The Nether Scroll

"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.

3

30 Eleasias, the Year of the Ba

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."