The Deep Lord who’d just spoken glanced around at his fellows, his eyes glittering from behind his hood. “It will shock you to learn that yesterday, a man believed to be suffering from the stoneplague was reported within Hammergate itself,” he said. “A suspicious looking dwarf with a gray tinge to his skin. Could he have been another of this human’s companions, I wonder?”
“More to the point,” a Deep Lord seated just to the left of the Lord Scepter added, in a quavering voice that betrayed his age, “the human admitted having had dealings with this Kendril fellow long before his misadventure at Needle Leap. It’s entirely possible these ‘negotiations’ carried the stoneplague to our doorsteps a tenday ago!”
Torrin opened his mouth to protest that his earlier negotiations with Kendril had been through a third party, not in person. Then he realized that, no matter what he said, the Council wouldn’t listen. Not at the moment. He closed his eyes to steady himself as whispers of suspicion chased each other around the room. When they stopped, he tried to gauge the reaction of the Lord Scepter, but the head of the Council was glaring off into space, not looking in Torrin’s direction.
The Council had no further questions for Maliira. She, at least, met Torrin’s eye as she left, but with so fleeting a glance that he couldn’t tell if it was meant to express sympathy-or sorrow.
As the doors closed behind her, the Lord Scepter raised a hand. Silence fell upon the room. “By show of hands,” he said, “who believes this human to be at fault, to have brought the stoneplague to our city?”
Torrin glanced quickly around the room and saw more than one Deep Lord-in fact, most of them-shifting slightly in their seats, starting to raise their hands. Torrin could contain himself no longer. “Lord Scepter!” he cried. “If you’re going to sentence me to death, I must know how to reply to Moradin, when he asks me to list my sins! I invoke the Treaty of the Hammer, which allows a condemned man-no matter what his race-to ask a single question, and have it answered.”
Silence fell. Heads turned.
“And your question?” the Lord Scepter asked.
Torrin drew a deep breath. “ Is the stoneplague in our city?”
Several Deep Lords gasped behind their hoods. The two knights flanking Torrin bristled, their weapons ready. But, Torrin noted wryly, they seemed as interested in the answer as he was.
The Lord Scepter patted the air. “At ease, knights,” he said. His chuckle surprised Torrin-and more than a few of the Deep Lords, judging by the way the hooded heads turned. “He may be human, but he knows our laws. And more to the point, there is no harm in answering him.”
He stared down at Torrin. “The quarantine has done its work. Not a single case of the stoneplague has been reported in Eartheart. Nor has it been confirmed, I might add, that the man spotted in Hammergate yesterday actually had the stoneplague. That, as far as I am aware, is mere rumor.”
Torrin nodded. “Thank you, Lord Scepter,” he said with a bow. “Do with me what you will.”
Lord Scepter Bladebeard stared down at him for several moments. Then he spoke. “By show of hands-Who believes this human to be innocent?”
Torrin’s eyes widened. Had he heard correctly? The change in the Lord Scepter’s question was subtle, but significant. “Innocent,” he’d said. Several of the Deep Lords also appeared startled by the shift in emphasis.
“I might also point out,” the Deep Lord continued, “that if this man’s dealings had resulted in contaminated objects entering our city, we would surely have seen evidence of the stoneplague within our gates by now. As well, we have heard how he sought out a cleansing in Sharindlar’s sacred pool. Does that sound, to any of you, like the action of a man who cares nothing for our welfare?”
Lord Scepter Bladebeard’s eyes swept the chamber, lingering momentarily on the hooded face of each of the Deep Lords present. Slowly, a smattering of hands rose. Then more, and still more, until the majority of the Deep Lords had their hands in the air.
Torrin let out a relieved sigh. He wanted to laugh aloud, but that would be unseemly. Instead he assumed a suitably dour expression-but inwardly he wore a beard-splitting grin.
“Delver Torrin,” the Lord Scepter said. “You are absolved of any wrongdoing. Your sole fault is for not coming forward sooner. We bid you now to leave our Chamber; we have much to discuss.”
The knights on either side of Torrin snapped to attention. They barely allowed Torrin to bow his thanks-low and deep, until the silver hammers in his beard brushed the floor-before grabbing his elbows and hustling him from the Council chamber.
Torrin walked down the hallway with a newfound confidence. The Deep Lords had the matter in hand. The stoneplague would not spread to Eartheart, despite Torrin’s tardiness in coming before them.
“Praise Moradin,” Torrin whispered. “We’re safe.”
It was only after he was back on the city streets that he realized something. Lord Scepter Bladebeard had called him by his dwarf name. Not Daffyd, the name Torrin’s human parents had given him, but Torrin.
Moradin had indeed bestowed a blessing today.
“Uncle Torrin!” Kier cried, leaping up from the breakfast table and nearly tripping over the bench in his excitement. “I heard you were ordered before the Council last night. Tell me all about it! What happened?”
“Kier!” his father Haldrin chided. “Mind your manners. Torrin may not want to speak of it.” But from the way Haldrin leaned avidly forward, peering at Torrin from behind his spectacles, he was obviously hoping to hear Torrin answer the question.
Torrin chuckled to himself and tousled Kier’s hair. “He’s still a boy, Haldrin.”
“He’s old enough to know his manners,” Haldrin replied. “Being summoned by the Council is no light matter. Are you all right? Did they…” As if suddenly realizing he too was asking questions, he changed the topic abruptly. “Sit down. You look exhausted. You must be famished.”
Torrin did so. He was grateful to be sitting down, despite the fact that his knees knocked the underside of the table. He accepted a bowl of cinnamon-scented oat porridge from Gimrick, the gnome who served Clan Thunsonn.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Torrin answered. “They met to discuss the stoneplague. They were worried that I…”
Just at that moment, Ambril entered the room. She settled herself on the bench beside her husband, her pregnant stomach making her awkward and unbalanced.
Torrin quickly amended what he’d been about to say. “They knew I’d recently had dealings with a fellow from Helmstar,” he continued. “The stoneplague is as thick as fleas in an unwashed beard there, and they wanted to ensure I’d been properly cleansed before entering Eartheart.”
“Were you?” Ambril asked. She leaned back from the table, staring in wide-eyed alarm at the spoon Torrin had just taken a mouthful of porridge from, as if it were a venomous serpent.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Torrin assured her, even though he knew it would make little difference. “The Deep Lords themselves decreed that I posed no danger.”
Haldrin patted his wife’s shoulder. “There,” he said. “You see? Nothing to worry about, dear.”
Kier settled himself on the bench beside Torrin, ignoring his mother’s frantic hand signals to sit somewhere else. “Were they all wearing hoods, Uncle?”
“All except the Lord Scepter,” Torrin replied.
The boy shook his head. “Ridiculous! What did they think you were-some sort of drow assassin?”
Torrin lowered his spoon with a sigh. “It’s what they thought I wasn’t,” he said.
Kier nodded as his eyes gleamed with boyish indignation. “You should have taken me along,” he said. “I would have told them you’re no human.” Just eight years old, Kier was a long way off from sprouting the first hairs of a beard like his father’s, yet Torrin often caught glimpses of the boy’s grandfather in him. Kier had the same daring that had made Baelar Thunsonn one of the most renowned of the knights colloquially known as “skyriders.” No doubt Kier would become a Peacehammer and ride a griffon himself, one day.
Torrin noted the uncomfortable silence that had descended upon the other side of the breakfast table. Ambril and Haldrin were suddenly very interested in their porridge.
Torrin sighed. The Thunsonn Clan had taken him in and given him a home within the city. But that had been an act of charity, prompted by his friendship with Eralynn and cemented by his acceptance into the Delvers. To most of Clan Thunsonn, Torrin might act and dress and pay fervent homage to the Morndinsamman, but he was just a peculiar human.
“Thanks, Kier,” Torrin said. “I’d have been proud to have you by my side.” He grinned across the table at the boy’s parents. “Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary.”
“You’re not being banished, then?” Haldrin asked, finally looking up.
