him.
“By the gods,” Baelar said, shaking his head. “You’ve just pulled me out from between hammer and anvil. One moment more…”
“Yes,” Torrin answered.
One thing was clear. The duergar whose spell Torrin had turned must have been the one Tril had asked about, back in the tavern in Sundasz. The half-elf had mentioned tattoos. Now Torrin understood what had frightened the rogues so. He could also guess where Vadyr had disappeared to-why magic couldn’t find him. Like Blackhammer, he’d been consumed by the wand’s foul magic. That was why Eartheart’s mages hadn’t been able to locate Vadyr, and why Torrin hadn’t been able to teleport to him. He was simply… gone.
Baelar bowed until his beard touched the floor. “My thanks, Torrin Ironstar,” he said. “My profound thanks. You have indeed proved yourself as stout-hearted as any dwarf this day. And every bit as honorable.”
Torrin nodded in reply. Then the trembles began. He clutched his mace tightly, by sheer will alone forcing the shaking to stop. There was still work to be done.
“How did you find this cavern?” Torrin asked.
“That was your contribution, Torrin. Your message got through. The Lord Scepter relayed the information to us. He’s no doubt listening, even now.”
Torrin whispered a heartfelt prayer of thanks. “The rune that cursed Moradin’s vein,” he told Baelar, nodding at the center of the cavern. “It’s under that dome of spellfire.”
Baelar nodded too. “I guessed as much,” he said. “Dangerous stuff. Still, it’s only necessary to survive long enough to dispel the rune’s magic.”
“With what?” Torrin asked.
Baelar pulled out a coin pouch that hung around his neck under his shirt. From inside it, he took a feather with a golden shaft and mithril vanes. Baelar held it near the base of the shaft, as if it were a quill pen. “Eartheart’s mages crafted this,” he said. “It can dispel even the most powerful magic. One flick of the wrist, and the rune will be erased.”
“But we can’t even reach the rune,” Torrin protested. “We’ll be reduced to ash before we’re even halfway there.”
Baelar stared at the dome of spellfire for a long moment. Then he turned and walked back to the duergar Torrin had killed. Torrin, following, heard the captain grunt in satisfaction. Baelar squatted and began pulling off the duergar’s boots. “Teleportation magic,” he said. “With these, I’ll be able to reach the rune in a heartbeat. By the grace of the Morndinsamman, I’ll live long enough to work the feather’s magic.”
Torrin’s fingers were still tingling. He glanced down and saw that his entire hand was wreathed in spellfire. Even as he watched, the bright blue glow crept past his wrist.
“Baelar, wait,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
Baelar, still tugging at the duergar’s boots, shook his head. “No. It’s my duty,” he replied. “Besides, you don’t know how to use the feather.”
“It sounds simple enough,” Torrin said. “Just a ‘flick of the wrist,’ you said. And I know you’re no wizard. That means any dwarf could use it.”
Baelar rose, holding the teleportation boots. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it again. “No,” he said firmly. “I’m old. If it’s my time to be reforged, then so be it. You, on the other hand, are still a boy-by dwarf standards, that is. And you have no guarantee of living again. If anything were to happen to you, Kier would miss you terribly. And we both know how angry Eralynn would be if I ‘sent you to die.’ I’d never hear the end of it.” He started to chuckle, then noticed the anguished look on Torrin’s face.
“What’s wrong?” Baelar asked suddenly. “What happened?”
Torrin pulled Eralynn’s pendant out from under his shirt. “She’s dead,” he said. “There was no time to tell you before now.”
For several moments, the two men stared at each other in silence. Then a tear slid down Baelar’s face, into his beard. “How?” he whispered.
“The stoneplague,” he replied.
“I see.”
Torrin turned to stare at the dome of spellfire, giving Baelar a moment of privacy to grieve. Still not looking at Baelar, he spoke. “Long ago, back when the stoneplague first came to Eartheart, Moradin spoke to me in a dream. ‘No one else can help me,’ he said.” He stared at the dome of blue fire. “This is my destiny.”
“No, Torrin,” Baelar said. “It’s not.”
Torrin turned and saw Baelar with the metal quill in hand and the duergar’s teleportation boots on his feet. “Raise a glass for me, won’t you, at the next Festival of Remembering,” he said. Then he blinked out of sight.
Torrin whirled to face the spellfire and lifted his hands to shade his eyes from its harsh glare. He spotted Baelar at once, a black silhouette against the blue blaze. And he immediately realized something had gone wrong. Baelar hadn’t teleported into the dome of spellfire; he wasn’t even close to the spot where the rune had been inscribed. As Torrin stared, tense with worry, the dwarf vanished from sight and reappeared a few paces from where he’d been standing, no closer to the rune. Baelar blinked away a third time-trying once more to teleport to the rune-and reappeared almost exactly where he’d started, once again.
“By Moradin’s beard,” Torrin breathed. “He can’t reach it. Something’s preventing him.”
Baelar’s shout of frustration echoed back to Torrin across the cavern. Giving up on teleportation, Baelar hunkered over. Like a man battling his way forward against a hurricane, he began to march. Torrin, watching, clenched his fists and counted Baelar’s steps. One… two… three…
Baelar wavered. Then he sagged to his knees. Blue spellfire raged around his silhouette, feeding like flames on his hair, his clothes.
“No!” Torrin shouted. He plunged a hand into his pocket and yanked out the runestone. Sparks of spellfire immediately leaped from the crystals at his feet, streaking up to the runestone like bright blue fireflies. “By blood and earth, ae-burakrin. Take me to Baelar!” Torrin cried.
Fuelled by spellfire, the runestone activated so quickly that Torrin barely managed to complete Baelar’s name. With a twist that left him dizzy, he landed next to the fallen man. Torrin stumbled sideways, crystals crunching underfoot. The rune was still several paces away, yet Torrin was deep inside the dome of spellfire. Baelar was a barely visible heap at his feet, obscured by zigzagging streaks of crackling blue. The spellfire washed over Torrin like heat from an over-stoked forge as streams of smoke erupting from his smoldering clothes. The hole the duergar had bored in the floor was several paces ahead and to the right, adding its own heat to the air. He bent over and grabbed Baelar with his free hand, but saw that he was already too late. Baelar was dead. His hair and clothes were gone, his skin already turning to blue-tinged ash.
The sight sent a sharp pang of dismay through Torrin. Yet there was no time to grieve. Leaving the body where it lay, he scooped up the magical feather instead. The metal shaft was so hot it glowed and burned his fingers. He hoped it wasn’t about to melt.
Torrin squinted his eyes almost shut, peered into the blazing inferno, and spotted the rune that had been carved into the cavern floor between the growth of crystals. It was enormous, perhaps five or six paces long, and filled with molten gold through which tidal ripples flowed, bulging its surface as they flowed first in one direction, then another, as if seeking an exit.
Torrin felt his strength flagging. His clothing was full of holes now, the fabric falling away in puffs of ash. Sharp crystals poked into his thinning boot soles. Spellfire consumed his beard and eyebrows, turning them to clouds of ash that drifted into his eyes and clogged his nose. The skin on his arms and cheeks was starting to flake away. The pain was almost unbearable. The spellfire that had blossomed around the hand that held the runestone was a bright blaze that engulfed his arm from fingers to shoulder. His fingers felt like dead things.
He quickly transferred the runestone to his left hand, awkwardly gripping both it and the magical feather. “By blood and earth, ae-burakrin,” he gasped, “take me to the rune.”
Nothing happened. The runestone, like the teleportation boots, wasn’t working properly. Wasn’t working at all, in fact. The teleportation boots had at least shifted Baelar around a little when he’d tried to reach the rune, but the runestone was completely failing to activate.
Why?
Torrin’s left hand and arm were also ablaze with spellfire from within. If he survived it, he’d be spellscarred on both sides of his body. He shifted his grip on the runestone, and cried out in dismay as the magical feather
