He’d done it! He was inside Drik Hargunen!
Spellfire crackled around his knees, bleeding away into the floor. The stone under his knees was warm, but the warmth dissipated rapidly. Torrin scrambled over to the window and peered into the library proper. Duergar librarians bustled back and forth between the shelves, but none seemed to have noticed his arrival. So far, so good. He put the runestone inside his pack to keep it safe. Then he made his way to the door, and opened it a crack.
A hallway ran right and left. It had doors similar to the one he was peering through, likely leading to other cubicles. Faint murmurs came from behind some of them, probably the voices of library patrons. At the end of the hallway was a black metal door, inscribed with a large glyph surrounded by a multitude of smaller inscriptions. In fact, the hallway was covered in glyphs, too. Any one of them might trigger a magical alarm or a deadly trap.
Torrin reached up to stroke his beard, and halted as his hand touched blunt-ended braids. He’d had to remove Moradin’s hammers from his beard; the braids ended where he’d cut them. Likewise, he’d reluctantly left behind his bracers, lest their distinctive Ironstar rune give him away. His forearms felt naked without them. His mace, however, was at his hip. Though it was a mission that required stealth, he couldn’t very well walk through an enemy city without some protection.
He pulled a thumb-sized vial out of his pocket, uncorked it, and drank. The potion would temporarily allow him to spot anything that was ensorcelled. It tasted faintly of mushrooms. He gagged it down with a shudder.
Within a heartbeat or two, the potion took effect. Several of the inscriptions in the hallway acquired a faint, sparkling glow.
Cathor had said the exit lay to the right. Moving cautiously, careful not to tread on any magical inscription, Torrin made his way to that door. He could stand upright there; the arched ceiling was at least a handspan above his head. He glanced around as he walked, taking care not to let his shoulders brush the walls, and found he could read many of the inscriptions. The duergar spoke a separate dialect, yet they wrote with the same runes as the dwarves. Most of the inscriptions appeared to be prayers-the name Laduguer was repeated over and over again. None of the names bore a magical glow, but Torrin took care not to touch them anyway.
He reached the door without incident and eased it open.
The door led to a balcony with an iron floor and roof that were bolted onto the wall of an enormous natural chimney in the rock. The vast vertical tunnel was honeycombed with corridors leading into the rock and fronted with similar balconies. Arching ramps, also made of iron, connected each balcony to a spiral staircase at the center of the chimney. Scores of bald-headed duergar moved up and down the central staircase, intent on their business, passing across the bridges to the corridors bored into the rock. They moved for the most part in silence, barely acknowledging each other as they passed. Their hobnailed boots clanked on the metal steps. The only other sounds were the hiss of the chill, soot-tinged air through the cavern and the steady thud, thud, thud of something heavy and mechanical far below. Huge inscriptions, each glyph taller than a cottage, spelled out words on the chimney walls: “Silence. Toil. Obedience.”
Torrin rested his hands on the balcony’s grimy railing and leaned out, looking up. Just above was the rest of the Runescribed Hall of Laduguer’s Graving, temple to the god Laduguer. Its outermost walls were made of iron and bolted to the natural rock. They bulged out from the wall like an angular shield, protecting the corridors and rooms within. Two enormous metal doors, each bearing a brightly glowing glyph, marked the temple’s entrance. They were closed, likely locked and warded. Torrin hoped to get inside by subterfuge. His plan was to pose as a human slaver who needed the services of a cleric to scry out a particularly valuable escaped slave. But if that didn’t work-if he couldn’t convince Laduguer’s clerics to let him inside-there was always the magical ring that Delvemaster Frivaldi had loaned Torrin. All he had to do was knock, and any lock would open.
Torrin stepped back, brushing the soot from his palms. It was going to be dangerous. But he had to try.
He crossed the bridge to the central staircase and made his way up the wide metal stairs. Each step was a grill of metal, and the view below was dizzying. Torrin passed several duergar, each of whom lifted his or her normally downturned head to stare sullenly at him as he passed. Their eyes bored into his back as he climbed. The women were bare-cheeked, and the men wore beards that reminded Torrin of animal quills-each strand of hair was as thick as the spine of a feather and bristling stiffly from cheeks and chin. All had black eyes and dull gray skin. Torrin repressed a shudder. He reminded himself that it was their natural coloration and not the stoneplague.
Other creatures moved up and down the staircase as well. Grimlock slaves, a full head taller than the duergar, walked bent over as if worn down by their servitude. They had normal noses and mouths, but no eyes-just empty sockets covered by flaps of skin. Large, cupped ears helped compensate for their natural blindness. Most carried heavily loaded baskets or other burdens.
The grimlocks wore clothing little better than rags, tattered and stained. Lash marks-some healed, some fresh and weeping-covered their shoulders and backs. One grimlock stank of rotting flesh; maggots squirmed in an untended wound on his mangled hand.
Torrin swallowed down his bile. The sight of how the duergar treated their slaves made him sick. He started to whisper a prayer for the wretched slaves’ souls, but halted himself just in time. With his eyes down, he plodded on up the stairs.
Just above was the bridge leading to the temple. A pair of duergar wearing gray hooded mantles and riding boots and carrying lances over the shoulders had just started across to the temple. Torrin decided to wait until they had disappeared into the temple before trying to enter himself. He slowed down and let other duergar pass him. One hurried up the stairs, elbowing aside a grimlock. Already unbalanced by a basket filled with tubers, the slave stumbled sideways and threw out a hand to steady himself. He was about to touch one of two nearby runes that glowed with magic. Not the benign sounding burakrin, meaning “passage,” but the one that read bazcorl — “fiery death.”
Before the slave’s hand could make contact with the rune, Torrin shoved him. The slave lurched forward, and his hand came to rest on a non-magical part of the wall, instead. Unfortunately for him, he stumbled into the duergar who’d elbowed him aside. Tubers spilled from the slave’s basket and bounced off the duergar’s head and shoulders before rolling down the stairs. Some tumbled off the edge of the staircase and spun away out of sight.
The duergar whirled and spat out angry words. Torrin couldn’t understand the dialect, and at first thought the duergar was berating the slave. One word, however, he recognized: “human.” The sneer on the duergar’s lips made it clear he intended it as an insult. And he was staring down at Torrin!
Torrin had no idea what was expected of a human in Drik Hargunen. Should he answer the fellow’s insult with one of his own? Bow meekly and ask forgiveness? The duergar carried himself as if he were someone important-a noble, no doubt. He wore an expensive-looking cloak and several gold rings, some of which were glowing to Torrin’s potion-enhanced eyesight. His spiky beard glowed with magic as well.
Torrin bowed his head. “My apologies,” he said in Dwarvish. “I tripped.”
The noble’s eyebrows rose. With his quill beard bristling, he shouted something at Torrin. Immediately, the slave fell to his knees, trembling. Above, one of the duergar who’d been crossing the bridge to the temple glanced back at what was happening and halted abruptly. On the staircase below Torrin-all around him in fact-other duergar had gathered. They were staring at him with each passing moment, nudging each other, and muttering.