The Nether Scroll (21 page)

Dru pried the sword from one death-frozen hand. The hilt had been adapted for their odd
combination of pincers and fingers, but the balance was tolerable, the steel better. He
handed the weapon to Tiep who hesitated and wouldn't take it.

"Not me."

"Take it," Dru insisted. "You could get lucky with it; you won't without it. Get the belt and
scabbard, too. You don't want to gash yourself while we're walking." He loosened the second
corpse's belt.

Rozt'a gave one of her disdainful snorts. "Walking! We'll be moving a damn sight faster
than that! You were right. There, I admit it. We're not ready for this. We've got planning to do."

"Too late for that, Roz." He freed the belt and exchanged it with the one that supported his
folding box. "One got away. He's going to tell somebody what he survived. By sundown,
whatever else lives in these mines is going to be laying for us. We've got one chance, right
now, to find Sheemzher's egg, snatch the scroll, and beat a once-and-forever retreat."

"You can't be serious—" Rozt'a began.

The goblin cut her off. "Sheemzher find egg. Not far. Sheemzher find sky new way, yes?"
"Yes."

"Have you got anything useful left?" Rozt'a asked.

"Enough light to see us until tomorrow's dawn. A fireball. A pall of gloom. Warding, if we
found an empty room and needed to hide, and let me blur you next time; no arguments." Her
chin dipped. "Tiep, get that belt." The boy didn't move. "You've seen worse. You didn't think
this would be a walk in the park, did you?"

"I hoped," Tiep admitted, but he got the belt and fastened it around his waist.

When they got back to the sky—as Sheemzher put it—Druhallen expected his nerves would
quake for a month; in the meantime, he nudged Tiep in the goblin's direction. Sheemzher's sense of
time and direction were better underground than they'd been in the Weathercote Wood. They truly
hadn't gone much farther when light glowed ahead of them.

They approached with caution: ten steps, then wait and listen. The tunnel widened but
remained a rough-cut passage to a chamber that was filled with a faint, but steady, pale
green light. Dru dampened his own light spell and strained his senses searching for another
wizard's magic. He found it, too: powerful, but alien. A glance through his ring revealed
nothing they couldn't see with their eyes alone. It should have been reassuring; it wasn't.

Dru successfully stifled a twinge of guilt when Sheemzher waved his hands in silhouette to
indicate that he'd be the first to enter the chamber.

Go ahead, he mouthed, moving his lips but making no sound.

Tiep scowled and drew his sword. The sound was louder than thunder in a summer's
night, but didn't precipitate disaster. Sheemzher walked ten paces, twenty paces into the
light. He turned and beckoned them closer.

"Empty. All empty."

Rozt'a led Druhallen and Tiep into a large, but not huge, chamber. The light, which
seemed to rise from the chiseled floor on the far side of the chamber's center, revealed an
irregular dome that formed both walls and ceiling, but the light wasn't nearly bright enough to
banish shadows. Dru thought they were alone, though he couldn't prove it. The center of the
chamber was clear, but the sides were cluttered with boulders and piles of smaller rocks.
Anything man-sized or smaller could be hiding there.

The chamber was damp, even misty. There was water here, and there had been for a very
long time. Dripping icicles of stone hung from the ceiling; glistening spires grew beneath
them. When Dru touched them with his ring he felt only the faintest magic and manipulation.

The same could not be said for a series of pools had been dug out of the floor. Their
shapes were regular, their lips precisely square, and the largest of them was the source of
the light that filled the chamber. Rozt'a knelt to examine it and without warning dipped her
hand beneath the surface. She'd raised her hand to her lips before Dru found his voice. She
was already spitting when he told her not to swallow.

"Brine!" she sputtered between spits. "Brine from the worst pickles ever made!"

Tiep chuckled, Druhallen resisted.

"How do you get brine in the middle of a mountain?" she demanded.

"Rock salt," Dru suggested seriously enough, though Tiep took it for a joke.

The rock all around them was the same gray granite they'd been hiking through for days.
Good for making buildings, but useless for pickles. Dru took Rozt'a's place beside the pool.
He looked down into the light, saw the underwater passages connecting the light-filled pool to
the smaller, dimmer pools on either side.

"What good is brine?" Tiep asked. "You can't drink it."

"The oceans and seas are filled with creatures that don't drink brine," Dru replied and
collected a few drops of the suspect liquid on his fingertip. He'd seen an ocean just once,
after his visit to Candlekeep. It had little in common with the brightly lit Dekanter pool,
including the taste. The brine on Dru's finger was far saltier than Candlekeep's ocean and
slick, reminding him of blood.

Rozt'a observed, "I don't see anything swimming in there."

"Be grateful," Dru replied in a tone meant to discourage further questions.

Thanks—as usual—to Ansoain's relentless collection of useless facts and her determination to
share those facts with her son and apprentice, Dru had begun to put the puzzle pieces together. The
central piece was a bit of information Amarandaris had given him about the second garrison slaughter.
The Zhentarim and Red Wizards had torn each other apart. Those were the honored divide-and-
conquer tactics of those who'd mastered the discipline of usurping another sentient mind. Dru
could name a handful of living wizards and a score of races or monsters who were known to
usurp sentient minds, but only one such race made use of brine-filled pools.

If Druhallen was remembering Ansoain's lessons correctly then the Beast Lord wasn't a
god but a colony of mind flayers and they were in a world of hurt.

"You know something, Druhallen. Tell me what you know," Rozt'a demanded.

"I don't know anything." And Dru didn't, not yet. The picture wasn't nearly complete and
much of it remained contradictory. The commanding presence of a mind flayer colony—
something called its Elder Brain—was supposed to reside in a brine-filled pool. Without an Elder
Brain, there was no colony—according to Ansoain, who might have been wrong. She'd never
encountered a mind flayer, merely learned about them as she learned about everything else.

"Is this what you're calling 'the egg'?" Dru asked Sheemzher.

Sheemzher shook his head. "Egg not here, good sir. Egg there." The goblin pointed to a
tunnel in the shadows that Dru hadn't noticed before.

"Let's go then."

The tunnel was short and led to a room square enough to have been hollowed out by
dwarves but cluttered with rock debris and chunks of twisted metal, some of them larger than
a full-grown man. Sheemzher's egg stood in the center of the room. It was no more an egg
than the creatures they'd been killing for the last few days were demons, but it was an
athanor of dangerous proportions. Dru judged the oval engine was twice as high as he was
tall and perhaps a third as wide as it was high. It was made from hammered and riveted
plates of bronze, or possibly brass. Double-doors, hinged at the athanor's widest point, had
been left open and revealed a two-chamber interior. The bottom chamber was large enough
to accommodate a goblin or three. The upper chamber, though much smaller, could have
held a good-sized snake or a hundred of Lady Wyndyfarh's mantises.

Metal pipes and parchment hoses connected the two interior chambers and other parts of
the athanor, too. The widest pipe of all disappeared into one of the walls above an incised
rectangle that might have been the start of another rock-cut passage. Two more pipes were
bolted to the floor. Dru figured he knew what the athanor did and was asking himself how it
worked and what it had to do with a Nether scroll when he looked up and found the answers
to both questions in the same place.

A golden cylinder as long as his forearm stuck out of the top of the athanor and up into at
least a score of wires dangling from the ceiling. Some of the wires were shorter than the
others. All of them were soot stained. He didn't know what leapt between the wires and the
scroll—maybe fire, maybe lightning, maybe something he'd never studied—but he understood the
principle of using explosive spells to power engines both arcane and ordinary.

The metal litter on the floor—the smaller sections of pipe and larger sheets of brass—could have
formed the shells of earlier eggs. The Beast Lord—the mind flayers—hadn't perfected the
transmutation process. Suddenly, the misshapen goblins connected to the growing pattern. They were
the egg's failures and the swordswingers were its triumphs.

Sheemzher grabbed his sleeve in a panic. "Not egg. Not egg! Smell right, but not egg! Too
big. Very much too big."

That, too, fit into the pattern. "Six years, Sheemzher. Remember that it's been six years
since you were here. They've rebuilt your egg." Dru pointed out the piles of blasted metal.
"Step back and look up. It's your egg with the golden scroll sticking out the top."

Sheemzher retreated, squinted, and began jumping for joy. "Sheemzher see! Sheemzher
see! Get it now, good sir? Sheemzher climb. Sheemzher climb good."

It couldn't be this easy, Druhallen thought as he lifted the goblin. It couldn't be—

And it wasn't.

Sheemzher had one foot on the hinge of the open door and the other still resting on
Druhallen's shoulder when they heard the sound of a heavy latch being thrown.

6 Eleint, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR)

The Greypeak Mountains

Tiep liked having a sword in his hand. He didn't mind that the hilt was the wrong shape for
his human hand or the weapon was point heavy once he'd found a comfortable way to hold it.
In fact, he rather liked the weighty sensation. Knives were nice, but if he couldn't reel off
fireballs the way Druhallen did, Tiep wanted a sword riding below his hip.

He'd won a sword off a Scornubel swell last winter and worn it with a swagger until it had
become embarrassingly apparent that Rozt'a wouldn't teach him how to use it. Worse, she'd
whispered in the ear of the city's armsmasters and none of them would take him on as a
student. Bitterly disappointed, he'd sold the sword back to the swell come spring and hit the
road with his familiar knives.

In his wildest dreams, Tiep had never imagined Druhallen telling him to pick up a sword,
and to tell the truth, he'd been none-too-eager to unfasten the scabbard from around the hips
of something that clearly wasn't civilized. If the weapon had been enchanted, he'd have
gotten the worst of it; he usually did. Fortunately there wasn't any magic to the sword or its
scabbard and Dru's words were still swirling in his ears—

You could get lucky—

The phrase formed a satisfying counterpoint to one of Rozt'a's favorite sayings: I worry
more about incompetence than skill.

With visions of bravery, Tiep cut the air in the egg chamber with a flourish. He knew he
was incompetent, but he'd always been lucky. At least, he'd always thought he was, but if
he'd been truly lucky, he'd have been paying attention before Rozt'a slapped her hand
between his shoulders and shoved him toward the doorway.

It was disrespectful, that's what it was. Hadn't one of the first things Galimer ever said to
him been, Don't sneak up on Rozt'a when she's drawn steel? Granted, Tiep's first thoughts as
he staggered toward the doorway hadn't been a deadly counterattack. He'd been so
surprised he'd let the tip clunk and scrape across the stone. Still there was principle to
defend—

Tiep caught his balance and spun around. "Rozt'a—"

Something was wrong and the wrongness was unfolding so fast Tiep couldn't get his
thoughts around it. Rozt'a's sword was out, her fist was cocked, and she wore her wolf-face.
She didn't talk, she hissed.

"No noise ... no noise," and "We're getting out of here."

Tiep had to backpedal for all he was worth to avoid her charge. But why? There was
Druhallen beside the metal egg. Dru's arms were raised; he was poised to catch Sheemzher
who'd scrambled up the egg like a lizard and was hauling on the golden scroll with all his
puny strength.

Had the damned dog-faced goblin pulled when he should have pushed and started
something he couldn't stop? That would figure.

Rozt'a changed direction between strides and, discounting the fact that her beloved foster-
son was showing naked steel, reached across her body to grab him at the opposite shoulder
and spin him around before giving him another, mightier, shove toward the door. On his way
around, Tiep snagged a glimpse of what might be the cause of the chaos. The wall to the left
of the metallic egg that had been solid stone when they entered the egg chamber had
become a shimmering mirage—like the road ahead on a too-hot summer day—with a dead-black
slit in the middle of it.

Tiep needed another look to be sure of what he'd seen. When he tried to get it, Rozt'a's fist
landed in the middle of his back and he was crossing the threshold into the tunnel between
the pool chamber and the egg chamber before he caught his balance again. It was pitch dark
in the tunnel. Druhallen had their light and Druhallen wasn't with them.

Rozt'a must have guessed that Dru's name was primed on the back of his tongue,
because when she hit Tiep again, it was with her open hand. She seized his shirt and didn't
let go.

"Not a sound!"

There was a dogleg in the tunnel. It hadn't been a problem when they'd had Druhallen's
spell illuminating their path, but they missed it going out. Tiep, who was shoved in front of
Rozt'a, slammed into the stone chin and nose first. He smelled his own blood and his
thoughts were echo and pain when they got to the pool chamber.

"Hide!" Rozt'a hissed and pulled, rather than shoved, him along the chamber's right-side
wall.

Tiep spun out of her grasp. "Where's Dru?" He danced sideways. There was no light
moving in the tunnel. "Where's Druhallen? We can't leave Druhallen."

His voice had risen; he expected a smack on the jaw, but Rozt'a's hands were shaking too
much for her to deliver a punch, deserved or not.

"Hide! We've got to hide."

She was terrified. Tiep's foster-mother who'd laid open more men than Tiep could count
was terrified. For the first time, the possibility that they were in serious trouble—doom-and-
death trouble—entered Tiep's mind. Short of diving into the briny pools Tiep didn't see any hiding
places, and he'd have to know exactly what they were running from before he jumped into one of
those.

"Where? There's no place to hide."

Rozt'a's eyes, fortunately, were sharper and so were her wits. She'd spotted an empty
shadow in the chamber's walls. It was more a fold in the rock than a cave and it was a dead-
end passage—a very dead end if anyone came along with a lamp or light spell. But it was the best
they were likely to find.

"Keep your head down—your face'll glow like the moon down here," Rozt'a whispered, sounding
more like herself, more in control and command. A moment later she added, "We're kneeling in rock
dust... we're kneeling in dust! Rub some on your face and into your hair."

Tiep was used to listening to Rozt'a in emergencies. He didn't know why he was smearing
himself with dirt, but he rubbed vigorously and was attacking his ears when the rock began to
rumble and vibrate. Tiep thought he was already as frightened as a man could get but, as
rock icicles crashed to the cavern floor, he discovered untapped reserves of dread. The pale
light in the central pool grew so bright Tiep could feel it as he crouched beside Rozt'a with his
eyes closed and his dirty face pressed against his knees.

While the light brightened, the vibrations intensified until they were throbs that loosened
rock. Tiep and Rozt'a bounced against each other as if they'd been huddled in the back of
some scrap-collector's cart. He thought he might have screamed; he was sure that Rozt'a
had. Then a rumbling pulse more powerfully than the rest combined lifted them off the stone
and held them suspended.

Like a fool, Tiep opened his eyes. The light was so hot and bright that he couldn't see
anything except his bones. Tiep closed his eyes—he thought he'd closed his eyes—but the bone
vision lingered. He thought he'd died, thought that he'd gone beyond death, beyond his body,
and hoped it would be over soon.

It was. The throbbing ebbed rapidly, along with the light and the heat—which had surely
been imaginary because when feeling returned, Tiep found himself entirely unhurt, except for bruised
knees and a ringing in his ears. Their luck had held.

"We're alive!" he whispered to Rozt'a.

They didn't have to rub themselves with dust now. The smell of granite was inside Tiep's
nostrils and plastered his throat. It threatened to become cement when he first tried to
swallow. Desperate for air, Tiep hacked and spat without regard for who—or what—might
overhear.

Rozt'a stood beside him. She hadn't said a word, hadn't swallowed, hadn't fought with the
gray gunk she'd breathed into her throat. They both flinched at the sound of tumbling rock.
The light rising from the central pool was once again pale. It scarcely penetrated the dusty
air. Any sound could mean they weren't alone, that their enemies stalked them or that Dru
was nearby.

Tiep considered calling his foster-father. If Rozt'a had shouted Druhallen's name, Tiep
would have joined her. Rozt'a remained silent, and Tiep did, too. At that moment, Tiep cared
little for survival. If enemies moved in the chamber, he'd fight hard and eagerly to his own
death.

Nothing emerged from the dust. There were other crunches which Tiep's ears slowly
understood as the settling of rocks loosened by the magical eruption. The air seemed clearer
after every rock rolled to its final resting spot. It was probably illusion or hope, but it could
have been true.

Tiep was glad to be alive. Humans—living things in general—clung to life. It was only natural
for humans—one street-raised human in particular—to worry just a bit about the future before he
started celebrating the present.

Some of that shaken and fallen rock could be blocking the tunnel to the surface.

Or the one that led back to the egg chamber.

Rozt'a must have had the same thought—at least she started walking toward the egg-chamber
passage before Tiep did. There was debris, but not enough to make the tunnel impassible. The dust
made it darker, of course, but they were feeling their way slowly, not running. With the dogleg turn
uneventfully behind them, they were no more than forty paces from the egg-chamber threshold.

It was very quiet—no moans, no footsteps. Tiep told himself that silence meant nothing either
good or bad, but he wasn't really surprised when they came up against a smooth granite wall where the
doorway had stood a few moments earlier. Rozt'a beat her fists against the stone, and Tiep did the
same. The granite didn't budge, wasn't hollow. Tiep gave up before he hurt himself then put his arms
gently around his foster-mother and forced her to retreat from the treasonous wall.

"There's another way in. I saw it just before you shoved me out. We'll find it."

"Too late," Rozt'a replied, her first words, and they left her gagging the way Tiep first
words had left him.

He released her and she hurled herself against the rock. Rozt'a could scarcely breathe,
but that didn't stop her from putting her fists into the granite and calling Dru's name.

"There's another way," Tiep repeated.

His foster-mother didn't seem to hear him. Tiep found her fists by touch and sound and
tried a second time to gently pull her away from the wall. Rozt'a wouldn't yield to gentleness.
She shook him off and when Tiep touched her again, she lashed out wildly, blindly with a
backhand punch that set Tiep back on his heels.

Black panic nibbled into Tiep's thoughts—there was another way, but they'd have to look for it
together. His mind couldn't contain the thought of splitting up without feeding panic. "Rozt'a?" he
whispered, barely in control himself. He heard her crash into the wall again. "Tymora, help
us? Help me? Rozt'a, please? Mother—?"

In the beginning Rozt'a had wanted Tiep to call her Mother. He'd tried a few times, but he'd
been on his own too long. The instinct had died—until the goddess of luck reawakened it. With
that single word, Rozt'a stopped her frantic hammering. They found each other and, arm in arm,
walked toward the pool chamber.

"How should we start looking?" Tiep asked.

Rozt'a didn't answer. She was beside Tiep, holding him tightly, but that was only her body.
Her mind was somewhere else—with Druhallen, inside the egg chamber, or with Galimer, in
Weathercote Wood. In the dogleg part of the tunnel, where light was a promise but they couldn't yet
see each other, Tiep hugged his foster-mother—his true mother—as he never had and received nothing
in reply.

Panic said, You're in charge. You. You. You! and for a heartbeat panic was triumphant,
then the scrappy stubbornness that had kept Tiep alive in situations every bit as bad as this—
he'd picked Sememmon's pockets and survived, hadn't he?—took command.

"C'mon, Rozt'a. We've got to find that other way."

They walked slowly, quietly toward the light—and it was a good thing that they were both slow
and quiet. Tiep heard sounds that said they weren't alone any more and they weren't about to be
reunited with Druhallen, either. He nudged Rozt'a sideways. Some part of his foster-mother was still
functioning—without hesitation she made herself small in the seam between the wall and the floor.
She checked her weapons, then began creeping toward the light.

Tiep patted his hip before he crouched. His sword was in its scabbard. He didn't remember
putting it there. Tymora had heard his prayers before he'd uttered them. As long as the luck
goddess was watching out for them, they had a chance ...

A long-limbed silhouette marched in front of the tunnel threshold, sword at its side. It could
have been the twin of the creature who'd carried the sword Tiep wore. Other silhouettes
followed it. The followers walked on two legs but wouldn't have been as tall as the sword-
carrying creatures, even if they'd stood fully upright, which they didn't. Their shoulders and
backs were rounded and their heads hung so low on their necks that they were looking down,
not forward. One was limping badly, two others leaned on each other for support. Tiep
couldn't guess whether they'd been injured in the shake-up or long before. He was still trying
to answer that question when he realized the crippled silhouettes were goblins.

Two more of the long-limbed swordswingers followed the goblins. Slaves, he realized.
Slavers and slaves. Slavers, slaves, and unnatural creatures hatched out of a metal egg. The
pattern wasn't enough to reconcile Tiep with his goblin nemesis, and if Druhallen was dead
because he'd stayed behind with Sheemzher, then no goblin was safe from Tiep's revenge—
but he'd kill them cleanly, not like this.

With the egg chamber closed off behind them, Tiep saw two choices: stay where they
were, hiding in the shadows, or get closer to the light and a better understanding of what they
were up against. Tiep put his hand on Rozt'a's shoulder and together they crept forward. If
only all his choices were that simple.

Most of the dust had settled, which meant that it was still pretty bad but Tiep could see all
the way across the chamber. The tunnel where they'd first entered the chamber was open. If
they could get to it—no, make that when they were ready, they could get out. Tiep didn't let himself
think that he and Rozt'a might have to leave without Druhallen, but he did regret not paying closer
attention when Sheemzher picked their path through the intersections.