his prayer. The Dwarffather had been trying to tell him, all along, that no help would be forthcoming from him. Torrin was on his own.
He stared down with righteous fury at Cathor. He wasn’t the one who had poisoned Moradin using rune magic, but by Cathor’s own admission, he’d committed a crime even more vile. He’d knowingly afflicted his own race. And for the most base of reasons: simple greed.
“How could you?” Torrin said through gritted teeth. “You’ve killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of your own people.”
Cathor sneered as he said, “They deserved it.”
“No one deserves this,” Torrin said, pointing at Cathor’s gray skin.
Cathor broke into wild laughter. “You idiot!” he cried. “You think I’ve been afflicted, don’t you?”
Torrin suddenly questioned what he saw. “But… you’re a dwarf,” he said. “And… you are afflicted, just like Kendril was. Just like everybody else. Aren’t you?”
“That would be true, if I was just like everybody else. But I’m not.”
