Torrin shook his head, amazed at what had just happened. He’d been wrong. It wasn’t necessary to be in an earth node to activate the runestone. Its teleportation magic, it would seem, could be commanded from anywhere on Faerun.
Torrin crossed the cavern and picked up the runestone. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. He tucked it away in his pack.
He picked up Cathor’s dagger and sword and put them in his pack as well, for good measure. Then he stripped the rogue naked-there was no telling what form a magical amulet might take-and bound his wrists behind his back, using rope from his Delver’s pack. He tied Cathor’s ankles as well. Finally, just in case the rogue was capable of magic, Torrin stuffed a gag in his mouth.
All Torrin had to do next was wait for the sleep poison to wear off. Meanwhile, he prayed that Cathor didn’t have accomplices nearby. The cavern they’d teleported to, however, was as quiet as a crypt. And, Torrin saw as he walked its circumference, it had no visible exits, aside from the narrow fissure in the wall, which was too narrow for a person to squeeze through. No matter. The runestone was Torrin’s way out-assuming he could figure out how to use it.
Torrin nudged Cathor with his foot. The dwarf was still unconscious, but alive. “Don’t claim him yet, Moradin,” Torrin prayed. “Not until I’m done with him.”
He pulled a lantern from his pack and lit it, then slid his goggles up onto his forehead. He turned his attention to the objects littering the floor. The flash was solid gold, as he’d expected from the way it bent under his boots. The molds were the ones used to cast the cursed gold bars. He inspected the slit in the wall and saw that it led to an almost perfectly round tunnel, perhaps a pace wide, whose walls were coated with a crust of hardened gold. Torrin sniffed and caught the faint scent of molten metal.
“The River of Gold,” he breathed.
He glanced around, shaking his head in wonder. A fortune lay at his feet, splashed all around him like waste slag. Even though he knew its role in spreading the stoneplague, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pure greed at the sight of it. All that wealth made his heart pound. His people had a name for what he was feeling: aetharn or “gold lust.” With that much gold, he could go anywhere, do anything. Fund the most exotic delves anyone had ever dreamed of.
Then he thought of Eralynn, Kier, Ambril and her stillborn twins, and the hundreds of other dwarves who’d succumbed to the stoneplague, and the taste of his fantasies soured. He’d trade all the gold in the cavern-all the gold in the world-for them to be alive again.
He heard a faint movement behind him. Cathor had woken up. He was feigning sleep, but his shivers betrayed him.
Torrin squatted next to the dwarf. His anger banked as he stared at him. Rather than fan it red hot, Torrin let it smolder. The time for vengeance-for justice-would come later.
Cathor’s eyes opened. He strained at his bonds and shivered violently, either from the feel of cold stone against naked flesh or from fear. He shook his head and tried to say something. But all that got past the gag was a moan.
Torrin stared down at his captive. He pulled a tiny glass vial from his pack and showed it to Cathor. “This potion is the same as the one that forced your half-elf friend to talk, back at the inn,” he said. “One way or the other, you’re going to drink it. If I have to, I’ll kneel on your forehead and slice your lips open with my dagger. Or we can do it the easy way, and you can just swallow it.”
Cathor stared up at him, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. Perhaps he believed Torrin would free him once he had talked, or perhaps he thought he might yet use the runestone to escape. Whatever the reason, he grunted his assent.
“Good,” Torrin said. He took the gag from Cathor’s mouth. Cathor opened his mouth, and Torrin poured in the potion. Just in case Cathor was lying about being cooperative, Torrin immediately pinched the rogue’s lips shut.
Cathor glared, but swallowed down the potion. Torrin released his hold on the fellow’s lips and stood up.
“And now,” Torrin told his captive, “we’ll talk.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Truth comes to us from the past, like gold washed down from the mountains.”
Torrin stared down at his captive.Since the truth potion would only last so long, he decided to ask Cathor the most important questions first. He folded his arms across his chest. “How, exactly, was the gold cursed?”
“I don’t know,” Cathor said.
Torrin silently fumed, then realized he needed to back up a step. Cathor might be nothing more than a minion, after all. He might not know the details. Torrin had to take this step by step. “All right, then, let’s try again,” he said. “Let’s start with this: who cursed the gold?”
That, it seemed, was a question his captive could answer. “The duergar,” Cathor replied.
“The one who was trying to find Vadyr? What’s his name?” Torrin asked.
Cathor shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“Perhaps I should be more clear,” Torrin said. “What I want to know is this: What’s the name of the duergar who invoked the curse?”
“Perhaps I should be more clear,” Cathor said mockingly. “I don’t know.”
Torrin grit his teeth. He tried again. “Where can I find the duergar who cursed the gold?” he asked.
Cathor’s jaw muscles bunched as he tried to keep himself from speaking. The potion, however, forced the words out. “In Drik Hargunen,” he said.
“That’s better,” Torrin said. It took him, however, a few moments to place the name. He at last remembered there was a duergar city by that name, somewhere in the Underdark. Torrin had stumbled across the name once, when researching rune magic. He dredged the phrase up from memory: the runescribed halls of Drik Hargunen.
Torrin reframed the question he’d asked earlier. “What did the duergar use curse the gold?”
“Rune magic,” Cathor said.
That much, Torrin might have guessed. “How can the curse be broken?”
The dwarf glared. “No idea,” he said. “Why don’t you go ask the runescribes yourself?”
Torrin balled his fists. He reminded himself that the rogue was answering his questions truthfully. He could see Cathor struggling not to speak, yet being compelled to. Yet the answers weren’t nearly as informative as Torrin had hoped they would be. He decided to dig in a different direction. He gestured at the gold-crusted slit in the wall. “Who used the runestone to call the River of Gold to this cavern?” he asked.
“We did. Me and Kendril,” Cathor replied.
“Who tapped it and cast the gold bars?”
“The same: me and Kendril.”
“Whose idea was it to distribute them in Eartheart?” After a moment’s silent struggle, the word popped out. “Mine.”
“And the other two rogues? Vadyr and Tril? What part did they play in this?”
“They were hired to distribute the gold. Tril, in the smaller settlements. And Vadyr, in Eartheart.”
That fit. Only tallfolk could safely handle the cursed gold. Torrin stared down at Cathor’s gray-tinged skin. The two dwarf rogues must have been careless, to let themselves be afflicted by the stoneplague.
Time to get back to that line of questioning.
“Whom did the four of you take your orders from?” Torrin asked. “Who told you to make the gold bars?”
“No one,” said Cathor. “It was my idea. Mine… and Kendril’s.”
“So you and Kendril hired the duergar to curse the gold?”
Cathor shook his head. “No. They’d done it already. We just mined it.”
Torrin frowned in confusion. He looked at the cut in the wall. “So the duergar cursed the River of Gold,” he ventured, “before you mined it?”