“And you delivered my message?”
“Yes. In person.”
“How did my brother receive it?”
Torrin hesitated, remembering the shove that had nearly sent him tumbling down the rampart stairs. “He… ah… He didn’t exactly listen to it.”
“Lightning smite the old fool!” Kendril exclaimed. “Does he still have only stone between his ears?” He smacked a fist into the rock wall beside him. It struck with a dull clunk. A piece of something gray splintered off and flew away. A fragment of loose stone from the wall? Torrin wondered.
No, he realized. That had been Kendril’s little finger-and the dwarf hadn’t even noticed. Dark blood oozed from the stump, slowly dripping onto the ground.
“You’ve… injured yourself,” Torrin said, feeling as if he were about to be sick.
“Have I?” Kendril asked. He felt the place where his finger had been but made no step to staunch the blood.
Torrin took an involuntary step back. “Your eyes… Your hand… Are you ill, or was it a spell that did that to you?”
Kendril’s bitter laugh skittered along the edge of sanity. “Don’t you worry, human. You’re not going to catch it from me.”
Torrin guessed that was supposed to put him at ease. It didn’t. But Kendril was a fellow dwarf, someone who quite clearly needed aid. More aid than Torrin could deliver, but he was bound by the code of the dwarves to at least do what he could. “Let me bind that wound,” he said.
“Too late for that,” the dwarf said.
Kendril lurched forward suddenly and seized Torrin’s hand with his own, undamaged one. Torrin shuddered and tried to pull away, but Kendril’s grip was as strong as stone, despite the dwarf’s trembling.
“If you can’t convince Jorn, speak to his wife,” Kendril said. His foul-smelling breath panted up into Torrin’s face. “Tell her! They need to get as far away as possible, and as quickly as possible, or they’ll wind up like me.”
Torrin glanced uneasily down at Kendril’s oozing hand. If it was some sort of sickness that Kendril was suffering from, was it in his blood?
“Just tell them to get out of Eartheart-to get as far from the East Rift as they can,” Kendril said, pleading. “And tell Jorn I am his brother, still. Despite… everything. That I will carry my regrets to my grave.”
Torrin tried to ease his hand free. “Why must they leave Eartheart?” he prompted. “Tell me more. Tell me what the danger is.”
“Too late,” the dwarf said.
“But-”
“Shh.” Kendril cocked his head, listening. A low moan welled up from the cavern behind them. “That cloaker’s coming back.”
Finally, he let go of Torrin’s hand.
“We’d best be going, then,” Torrin said, backing off a pace. “Will you be able to find your way back to Helmstar on your own? Can I… guide you?”
In truth, Torrin wanted to turn and run the other way. Chance Needle Leap a second time, despite the cloaker. Run all the way home to Eartheart, and tell someone, anyone, of his strange encounter and ask them what it meant.
“I’m not returning to Helmstar.” Kendril said. “My destiny lies in another direction.” He took a deep breath, then turned his face up toward Torrin’s. “I was a cleric, once. Did you know that?”
“Really?” Torrin replied. Belatedly, he admonished himself for letting the word slip out. It wasn’t his place to mock a fellow dwarf, no matter how low the fellow might have fallen. Torrin knew how mockery could sting.
Kendril abruptly clenched both fists and banged his right hand down atop his left-the sign of Moradin’s hammer striking the anvil. “May the Soul Forger find a vein of worthiness, amid my dross, and forgive me for what I’ve done.” Then he sprinted away-straight toward the chasm.
“Kendril!” Torrin exclaimed. “Stop!” He started after the blind dwarf, but it was too late. Kendril ran straight over the edge, hurtling forward. Screaming the Dwarffather’s name-“Moradinnnnn!”-he plunged into the chasm.
“No!” Torrin gasped. He heard the sickening thud and crack of Kendril’s body striking a wall, followed a moment later by the rustle of a cloaker enveloping its prey. There was no scream. Torrin prayed that meant that Kendril had been knocked unconscious before being devoured.
“Moradin’s blessing upon you, Kendril,” he whispered as he backed hurriedly away from Needle Leap. “May you be reforged anew.”
Torrin turned and ran down the tunnel that followed the longer route to Eartheart, bypassing Needle Leap. As he ran, conflicting emotions clanged through him like hammers all trying to strike the same anvil at once. He was elated to have at last acquired the runestone, but at the same time a rising sense of dread filled him. What had been wrong with Kendril? Obviously some strange new disease that the blind dwarf feared would spread to his family. But why-and how? By his own admission, Kendril hadn’t spoken to his brother’s family in years.
And why had Kendril killed himself? Yes, the cloaker had been had been headed back, and might even have squeezed itself into the tunnel, but surely Kendril wouldn’t have felt it necessary to create a distraction that would save Torrin, a complete stranger to him. Such a sacrifice was something one would expect only of a shield brother.
Which, Torrin suddenly realized, was exactly what Kendril must have been doing: protecting his fellow dwarves by killing himself, so whatever it was that had afflicted him wouldn’t spread.
Torrin realized he was wiping his hand against his trousers as he hurried along. “Might as well try to blow out a forge with a breath,” he said, admonishing himself. If Kendril’s touch had left disease on Torrin’s hands, he’d need a blessing to expunge it. It wasn’t about to be brushed off like dust.
A cleric, he decided. A cleric was what he needed. The temple of the Lady of Mercy in Hammergate, just outside of Eartheart, would be his first stop. And he wouldn’t touch anyone, or anything, until he reached it.
Chapter Two
“Gold is where you find it.”
Torrin strode, naked, into the glacial pool in the temple’s chamber of healing. He winced as the numbingly cold water reached his genitals, and shivered as he descended the steps into chest-deep water that took his breath away. “Sharindlar,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Lady of Mercy, I beg a boon: cleanse me.”
He ducked underwater, his shivers bone-deep. Praying silently, he tipped his head back and held himself underwater with powerful strokes of his arms. Through the water above him, he saw the red-robed cleric gesture, one of her hands sweeping across the water, palm down. A sheet of blood red flame spread across the surface of the pool, obscuring everything else from sight. Torrin counted one heartbeat, two, three-and then stood upright. Flames flickered across his hair, face, and shoulders-warming but not burning him-and spread down his body as he strode forward to the edge of the sacred pool. The sweet scent of burning frankincense filled his nose as he climbed the stairs and stepped out, leaving wet footprints that danced with tiny red flames. Then the cleric clapped her hands together, and the flames on both his body and the pool went out with a loud hiss-extinguishing his worries along with them. Whatever illness Kendril had been suffering from, any lingering taint that had rubbed off on Torrin was gone.
He bowed before the statue of the goddess that dominated his side of the room. Twice as tall as a dwarf and carved from a single piece of fire opal, it depicted the goddess dancing, her red robes swooshing to the side as she spun.
He rose from his bow. His body prickled, both hot and cold at once, as he waited for the Merciful Maiden to pronounce the tithe that would be demanded for the cleansing. At the same time, he snuck a look at her.
The priestess looked as though she were in her late teens, but with dwarves, who aged much more slowly than humans did, appearances were deceiving. She was likely in her late twenties, closer to Torrin’s age. And she was quite beautiful. Dark eyes, a full, curvy figure that filled out her robe, a dimpled chin, and a few stray black ringlets that had escaped the blue headscarf holding back her hair. Sharindlar’s silver disk rested gently on the portion of her breasts not covered by her robe.