“Really?” he asked, meeting her eye.
“Really. That much gold would tempt anyone.”
“So… where did you get that gold bar?”
“I got it in change, when I purchased the rope we used to descend to Wyrmtrap portal. Mercuria said he didn’t have any gold coins, and he gave me the gold bar instead.”
“Mercuria?” Torrin echoed. “You bought that rope at Mercuria’s store?”
“Now just a moment,” Eralynn retorted. “Don’t go lecturing me about dealing with a tiefling. I know full well where his merchandise comes from, and I don’t care. He’s got the best prices in town. All of the Delvers buy from him.” She glanced down at the gold bar. “But you’re right. I should have been more cautious. The exchange rate was a little too favorable.”
She glanced up again as she continued. “I wasn’t a complete babe in the wolf’s den, however. I figured the talismonger might be trying to pass off gilt over dross. But when I scratched the bar with a nail, it was soft as butter-solid gold, all right. Or at least, I think it was.”
She stared down into the pouch. “You’re going to tell me this is really lead, aren’t you?” she said. “That Mercuria used magic to trick me.”
“Let me see it,” Torrin said. Keeping the gold bar inside the pouch, where it wouldn’t attract so much attention, he examined it. He spotted something amiss right away. “See this rune, next to the purity stamp?”
She peered at it. “What of it?”
“It’s been carelessly done,” he replied. “One of the lines in the ‘one hundred’ rune is shorter than the others. And the horns on the crescent that marks it as being from the Waterdeep mint have the wrong curve. This might be gold, but the minter’s mark is a forgery. I’ll bet someone shaved the original bar down, then recast it with just enough of another metal in the mix that a casual observer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
Eralynn raised an eyebrow. “How do you know so much about currency?”
“I used to help my human parents tend the store, remember?” Torrin replied. “We had to be careful what we took in trade.” He yanked the pouch’s drawstrings tight. “The real question is, how did one of the bars from the earthmote wind up in Mercuria’s possession?”
“That’s easy enough,” Eralynn said. “You said yourself how alluring gold can be. One of the skyriders pocketed it, then used it to buy something at Mercuria’s shop.”
“No skyrider would do such a thing!” Torrin said in protest.
Eralynn shook her head. “You may be a dwarf at heart, Torrin, but there’s much you’ve yet to learn about the hearts of dwarves.”
Torrin tried to hand the pouch back to her, but Eralynn refused it. “Keep it,” she said.
“But it’s valuable!” he said.
“You need to pay for your cleansing,” she replied as she shook her head. “If your mother had given me a chance, I would have left the gold with her to pass along to you. But she wasn’t very polite.” She glanced down at her hands and sighed. “Not that I’m unused to that.”
“It wasn’t your hands,” Torrin told her. “She just… has a bit of trouble talking to dwarves, sometimes. She blames the stout folk for… Well, for this.” He gestured at his beard.
“Ah,” Eralynn said, looking somewhat mollified. “Still, even if the bar isn’t full value, it’s enough to pay your tithe. So keep it.”
Torrin opened his mouth to thank Eralynn, but his eyes fell, just then, on the Merciful Maiden who had just appeared at the entrance. Maliira. Torrin held up his left hand to display the ribbons, and waved. Maliira nodded back at him. Was she smiling? He couldn’t tell. She crooked a finger, beckoning him closer.
“You know her?” Eralynn said.
“A little. Not as well as I’d like,” he replied.
Eralynn suddenly turned and walked away.
Torrin was taken aback by her abrupt departure. “Wait!” he called after her. “I wanted to thank…”
But Eralynn had turned the corner. Torrin scratched his head. If he hadn’t known better, he might have guessed that she felt affection for him. But she’d made it clear many times in the past that they were just friends. Fellow Delvers, nothing more.
He shrugged, then strode to the spot where Maliira stood. “You wanted to talk to me?” he asked her.
“It’s your turn for a cleansing, it would seem,” Maliira told him. “Since you’re the only one left in line.”
Torrin smiled. “Will you administer the blessing?”
“No,” she replied, waving a hand at the people who were starting to venture-albeit timidly-back to the street in front of the temple. The line was beginning to reform. “I’m needed here, to keep order until the Steel Shields arrive. Some idiot, apparently, accused someone else in line of having the stoneplague, and nearly started a riot.”
Torrin was thankful his beard hid the flush of his cheeks. “Ah. Yes. Stupid thing to do,” he said.
“What he should have done was quietly pull the afflicted person aside and bring him to the front of the line, so we could heal him,” Maliira continued.
“Yes, yes, of course. That’s exactly what he should have done,” Torrin agreed.
Was it just his imagination, or was she giving him an accusing look?
He needed to change the subject. “This time, I’ll be able to pay my tithe,” he said. He lifted the pouch Eralynn had given him and opened it with a flourish, drawing out the gold bar.
Maliira took it from him and stared at it thoughtfully. For a moment, Torrin thought she was going to reject it as payment. She further alarmed him by glancing around somewhat furtively, and drawing her dagger.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is my tithe… insulting in some way?”
“Quite the contrary,” she said. “It’s very generous. Now hold out your left hand.”
Torrin did as he was bid.
She sliced the two ribbons off his wrist. “Your debt is absolved,” the priestess said.
Torrin rubbed his bare wrist. “But… I promised to pay for the previous two cleansings,” he said. “And I always keep my oaths.”
Maliira didn’t seem to be listening to his protests.
“I was told what you said in the Council chamber,” she said, sheathing her dagger. “You were very brave.”
“I was merely doing my duty as a citizen of Eartheart,” he replied.
“Yet you’re not a citizen. You’re human.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. As I told you the first time we met: I’m a dwarf.” He thumped his chest. “Here. On the inside.”
“Regardless of whether that’s the truth or a pretty fantasy, you have the honor and the courage of a dwarf. It seems unfair you should pay when you’ve already done so much.”
“Nevertheless, I will pay,” Torrin insisted. “As promised.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Is your insistence on payment just an excuse to dance with me on Midsummer Night?”
Torrin grinned as he replied, “Does the coal in a forge glow red?”
Maliira smiled. “Off you go, then,” she said. “Get cleansed. That way, they’ll have no excuse to haul you before the Council again.”
“Until Midsummer then,” Torrin said.
“Until Midsummer.”
Torrin entered the temple, still grinning. He might have lost all of the gold in the earthmote, but somehow, ironically, his footsteps felt all the lighter. The weight of the gold had lain upon his shoulders, filling him with anxiety and guilt. In truth, he was glad to be rid of it. And he had something much, much better to look forward to.
He still had to raise the hundred Anvils he’d stubbornly insisted on paying, but as a result of his foray into the Wyrmcaves, he realized the solution to that problem was already at hand. Once the other Delvers learned that the runestone was capable of taking them anywhere they wanted to go, they would pay Torrin whatever price he asked to transport them to their delves. Dorn, for example, would pay a pretty price to find the lost tomb of Velm Dragonslayer-and he was just the start.
Whistling cheerfully, Torrin made his way to the temple’s lower level. After seeing Maliira again, a plunge into an ice-cold sacred pool was just the thing he needed.