The Nether Scroll (6 page)

Amarandaris's retreat covered the third floor of the charterhouse, a level that could not be
seen from the ground.

From its porch, Amarandaris could see the Greypeaks, Weathercote Wood, and the
distant yellow haze of the desert. Two human men sat with their backs to a wall and their
faces toward the stairway. They were on their feet with their weapons drawn when Dru first
noticed them.

At a word from Amarandaris, they sat again on benches flanking a single door. Dru
stepped aside—he would get stubborn before he'd open the door to another mage's private quarters.
Amarandaris flashed another grin, released the latch, and pulled the door open.

"Be welcome."

The Zhentarim lord lived comfortably above the charterhouse: upholstered furniture, plush
carpets, an abundance of colored glass, gold, and silver. Maps hung on every wall, more
detailed than most Dru had seen and speckled with knowledge the Zhentarim rarely, if ever,
shared. He squinted for a glimpse of Weathercote. The Wood was speckled with yellow and
black dots whose meaning wasn't obvious.

Sheets of parchment covered Amarandaris's ebony desk. Three abacuses, each one with
a different arrangement of wire and beads, sat on the parchment. A checkered counting cloth
was folded in one corner and a set of inkwells sat in another. The inkwells were gilded and
sat in a crystal base, but they were functional and well used. Amarandaris worked as hard as
any honest man.

On a side table a sparkling sphere kept the air moving and kept it fresh as well—no desert
grit rasping Amarandaris's throat or disrupting his sleep. Beside the sphere was an enameled tray with
a matching ewer and two exquisite blown-glass goblets.

Amarandaris filled a goblet with wine from the ewer. He offered it to Druhallen.

"Sit," the Zhentarim suggested, indicating the largest of his upholstered chairs. "Make
yourself comfortable."

Dru accepted the goblet without drinking from it and refused the invitation to sit.
Amarandaris filled the second goblet and tapped its lip against Druhallen's before repeating
his request:

"Sit down, man."

"What do you want?" Dru grumbled as he sat in a different chair. He sipped the wine. It
was sweet, fruity, and definitely not local. Poisoned? Not likely; Amarandaris wouldn't be
going through his gracious-host rituals if he'd had poison on his mind.

"Word is that you want to go to Dekanter."

That was hardly a secret. The merchants they'd failed to meet could have told
Amarandaris that much.

"Until this year the Dawn Pass Trail did wend that way."

"Last year," Amarandaris corrected. He settled in another chair, a twin to Druhallen's
except that it stood behind the desk. "Why Dekanter? It's far from the roads you've been
working—the roads you worked with Bitter Ansoain."

Druhallen shrugged. He'd never heard that epithet before, but remembered how Ansoain
would rant after she'd had too much to drink. It fit, and failed to intimidate him. "Why
Dekanter?" he repeated, mimicking Amarandaris's tone. "Why not? It's old. It's our history,
not dwarves or elves."

"Yes." The word flowed slowly out of Amarandaris's mouth, like the hissing of a large
snake. "Very human. One never knows what will turn up at Dekanter. I hear you're looking for
something very specific."

Despite himself, Dru stiffened. "An answer: How did she die?"

"Oh, come now, Druhallen. We all know how Bitter Ansoain died. You and Longfingers
made sure of that. And we know that the Red Wizards killed her; don't tell me you don't know
that, too. Would you like to know why?"

Dru forced himself to relax with another shrug. "There was more to that bride than we
knew—or something in her dowry. Or her Hlondeth suitor changed his mind."

"Let's say he'd incurred debts of a most unpleasant kind, and that he kept his side of the
bargain."

Air escaped Dru's lungs. So the Zhentarim named Galimer's mother Bitter Ansoain. So
they knew more about her death than he'd been able to learn after all these years. So they'd
kept track of him and Galimer and passed that knowledge along to a man like Amarandaris in
a village like Parnast, where Dru had never been before. So what? Ansoain herself had said:
Assume the Zhentarim know everything that happens and live your life accordingly.

"I pity the girl. May I assume there was a girl? We never saw her."

"A pity," Amarandaris agreed. "You're not looking for her, are you? Not thinking that you
can rescue a fair, ill-fated maiden?"

Dru shook his head. "We weren't headed for Thay."

"But you're looking for Thay at Dekanter, yes?"

That was, of course, exactly what Druhallen hoped to find, though he'd scarcely admit it.
"For treasure ... Netherese artifacts."

"A glass disk? A focusing lens? Something that might explain how the Thayans ambushed
you or how they control their minions while they're casting spells?"

Their eyes met and locked. To be sure, Druhallen had talked about the disk since arriving
in Parnast, but only in their room where he'd laid a ring of wards. He wasn't fool enough to
think his wards were proof against Zhentarim spying, but Dru did believe that no one could
have compromised his wards without his knowledge and he knew, even as he sat staring at
his wine, that his spells were intact.

Of course, his intentions need not have been discovered by magic. Any one of his partners
might have talked out of turn. Dru suspected only one of them. If he'd had the power to be in
two places at once, the second place would have been in the corner of the courtyard where
Tiep gambled, and he would have thrashed the boy without mercy. If Dru had had that power,
which he didn't. He was rooted in one place, in Amarandaris's place, and the Zhentarim with
the unmemorable face was asking close-to-the-bone questions.

"If you know to ask the question, you know the answer."

"I don't suppose you'd sell it to me?"

Dru set his goblet on the desk and shook his head.

"At least allow me a look at it. I know Dekanter, Druhallen. I know what's been found there
in the last two decades ... and I know who's found it."

"If you knew everything that's been found and everyone who found it, there'd be no need
to buy my disk."

Amarandaris refilled Dru's goblet. "I'm prepared to pay quite handsomely. We're prepared,
that is. A year's profit, I'd say; a year for all three of you." He held the glass out.

"Then it must not be important. I've never heard of the Zhentarim paying handsomely or
otherwise for anything you truly wanted."

"Stubborn," Amarandaris repeated and set the goblet down. "Very stubborn. Name your
price, Druhallen. Walk out of here with something to show for your efforts."

"My life?" Dru stood up. "My friends' lives? If you know so much about me, Amarandaris,
you know I'm not going to bite your bait. I walk out of here with what's mine, or I don't—and
I'm not talking about an antique."

"Sit, Druhallen. Sit down. Nothing's going to happen to you or your partners."

Amarandaris's predatory eyes searched Dru's face. He held himself calm and the eyes
blinked, the man sighed.
"Stubborn?" Amarandaris mused, as if there were a third party in the room, which was
always a possibility. "Stubborn or ignorant? Perhaps if you understood more about our
situation—and it is our situation, Druhallen—you'd find it easier to cooperate. Let me start at the
beginning; we're the newcomers in this corner of the world. The Netheril Empire was founded five
thousand years ago out there in what's now the Anauroch desert. Four thousand years ago, a Netherese
explorer by the name of Dekanter found the mines that bear his name. The Empire hired dwarves to
extract gold, iron, silver, mercury, and platinum, not to mention the finest black granite in the
Western Heartlands from the Dekanter Mines."

"I knew all that," Dru complained, "except for the mercury."

"Then I'll jump ahead a thousand years. The ore veins are empty and no one in the Empire
wants or needs granite because they're all living in cities that float through the clouds. The
dwarves have packed up their picks and the mines are gathering dust when a Netherese
archmage reduces his floating city to falling pebbles."

"We'd call the city 'Sunrest'," Druhallen repeated the name he'd learned at Candlekeep.
"The proper Netherese pronunciation eludes me, but I know the letters. I could write it down
for you."

Amarandaris sat back in his chair. "No doubt you could and no doubt you know that for the
rest of the Empire's long life, Dekanter was the place—the only place—where Netheril's mages
did serious research and made their mistakes. Think about that for a moment, Dru—may I call you
Dru? A veritable honeycomb of wizards. A Netherese Elminster in one corner, a Manshoon in another,
and a Halaster holed up down the hall. Its been nearly two thousand years since the floating cities
crashed but if your friends at Candlekeep tried to sell you a map of Dekanter, I'm here to tell you it's
worthless."

Dru's hand dropped to his belt before he could resist the impulse to move it. The scryer
had given, not sold, him such a map.

"Burn it," the Zhentarim advised. "Forget you ever looked at it. The Mines change every
time it rains—and it rains all the time at Dekanter. Passages open and close. Things appear . .. and
disappear. Sometimes we find bones; sometimes a corpse that's warm and soft. Sometimes we recog-
nize them, most of the time we don't, not by several thousand years. The Netherese played with time
and space, Druhallen, and they didn't trust their neighbors. Dekanter's haunted, my friend, and that's
just the beginning."

Amarandaris sipped his wine, waiting for Dru's reaction which came in the form of a quiet
question.

"The Red Wizards of Thay—?"

"—Were the Red Wizards of Mulhorand until a few hundred years ago, and Mulhorand was there
the day Netheril died. Do you think you're the first man who's tried to connect Red Wizard magic with
Netheril?"

"I never gave it much thought," Druhallen admitted. "I've wanted vengeance for Ansoain,
and I want to know how they beat us so easily. Beyond that, I didn't talk about it much—"
except to his partners. "After a few quiet years, I didn't think anyone cared—the Zhentarim, the Red
Wizards, anyone at all."

"We always care about trade, Druhallen, and the safety of the roads. It's very simple. My
associates have watched you indulge your hunches since Bitter Ansoain died. We know you
found an artifact, taught yourself the script of Netheril, and nearly beggared yourself at
Candlekeep—you should have come to us, Dru, gold would have flowed your way. But Candlekeep
couldn't answer your questions—or ours. We suspect—we strongly suspect—that you left Candlekeep
with a spell that will connect your disk with Dekanter and the Red Wizards of Thay."

Dru squeezed the goblet stem and nearly broke it. Tiep wouldn't be so lucky. It had to
have been Tiep who'd mouthed off. The boy didn't understand how magic worked and was
constantly underestimating, or overestimating, a spell's effects.

"Of course, you've worked alone, in secret, trusting no one with your suspicions—especially
the Zhentarim."

The Zhentarim had told a joke; Dru forced himself to crack a smile. "Especially the
Zhentarim—for all the good it seems to have done me."

"I'd say it's done you a world of good, Druhallen of Sunderath."

Amarandaris picked up a folded scrap of parchment and scaled it across the desk. The
sheepskin was blank at first, then a bold, elegant script emerged from a minor enchantment.
Though the letters were common, the language was not. Dru couldn't make sense of more
than one word in ten, and most of those were his own name.

"He takes a personal interest in your progress," Amarandaris said before Druhallen had
finished extracting what little he could from the script. "If I were a wagering man, which I'm
not, I'd wager that he knew Ansoain before she was quite so bitter."

He was almost certainly Sememmon, Lord of Darkhold, and the author of the letter in
Druhallen's hand.

"She didn't talk much about her past," Dru said and laid the parchment on the desk.

"Not many of us do," Amarandaris agreed. "Now, can we get back to business, my friend?
Your arrival is not unexpected, but it comes at an awkward time. We, that is the Zhentarim,
find ourselves besieged—"

"My condolences—"

"Are unnecessary. Just now I cannot guarantee your safety in Dekanter, and, as you can
perhaps guess, I'm obligated to guarantee it. If it were only the Red Wizards taking
advantage of—shall we say some disruption in our regular trade between here and Zhentil Keep on
the Moonsea ... well, I know I can count on you against the Red Wizards. Unfortunately, the Wizards
are the least of Dekanter's problems—or Zhentil Keep's."

The Zhentarim paused and shuffled the papers on his desk.

"It's Beshaba's backside in Dekanter, Druhallen. War ... below the ruins. We had a good
trade set up: a few artifacts, some fur and feathers from the interior Greypeaks, and a steady
supply of starving goblins. They breed like vermin and never have enough food. We dealt
with Ghistpok and Ghistpok dealt with the Beast Lord. There's always a Ghistpok on the
ground above Dekanter. Ghistpok means chief, or something similar in their language.
Ghistpok would sell his own children to the highest bidder, and I imagine that he has more
than once."

"Spare me the moral indignation, friend. I've got no love for the goblin-kin, but they're no
worse than humankind when it comes to buying and selling their own."

Amarandaris tipped his glass, acknowledging the insult. "If Ghistpok's selling his children
today, he's not selling them to us. When I came to Parnast twenty years ago, common
wisdom was that the Beast Lord was a minor beholder, a very minor beholder. The goblins
worshiped him as their god, and the Zhentarim made the usual offerings to keep the peace
and maintain our market. Things started changing about seven years ago. Little things—new
Beast-Lord rituals. Raiding parties. War parties."