The Nether Scroll

Rozt'a folded her arms beneath her breasts. "I don't share your faith where Darkhold is concerned. I got a look at this Amarandaris while I was scouting the resident muscle. I've seen warmer eyes on a snake."

"Why not go up the Dawn Pass?" Galimer interrupted. "They've got sixty mules in the stables right now, that's thirty more than they want. There'll be a mule train headed back to Llorkh tomorrow or the day after. We can go with them. I can keep our noses clean with the Zhentarim, but something's got the goblin-kin riled. Sweet Mystra—didn't you see them camped outside the palisade as we came in? Something's put real fear into those little beggars. Dwarves, maybe, or Underdark races who'd kill us as soon as they'd kill a goblin. If Amarandaris pulled the Network out of Dekanter, Dru, I'm telling you I'm not eager to get one step closer than I already am."

"Vengeance," Dru countered. "Your mother's vengeance."

"We've gotten vengeance. There were thirteen Red Wizards on that hilltop. We've learned all their names and slain three of them without going to Dekanter. We'll slay the rest when we can, if we can. Going to Dekanter won't get us closer to any of them. All Dekanter gets us— gets you—is a chance to cast that scrying spell you've been cooking up for years. All right—suppose you do scry something about the glass disk? Suppose you see a red-robed wizard carry it out of the mines, then what? You've never been able to answer that question for me, Dru. Are you going to start excavating with strangers around—Zhentarim strangers? Sweet Mystra, you've always said, 'Don't let the Network know we think there's a co

"Strangers! Red Wizards! Zhentarim!" Rozt'a erupted. "Gods! Take your pick and the Pit take them all. We're all born little people and if we're clever well stay little people, beneath the notice of the mighty for good or evil. You find what you're looking for, Druhallen, and our troubles are just starting."

Dru defended himself: "If I'm right and the Red Wizards are kindling their spell circles with Netherese magic and Netherese artifacts, then the rest of Faerun's got to know before the Weave is torn. The Netheril Empire came down in a day because wizards got greedy."

"The Weave's not our responsibility. I've said it before: She was my mother!" Galimer shouted. Galimer never shouted, but the heat and frustration had gotten to them all. "You've spun a yard of conclusions from a single strand of suspicion, Dru. I say, sell that damned disk and be done with it."

Dru opened his folding box—a different one than he'd carried on the Vilhon Reach—and removed the disk. He held it up in the summer light.

The disk had not yielded its secrets easily. Ansoain had been dead for two winters before Druhallen knew the inscription was written in the language of the ancient Netheril Empire. Another seven winters passed before he'd taught himself enough of that forgotten language to attempt a translation ... Those who see me see darkness, while he who holds me casts the sun.

In his heart Druhallen believed that the first part of the inscription described the disk's function as a vault where several wizards could pool their potential magic; and the second part described the might a wizard wielded when he unleashed that pooled potential. But other interpretations were possible. There was no definitive concordance of Netherese with any modern language. In other contexts, the word Druhallen had translated as darkness meant death or blindness; and at least one elven authority insisted that casts the sun was a metaphor for insanity.

Galimer and Rozt'a agreed with the elves and so, five years ago, Druhallen had spent the winter at Candlekeep, where for a hefty price in gold a blind seer had plunged into a trance. She'd vindicated a few of Dru's cherished suspicions. Before it fell into the grass on the Vilhon Reach, the disk had belonged to a red-robed necromancer from Thay who commanded the potential magic of twelve other wizards less skilled than himself. But the Candlekeep seer had been unable to determine what precise role the disk had played in casting the spells that slew Ansoain and so many others that day, or how a Netherese artifact had wound up in a Red Wizard's hands.

Go to Dekanter, the seer suggested when her trance had ended. Go to the Mines of Dekanter in the Greypeak Mountains. The Netherese mages congregated there after the metal played out and the dwarves had moved on. They developed their most potent spells and artifacts in those mountains, away from the floating cities. There is a distinct pattern to objects forged at Dekanter—a taste of darkness, the scents of depth and weight. Go to Dekanter. Your disk was born there, lost there, and found there not so long ago. A century or two, at most. If you can find the chamber where the disk was fired, I can teach you a simple spell that will show you the rest.

The seer's "simple spell" was more subtle than any spell Druhallen had learned before or since. It had taken him three years to collect the reagents necessary to cast it and another year—not to mention the lion's share of the reagents—to master it. Until this morning, he'd believed he was less than a week's journeying from unraveling a triad of mysteries with a single spell: the history of a polished disk of Netherese glass, the specific role it played in the ambush that led to Ansoain's death, and the more general role it played in Red Wizard spell-casting.

In the Parnast room Dru rotated the disk until it angled sunlight onto the floor between them all. "The Netherese wizards destroyed themselves, their Empire, and very nearly the world." He recited a lesson he'd learned from the Candlekeep seer. "When Great Ao saw the price of their foolishness, He commanded Mystra to thread a new strand through the Weave, the strand of fate that limits the power of our spellcraft—because the nature of magic is reckless- ness and self-destruction. That thread has held tight against good, evil, and all that lies between—until now. I'm sure the Red Wizards are trying to recreate the forbidden spells that brought the Empire down."

Galimer shook his head. "It doesn't follow, Dru. It hasn't ever followed. Yes, the Thayan circles are dangerous and we don't know how the Red Wizards create them. And, yes, their zulkirs are madmen, worse than the Zhentarim. But madmen fueled with Netherese artifacts? Look at a map, Dru—there's half of Faerun between Thay and Dekanter. It's not as if they can just appear and disappear—"

The gold-haired mage stopped himself, and Druhallen savored a long-awaited victory.

"That's exactly what they did on the Vilhon Reach," Dru said without gloating. "Why not do it at Dekanter? Everything does follow. I'd just as soon go the rest of the way by ourselves— the old trail must still be there and it's not as if we'd be looking for a fight with anyone—although, have you considered the possibility that this supposed war below Dekanter is actually the Red Wizards establishing themselves above?"

Dru watched Galimer's eyes narrow with thought, and he feigned a philosophical retreat.

"You plot our course, Longfingers. If you say we go to Llorkh, then we head east to Llorkh. Gods willing, I'll get back here some other year."

Galimer, still narrow-eyed and thinking, said nothing.

Rozt'a began her opinion with a groan, followed by, "Spare me! Mystra's got nothing on you, Druhallen, when it comes to weaving mismatched strands. Both of you would like nothing better than to be cooped up for the winter with nothing to do but pore over a spellbook. Gods know, Parnast isn't big enough for real trouble—"

It was an afternoon for misstatements—and not about a wizard's capacity for boredom. Their trio was, in fact, a quartet and their fourth partner was loose.