Lisa Smedman - The Gilded Rune

Torrin smiled at his fellow Delvers as he continued through the room, but despite the fact he’d held his own, he still felt the sting of the fellow’s taunt. One day, he’d just like to walk into the Delver’s Roost and not be challenged-just walk in, unnoticed and unremarked upon, like any other Delver.

An ale would help, he decided. He made his way to the everful cask at the center of the room, lifted his ceramic cup down from the hooks above-most of which held mugs of pewter or etched glass with gilded rim-and held it under the spigot. Frothing ale rose in his mug. When it was full he carefully turned the spigot back. He fished out the last coins in his pocket, counted out ten copper bits, and tossed them into the money jar.

He sniffed. The room smelled better than it had. Two months before, Torrin’s friend Eralynn had been blamed for breaking the spigot-an unfortunate occurrence that had flooded the room ankle-deep in ale. The bottom edges of some of the wall maps had been damaged, but fortunately the maps were only copies of common views of the East Rift and the surrounding lands. The flood hadn’t done any real harm, other than lending a musty odor to the carpet, but it had taken more than a tenday to dry the room out. And the other Delvers had yet another reason to whisper about Eralynn behind their beards, gossiping about how “unlucky” she was. They were always commenting on her spellscarred hands. Useful though the magic a spellscar granted might be, few among the Delvers were willing to overlook the fact that the “taint” on Eralynn’s hands was the same blue fire that had almost torn the world apart, nearly a century before.

No matter how Torrin had tried, he hadn’t been able to convince them that the flooded room wasn’t Eralynn’s fault, that it had been mere coincidence she’d been the last to use the keg the night it broke. The other Delvers, however, had listened with stoppered ears. Had Delvemaster Frivaldi himself come to Eralynn’s defense, it likely wouldn’t have made much difference. The others had already made up their minds that the flood was Eralynn’s fault-just as they’d decided, years before, that she’d been responsible for her delving partner’s death.

Torrin carried his mug to the table where the Delvemaster sat. The head of the local chapter of Delvers was one hundred and thirty-five years old with a waist-length beard, but he had a boyish look about him, just the same. His unruly black hair kept falling over his eyes, and he flipped it back with an impatient head toss. His eyes sparkled with suppressed mirth that threatened to bubble out of him at any moment.

Torrin repressed a pang of jealousy. With his human body, he’d be lucky to see eighty summers, let alone two or three hundred.

As Torrin approached, Frivaldi set down the blacksmith’s puzzle he’d been toying with, raised his slender fingers to his temples, and closed his eyes. “Say nothing, say nothing-yes, there it is,” he intoned. “I can hear your thoughts clearly now: ‘I’ve located it at last, Delvemaster Frivaldi. The Soulforge. All I need is the coin to equip an expedition.’ ” Frivaldi opened his eyes. “Am I right?” he asked.

“Close,” Torrin said. His mouth broke into a beard-splitting grin. “What I have found is a runestone that will teleport me directly to the Soulforge. May I join you?”

The Delvemaster nodded.

Torrin unslung his pack and settled on the three-legged stool across from Frivaldi. He pulled out the runestone Kendril had sold him. After glancing around to ensure that none of the others were looking, he unwrapped it and set it down carefully on the table between them.

The Delvemaster leaned forward and examined the stone. “Are you sure this runestone is what you think it is?” he asked. “Those runes say ‘earth magic.’ It looks more like something a wizard would use to summon an elemental spirit.”

Torrin shook his head. “It’s teleportation magic. The man who sold it to me said so. Ancient magic, the like of which we don’t see today.”

“Ancient?” Frivaldi said as he sat back. “Those scratches look fresh. Almost as if someone made them deliberately, to make the stone look older.” He pushed the runestone back across the table. “How much did you pay for it?”

“Every coin I had.”

“Ah.”

“I just need to know how to use the runestone,” Torrin continued as he wrapped it up again and tucked it back into his pack. “A loremaster can tell me that. If our order could foot the bill, I could pay back the coin. Eventually. I know I’m onto something this time. This stone is special. I can feel it.”

Frivaldi sighed.

Disappointment settled on Torrin’s shoulders like a heavy stone. “You’re going to say no, aren’t you?” he asked.

Frivaldi smiled. “Not necessarily.” The Delvemaster picked up the tangle of interconnected wrought iron loops he’d been playing with. It was the most complicated blacksmith’s puzzle Torrin had ever seen: close to two dozen different rings, loops, twisted bars, and triangles, all interlocking. Frivaldi, however, undid it in a matter of moments, reducing the puzzle to a simple chain.

He peered past the chain at Torrin. “Got it?” he asked.

“Almost,” Torrin said-a word that was about as close to the truth as mud was to a diamond. “You went a little fast.”

“Think you can do it?” Frivaldi asked.

Torrin nodded, not wanting to admit otherwise.

Frivaldi clanked the pieces back together, resetting the puzzle, and put the tangled mass on the table between them. “I’m going to make you an offer. Untangle that, and I’ll give you the coin you need to pay for the loremaster.”

Torrin’s pulse quickened. “You’re serious?”

Frivaldi smiled. “Have you ever known me to say something I don’t mean?”

“Not in this lifetime,” Torrin said with a grin. He picked up the puzzle and worked the pieces back and forth, back and forth, pursing his lips ever tighter as the right combination continued to elude him. At one point he thought he had it-six of the center pieces fell apart from the rest to form a linked chain-but the next twist brought them back together again.

He persevered, his ale forgotten, only dimly aware that Frivaldi had risen to refill his own mug. Frivaldi returned to the table and sat down again, his arms folded across his chest. Torrin noted that a handful of other Delvers had followed. He heard them talking softly behind him, and the clink of coins changing hands. His determination grew as he realized they were wagering on the outcome. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple and dripped onto the table. He kept working at the puzzle, and working at it, but at last he realized it was no use. He threw the clanking mass down on the table in disgust.

The other Delvers laughed or groaned, depending upon the bet placed, and coin changed hands. As they drifted back to their seats, Frivaldi uncrossed his arms and picked up the puzzle.

“Go easy on yourself, Torrin,” the Delvemaster said. “This puzzle is something even the most deft-fingered rogue would have trouble with. It took me years to learn it.”

“You knew I’d fail,” Torrin said.

“I knew it was highly likely. More to the point, I hoped you’d learn that life rarely offers us instant, easy solutions to the problems we encounter. That was something I had to learn the hard way by trial and error-and some of them were expensive errors.”

Frivaldi set the puzzle aside and took a sip of his ale. “Did I ever tell you about Durin, and the very first delve I partnered with him on, more than a century ago?”

Torrin nodded. It was Frivaldi’s favorite story. “Many times.”

“I thought he was a plodding old fool,” Frivaldi said. “All those stupid acronyms. Did you know he wrote an entire chapter of the Delver’s Tome-the one on standard delving procedures?”