The Nether Scroll

12 Flamerule, the Year of the Arch (1353 DR)

Along the Vilhon Reach

"Do you think she wants to marry him? I hear he's half snake ... the wrong half."

The question and comments rolled off the tongue of Galimer Longfingers, journeyman and
wizard, as he and Druhallen of Sunderath, also a journeyman and wizard, fidgeted in their
saddles while watching other men repair a broken cartwheel.

"Which half would be the right half?" Druhallen joked, then turned serious. "There's no
point to wishes. What's cut, stays cut. We've been hired to get her to Hlondeth. What
happens afterward is none of our concern."

Afoot, Druhallen was a handspan shorter than Galimer, though that wasn't obvious when
they were astride. Nothing about Druhallen was obvious. His hair was a drab shade of brown
that framed his squarish face with a ragged fringe. He had a larger-than-average mouth and
nose, and his otherwise attractive hazel eyes were shadowed by heavy brows that were
darker than his hair. Dressed in homespun and leather, Druhallen was often mistaken for his
friend's varlet.

Galimer Longfingers cut an impressive figure, even in the middle of nowhere or on an
empty road across the Vilhon Reach—which was almost the same thing. If the young woman
under discussion was looking for a handsome, all-human suitor, she'd certainly cast a measuring
glance in Galimer's direction. His wine-colored tunic and gray moleskin breeches had been tailored in
the best Scornubel establishments and were as sturdy as they were fashionably expensive. His idly
curling hair was the color of Aglarond cider, his eyes were gemstone blue, and his features were
delicate without being either elven or feminine. His fingers, sheathed in leather gloves dyed to match
his eyes, were elegant and long.

Wizard hands, Ansoain, his mother, labeled them—because long, slender fingers were
presumed to be an asset in a profession that relied on gesture and precision. She'd nicknamed him
Longfingers when he was a toddler, and fifteen years later Galimer still dreamed of taking his place
among the great wizards of Faerun.

A more sober and thoughtful youth, Druhallen never gainsaid his friend's dreams though
he—and Ansoain, too—were aware that wizardry required more than elegant hands. Wizardry
demanded a sharp mind, a special sort of curiosity, nerves of steel, and—above all else—gods-given
talent. Galimer's wits were sharp enough, but he fell short in all the other attributes.

Druhallen had it all, despite his workman's physique and a childhood spent learning
carpentry beside his older brothers in his father's shop. He'd captured Ansoain's attention a
decade ago when bad weather led her to commission a waterproof box for the rare spices
she was chaperoning along the roads to Elversult. When the carpenter's youngest son
blithely quieted a squealing hinge with a cantrip of his own devising, Ansoain offered to
apprentice the boy in exchange for twenty fresh-minted Cormyr falcons.

Without consulting his son, the old man bit each coin and, approving of their taste, gave
Druhallen a swat on the rump and a warning to obey his new master. Druhallen had sworn
he'd never bring shame to his father's name and left Sunderath that day with a pocketful of
nails. He'd kept his promise and the nails.

They both knew he could have found himself a wealthy patron by now, but he'd taken to
the road like an uncaged bird took to the sky. Still, Dru remembered what he'd learned from
his father and as far in time and place as he'd come from Sunderath, he could have re-
spoked that wheel in half the time it was taking the carters.

The carters would be at it a while longer. Long enough, Druhallen thought, for a nap. He
was eyeing an elm tree with moss-padded roots when Galimer interrupted him with another
bit of gossip.

"I've heard the bridegroom's forty-five, three times a widower, with neither hair nor heirs to
show for his efforts."

In Scornubel and the other towns where Ansoain plied the journey-trade with Druhallen
and her son, Galimer Longfingers was accounted a witty young man. His wordplay usually
left Druhallen chuckling, but not when the carters had just managed to break another spoke.

"And I've heard the bride is bugbear ugly," he grumbled.

In truth, Dru had heard no such thing. He'd been careful not to acquire neither expensive
habits nor an ear for gossip. Still, the simple fact was that they were ten days into what would
be at least a twenty-day journey and the bride-to-be had yet to emerge from that cart with the
jinxed wheels. Speculation ran rampant, and not only between bored wizards who hadn't yet
seen the sun rise on their twentieth birthdays.

In addition to Ansoain and her apprentices, there were twelve men-at-arms attached to the
dower caravan: the muscle complement to Ansoain's magic. A man would have to have been
stone deaf not to hear what the muscle thought of the situation.

A few days back, Dru had lent a hand to one of the handmaids as she'd struggled with a
too-full water jug and gotten an insider's version of the sad tale. The bride's family had a
lustrous title, generations of honor, a drafty castle, and debts galore. The bridegroom was a
dyer and tanner of fine leathers, no better born than Druhallen himself, but blessed with a
self-made fortune. He was said to be a human man, but who knew with the Hlondethem?
Their queen was a yuan-ti half-breed with iridescent scales on her cheeks and a serpent's tail
she kept hidden, except from her lovers ... according to the maid.

The match had been based on mutual need: The groom's for a title to match his wealth
and sons to inherit it. The bride's to save her father from the ignominy of debtors' court. She
stayed in the cart whether it rolled on four wheels or three because nightmares and tears had
ruined her complexion ... according to the maid.

"I'd like to see what we're guarding just once before we deliver it," Galimer continued his
complaints. "The way those three dower carts are wrapped up, you'd think we were escorting
the lost treasure of Oebelar."

Druhallen didn't know about Oebelar's legendary wealth, but he knew that three of the five
wagons in their caravan were filled with brick and stone in a pathetic effort to maintain
appearances for the already mortified bride. Her dowry, other than the name she'd been born
with and the pedigreed blood in her veins, fit in a single chest she kept constantly at her feet.

"Leave it be," Dru advised for the third time. "We've escorted stranger consignments and
been paid less for our troubles, right?"

Notwithstanding his expensive tastes Galimer was the money-man for the trio. He might
bungle his reagent proportions or forget his spells in a crisis, but Galimer knew the exchange
rates in every city and who was buying what—or so it seemed to Druhallen, who understood hard
work but had no notion of profit.

Ansoain appreciated profit, but couldn't calculate risk for love nor money. She'd willingly
turned their business affairs over to her son when his true calling manifested itself some five
years ago. Their fortunes had improved steadily ever since.

Galimer had signed them up for this jaunt along the Vilhon Reach precisely because the
leather-dyeing suitor had been willing to pay double the going rate to hire the same muscle-
and-magic escort that had shepherded a bit of glittery tribute from Hlondeth's queen to her
counterpart in Cormyr last autumn. The prospect of such good money had inspired them all,
muscle and magic alike, to overlook some obvious questions when the contracts were sealed
before a priest of trade in a Waukeenar temple.

"It just seems odd," Galimer persisted. "Virgins don't melt in sunlight and if there were
anything half-so-valuable in those carts as all that warding suggests, then there aren't
enough of us to keep it away from anyone who truly wanted it."

"No argument," Dru said mildly and ignored Galimer's sour scowl.

He'd voiced the same objections himself when they'd arrived in Elversult to collect the
bride and her dowry. Galimer had dismissed Dru's worries out of hand.

The young men were friends, though, the best of friends and brothers combined—however
unlikely that had seemed when a rough-mannered carpenter's son had mastered spells as fast as he
learned to read them, faster by far than Galimer at his best. Staying on Longfingers's good side had
come naturally to a boy with five older brothers, and Galimer had yearned for a friend. A childhood
tagging along after Ansoain, who couldn't sleep three nights in the same bed, had left Galimer with a
better grasp of geography than friendship.

They might not exchange another word this afternoon, but they'd be talking again after
supper.
The carters wrestled the last of the spokes into place and retrieved the hobbled horses
from the grass where they'd grazed. When the horses were ready, the magic-and-muscle
escort assumed its customary positions and the caravan was on its way toward Hlondeth.

Dru and Galimer's customary positions were a short distance behind the bridal wagon.
Ansoain, who'd spent most of their unscheduled rest with the captain of the men-at-arms,
joined them there. By the brightness of her eyes, Dru suspected that she and the captain had
shared more than a discussion about the weather. He disapproved, as only a young man
could disapprove, of his foster mother's behavior, but both he and Galimer were years
beyond embarrassment and however predatory her habits, Ansoain never let them interfere
with work.

"Tree branch," she said as soon as her horse had settled in between his and Galimer's.

"Scry for diseases," Galimer answered quickly.

"What kind of tree?" Dru asked at the same time.

It was Ansoain's custom to quiz her apprentices whenever the spirit moved her. Galimer
always strove to be first with an answer while Dru usually wanted more information before
he'd commit himself.

"A fruit tree, in flower."

Dru nodded. "Stripped of the flowers and leaves, the branch could become a divining rod.
And the flowers could be put to use in the dryad variation for making pure water."

"Not fair!" Galimer complained. "If there were a real stick, I'd see that it was in flower. You
said stick, so that's all I imagined!"

"I said 'branch,' but you're right, Longfingers, you would have seen the flowers. You're both
right." Ansoain tried to be fair; it wasn't easy. "Dragonfly's wing," she challenged, inspired, no
doubt, by the insect flying between them and the cart.

"What kind of dragonfly?" Galimer demanded.

"Blue-green." The now-disappeared insect had been blue-green.

Dru didn't know any spells that required the wing of a blue-green dragonfly. He didn't know
any that called for any specific part of any color dragonfly. He knew of a few spells that
required the jewel-like carapaces of rare jungle beetles and another that needed scales from
a true dragon's wing. None of those were in his head nor etched into the wood of the
magically folded box hanging from his belt. An apprentice with access to his master's library
usually knew more spells than he could actually cast.

Even Galimer knew more spells than he could cast, and frequently got them confused. Dru
looked beyond Ansoain. Years of observation had taught him to anticipate Galimer's answer
from the shape of his lips. If Gal's answer looked to be correct, then Druhallen would hold his
own tongue, but if, as so often happened, it looked like Galimer was about to make himself
appear foolish, Dru would speak up quickly and loudly—

"A blue-green wing would satisfy a spell that required only an insect's wing and, maybe, an
affinity could be drawn to spells requiring feathers—function, form and color would give a
threefold congruence—but it would be a far stretch to make a dragonfly's wing stand for any part of a
true dragon."

Galimer's face showed indignation, then relief. Ansoain never let on that she suspected
her foster's game—though she was usually careful to position herself so that Dru could see
Galimer's face when she quizzed them.

"Good enough. Now, what is the writ for a dust shield?"

"Dust. What else?"

Sometimes Galimer spoke too quickly for Dru to save him.

"The writ!" Ansoain snapped, "not the reagents. How much dust, and how do you seal the
spell in your mind? What trigger will call it out when you need to cast it?"

A dust shield was one of Galimer's more reliable spells. He rattled off the answers
correctly and without hesitation.

Ansoain peppered them with other reagents and writs as the afternoon sun grew warm on
their backs. When their stomachs began to churn in anticipation of supper, she lectured them
on tactical shortcomings of the adversaries that journeying mages might encounter in
Faerun's Heartlands.

"Fumarandi are drakes. Their weapon is charcoal smoke, and they make their homes
above the trees in mountain forests. They can be claimed as companions ..."
Ansoain claimed that she never forgot a lesson or a nightmare. It was the latter that kept
her on the road. As long as she was moving, the worst of her dreams couldn't find her. In
winter, when they went to ground in Scornubel, Ansoain rented rooms by the night and fought
her nightmares by the keg. Winters had been hard for Dru and Galimer until they were old
enough to rent rooms for themselves and worse, in a way, since Galimer had taken over their
finances. Every publican in Scornubel knew Galimer would cover his mother's debts.

But when they were on the road and spending their nights beneath different trees, no one
had a clearer mind than Ansoain. She shared her knowledge of the world and magic with her
sons.

"Wyvern gall," she called out after she'd told them everything there was to know about the
fumarandi.

Galimer's lips didn't twitch; he hadn't a clue. Druhallen inquired: "Fresh, powdered, or
ossified?"

"Ossi—"

She didn't finish the answer. Her gray eyes scanned the forward horizon, then closed
while she sought the wisdom of her mind's eye. Dru felt the disruption also: a slight, yet
profoundly ominous change in the ether, that strange, intangible stuff where magic held sway.