Sabira paused expectantly, waiting for Mountainheart to catch up with her, but he just gave her a confused look and shook his head. Tysane said nothing.
“The family names were familiar to me because I’d seen them before. Because they were all names of Nightsh—of the Stalker’s victims.”
“Wait. You’re saying the Stalker killed all those people … over mining claims?” Mountainheart couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the prospect.
“I think so, yes. To make sure the area in and around Noldrunhold was completely abandoned.”
“But why? Nobody lives there anymore. Nobody wants to live there. Who would, with Korran’s Maw on one side and Noldrunthrone on the other?”
It was a fair question. Noldrunthrone was believed by all to be haunted, and the Maw was possibly the most feared and shunned location in the entirety of the Holds. Though it was commonly known that the mine still bore rich lodes of ore, so great was the power of the legends surrounding it that those veins remained untapped, even four centuries after they were first deserted. Even so, there was one person who would not be deterred by shades and stories.
It was Tysane who provided the answer.
“A Noldrun.”
“At least one—remember, Hrun is just the accomplice. The Stalker who set all this in motion was probably a Noldrun, too.”
“So, what’s he doing now?” Mountainheart asked, frowning into his beard. “These new victims don’t fit the same pattern. Aside from Goldglove, most of them aren’t even from the southern holds.”
“You’re right, they’re not,” Sabira agreed. “They’re all people whose deaths would be easy to lay at Aggar’s feet for one reason or another, but other than that, they’re not important to Hrun’s greater plan. Not like the first victims were.
“I thought he just wanted to finish the job that I interrupted back in ’91—killing Aggar. But I realize now that was never his goal. Or at least, it wasn’t his only one.
“Haddrin stumbled onto the true plot when he discovered the fissure. Hrun wasn’t going to be content with just killing the Tordannon heir this time—he was going to destroy the heir and the inheritance.”
“Frostmantle?” Tysane asked, horrified. Tysane quickly curved her first two fingers into a fang shape—the sign of the Keeper, the Sovereign of Death and Decay, meant to ward off evil.
“Exactly. Hrun must have remembered Haddrin from his crazed wanderings and realized the threat your son posed. It would have been easy enough for Hrun to track him down at the hot springs, since he knew where to look. Then, when he read the logbook entries and saw that Aggar had threatened Haddrin, the idea to frame Aggar for the murder must have seemed like a gift sent directly from the Mockery. Only the authorities took too long to figure it out; Hrun had to help them along by laying even more murders at Aggar’s feet. But now that Aggar’s been arrested, Hrun can carry on with his true work undisturbed.”
“So how do we stop him?”
“I haven’t figured that one out just yet. But I do know where we can find him.” She grinned at Mountainheart, unaccountably relieved to finally have a sure course of action. “Care to visit some hot springs?”
As they were taking their leave of Tysane, Sabira reminded the old woman not to speak of what she’d heard and then thanked her again for letting them have Haddrin’s logbook.
“Your generosity today will save many lives, grandmother—” Sabira began, only to have Tysane smack her on the shin with her cane.
“Stop calling me that, girl. I’m no one’s grandmother—and won’t ever be, now. The Goldglove line ends with me.”
“I’m sorry,” Sabira said perfunctorily, and then the old dwarf’s words reminded her of something she’d read. Ah, yes. Gunnett was likewise the last of her line.
“Speaking of which, grand—sorry, Tysane. Can you tell me what some symbols on a family pedigree mean?”
“Most likely,” the genealogist replied with alacrity. “Describe them.”
When she had, Tysane nodded.
“Hmm. The circle with the x in it is a fairly common one. It means the woman has been proven to be barren. The other symbol—two circles separated by a line, with one circle being larger—that one’s quite a bit rarer, at least in modern genealogies. It’s the sign of the fortunate twin.”
Sabira, unfamiliar with the term, looked at Mountainheart, who shrugged and shook his head. A response he was getting a little too much practice making of late.
“The fortunate twin?” she prompted Tysane.
“Yes. It refers to an old custom no longer considered acceptable by civilized dwarves. Twin births are generally more difficult than singletons, and one or both children are often born with abnormalities. In older, darker days, the ‘imperfect’ twin was usually cast out.” Tysane’s wrinkled face creased into a grimace. “Can’t say as I’m sorry the custom’s been abandoned, seeing as I was a twin myself, and my life hasn’t turned out half bad.”
Sabira resisted the urge to give Mountainheart a pointed glare at that, thinking of another blind child that never got the chance to find out what his life would have been like.
“So, if the mother was barren, and the daughter was a fortunate twin …?”
“Then the normal daughter was adopted via the Ceremony of Blood, Steel, and Stone, while her twisted twin was most likely left to die in the depths of the Ironroots,” Tysane finished. “If that’s the case, the size of the circles can also indicate the age at which the adoption took place.”
Sabira thought back.
“The smaller circle was about the same size as the one indicating barrenness, and the larger was probably twice that.”
“Not an infant, then. Anywhere from five to ten years old, I’d guess. Old enough to remember it, poor child.” But whether Tysane was referring to the fortunate twin or the cast-off, Sabira couldn’t tell.
“Why are you wasting time asking about this?” Mountainheart demanded with an impatient frown. “What does the barbaric practice of some obscure family have to do with finding Hrun or helping my uncle? Who are you even talking about?”
Sabira looked at him for a moment, considering. He didn’t have any of the usual tells of someone who was bluffing; he must honestly not know that Gunnett had not been born a Stoneblood.
“It’s not important,” she said at last. She wasn’t sure what to make of this new information, but she did know telling Mountainheart about it now was only going to distract him from the task at hand, and she had a feeling she was going to need him at his sharpest. Their foe was turning out to be far cleverer than she’d imagined.
“Something from an old case,” she added when the dwarf didn’t seem convinced. “Remind me to tell you about it later, after this one is closed. For now, we need to get down to the lowest levels of the city as soon as possible. From what I read in Haddrin’s journal, the fissure had almost reached Frostmantle. It must be even closer now, maybe even beneath the city already, so whatever Hrun has planned, it’s going to happen soon. And we need to be there to stop it.”
It took them more than two hours to wend their way down through the lower levels of Frostmantle until they reached Maintenance. This level housed great pumps and a labyrinthine system of pipes that delivered clean water to every home in the mountain and took the soiled water away again to be purified. Trash and debris were likewise delivered to this level via an intricate system of chutes, where it was separated for either composting or burning. If an item could be melted down or somehow reused, it was; otherwise, it went into a vast central furnace that provided heat for much of the city. The operation was not without disadvantages, however: While most of the smoke was vented away, the lingering odor rivaled that of Stormreach’s sewers.