The Nether Scroll

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 begi

"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 begi

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 co

"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 co

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 u

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."

Only the Zhentarim would describe war as a "little thing."

"The Dekanter goblins are fierce; the males are, anyway. Maybe it's their Beast Lord cult, maybe it's the water. Get 'em fired up, point them at your enemy, and they won't quit until they're all dead. In a real fight, goblins last about an hour; demand for goblin war-slaves, as you can imagine, is steady. In Dekanter, Ghistpok's tribe got greedy. They wiped out the other clans, at least the males. The females, the children—they took to the mountains."

Amarandaris took another sip of wine and topped off his goblet. "Look around you. Parnast's always had a few goblins. Only a few because, well—" He made a helpless gesture. "This is a free village, Dru. Oh, some of the merchants who come through here peddle flesh on the side and not every scut-driver is on wages, but there's no slave market here. No buying or selling, not of men, or elves, or dwarves—not even goblins. That, my friend, was Dekanter's function; we do other trade here."