"Are you going to tell me what kind of creature that is?" Frivaldi asked. "Or do I have to look it up in the Delver's Tome?"
Durin gave him a sour look, but said, "It's a dragonkin.".
"What's that?"
"They're like dragons, but not as smart, or as powerful. No breath weapon, no spells-but they can tear open your guts with a single swipe of their talons and they know how to use weapons. They're drawn to anything that's magic. They can't resist it, any more than a crow can forego something shiny. They'll pick a place clean of magic, even though they don't know how to use it." He paused, nodding to himself. "So that's what made the scratches on the floor. Dragonkin."
"Are the rings magical?" Frivaldi asked.
"Let's find out."
Durin opened a second equipment pouch and pulled out a rod with a hooked blade at one end and a pincher-grip at the other. Extending it, he used the bladed end to slice through the thong around the dragonkin's neck, then reversed it and used the spring-loaded pinchers to recover the rings, one by one. He put the first two inside his pack, but held the last one up for Frivaldi to inspect. It was a band of solid hematite, set with a shield-shaped diamond.
"This one's a stoneskin. If the dragonkin had been wearing it, the beetles couldn't have penetrated its flesh."
"And the sapphire?" Frivaldi asked, eyeing it. "I suppose it's the most valuable bit of magic of all-and the dragonkin was too stupid to know what it was."
"Sapphire?" Durin snorted. "That's a blue spinel, not a sapphire. Any beardless boy could tell you that."
Frivaldi's face flushed.
"And it's nothing but a magical bauble," Durin continued. "The dwarves of Oghrann handed them out as favors at their feasts. I've found hundreds. I've stopped picking them up."
"What do they do?"
Durin's lips actually twitched. A smile? He collapsed his pincher-grip rod and put it away in its pouch.
"Look it up in the Delver's Tome when we get back to Silverymoon," he said. "Volume sixteen, chapter four, entry number eight hundred and nine."
Frivaldi glanced at the gem and waggled his fingers. Why should he wait until they got back to Silvery-moon, when he could find out here and now? With the speed of a releasing trap, he lunged into the room and plucked the gem from the pile of coins before the horde beetles could swarm his hand.
"There," he said, turning to Durin. "Now I can start my own collec-"
Something strange had happened to his darkvision. The corridor was no longer black and gray-it had turned blue. No, his skin had turned blue. It was glowing with an eerie blue light that also emanated from his clothes, his hair, even his dagger and pack. Startled, he flung the gem into the air.
"It's just faerie fire," Durin answered. "Touching the rune triggered the spell."
"I knew that," Frivaldi said. He flipped the falling gem back into the air with his foot and bounced it off an elbow for good measure, then caught it, trying to appear nonchalant.
"My, uh… nephew… will love it."
He shrugged off his backpack and opened its main flap, savoring the smell of new leather that rose from it, and dropped the gem inside.
Durin, examining the door, said, "Did you pick this lock?"
"Of course." Frivaldi waggled his fingers. "Easy as-"
"Then how did the dragonkin get in?"
"It, uh…" Frivaldi shrugged. "It teleported?"
Durin stared at the floor, muttering to himself, "By. the scatter of the coins… yes. There."
He slipped the hematite ring onto his finger, then stepped into the room. Hoard beetles skittered off the pile of coins and threw themselves at his feet and legs, slashing holes in his trousers and boots. They bounced off his skin and clattered to the floor. Durin ignored them.
"What are you doing?" Frivaldi asked.
The glow of the faerie fire was starting to lessen. He could almost see normally again.
Durin examined a section of the rear wall. He pressed his palms against the stone and pushed. With a squeal of rusted pivots and a low grumble, a door-sized section of wall rotated open, revealing a corridor.
"Standard delving procedure," Durin said. "STOP: Secret Transits Ought to be Perused."
He braced his shoulder against the door, which seemed to be straining to shut itself again, and fiddled with the ring on his finger.
Waiting.
Suddenly Frivaldi understood. It was a test of his abilities. A challenge-just like picking a lock.
He eyed the pile of coins. The hoard beetles that had been flinging themselves at Durin had given up and crawled back to their fellows, but several were still moving restlessly on the pile. And the pile was directly in front of the rotating door. He glanced at the dragonkin corpse-at the dozens of coin-sized lacerations in its flesh-then back at Durin, who was still twisting the ring on his finger.
Frivaldi grinned, took a deep breath, and sprinted for the door. One step, two-the horde beetles skittered off the pile, swarming toward him-then he leaped. He hurtled past Durin, knocking him down. Behind them, the door sprang shut with a scraping thud. Something metallic rolled across the floor: the stoneskin ring.
Durin shoved Frivaldi off and said, "By Moradin's beard, boy, must you always be so impatient?" He scooped up the ring and shoved it into a pocket. "It was stuck on my finger."
Frivaldi picked himself up.
"You were going to toss the ring to me?" the younger dwarf asked. "I thought…"
Durin met his gaze and said, "What? That I was unwilling to take a calculated risk that the horde beetles wouldn't attack me a second time, in order to see an apprentice safely through a dangerous spot?" He tossed his beard over his shoulder. "You don't know me very well, boy."
Durin took off his backpack and pulled from it an iron rod as long as his forearm. One end was wrapped in worn leather, like the grip of a frequently used sword. The other end had a small knob shaped like the face of a hound.
"What is it?" Frivaldi asked.
"Something that will tell us if there are dragonkin ahead."
Frivaldi dredged up the acronym: "FLEE, right? Flank, Locate, Eradicate Enemies. We're going to make sure the dragonkin don't steal up behind us."
The faerie fire had at last worn off, and he could see Durin's face clearly.
"Not quite," Durin said, his eyes glittering like mica.
"The stronger the dweomer, the more dragonkin feel its pull. They're drawn to artifacts like a hoard beetle to warm flesh. If we find other dragonkin…"
Frivaldi grinned and finished, "We find the Bane of Caeruleus."
The rod quivered in Durin's hand, indicating hostile creatures ahead. Pressing a finger to his lips, he made a stern motion, indicating that Frivaldi should remain where he was, then he crept forward along the corridor. It opened, just ahead, onto a gallery that ran along one side of a large hall. From below Durin could hear the sound of half a dozen to a dozen guttural voices. He recognized the language as Draconian by its hisses and clicks, but the voices were pitched too low for him to make out the words.
The low wall of the gallery had been carved in a pattern as delicate as lace. Sadly, it had suffered. Large pieces had been smashed out of it and a rusted spearhead was wedged in it. Creeping forward, Durin peered down through what remained.
What he saw in the hall below made his eyes widen. He'd half expected the clutch of eight dragonkin, but the figure they were kneeling in front of sent a chill through him. A dragon! And not just any dragon. The monster was just at the edges of Durin's darkvision, but even so he could see the frilled ears and a single, forked horn jutting out of its forehead that were the distinctive traits of a blue.
Had Caeruleus survived, all those centuries?
No, a blue might live two thousand years, but not seven. The dragon below must have been one of Caer-uleus's descendants. What a bitter irony-that it had chosen Torunn's Forge as its lair.