The Nether Scroll (5 page)

"All right!" Dru snarled. He wasn't in the mood for Tiep's logic. "Rozt'a didn't say you'd
done anything wrong! What we're all saying is that we're likely to be in Parnast longer than
we planned, so you've got to be extra careful. If you see something lying on the ground, just
leave it there and don't cross the locals or their daughters. Amarandaris has the first and last
word in justice here, and I'm not going to risk our lives or livelihoods to save yours."

"Sheesh! I've got the point. Gods, it was only a kiss, and it was her idea, to thank me for
chasing those goblins away."

Rozt'a had closed the door and the room was stifling with raw emotion. Tiep and Galimer
exchanged anxious glances. They were alike in important ways: they both valued peace
more than victory. Dru wasn't surprised that Galimer broke the tension.

"Other than goblins and girls, how was your afternoon?"

"Did you rasp down their hooves?" Rozt'a added before Tiep could answer.

He knew whose questions came first. "All but Ebony's—she wasn't having anything to do with
me around her feet an' it was too hot to argue with her. I'll get her in the morning when she's still
sleepy. I got everybody else: Cardinal, Bandy, Fowler, Star and Hopper. Hopper's cracked his left rear
hoof. I was going to say we'd have to find a smith and get him shod, but if we're not going anywhere
for a while, maybe we can wait an' see if it'll grow out on its own."

Larceny notwithstanding, Tiep was a conscientious youth. He took good care of their
animals—especially Hopper, the elder statesman among their horses—and was a better cook than the
rest of them combined. This past spring, before they left Scornubel and at Druhallen's suggestion,
they'd given him a one-tenth share of their profits.

It had been time to make him a partner, but it had taken away the one threat that always
worked with Tiep: the threat of leaving him behind.

With a grin Tiep offered Dru a small, rag-wrapped parcel. "I found this for you."

Warily, Dru accepted the parcel which unfurled in his hands. A lump of black, waxy stuff
released its scent into the crowded room.

"Myrrh," Dru muttered when enough of the mournful aroma had hit his nostrils. A small
fortune in myrrh. "Tiep, tell me you don't expect me to believe that you found this just lying
about."

"In the stalls," the lad replied quickly, too quickly for Dru's taste. "Those Zhentarim
hostlers, they don't clean the stalls near good enough."

"Tiep!" all three adults spoke as one.

"All right. All right. I won it. I won it fair and square from a hostler. An' he said he did find it
in the straw after some merchants left yesterday. I figured it was the bunch that ran out on us,
and that they owed us, so I made sure I won the bet—"

"You admit you cheated?" Dru challenged. Discipline fell to him. Galimer didn't have the
stomach for it, and Rozt'a left bruises when she tried.

"Never!" Tiep replied emphatically. "I don't cheat! The guy said he could throw double-
three five times running. I let him make his throw four times, then I dared him—my ring for his
myrrh—to throw his fifth double-three with my dice."

Of course Tiep had had a pair of dice with him.

Rozt'a reached for his shoulders again. "That ring's not yours to sell or game away."

Before they'd set out from Berdusk, Druhallen had enchanted the ring to help them find the
boy, if he'd ever truly gotten lost, and to pass him through the wards Dru routinely set around
their rooms and camps. In the process they'd discovered that Tiep had another talent beside
thievery: he shed simple magics and was particularly hard on enchantments. His talent
wouldn't save him from a fireball, but it had forced Dru to enchant an expensive gemstone
ring rather than a plain silver band and it had made it impossible for Tiep to follow in his foster
fathers' footsteps.

"There was no way I was losing my ring."

"Then you were cheating," Dru corrected.

"No way! My dice are absolutely pure, honest, all-around square." Tiep placed his hands
over his heart for dramatic emphasis. "The hostler was cheating. No way he was going to try
to make his throw with square dice. And it wasn't as if the myrrh really belonged to him. He
didn't even know what it was—he was going to smoke it. Can you imagine how sick he'd be right
now if he'd tried smoking myrrh? I saved that hostler from a really bad night."

The worst part of Tiep's tale was that it was probably true. "You should have taken the
hostler and the myrrh to the charterhouse."

"Ri-i-i-ight," Tiep sneered. "And gotten him in all kinds of trouble? And Amandis was going
to shout 'Quick, saddle my fastest horse and get this lump of very valuable myrrh back to the
idiot who dropped it!'?"

Tiep had a point; he usually did. Dru contented himself with a simpler warning: "That's
Amarandaris, not Amandis."

"Yeah, him, too."

"Don't take Parnast lightly, Tiep. We're out of the Heartlands. This is Zhentarim territory,
and there's nothing they like better than a cocky, young man."

"He's right, Tiep," Galimer added. "Lord Amarandaris might not punish you, if he catches
you. He might seduce you into working for him. It's easy to find yourself working for the
Network and impossible to stop. There's no 'just this once' with the Zhentarim."

Tiep grimaced. "I'm not stupid. I won that myrrh from a damn-fool hostler. How he got it is
no concern of mine."

Tiep could seem so sure of himself, so honest and sincere in his protests, but for an
instant, as he'd opened his mouth, Dru thought he'd seen a flash of naked terror in the youth's
eyes. Maybe they were finally getting through to him.

A man had to be doubly careful with his integrity when he shared the road with the Black
Network, paid their tolls and bribes, and knew that every coin in his purse had passed
through their hands at least once before it came to him. That was the first lesson that Ansoain
had taught him. Druhallen thought he'd kept the lesson close to his heart all these years, but
he kept the myrrh, too, and he believed his foster son.

30 Eleasias, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR)

Parnast

A storm kicked up that night. While Druhallen tried to sleep, wind howled from the east,
from Anauroch. It blew for three days, hot as an open fire pit and sharp with grit. Parnasters,
both native and Zhentarim, expertly covered their faces like the Bedine and told their
suffering visitors: "This is nothing," "Wait another ten days," and "You should have been here
last year—we didn't see the sun for twenty days!"

Dru didn't want to imagine a twenty-day dust-storm. Rozt'a, Galimer, and Tiep had
replaced the family he'd once had. He'd die for them, if circumstances demanded, but after
three endless days cooped up with a sulky youth and a married couple his thoughts had
begun to tilt toward murder.

Then the wind backed and died. When Druhallen awoke before their fourth Parnast dawn,
silence had replaced the incessant rasping of Anauroch grit on the walls and roof. The air
smelled fresh and felt cool. He imagined bathing in a cold stream, rinsing away the yellow
dust that stiffened his hair and tightened his skin. Moving quietly, so as not to disturb his
sleeping companions, Dru pulled on his boots and inscribed words he couldn't see on a wax
tablet which he left on his blanket.

Gone for a walk. Back before noon.

Bodies stirred in the bed Rozt'a and Galimer shared. Rozt'a was almost certainly awake.
She held herself a bodyguard first, a wife second. Given a chance, she'd have spread her
blankets in front of the door and slept there alone. Dru didn't give her the chance and blocked
the door with his own body each night.

"I need air," he reassured her softly. "Don't worry."

Odds were she'd be lying on his blankets, in his place, before he took ten steps from the
door.

Druhallen wasn't the only one out early, welcoming the changed weather. Laughter
surrounded the stables and the charterhouse kitchen. The gate in the narrow side of the
palisade was already open. Gatehouse guards hailed Dru as he approached.

He wished them a good day. On a morning like this, with the promise of fair weather
brightening the east, Dru could have wished the Red Wizards a good day had a circle of them
popped into sight—which, thank all the gods, they didn't.

Ignoring the Dawn Pass Trail, Dru chose to follow the north-wending footpath Parnasters
used to tend their fields. A forest—Weathercote Wood—rose beyond the fields. The true
Parnasters—the twenty-odd families that had farmed here before the Zhentarim arrived and would
continue to do so long after the last Network scheme had fizzled—spoke reverently of their forest. In
the charterhouse commons where Dru and other travelers took their meals, the Parnasters said that a
visiting wizard should walk as far as the brook bridge at least once before he left the village.

Weathercote Wood was a place marked on better maps. Knowledgeable cartographers
agreed it was an enchanted place, though no legends were associated with it, no dragons or
treasure, no cursed castles or fallen cities, just the label: "Herein lies magic." Weathercote's
greatest mystery was its lack of mystery.

That was fine with Druhallen. He was more interested in the brook than in mystery.

A mounted patrol caught up with him before the palisade was gone from sight. As they
passed, they warned him to beware of goblins whose hunger, after three days of eating dust,
might be stronger than their cowardice. Most of the riders were Zhentarim in black leather,
chain, and carrying crossbows, but a few were Parnasters carrying scythes and pitchforks.

The truth was, Lord Amarandaris had himself a serious goblin problem. Displaced from
their homes by some upheaval in the Greypeak Mountains, they were starving, desperate,
and just civilized enough to recognize that a village meant food. The native Parnasters were
a charitable folk, which had only made things worse. They'd fed and sheltered the first
arrivals. Then a second wave arrived, and a third—all expecting the same good treatment and
turning surly when the villagers hesitated.
Or so said Tiep's friend Manya, who'd visited their room twice during the storm and whose
fears were fast becoming hatreds. She worried what would happen after the Leafall when the
weather got wintery and Lord Amarandaris hied himself down to distant Darkhold.

If he were smart, Amarandaris was worried, too.

Druhallen wasn't worried about goblins. He'd pulled a serviceable staff from the firewood
pile on his way through the palisade. Goblins, even a pack of them, weren't likely to attack a
grown man carrying any sort of weapon, not with bowmen riding the fields. And if the scrawny
beggars were so foolish, Dru had the pinch of ash wedged beneath his thumbnail. A few
breaths of a gloomy enchantment would quench their fury.

He was well beyond the village but not yet in sight of the Wood when he met a Parnaster
coming toward him. The man was bent with age and leading a donkey that all but
disappeared beneath a load of kindling.

"Be you bound for the Wood?" the codger asked.

"For the brook."

"Good for the brook! But I'd not be crossing the bridge today, not being a wizard and not
seeing a path on t'other side. Maybe not then, neither, depending on the light. Being a wizard,
maybe I would, no matter the light. But not without a path. Being a wizard, the Wood's not
safe without a path."

Dru understood the words but not their meaning. "I'll mind the path and the light," he
assured the codger and kept going.

Beyond the fields the path became a track through wild-flower meadows. Dru thought
about the wood-gatherer. If the codger's words had any meaning, then men who weren't
wizards shouldn't enter the Wood and those who were should stick to the path. But the
codger hadn't gathered his kindling on the meadow side of the brook, which left Dru
wondering about the Parnasters themselves.

As far as he knew, the Dawn Pass Trail was as old as men and had always skirted the
Greypeaks. It had connected the ancient Netheril Empire, now lost beneath the Anauroch
sands, with the Sea of Swords to the west and the Moonsea to the south. Whenever Parnast
had been founded, it would have seemed reasonable for the village to have grown up where
the trail divided rather than a half-day's journey to the west. It would have been typical of the
Zhentarim to re-found the village at that more useful place once they'd come to dominate the
area. Gods knew, the Zhentarim weren't averse to uprooting villages for their own
convenience.

Sememmon might possess the least brutal reputation among the Zhentarim princes, but
that was damning the master of Darkhold with faint praise. Amarandaris would burn the
village and march the survivors to oblivion, if Sememmon twitched in that direction. It was
that threat of annihilation that gave most Zhentarim villages their bitter, weary atmosphere—
an atmosphere notably absent in Parnast. It was as if the Parnasters tolerated the Zhentarim, rather than
the other way around.

What would have enabled a few farmers to bind the Black Network to good behavior?

The path cleared a hilltop. Weathercote Wood burst into sight, a lush wall of greenery on
the far side of a brook which this late in summer scarcely needed a bridge. On the Parnast
side the bridge came down in a gravel-filled ditch. On the Weathercote side, there was
untrampled grass and nary a hint of a path.

The light, apparently, was wrong.

Bathing was impossible in the shrunken brook, but Druhallen could, and did, kneel in the
delightfully frigid water. With no one watching, he splashed himself until he was soaked to the
skin. During the past three days he'd sworn that he'd never complain about cold again, but it
wasn't long—not more than a quarter-hour—before he was shivering and headed back to the patch of
sunlight where he'd left his boots, belt, and folding box.

Dru watched the forest while the sun dried the clothes on his back. Once, hundreds of
black birds took flight at one swoop. They cast a shadow across the sun, but there was
nothing magical about crows raiding the grain fields. After the crows, the Wood erupted with a
locust racket and, for a moment, Druhallen suspected magic. He rose... took a step toward
the bridge ...

The bugs fell silent.

The light wasn't right.
He gave the Wood until mid-morning to reveal its magic. Locusts racketed a few more
times and once, when his attention had wandered a bit, a fox poked its head through the
thicket. But before Dru could get a better look, it had vanished.

Dru headed back to the village; Weathercote could keep its secrets. Nearing the palisade,
he heard shouting and the unmistakable honk of camels: a caravan had followed the storm
off the Anauroch. Druhallen quickened his pace, but stopped short once he was through the
gate.

Until that moment, Dru would have guessed that a desert caravan held a dozen camels,
perhaps as many as twenty. Instead, there were easily twice that—the exact number was
impossible to count—each with a pair of desert-dressed handlers and a merchant retinue, and all of
them were shouting. Parnast's single street and the courtyard between the charterhouse and its stable
had been transformed into chaos incarnate.

A few men, quieter than the rest and dressed in cleaner clothes, made themselves
obvious. They were the Zhentarim inspectors, checking every pack and purse, making sure
that their master and, especially, they themselves got a cut of the loot.

Loot there was. The riches of Anauroch and the east were on display beneath the Parnast
sun: carpets and tapestries, carved sandalwood chests, and brass hammered into shapes
both functional and fantastic. Amarandaris would lay claim to the best, but he couldn't keep it
all and, like as not, neither he nor his men would find the rarest, the most precious objects the
desert had yielded up.

That meant there'd be merchants looking to get out of Parnast as quickly as possible with
hired magic that didn't dance to the Zhentarim tune.

Druhallen looked about for Galimer's golden hair and found Rozt'a instead. Their
bodyguard was perched on the courtyard fence, absorbed in animated conversation with
another leather-clad, sword-wearing woman. She waved as Dru walked by, but didn't invite
him over and he didn't intrude.

There were few enough women living Rozt'a's life. When Rozt'a met one, she tended to
embrace the woman as a long-lost sister, even if they'd never met before. It was just another
of the many things Dru didn't understand about the woman who'd wanted to marry him.

He spotted Tiep. The youth's wild, dark curls were unmistakable amid a clutch of desert-
wrapped heads hunkered within a ring of rope-bound chests and knotted sacks. Dru knew
what they were doing before Tiep's fist shot up. As best Druhallen could figure, Tiep had
learned to throw a pair of dice before he'd learned to walk. The youth knew the rules and
strategy of every game played for money. Dru was certain Tiep cheated—luck simply couldn't
account for his winnings—but he'd never been able to catch him, and neither had anyone else.

Another slow turn on his heels and Dru still hadn't found Galimer. If his partner wasn't part
of the courtyard throng, then he'd already decided which merchant had the most to offer and
was inside the charterhouse negotiating over tea and wine. Dru had no intention of
interrupting that discussion, either, but he wanted an advance look at whatever had caught
Gal's eye. He was halfway to the porch when an unfamiliar voice hailed him from behind.

"Druhallen! Druhallen of Sunderath!"

There was very little about the lord of Parnast that set him apart from other men. Of
average height, weight, and coloring, his appearance was easy to describe, easier to forget.
It wasn't until he'd closed the distance between them that his dark, predatory eyes became
noticeable.

Dru held out his hand, demanding a peer's greeting, which brought a one-beat hesitation
to Amarandaris's forward progress, but the Zhentarim lord recovered quickly. He clasped
Dru's right hand in his own and swung his left arm out for a hearty shoulder clap which guided
Dru toward the eastern end of the porch.

"Druhallen—you're just the man I've been looking for!"

A sharp sting, like that of an insect, only very cold, penetrated Dru's shirt. Another man—a
man with no magical talent or training—might have shrugged and kept going. Druhallen knew he'd
been touched by superficial spellcraft, probably from one of the many rings Amarandaris wore. Dru
himself wore such a magic-probing ring on the middle finger of his right hand. Twisting that hand, he
brought the bit of metal to bear above the veins of Amarandaris's wrist.

He learned nothing from the exercise that he didn't already know. Amarandaris was a
wizard of middling skill. Most Zhentarim of any stature were at least that good with the craft.
As was Druhallen himself, which Amarandaris should have known, since he'd known
about Sunderath.

"We need to talk, Dru," Amarandaris said loudly enough to be overheard, if there'd been
anyone else on the porch.

"Let's go inside," Dru replied, leaning toward the double doors to the common room.

Amarandaris clamped his fingers over Dru's wrist. "Upstairs."

Druhallen had the physical strength and, perhaps, the magical strength to escape. He
grinned broadly, like a dog baring its teeth, to let Amarandaris know that he'd be polite, but
not coerced. The Zhentarim lord returned the grin and released the captive wrist, though he
kept a hand on Dru's shoulder.

"I was told to expect a stubborn man," Amarandaris said, pushing Dru ahead of him.

That wasn't anything Dru wanted to hear from a Zhentarim wizard—and he didn't think of
himself as particularly stubborn. Cautious. A man who was honest and wise needed to be cautious
when dealing with men like Amarandaris. If Dru had been a stubborn man, he would have insisted that
Amarandaris precede him up the stairs.