The Nether Scroll le-4

  The Nether Scroll

  ( Lost Empires - 4 )

  Lynn Abbey

  Lynn Abbey

  The Nether Scroll

  1

  12 Flamerule, the Year of the Arch (1353 DR) Along the Vilhon Reach

  "Do you think she wants to marry him? I hear he's half snake… the wrong half."

  The question and comments rolled off the tongue of Galimer Longfingers, journeyman and wizard, as he and Druhallen of Sunderath, also a journeyman and wizard, fidgeted in their saddles while watching other men repair a broken cartwheel.

  "Which half would be the right half?" Druhallen joked, then turned serious. "There's no point to wishes. What's cut, stays cut. We've been hired to get her to Hlondeth. What happens afterward is none of our concern."

  Afoot, Druhallen was a handspan shorter than Galimer, though that wasn't obvious when they were astride. Nothing about Druhallen was obvious. His hair was a drab shade of brown that framed his squarish face with a ragged fringe. He had a larger-than-average mouth and nose, and his otherwise attractive hazel eyes were shadowed by heavy brows that were darker than his hair. Dressed in homespun and leather, Druhallen was often mistaken for his friend's varlet.

  Galimer Longfingers cut an impressive figure, even in the middle of nowhere or on an empty road across the Vilhon Reach-which was almost the same thing. If the young woman under discussion was looking for a handsome, all-human suitor, she'd certainly cast a measuring glance in Galimer's direction. His wine-colored tunic and gray moleskin breeches had been tailored in the best Scornubel establishments and were as sturdy as they were fashionably expensive. His idly curling hair was the color of Aglarond cider, his eyes were gemstone blue, and his features were delicate without being either elven or feminine. His fingers, sheathed in leather gloves dyed to match his eyes, were elegant and long.

  Wizard hands, Ansoain, his mother, labeled them-because long, slender fingers were presumed to be an asset in a profession that relied on gesture and precision. She'd nicknamed him Longfingers when he was a toddler, and fifteen years later Galimer still dreamed of taking his place among the great wizards of Faerun.

  A more sober and thoughtful youth, Druhallen never gainsaid his friend's dreams though he-and Ansoain, too-were aware that wizardry required more than elegant hands. Wizardry demanded a sharp mind, a special sort of curiosity, nerves of steel, and-above all else-gods-given talent. Galimer's wits were sharp enough, but he fell short in all the other attributes.

  Druhallen had it all, despite his workman's physique and a childhood spent learning carpentry beside his older brothers in his father's shop. He'd captured Ansoain's attention a decade ago when bad weather led her to commission a waterproof box for the rare spices she was chaperoning along the roads to Elversult. When the carpenter's youngest son blithely quieted a squealing hinge with a cantrip of his own devising, Ansoain offered to apprentice the boy in exchange for twenty fresh-minted Cormyr falcons.

  Without consulting his son, the old man bit each coin and, approving of their taste, gave Druhallen a swat on the rump and a warning to obey his new master. Druhallen had sworn he'd never bring shame to his father's name and left Sunderath that day with a pocketful of nails. He'd kept his promise and the nails.

  They both knew he could have found himself a wealthy patron by now, but he'd taken to the road like an uncaged bird took to the sky. Still, Dru remembered what he'd learned from his father and as far in time and place as he'd come from Sunderath, he could have re-spoked that wheel in half the time it was taking the carters.

  The carters would be at it a while longer. Long enough, Druhallen thought, for a nap. He was eyeing an elm tree with moss-padded roots when Galimer interrupted him with another bit of gossip.

  "I've heard the bridegroom's forty-five, three times a widower, with neither hair nor heirs to show for his efforts."

  In Scornubel and the other towns where Ansoain plied the journey-trade with Druhallen and her son, Galimer Longfingers was accounted a witty young man. His wordplay usually left Druhallen chuckling, but not when the carters had just managed to break another spoke.

  "And I've heard the bride is bugbear ugly," he grumbled.

  In truth, Dru had heard no such thing. He'd been careful not to acquire neither expensive habits nor an ear for gossip. Still, the simple fact was that they were ten days into what would be at least a twenty-day journey and the bride-to-be had yet to emerge from that cart with the jinxed wheels. Speculation ran rampant, and not only between bored wizards who hadn't yet seen the sun rise on their twentieth birthdays.

  In addition to Ansoain and her apprentices, there were twelve men-at-arms attached to the dower caravan: the muscle complement to Ansoain's magic. A man would have to have been stone deaf not to hear what the muscle thought of the situation.

  A few days back, Dru had lent a hand to one of the handmaids as she'd struggled with a too-full water jug and gotten an insider's version of the sad tale. The bride's family had a lustrous title, generations of honor, a drafty castle, and debts galore. The bridegroom was a dyer and tanner of fine leathers, no better born than Druhallen himself, but blessed with a self-made fortune. He was said to be a human man, but who knew with the Hlondethem? Their queen was a yuan-ti half-breed with iridescent scales on her cheeks and a serpent's tail she kept hidden, except from her lovers… according to the maid.

  The match had been based on mutual need: The groom's for a title to match his wealth and sons to inherit it. The bride's to save her father from the ignominy of debtors' court. She stayed in the cart whether it rolled on four wheels or three because nightmares and tears had ruined her complexion… according to the maid.

  "I'd like to see what we're guarding just once before we deliver it," Galimer continued his complaints. "The way those three dower carts are wrapped up, you'd think we were escorting the lost treasure of Oebelar."

  Druhallen didn't know about Oebelar's legendary wealth, but he knew that three of the five wagons in their caravan were filled with brick and stone in a pathetic effort to maintain appearances for the already mortified bride. Her dowry, other than the name she'd been born with and the pedigreed blood in her veins, fit in a single chest she kept constantly at her feet.

  "Leave it be," Dru advised for the third time. "We've escorted stranger consignments and been paid less for our troubles, right?"

  Notwithstanding his expensive tastes Galimer was the money-man for the trio. He might bungle his reagent proportions or forget his spells in a crisis, but Galimer knew the exchange rates in every city and who was buying what-or so it seemed to Druhallen, who understood hard work but had no notion of profit.

  Ansoain appreciated profit, but couldn't calculate risk for love nor money. She'd willingly turned their business affairs over to her son when his true calling manifested itself some five years ago. Their fortunes had improved steadily ever since.

  Galimer had signed them up for this jaunt along the Vilhon Reach precisely because the leather-dyeing suitor had been willing to pay double the going rate to hire the same muscle-and-magic escort that had shepherded a bit of glittery tribute from Hlondeth's queen to her counterpart in Cormyr last autumn. The prospect of such good money had inspired them all, muscle and magic alike, to overlook some obvious questions when the contracts were sealed before a priest of trade in a Waukeenar temple.

  "It just seems odd," Galimer persisted. "Virgins don't melt in sunlight and if there were anything half-so-valuable in those carts as all that warding suggests, then there aren't enough of us to keep it away from anyone who truly wanted it."

  "No argument," Dru said mildly and ignored Galimer's sour scowl.

  He'd voiced the same objections himself when they'd arrived in Elversult to collect t
he bride and her dowry. Galimer had dismissed Dru's worries out of hand.

  The young men were friends, though, the best of friends and brothers combined-however unlikely that had seemed when a rough-mannered carpenter's son had mastered spells as fast as he learned to read them, faster by far than Galimer at his best. Staying on Longfingers's good side had come naturally to a boy with five older brothers, and Galimer had yearned for a friend. A childhood tagging along after Ansoain, who couldn't sleep three nights in the same bed, had left Galimer with a better grasp of geography than friendship.

  They might not exchange another word this afternoon, but they'd be talking again after supper.

  The carters wrestled the last of the spokes into place and retrieved the hobbled horses from the grass where they'd grazed. When the horses were ready, the magic-and-muscle escort assumed its customary positions and the caravan was on its way toward Hlondeth.

  Dru and Galimer's customary positions were a short distance behind the bridal wagon. Ansoain, who'd spent most of their unscheduled rest with the captain of the men-at-arms, joined them there. By the brightness of her eyes, Dru suspected that she and the captain had shared more than a discussion about the weather. He disapproved, as only a young man could disapprove, of his foster mother's behavior, but both he and Galimer were years beyond embarrassment and however predatory her habits, Ansoain never let them interfere with work.

  "Tree branch," she said as soon as her horse had settled in between his and Galimer's.

  "Scry for diseases," Galimer answered quickly.

  "What kind of tree?" Dru asked at the same time.

  It was Ansoain's custom to quiz her apprentices whenever the spirit moved her. Galimer always strove to be first with an answer while Dru usually wanted more information before he'd commit himself.

  "A fruit tree, in flower."

  Dru nodded. "Stripped of the flowers and leaves, the branch could become a divining rod. And the flowers could be put to use in the dryad variation for making pure water."

  "Not fair!" Galimer complained. "If there were a real stick, I'd see that it was in flower. You said stick, so that's all I imagined!"

  "I said 'branch,' but you're right, Longfingers, you would have seen the flowers. You're both right." Ansoain tried to be fair; it wasn't easy. "Dragonfly's wing," she challenged, inspired, no doubt, by the insect flying between them and the cart.

  "What kind of dragonfly?" Galimer demanded.

  "Blue-green." The now-disappeared insect had been blue-green.

  Dru didn't know any spells that required the wing of a blue-green dragonfly. He didn't know any that called for any specific part of any color dragonfly. He knew of a few spells that required the jewel-like carapaces of rare jungle beetles and another that needed scales from a true dragon's wing. None of those were in his head nor etched into the wood of the magically folded box hanging from his belt. An apprentice with access to his master's library usually knew more spells than he could actually cast.

  Even Galimer knew more spells than he could cast, and frequently got them confused. Dru looked beyond Ansoain. Years of observation had taught him to anticipate Galimer's answer from the shape of his lips. If Gal's answer looked to be correct, then Druhallen would hold his own tongue, but if, as so often happened, it looked like Galimer was about to make himself appear foolish, Dru would speak up quickly and loudly "A blue-green wing would satisfy a spell that required only an insect's wing and, maybe, an affinity could be drawn to spells requiring feathers-function, form and color would give a threefold congruence-but it would be a far stretch to make a dragonfly's wing stand for any part of a true dragon."

  Galimer's face showed indignation, then relief. Ansoain never let on that she suspected her foster's game-though she was usually careful to position herself so that Dru could see Galimer's face when she quizzed them.

  "Good enough. Now, what is the writ for a dust shield?"

  "Dust. What else?"

  Sometimes Galimer spoke too quickly for Dru to save him.

  "The writ!" Ansoain snapped, "not the reagents. How much dust, and how do you seal the spell in your mind? What trigger will call it out when you need to cast it?"

  A dust shield was one of Galimer's more reliable spells. He rattled off the answers correctly and without hesitation.

  Ansoain peppered them with other reagents and writs as the afternoon sun grew warm on their backs. When their stomachs began to churn in anticipation of supper, she lectured them on tactical shortcomings of the adversaries that journeying mages might encounter in Faerun's Heartlands.

  "Fumarandi are drakes. Their weapon is charcoal smoke, and they make their homes above the trees in mountain forests. They can be claimed as companions…"

  Ansoain claimed that she never forgot a lesson or a nightmare. It was the latter that kept her on the road. As long as she was moving, the worst of her dreams couldn't find her. In winter, when they went to ground in Scornubel, Ansoain rented rooms by the night and fought her nightmares by the keg. Winters had been hard for Dru and Galimer until they were old enough to rent rooms for themselves and worse, in a way, since Galimer had taken over their finances. Every publican in Scornubel knew Galimer would cover his mother's debts.

  But when they were on the road and spending their nights beneath different trees, no one had a clearer mind than Ansoain. She shared her knowledge of the world and magic with her sons.

  "Wyvern gall," she called out after she'd told them everything there was to know about the fumarandi.

  Galimer's lips didn't twitch; he hadn't a clue. Druhallen inquired: "Fresh, powdered, or ossified?"

  "Ossi-"

  She didn't finish the answer. Her gray eyes scanned the forward horizon, then closed while she sought the wisdom of her mind's eye. Dru felt the disruption also: a slight, yet profoundly ominous change in the ether, that strange, intangible stuff where magic held sway.

  "What the-?" Galimer demanded.

  Ansoain commanded silence with a snarl, the raised her hand in a curious gesture. Bits of ash-spent reagents-blew away from her palm. The spell carried her words directly to the ears of the captain and his men. Druhallen and Galimer didn't hear a sound.

  The captain had a similar ability to communicate with his men, equally magical, but derived from the matched rings he and the men wore. The caravan came to a halt. Its muscle-and-magic escort pulled in tight around it. The muscle fastened their chain mail coifs over their faces and tested their swords without drawing them. The magic considered their spells.

  "Fire?" Dru suggested softly.

  Ansoain shrugged. "It's got no shape or signature. It could be anything, or nothing. Fire needs something to burn."

  Galimer opened a foot-long war-fan from distant Kozakura. There, it had been a weapon. Here, it was a spellbook with writs etched in silver along the vanes.

  "No time for that, son," Ansoain said grimly. "If your nerves are chancy, hide in the wagon."

  "I'm sure of some fire," Longfingers protested, "and a shrieking arrow."

  "And you?" she asked Druhallen.

  "The usual. I can blur us a little now, if you think that would help."

  "No, whatever's out there, it's already taken our measure. Probably slavers. Save your blurring for later. Your gloom, too. The girl's got to be what they're after. The girl and her dowry. Get her out, if push comes to shove. Make a pall of misery and get out beneath it."

  Druhallen bit his tongue. They'd tangled with slavers before-a base and brutal lot, and not above using the nastier sorts of spellcraft to protect, or acquire, their merchandise. But slavers were rarely subtle and the disturbance Dru tasted with his inner senses was as subtle as it was potent. He patted his left sleeve, assuring himself that the wax-sealed embers he used to trigger his fire spells were in their proper places. He checked his belt, too-not for the folded box; as Ansoain had told Galimer, it was too late for rehashing spells-but for his dagger. The single-edge knife was mostly a tool for cutting meat and gathering herbs, but
he'd made sure it was long enough to pierce a man's heart through his ribs.

  The ethereal disruption materialized. Galimer spotted it first.

  "Over there," he whispered and cocked a finger at a hilltop north-by-northeast of the caravan.

  The hilltop air shimmered with a untimely sunset glow. A moment later at least a dozen figures, each wearing a long, red cloak, circled in the grass. A moment after that there was fire in the sky and a thick, black fog rolling toward the wagons. It could have been worse. They could have stopped at the base of the hill, but they were still in trouble.

  Druhallen didn't need to know the name of the spell that wrought the fog to know it was nothing he wanted to breathe. For that matter, he didn't want to be astride when the miasma hit. He leapt to the ground and cast an air-clearing spell just in time to keep his head clear. Dru could have extended the spell to protect his entire body-but it would have faded more quickly and he wouldn't have been able to hurl a fireball at the hilltop.

  The spell affected Druhallen's hearing. Sound was fainter than it should have been, and distorted, as if he'd gone diving and surfaced with water in his ears. He heard enough steel and deep-pitched screaming to know that the men-at-arms were fighting for their lives. On hands and knees, Druhallen crept through the fog, away from his mentor-not from cowardice, but to widen the angle of their attack and defense. Never let an enemy kill twice with the same stroke, that was Ansoain's motto.

  The red-cloaked wizards abandoned subtlety. A head-blind child could have placed them in the fog-and Dru's fireballs were about as effective as a head-blind child's wish when it came to piercing their defenses. He felt his final spell rebound harmlessly. Some months short of his twentieth birthday, Druhallen of Sunderath confronted the end of a life he'd hoped would be much longer. Drawing his knife, Dru waded through the black fog to join what was left of the muscle near the wagons.

  He hadn't taken ten strides when a faintly luminous, undead skirmisher lunged at him. The zombie's face was fully skeletal, and flesh hung in tatters from its long bones. Beyond fear and pain, it fought clumsily with a stone-headed mace until Dru knocked it off its legs. Taking no chances, he kicked its skull aside and stomped its brittle ribs.