“Small chance of that,” she gasped. “We won’t even recognize each other.”
Torrin hung his head closer to the ground, trying to find cooler air. With all the smoke in the air, it was getting difficult to see. Eralynn struggled to rise, her sword in her hand, but another blast of flame forced her back to her knees.
Then Torrin noticed something-a blue glow. Lines of magical energy were flowing toward the spot where he and Eralynn were crouched, converging on them as though they were the hub of a spoked wheel.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Something’s activated the earth node,” Eralynn said. “It’s channeling spellfire.” She lifted her hands and squinted at them through the smoke. The glowing veins of blue were no brighter than usual. “But it’s not me. Something other than my spellscar must be drawing it.”
Torrin saw, to his surprise, that the beams of crackling blue energy were converging on the spot where he crouched. “It’s focusing on me!” he gasped back. “But I’m not spellscarred. Why would it-”
Wracked with coughing, he couldn’t continue.
“Your runestone!” Eralynn cried.
Of course! Why hadn’t he made the connection before? The words on his runestone were “earth magic,” and they were at the heart of an earth node: one of the places where the invisible lines of elemental energy that ran the length and breadth of Faerun converged. And perhaps-just perhaps-it would be their salvation. Mages used earth nodes like stepping stones, teleporting from one to the next with a mere thought. Perhaps the runestone would allow even someone without knowledge of magical rituals to do the same. And not just from one earth node to the other, but to-as Kendril had said-“anywhere you want to go.”
Torrin ripped off his pack and fumbled with the runestone. Immediately, the sparkling lines centered on it. A ball of blue light formed around the runestone, sending tingling shivers up Torrin’s arms.
“What should I do now?” he shouted.
“I have no idea!” Eralynn rasped out between coughs. “Try concentrating on somewhere else.” Yet another wave of heat and smoke boiled over them as the dragon exhaled again. “Anywhere else!” She cupped her hands around Torrin’s, and the blue glow intensified. Crackling veins sprang into bright relief on the backs of her hands.
“Hold on!” Torrin shouted. He squeezed his eyes shut, one hand on his pack and the other holding the runestone. Out of here, he thought fiercely. Get us out of here. Take us-
Fire curled over the slab as the dragon exhaled its most powerful breath yet, the flames licking down over the lip of the stone. As they seared Torrin’s scalp and smouldered his hair, he screamed in pain. “Home!”
He felt a sudden wrench.
A twisting sensation followed-a long spinning slide along lines of blue fire. Then a sudden thud, blessed coolness, and the press of wooden boards against his cheek.
He lifted his head and saw Eralynn lying unconscious-but, praise Moradin, still breathing-beside him on the floor of his parents’ shop in Hammergate.
“We made it,” he gasped.
Then he collapsed.
Chapter Six
“Even the just may sin with an open chest of gold before them.”
Torrin hissed in pain as something cold touched his forehead. He reared up, wincing at the sting, and a wet cloth fell from his forehead, into his lap. He glanced around stiffly, and saw that he was in the attic loft above his parents’ shop in Hammergate.
“Welcome home, Daffyd,” a voice beside him said. Torrin glanced to the side and saw his mother. She picked the cloth up from the bed, dipped it into a basin of ice water, and wrung it out. “We’ve seen you, what-twice? — these past ten years, and suddenly you decide to barge in on us out of thin air.” She shook her head and feigned a laugh. “Decided to test the shop’s protective wards, did you?”
“You’ve added wards?” Torrin asked. “Business must be good.”
“As it turns out, no,” his mother replied, suddenly serious. “The dwarves have sealed the gate to Eartheart. None of them are venturing out to Hammergate any more. They’re all trembling, right to the tips of their beards, about this new disease. The stoneplague, they call it. Thank goodness it doesn’t seem to affect… us.”
Torrin’s mother had aged since he’d seen her last. The hair that was pulled up in a neat bun was a solid gray, and the lines beside her mouth had deepened. She was also heavier than Torrin remembered-the stool she sat on creaked as she leaned forward. But although her tone was as chiding as ever, her touch was gentle as she laid the cold cloth on Torrin’s scorched arm.
“Where’s Eralynn?” he asked. “Is she all right?”
“That dwarf woman you teleported in here with?” his mother replied. “The one with the strange hands?” Her lips turned down in a barely suppressed frown. “She’s spellscarred, you know.”
“Really?” Torrin snapped back, falling back into his old habit of sarcasm. “How could you tell?”
His mother ignored his retort. “She’s gone back to Eartheart, I suppose. Assuming she found enough gold for the cleansing. The temple is charging whatever the market will bear, I’m told.”
Torrin winced, and immediately regretted it. The portions of his face that hadn’t been protected by the goggles or his beard stung from his burns. What stung worse was the news that Eralynn had just walked out on him. “When did she leave?” he asked.
“Yesterday.”
Torrin blinked. “I’ve been unconscious that long?”
His mother’s lips tightened. “I was worried about you,” she replied. “But your dwarf friend said you’d be fine, once the backlash from the spellfire wore off. What were you up to? You didn’t blunder into a pocket of spellfire, did you?”
“Nothing like that.” Torrin said, looking around the room. His toys and clothes had been packed away years before. All that remained of his childhood furnishings was the bed. Sunlight filtered through the room’s single grimy window-the one through which he’d snuck out onto the rooftop as a boy, to look down on the crowded streets below. Beyond the rooftops, he could see the high walls of Eartheart proper. There were more knights than usual patrolling the battlements. Making sure no one tried to slip past the quarantine, Torrin supposed.
The attic was filled with crates and boxes. It had become a storeroom. But near the window was a crude drawing he’d done of himself, back when he was six-the year before he’d realized he was a dwarf born into a human family, and not a true human at all. The beardless boy that stared back at him from that drawing seemed as distant from the man he had become as the stars were from Faerun.
“Where’s the runestone I was holding when I teleported here?” he asked.
“Your friend put it in your pack-which is over in the corner there. Safe,” his mother said reassuringly.
“And my mace?”
After a moment’s strained silence, she answered, “Also safe.”
“Praise Moradin.”
His mother stared at the silver hammers in his beard. “I see you’re still worshiping dwarf gods.”
“Of course,” Torrin replied. “Why shouldn’t I worship my maker?”
His mother closed her eyes and whispered something in a strained voice. Then she stared an age-old challenge into his eyes. “I’m your mother.”
“I’ve never disputed that,” Torrin said.
She held up a silencing finger. “For nine months, I bore you inside me,” she continued. “For seven years, you were a normal boy, with none of these flights of fancy. If I could only step back in time, I would never have taken that horrible weapon in trade.” She leaned forward, her eyes intense. “It was the mace that whispered its command word into your mind that day, Torrin. It had nothing to do with you. You’re not a dwarf.”
Torrin sighed. Their conversation was familiar ground, so well trodden he could have been blindfolded and still followed the footprints of the words that would come. “The mace wouldn’t have spoken to me if I wasn’t of the Ironstar clan,” he said.