The Nether Scroll (12 page)

There was no dilemma, no need for a split-second decision. Dru would not harm Galimer.
He opened his hand and the unkindled fire dissipated in the air. His body reeled from the
shock. Swallowing a spell was more difficult than casting it. Color and contrast faded from his
vision, but not enough to free him from the sight of sinuous magic leaping from that dark
claw. A cross between spider silk and lightning, Wyndyfarh's magic spun itself around
Galimer, swiftly concealing him in a clouded whorl. Foolishly, Dru made a grab for his friend
as Galimer's light-shrouded body rose from the moss.

The next thing Druhallen knew, he was on the other side of the pool and his spine ached.
He was flat against a rock. Both Galimer and Lady Mantis vanished behind the waterfall.
Sheemzher followed them, his arms waving frantically and his hat flying off his warty head. If
he'd had the strength—or the spell—Dru would have fried the misbegotten creature as he ran. But
Dru's mind was empty of magic—completely empty—and the goblin also escaped behind the
waterfall.

With the skirmish over and lost, Druhallen checked himself for unsuspected injuries before
standing. Upright, he had a full view of the glade, including Tiep, who hadn't moved from the
spot where he'd fallen but was clearly alive. The young man crouched on the moss with his
head between his knees, his back to the bright-blue sky. Rozt'a stood beside her foster son.
She'd sheathed her sword, but that seemed the limit of her sympathy.

Dru left them alone. He approached the waterfall from his side of the pool. At first glance,
there seemed to be a cave behind the cascade. Perhaps there was, the stone he found was
black, glassy, and clearly unnatural. He pounded it with his fists and put his shoulder into an
accommodating hollow.

"Try magic," Rozt'a suggested from the opposite side.

Her voice was ominously flat. Dru looked to see if she was angry or in shock. He couldn't
tell; her face was hidden in shadow.

"I'm done for the day," he admitted and waited for her response, which came in a slow,
ragged sigh.

"What happened? One minute he was standing there, the next she'd snared him. I begged
her to let him go, and she looked at me as if I were dirt."

Dru searched his memory for the sound of Rozt'a's voice and found nothing. Perhaps
she'd pled for her husband after he'd been hurled across the pool, though he didn't think he'd
lost consciousness in the air or after landing. Perhaps they'd seen and remembered different
things. That implied some potent notions about Lady Wyndyfarh's magical mastery. Dru gave
up on the cave-that-wasn't and joined Rozt'a on the temple side of the pool.

"Gal challenged her," he explained. "Something about taking the goblin's word over
Tiep's—"

"Damn! A setup!"

She tried to force her way past him to the glassy stone. In a fight with weapons, Rozt'a had
Dru beat cold, but he held his ground easily against her half-hearted shove.

"We better talk to Tiep first, before either one of us goes leaping off a cliff. He had
something that wasn't his. When the dog-face made the stuff glow, there was something
shining in his shirt. A piece of amber, I guess."

"Damn," Rozt'a repeated herself, this time with a scowl in the youth's direction.

"There might be more. Have you noticed the bugs?"

She gave a puzzled shake of her head and stiffened when Dru reached for her face.

"Steady," he advised and carefully—very carefully— mussed her hair.
The ruby bees took flight reluctantly. They wouldn't have flown where Rozt'a could see
them if Dru hadn't been insistent with his fanning.

"We've each got a pair of guardians. Spies, I think, for our host. You've got the pretty ones.
Tiep had jet-stone beetles. She said something about murder and defiling just before the fat
hit the fire. I thought she meant Gal and I and gleaning the reaver—or maybe I thought I could
distract her. The boy must have killed one of his bugs, and not by accident."

Rozt'a's scowl deepened. "I didn't hear her say anything like that."

"And I didn't hear you pleading for Galimer. This isn't an ordinary place, and Lady Mantis
isn't an ordinary wizard—"

"You're blaming me for this?" She turned that glower on Druhallen.

He supposed there had been a nasty edge on his voice and that, in the unspoken regions
of his heart, he did blame her. One thing did follow another and without Rozt'a's dream—her
change of heart—they'd never have followed the goblin out of Parnast. Still, Dru remembered life with
five older brothers and knew that blame grew best in guilty soil.

The bees returned to Rozt'a's spiky blond hair. She didn't seem to notice them.

"What's cut stays cut," Dru said to himself and his onetime lover. "Blaming each other isn't
going to get Galimer back."

Rozt'a purged her hostility with a sigh that left her chin resting on her breastbone. "We'd
better talk to Tiep ... find out what he really did ... what he thinks happened."

Dru nodded and followed Rozt'a.

Tiep lay flat against the moss as they approached. He raised his head, revealing the face
of remorse which was quite possibly sincere, albeit too late.

"You had to steal some amber," Dru said, a statement of fact, not a question. Tiep seemed
to shrink, but that was wishful thinking of the purest, unmagical sort. "What else, Tiep? What
else did you do? Think hard—did you step on a bug, a black beetle-y bug?"

If he'd been trying to unnerve their foster-son, Dru couldn't have chosen a better question.
He'd seen corpses with better color than what remained in the boy's cheeks.

"Did you?" Rozt'a demanded. Her voice was cold enough to worry Druhallen.

"He set me up. I told him I was going to take the amber out of the tree where I'd hidden
during the reaver fight, and he said 'go ahead'... sort of... the way he says things so you think
you know what he means, but later, maybe, you don't. Maybe you misunderstood."

Dru shook his head, a gesture wasted on Tiep, who was staring at the ground. "It's not the
amber, Tiep. She called you a murderer. We've got watchers ... bugs. Yours are shiny black
beetles. Do you remember seeing one? Stepping on it?"

The youth's mouth worked silently while he worked up the courage to say, "I smashed
one. With my knife. It was sitting on the amber. It wouldn't shoo away, so I smashed it."

Rozt'a moaned and turned away.

"It was a bug!" Tiep protested. "An ugly, nasty bug and it wouldn't fly away. All it had to do
was fly away ... or walk. I wanted the amber, that's all. I wouldn't've smashed her damn spy, if
it had gotten out of the way. I swear—I wouldn't have touched the amber, either, if the goblin
hadn't twisted his words around to trick me. They set a trap for me."

"And you walked straight into it."

Tiep accepted Druhallen's conclusion; at least he said nothing to contradict it. There was
silence among them until Rozt'a asked, "Why Galimer? Why did she take my husband
instead of Tiep? He hasn't stolen anything. He hasn't smashed a bug. Their trap was for
Tiep."

Tiep was weak. So was Galimer, in some ways. Dru raked his hair. Sometimes that helped
to stir his thoughts. Not this time. "Lady Mantis is different, not human, not elf either."

"Not even close," Tiep agreed. "Too shifty. Way too shifty. Blink and she's a woman with
arms and hair. Blink again and she's a hawk the size of a woman with wings instead of hair
and the gods know what for arms—except that they end with talons like enough to rip your heart
out. I was thinking, maybe she's a dragon or a god."

Dru considered the possibilities. Gods had walked Faerun in recent years and wrought the
havoc only their kind could inflict on mortal folk. A year ago, priests of every stripe emerged
from their temples to assure those who'd survived that the gods had returned to their proper
places and were forbidden to return. Gods in general weren't known for their obedience, but a
man had to believe something and Druhallen had believed that he'd get safely to his grave
without meeting one on the road, or in the Weathercote glade.

To the best of his knowledge, he'd never met a dragon, but Ansoain had drilled him and
Galimer on their salient traits. He replied to Tiep with a shake of his head, "Her magic's
different. I can't describe it easily and, Mystra knows, I'm no archmage, but my gut says this
lady's on another path altogether. She's tampered with our memories—just reached out and
rearranged what we remember. We don't know what actually happened—"

Dru reconsidered. Lady Wyndyfarh had left the impression of a hawk in his memory, but
he hadn't suspected actual shapeshifting. "Each of us is having a different experience of this
place. We don't know what Galimer experienced—I don't know if what I remember him saying is
what he truly said. He might not know or remember himself—"

Dru paused uncomfortably. Rozt'a had fixed him in a bleak and withering stare.

"He's alive, Roz."

She radiated disbelief without so much as opening her mouth or raising an eyebrow.

"We've spent too much time together—too much time making magic, or trying to. I'd feel the
loss. There's a distance, as if he's on the other side of imagination, but he's there. I'd know. I knew with
Ansoain; we both did."

Rozt'a wanted to be relieved. She tried another sigh, but her breath caught in her throat
and she hurried away coughing.

"What're we going to do?" Tiep asked when she was out of earshot.

"We're not doing anything. I'm waiting until the sun's under my feet and I've got the
wherewithal to study up some spells again; Rozt'a's worried sick about Galimer, and you're
going to do what I say and stay out of trouble."

The boy shrank again. "It's not right. None of this is right. It shouldn't have happened."

"But it has and what's cut, stays cut."

Tiep twisted the hem of his shirt around his fingers. It was a habit he'd had from the
beginning at the Chauntean temple. This time the exercise loosened the stolen amber. The
lump bounced to the ground between them and lay there like sin.

"I'm sorry," Tiep said with his arm reaching halfway to the amber. "I didn't—"

Dru cut him off. "Not another word beyond 'sorry.' It's not enough—" The wizard shook his
head, at a loss for words himself. "Anything more is too much."

He walked away. Tiep took a few strides after him but, wisely, realized that was a bad
idea. Rozt'a had found herself a resting place with a view of the glassy stone behind the
waterfall. Dru found a different one at the hilltop where they'd first seen the grove and its
marble temple. Tiep took longest to find a spot to sit and wait, but when he did it was on the
opposite side of the pool from Dru and on the border between the moss and the trees.
Without benefit of conversation, they'd formed themselves into the largest triangle the nearly
circular clearing could contain.

Water was no problem—except that they had to drink from Lady Wyndyfarh's pool. For food
they had the supplies prudent hikers would carry into the forest: stale bread, smoked meat, slabs of
wax-dipped cheese, and such fruits as the local orchards and vines provided in late summer. The
quantities would keep their stomachs quiet for a day; not much longer. Druhallen had flint and steel in
his folding box, not to mention the script for a spell that would coax flames from swamp wood. He had
the makings of snares, as well, though nothing this side of death would induce him to set a trap in
Weathercote Wood.

Their waiting time was limited. It took all Dru's strength not to begin the downward spiral of
wondering what he'd do, how he'd feel, when it came to an end.

Twice, as a long afternoon slumped toward twilight, the air quickened and Dru dared a
hope that the next act of their isolated drama had begun. Twice the aura faded without any of
the other actors appearing on the stage. The clear air cooled quickly once the sun had
slipped behind the trees. They'd carried cloaks—extra cloth was as prudent as water, food, or
steel. Dru wrapped his tight and hunkered down with his folding box opened on his knees.

A wizard could study magic whenever he chose, but Mystra's dictates for casting spells
were rigid and inviolable. A wizard's mind could accommodate only so much magic. The
exact amount varied from one wizard to the next and, generally, grew larger with time and
practice, but every wizard knew his or her limit intimately. Dru had cast himself to an
exhaustion that wasn't measured in his muscles and he had hours to wait before he could
hope to replenish his mental trove of spells.
For Dru and Galimer, the moments when they could open their spellbooks and make
magic with the words they read there began precisely at midnight—the moment when
tomorrow's dawn was as distant in time as yesterday's sunset. Druhallen knew other wizards who
experienced Mystra's dictates differently, but he and Galimer had had only one teacher in their
formative years and they experienced the dictates exactly the way Ansoain had experienced them.

Wizards were a superstitious, conservative lot; they clung to reliable routines and shunned
change for its own sake. Dru envied wizards who could effectively rest and restore their spell-
casting vigor at any time of the day or night, but he'd never been tempted to emulate their
habits. Except at midnight, Dru read his spells with his intellect alone and hoped for subtle
insights that would enhance his spell-casting acumen.

In Wyndyfarh's glade, even Dru's intellect was weary. He couldn't concentrate on the
faintly luminous words carved into the wood of his combination spellbook and reagent box.
Her magic hung on every leaf and flower, dusting it with pale green-light. Amber markers, like
the one Tiep had stolen, circled the pool and highlighted the marble arches of her small
sanctuary. All in all, Wyndyfarh's glade was a beautiful place, but beauty was the last thing
Druhallen wanted to contemplate.

He closed his eyes and set himself adrift in his memories. Barring his childhood, Dru had
very few memories that didn't include his friend. He'd taken it for granted that they'd die or
grow old together. It had never occurred to him that he might have to mourn for Ansoain's
son.