Torrin turned and stared at a dull red glow he hadn’t noticed before. It emanated from a massive forge a few paces distant from the Dwarffather’s throne. A long line of ghostly shapes stood behind it, some larger, some smaller. The souls of dead dwarf adults and children, waiting patiently to be reforged. Torrin recognized one of them, farther back in the line, as a man he’d known in the life that had just ended-an older dwarf carrying a plumed skyrider’s helm.
Baelar, he breathed.
The soul that had been Baelar glanced up at him and smiled.
The soul closest to the forge-a woman Torrin didn’t recognize-ghosted into it and lay down amid the glowing red coals. Her soul wavered a moment, then melted away into a bright puddle of glowing mithril. Moradin waved his free hand, and the molten metal rose into the air. The god caught it and clenched his hand around it like a mold. He blew onto his fist, and steam escaped from his fingers with the bubbling hiss of forge-hot steel plunged into a bucket of water.
After a moment, Moradin’s fingers opened. Inside them was a diamond that sparkled myriad colors in the light of the forge. Moradin lifted the diamond to his mouth and blew a second time, releasing a gust of warm breath that smelled of rich, life-sustaining blood. The diamond tumbled off his palm and vanished-a soul, seeking its next lifetime.
The soul that had been Torrin watched, awestruck. So beautiful, he breathed.
“What you sought never did exist on Faerun,” Moradin told him, at last answering the question he had asked earlier. “There is only one Soulforge-here, in my realm. Yet you were correct, in one regard. There is a place on Faerun that is the equivalent of my forge, a place from which the dwarf race emerged onto that world. A navel, through which the first dwarf people passed.”
Where?
Moradin chuckled. “Always the curious soul, weren’t you?” he said.
Always the Delver. And as he said it, Torrin realized it was true. He’d been a Delver in his last life-and would be in his next, thanks to Kier. Like his “Uncle Torrin,” Kier would choose a Delver’s life. And he’d pass along that love of adventure to his son, who one day would teach it to his own son. And around and around the wheel would go.
Tell me, he cried, his excitement building as he imagined the delves to come. Where is the place the dwarves emerged onto Faerun?
“You won’t remember.”
Tell me anyway.
“It’s in the Yehimal Mountains. From it, the dwarves spread across all of Faerun, in the days long before the founding of Bhaerynden.”
Had the soul that had been Torrin still had a heart, it would have quickened at that revelation. A portal? he guessed. Leading where?
Moradin’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “That may take you many lifetimes to discover,” he said. “Or, if you’re as determined to get on with your quests as your friend Eralynn proved to be, perhaps only one more lifetime.” The god shrugged. “That remains to be seen.”
Moradin’s face settled into a solemn expression as he stared down at Torrin. “You’ve done me a great service,” he intoned. “A service beyond price. I might have died were it not for your valiant actions. I will thus watch over you for all of your lifetimes and aid you whenever you call.”
Torrin bowed again. And I will honor you, in all of my lifetimes.
“I know.” the god said, smiling. “There are many things a god can foresee, and that is one of them.”
Moradin rose from his throne. He moved toward the soulforge, still carrying the soul that had been Torrin on his palm. The souls waiting in line at the forge paused, all eyes turning upward. “And now the time has come for you to be reborn,” Moradin said.
Torrin startled. Had he heard correctly? But you said I would be Kier’s son. Has that much time really passed? Is he a grown man already?
The god’s eyes twinkled as he said, “Time is flexible here.”
The soul that had been Torrin breathed a long, slow sigh of relief. In his next lifetime, he would be a dwarf. Kier’s son. Although the boy would never know him, that was something. My thanks, he said.
“No thanks needed,” said Moradin. “It is as it should be.”
It was indeed.
As the god lowered him to the forge, the soul that had been Torrin was bathed in sustaining warmth. Then the hand closed, and he saw only a dim red glow through the cracks between Moradin’s closed fingers. The pounding of the hammer on metal dulled to a muffled thud, thud, thud of a heartbeat heard through sustaining blood and cushioning water. Torrin felt himself squeezed, compressed, crystallized down to his soul’s essence. Then he felt the closed fist rise to the god’s mouth, and heard the rush of Moradin’s exhaled breath. The gust of warm air pushed him tight against the god’s clenched fingers.
What will I look like, this time? he wondered.
The breath at last forced the fingers open. He was carried along with it in a rush of sensation and sound.
Wet, shivering-yet cradled in loving hands-he opened his eyes on a new lifetime.
Kier, a grown man, peered over the midwife’s shoulder at the newborn babe the midwife had just placed in his mother’s arms. “Look at that red hair,” he observed. “And he’s a stout one, too. Just look-he’s not even crying.”
For just a moment, the soul that had been Torrin remembered its last life. There had been a woman he’d loved as a shield sister, a boy he’d loved as a son, a family who’d taken him in when all others had ridiculed him…
As the midwife wiped the bloody afterbirth from his face, the sharpness of those memories dulled, then fled.
The newborn babe nuzzled against his mother’s breasts, found the milk he’d been searching for, and suckled, content at last.
