The Nether Scroll (2 page)

"What the—?" Galimer demanded.

Ansoain commanded silence with a snarl, the raised her hand in a curious gesture. Bits of
ash—spent reagents—blew away from her palm. The spell carried her words directly to the ears of the
captain and his men. Druhallen and Galimer didn't hear a sound.

The captain had a similar ability to communicate with his men, equally magical, but
derived from the matched rings he and the men wore. The caravan came to a halt. Its
muscle-and-magic escort pulled in tight around it. The muscle fastened their chain mail coifs
over their faces and tested their swords without drawing them. The magic considered their
spells.

"Fire?" Dru suggested softly.

Ansoain shrugged. "It's got no shape or signature. It could be anything, or nothing. Fire
needs something to burn."

Galimer opened a foot-long war-fan from distant Kozakura. There, it had been a weapon.
Here, it was a spellbook with writs etched in silver along the vanes.

"No time for that, son," Ansoain said grimly. "If your nerves are chancy, hide in the wagon."

"I'm sure of some fire," Longfingers protested, "and a shrieking arrow."

"And you?" she asked Druhallen.

"The usual. I can blur us a little now, if you think that would help."

"No, whatever's out there, it's already taken our measure. Probably slavers. Save your
blurring for later. Your gloom, too. The girl's got to be what they're after. The girl and her
dowry. Get her out, if push comes to shove. Make a pall of misery and get out beneath it."

Druhallen bit his tongue. They'd tangled with slavers before—a base and brutal lot, and not
above using the nastier sorts of spellcraft to protect, or acquire, their merchandise. But slavers were
rarely subtle and the disturbance Dru tasted with his inner senses was as subtle as it was potent.
He patted his left sleeve, assuring himself that the wax-sealed embers he used to trigger his
fire spells were in their proper places. He checked his belt, too—not for the folded box; as
Ansoain had told Galimer, it was too late for rehashing spells—but for his dagger. The single-edge
knife was mostly a tool for cutting meat and gathering herbs, but he'd made sure it was long enough to
pierce a man's heart through his ribs.

The ethereal disruption materialized. Galimer spotted it first.

"Over there," he whispered and cocked a finger at a hilltop north-by-northeast of the
caravan.

The hilltop air shimmered with a untimely sunset glow. A moment later at least a dozen
figures, each wearing a long, red cloak, circled in the grass. A moment after that there was
fire in the sky and a thick, black fog rolling toward the wagons. It could have been worse.
They could have stopped at the base of the hill, but they were still in trouble.

Druhallen didn't need to know the name of the spell that wrought the fog to know it was
nothing he wanted to breathe. For that matter, he didn't want to be astride when the miasma
hit. He leapt to the ground and cast an air-clearing spell just in time to keep his head clear.
Dru could have extended the spell to protect his entire body—but it would have faded more
quickly and he wouldn't have been able to hurl a fireball at the hilltop.

The spell affected Druhallen's hearing. Sound was fainter than it should have been, and
distorted, as if he'd gone diving and surfaced with water in his ears. He heard enough steel
and deep-pitched screaming to know that the men-at-arms were fighting for their lives. On
hands and knees, Druhallen crept through the fog, away from his mentor—not from cowardice,
but to widen the angle of their attack and defense. Never let an enemy kill twice with the same stroke,
that was Ansoain's motto.

The red-cloaked wizards abandoned subtlety. A head-blind child could have placed them
in the fog—and Dru's fireballs were about as effective as a head-blind child's wish when it came to
piercing their defenses. He felt his final spell rebound harmlessly. Some months short of his twentieth
birthday, Druhallen of Sunderath confronted the end of a life he'd hoped would be much longer.
Drawing his knife, Dru waded through the black fog to join what was left of the muscle near the
wagons.

He hadn't taken ten strides when a faintly luminous, undead skirmisher lunged at him. The
zombie's face was fully skeletal, and flesh hung in tatters from its long bones. Beyond fear
and pain, it fought clumsily with a stone-headed mace until Dru knocked it off its legs. Taking
no chances, he kicked its skull aside and stomped its brittle ribs.

Knowing there were undead in the fog, he changed course and headed for the hilltop. If
the red-cloaked wizards were so confident of their strength that they relied on zombies for
physical protection, then there was a chance—a slim but real chance—that he could stab one or
two of them before he died.

But the red-cloaked wizards weren't as reckless as he'd hoped. Halfway up the hill, Dru
met another luminous creature. As dead, or undead, as the zombie, its eyes shone with
sentience. It knew what to do with the steel halberd it carried.

Druhallen dodged the undead warrior's first thrust and successfully beat the second aside
without losing his right arm, but his knife was woefully inadequate against the halberd.
Guessing that he was stronger than the creature, he slammed the blade into its sheath and
clamped his hands on the halberd's shaft. The undead warrior howled. Spider-silk strands of
red magic spun out of the wood. They numbed Dru's nerves and paralyzed his muscles. He
couldn't release the shaft.

Dru was screaming when the undead jerked the halberd and flung him through the inky
fog like a stone from a sling. He never felt the landing.

The world was dark when Druhallen next opened his eyes—new-moon dark with a thousand
stars overhead. With his first waking breath, he was grateful to be alive. With his second, he recalled
what had happened and what he had lost. A part of him would have preferred never to have awakened,
but that was the lesser part of his spirit.

He had to move, had to stand, had to find his way back to Elversult, but first he had to
conquer his pain. The stranded magic of the undead's halberd had left him aching from the
roots of his toenails to the root of each hair on his head. The cumulative ache was such that
Dru didn't realize he had a more serious injury until he tried propping himself up on his left
arm.

His left wrist was broken and his efforts dislodged the bones, grinding the shards against
one another. Dru cursed the world and returned to oblivion.

Amber-rose glowed on the eastern horizon when Dru regained consciousness. Dawn
wasn't more than an hour away. The all-body aches had subsided, and though his wrist had
swollen to a ridiculous size, he managed to stand.

The battleground was quiet, except for the crackle of fire in the wagons. The flames were
starving. Whatever their purpose, the red-cloaked enemy had abandoned this place hours
ago.

There were no obvious survivors. None of the dark mounds strewn near the wagons
moved or groaned. Druhallen realized he owed his life to the undead who'd hurled him off the
battlefield. It was not a comforting thought. He began to search for Ansoain and Galimer, the
tragic bride and her maids, the captain and his men.

Druhallen's mind relived the ambush: A dozen magicians, each wearing a red cloak, had
stood in a circle. His mind wandered far to the south and east, to the land called Thay. He'd
never met a Red Wizard, at least not one who admitted his affiliation, but Ansoain had
lectured him about their habits. More important, the Zhentarim had heard of them and
regarded them as rivals.

Ansoain had been adamant that she'd never worked for the Black Network of the
Zhentarim, but she had contacts inside their organization. A few of those contacts might be
termed "friends," and one or two of those might choose to avenge her.

Dru's vision blurred. He raised his good arm and wiped away tears had hadn't known he
was shedding. He looked down at another body. It had been the captain, and it had been
savaged. A pack of wolves could not have done more damage. Even his mail had been
shredded.

The world began to spin. Druhallen dropped to his knees before they buckled. He retched
violently. His tears were as hot as the acid churning in his gut and for several moments Dru
was helpless in his grief. Then sanity returned. He stood and called the names he knew best.

"Ansoain! Galimer! I live. Druhallen lives for you! Can you hear me?"

In the lengthening silence, he seized a piece of smoking wood and hurled it at the empty
hilltop.

"Galimer. Galimer Longfingers!"

Dru heard a sound, spun around, and laid his good hand on the hilt of his knife.

Nothing. Not another peep or a twitch. Dru sighed. The east was brighter now. Soon, the
ruins would stand revealed in all their horror and there'd be no need to bend low over each
corpse with a mixture of hope and dread.

Though not a religious youth, and utterly unaware of the affiliations of the men and women
whose lives he'd briefly shared, Druhallen paused beside each body. He recited, as best he
could remember them, the prayers of peace and safe-passage his grandmother had taught
him. He was chanting safe-passage for one of the carters when he heard a second sound.
This time, as he spun around, Dru glimpsed movement near a smoldering wagon.

Leaving his prayer unfinished, he ran to the spot.

"Dru—? Druhallen, is that you?"

The voice, though weak, was unmistakable. Galimer Longfingers had survived!

Stretched face down in the dirt, Galimer's legs were pinned beneath charred planks from
one of the stone-filled wagons. Fearing the worst, Dru put his shoulder against the wreckage
and bulled it aside. Galimer's fine clothes were ruined, but—miraculously—he appeared
unbloodied, unburnt. Dru cautiously rolled him onto his back.

"Tell me where it hurts, Gal—"

"All over. I tried—My mind went blank of everything except dust," he said sobbing, "and I
couldn't get it cast. I panicked. I hid, Dru. I hid. When they lifted their fog and called off their minions,
I just stayed here where I'd hidden myself. Even when they ransacked the wagons and set them ablaze,
I couldn't make myself move. I should have died."

Druhallen closed his good hand over Galimer's. "It didn't matter. They had us beat from
the first scent. At least you know what they did and said. I tangled with something undead
and wound up out cold, two hundred paces away from everyone."

"At least you fought! You cast what you could and then you fought." Galimer pulled his
hand away from Dru and covered his face. "I should have died."

"What's cut, stays cut," the carpenter's son advised. "If you hadn't hidden, you might well
have died, and I'd be facing the road to Elversult with only a broken wrist for company."

Galimer expressed concern for his friend's injury, but Druhallen wasn't interested in
sympathy.

"Can you stand? Walk? We need to find your mother. You said you saw them—"

"Heard them," Galimer corrected as he grabbed Dru's shoulder and sat himself up. "I didn't
see anything."

"Kept your eyes closed, eh?" Dru laughed and stood.

"I got hit by something bright when it all started. Everything's been blurred since." He
flailed for Dru's arm with an awkwardness that lent credence to his claim. "I heard them, and
that's about it. I didn't recognize their language. They came a damn long way to steal that girl
and her dowry."

Druhallen pitied the misbegotten girl, but cut was cut and his pity was worthless. He hoped
she was dead. The dead didn't remember ... usually.

Leaning on each other, the friends surveyed the killing ground. It was just as well that
Galimer's eyes weren't working too well. He was spared what Dru saw all too clearly once the
sun was up. Whatever had killed Ansoain had torn her apart like so much stale bread. He
recognized her by pieces: bits of cloth and scalp, a bloody chunk of her hand with fingers and
rings still attached.

Fighting nausea, Druhallen retrieved her rings. They were magically potent, not to mention
intrinsically valuable. It was difficult, for many reasons, to understand why they'd been left
behind.

"She'd want you to have them," he told Galimer as he pressed the metal bits into his
friend's hand. "Now, let's get out of here. I can see a few of the horses. You be the hands, I'll
be the eyes ..."

Galimer balked. "Guide me to the hilltop. Maybe those bastards left something traceable
behind."

"Cut is cut," Druhallen muttered, but he led Galimer through the grass.

The scents of spellcraft and malice lingered on the hilltop, and something else: a palm-
sized glass disk. The disk was dark, but neither black nor completely opaque. So smooth and
slick that it slipped through Druhallen's fingers when he tried to retrieve it. The disk was
colder than the claw of winter when he finally had it in his grasp.

Ignoring numbed fingers, Dru held it up to the risen sun. Gold flecks sparkled within the icy
glass.

"There's something written on the edge," Galimer interrupted.

"I thought your eyes were bad."

"My body's eyes. My mind's eye sees clearly enough. That thing reeks of sorcery and
there's writing on the edge."

Dru rearranged his fingers and saw the truth of Galimer's statement. "I don't recognize the
script."

"Doesn't it tell you something through your fingertips?" Galimer asked.

"Only that it's colder than winter."

Dru balanced the lens in his left hand. It was an agonizing error. He gasped and the disk
thumped to the grass. While Druhallen swore at himself and his pain, Galimer swept the
grass with his hands.

"Sweet Mystra!" the gold-haired mage swore as he clutched, then dropped, the glass.
"Cold's not the half of it!"

"Aye, but what is that other half?"

Galimer pinched his fingertips to the scripted edge and lifted the disk carefully. "How about
a way to control their undead minions?"