“He brings plague among us!”
“How dare he!”
“Plague!”
“Arrest him! Lock him away!”
“Execute him, before it spreads!”
The knights on either side of Torrin stepped back a pace, at the same time distancing themselves from him and flanking him, their axes at the ready. They glanced at the Lord Scepter, waiting for orders. Torrin stood utterly still, careful not to even twitch a finger, acutely aware of the magical symbol under his feet.
“Enough!” the Lord Scepter said. The word sliced through the angry shouts like a blade through ripe fruit, reducing them to a splatter of mutters and whispers. “We will hear what this human has to say, then decide his fate.”
Torrin shivered, the sweat on his body suddenly as chill as ice water. “Thank you, Lord Scepter.”
“Don’t thank me yet, human,” the Lord Scepter said. “If you have brought plague among us, your life will be forfeit.”
Torrin met his eye. “If I have carried plague to Eartheart, I will gladly bare my neck for the blade,” he replied in a steady voice. “If it is established that I have caused harm to my friends and family, death will be a mercy. Moradin willing, I will be reforged anew, and receive a second chance to atone for any suffering I might have caused them.”
The Lord Scepter’s eyebrows rose. He likely hadn’t expected that reply. “Tell your tale,” he ordered.
Torrin nodded, and began the story of his meeting with Kendril, a recitation he’d been going over and over in his head, ever since the quarantine had been imposed.
Immediately following the meeting to which Delvemaster Frivaldi had been summoned, a proclamation had been carried throughout the city by the Steel Shields. The Lord Scepter had decreed that the city would close its gates in a bid to protect Eartheart from a strange new illness that had broken out in the smaller settlements scattered through the Deeps to the east and north of Eartheart. Those who wanted to leave were permitted to do so, but no one would be let back inside the city without first being cleansed by Sharindlar’s clerics. As an added precaution, Berronar’s clergy were carving protective sigils into the walls and the streets, as well as wards preventing teleportation, to keep the city safe.
As soon as he’d heard the proclamation, Torrin had felt a hollow open inside him. He’d known, without asking, what the illness was: the horrifying affliction that had led Kendril to kill himself. Torrin immediately went to Delvemaster Frivaldi and told him the rest of the story-the part he should have told the Delvemaster before.
According to Frivaldi, similar afflictions had been reported in Velm’s Brace, Wildstar, Sundasz, Magkstok-even as close as Daunting and Tarnhall. Just a handful of cases, but the descriptions were enough to make the boldest dwarf’s beard turn gray. The illness even had a name already: the “stoneplague.”
And so Torrin was standing before a hastily convened meeting of the Council of Deep Lords, telling them the little he knew of the sickness.
They questioned him at length, wringing out every detail of Kendril’s affliction. They seemed particularly interested in the part where Kendril had told Torrin that the stoneplague wouldn’t affect him, probing for clues as to what that statement meant. Torrin was at a loss, and could only venture a guess: that Kendril seemed to feel his illness was a punishment from the gods, for having either abandoned or been excommunicated from his faith.
Kendril’s brother-Jorn, son of Balund, a sergeant in the Steel Shields-was called to the Council chamber and questioned. He shot an angry look at Torrin, no doubt remembering Torrin’s attempt to have Jorn heed his brother’s warning to leave Eartheart. The twin brothers had both been sworn servants of Clangeddin Silverbeard-Jorn as a knight, and Kendril as a battle cleric. They had parted ways, decades before, after a bitter dispute over a point of faith.
The Council prodded, wanting to know more. Was Kendril’s supposed heresy the cause of the stoneplague?
“My… brother believed that Moradin’s breath ‘fired’ the Soulforge,” Jorn explained. “When clearly the scriptures say it ‘cooled’ the noble metals from which our race was forged. The lowliest novice of any of the Morndinsamman can tell you that the first dwarves were in solid, immutable form before being tipped from the Soulforge; yet Kendril insisted that they were tipped out of the mold while still warm, and acquired imperfections during the cooling process. It was heresy!”
“I see,” said the Lord Scepter. The other Deep Lords began talking quietly to each other, clearly no longer interested in what must have appeared, to them, to be a relatively minor point of doctrine.
Torrin, however, hung on every word, wishing he’d known earlier that Kendril had been so knowledgeable about the Soulforge. Kendril might have been, it would seem, a kindred spirit, also expressing opinions about the Soulforge that strayed beyond the narrow bounds of conformity. Torrin wished he could have met him under better circumstances, found out which texts the former cleric had read. What else might they have revealed?
Jorn explained that he and his brother had eventually come to blows over whether the Dwarffather’s breath had heated or cooled the noble metals from which the dwarf race was formed. And the brothers had refused to speak to each other after that. As a result, Jorn had no idea of what had become of his brother after Kendril had departed the main temple in Eartheart to pursue his “heretical” studies in Sundasz. Nor did he show any emotion as Torrin was called upon to describe, for the second time that night, the circumstances of Kendril’s death.
Jorn was then dismissed, and took his leave from the chamber. As he did so, he glared at Torrin and muttered just loud enough for him to hear. “Thought I would abandon my post, did he?” he said with a snort. “Kendril was a fool to the end, I see.”
Torrin said nothing. Fortunately, Jorn hadn’t been present when Torrin had told the Council about the nature of his dealings with Kendril. Nor had the Deep Lords asked what Torrin had paid for the runestone. If they had, Torrin would have been forced to choose between two oaths: his promise to Kendril not to reveal the source of the gems Jorn’s wife had been given via an intermediary, and his sacred vow to Moradin to speak the truth before the Council.
Delvemaster Frivaldi was summoned next. He spoke about how Torrin had shown him a runestone the other night in the Delver’s Roost. The runestone, he added, had since been examined by Dugmaren Brightmantle’s clerics, and declared free of contagion.
Torrin listened avidly, temporarily forgetting the dire circumstances he was in. He had hoped the clerics’ examination might have revealed some clue as to the runestone’s function, but Frivaldi made no mention of whether the clerics had probed its magic. Nor did he so much as glance at Torrin, even when he turned to leave. There was no encouraging nod, no sympathetic look.
But Torrin understood why. If a member of the order had indeed brought plague to the city, the Delvers would be disgraced, even reviled. The fact that Torrin was a second-rank member, a mere “human,” would have little bearing.
Torrin’s shoulders slumped. He’d hoped Frivaldi would support him. But it was as if the Delvemaster had mentally closed the door on Torrin, no longer recognizing him as a member of the order. That stung. One day, assuming he survived the Council meeting, Torrin would prove to Delvemaster Frivaldi that he was, indeed, still worthy of being called a Delver.
Maliira was the next one called to the Council chamber. Questioned by the Deep Lords, the priestess confirmed that Torrin had sought a cleansing at the temple in Hammergate before entering Eartheart proper. She assured the Council that the cleansing had been properly performed, and that Torrin had been free of any contagion when he left the temple.
“And did he pass directly through the city gates afterward?” asked a Deep Lord in the front row who wore a red doublet.
“That I cannot say,” Maliira admitted. “I was busy with another supplicant.”
The Deep Lord nodded behind his hood, as if that was significant. “So for all we know,” he continued, “he may have had dealings with others who carried the stoneplague during his walk between the temple and the city gates?”
“My Lords,” Torrin protested. “I assure you, I did not. I came directly-”
“You will speak only when bid, human!” another Deep Lord thundered back. He shook his finger at Torrin, his sleeve falling back to reveal an elaborate silver bracer.
Torrin’s jaw clenched in frustration. Seething inside, he bowed his head. “My apologies.”
