The Nether Scroll (20 page)

Tiep proved a non-cooperative partner. "You let Rozt'a go off alone with Sheemzher?"
He'd folded his arms across his chest.

"Do you think Rozt'a can't handle a goblin, Tiep? Should I mention that to her when she
gets back?"

"Tymora protect me! Don't do that!" Tiep snatched Hopper's rein and fell in behind
Druhallen.

"What then? I thought you and the goblin had made peace."

"We did," Tiep replied with a notable lack of enthusiasm. "As much peace as an honest
man can make with a liar."

"Right," Dru agreed with a sigh.

Star sulked and balked, but he was thirsty and the smell of running water got him down the
last slope.

"You're sure we're going to be able to get them out of here?" Tiep asked when he and
Hopper were beside the water.

The slope had been steeper than Dru imagined. They'd all had a few sliding, frightening
moments. Dru had wrenched his shoulder keeping Star upright and Hopper was favoring the
hoof he'd cracked before they got to Parnast.

"Well push 'em out one at a time, if we have to. It was here or leave them on the bogs. If
the goblins catch sight of them, they'll eat them all." After emptying one of the forage-filled
nets, Dru handed the green wood poles to Tiep. "Strip them down while I heat the pitch and
dip the rushes."

They had three torches finished when Rozt'a and Sheemzher returned.

"He found it," Rozt'a announced. Dru watched Tiep roll his eyes skyward. "We went down
as far as we could—as far as I could without light. Why Ao made their eyes better than ours is
something I'll never understand."

Dru wound another length of pitch-dripping greenery around the working end of a torch.
Rozt'a wouldn't have given up sunlight or far-sight for all the moonlight in the world, but that
didn't keep her from complaining. He understood the frustration—and a few of the races did
have undisputedly better vision than humans did—but not the goblins. One had only to look at
Sheemzher's watery eyes to know that.

Rozt'a hefted one of the finished torches. She tested the pitch to see if it would light. "We
could take these and check it out, Dru—go down and really see what we're up against before
you're up against midnight decisions."

Druhallen advocated caution. In truth, he was anxious ... afraid. Rozt'a, Sheemzher, even
Tiep were cut from different cloth than he. They were fighters, hunters, or gamblers and
would rather be in the middle of a situation than mapping it from the outside. Dru had
probably done more damage to life and limb than the three of them combined, but always in
reaction. He didn't start fights, didn't deliberately expose himself to danger—

"We won't steal the godsforsaken thing," Rozt'a chided. "We're just going to try to get a
look at it so we can decide how we'll steal it tomorrow ... is that better?"

She tossed her torch Dru's way. He caught it without hesitation.
Tiep grabbed the other two. "Who says we won't steal it?" he asked as he scrambled up
the rocks.

Dru made them wait until he'd checked his folding box and pulled soft rope from their gear.
He wouldn't deny the wisdom in Rozt'a's words—or in Tiep's for that matter. If they could snatch
the scroll, then, by gods, they would, but he wasn't plunging underground without embers enough to
kindle his fire spells five times over and all the rope he could comfortably carry.

Sheemzher's way into Dekanter was a gap in the gray rocks that was generously wide for
him, tight for Rozt'a and Tiep, and downright painful for a man with Druhallen's shoulders. He
went in feet first. When he got stuck, Rozt'a wrapped her arms around his dangling legs and
pulled with all her strength. Druhallen entered the ancient mines of Dekanter with a groan.

Moments later, after he'd kindled a light spell, Dru had forgotten his discomfort. A pair of
gilded symbols had been carved into the squared-off ceiling. He didn't read dwarven script,
but he knew their Dethek runes by sight.

"We've come to the right place."

The goblin set a steady pace. There wasn't time to explore, even when their path took Dru
past side chambers where the Netherese wizards had perfected—or not perfected—their art.
The chambers had been looted—Dru could see that much from the corridor—but debris remained. The
walls of several were covered with the Empire's ancient script.

Dru's head said, keep walking. His heart said, take a moment, read the walls—what harm
can a moment bring? The light spell followed him into a square room.

Woe betide the ... He racked his memory for a translation. Woe betide the moon-eyed
thief...

Rozt'a broke Dru's concentration. "We're in the dark up here. Get a move on. You're the
one with the light."

Dru hurried, caught up. He deliberately hadn't memorized the Candlekeep scrying spell.
He couldn't succumb to the temptation to cast it; that didn't stop the aching. "You don't
understand—" he muttered and quickly swallowed the rest of his private disappointment.

"I don't," Rozt'a agreed. "Galimer would. He'd be wide-eyed beside you, if he wasn't stuck
in Weathercote Wood."

Druhallen nodded. Remembering where Galimer was effectively dashed his curiosity.
"Lead on," he said to the goblin.

Sheemzher led them along sloping corridors. They were moving away from the quarry, at
least Dru thought they were. Over the years, his sense of direction had proven reliable above
ground, but this was his first experience with caverns and mines. He was calm until their
corridor ended at a cross passage. Dru matched the Dethek runes above them with the ones
he'd seen at their entrance. He deduced that the four on the cross-passage ceiling were
directional guides—useless directional guides for a man who could read a Netherese wizard's curse
but not a dwarf's clear-cut runes.

Left or right? He asked himself and was suddenly in the grip of primal terror: They had
torches, but no water, no food. If they made a wrong turn or failed to retrace their steps
accurately, the light spell would eventually fizzle, likewise the torches, and they'd be trapped
in the dark. Dru felt the mountain around him. His heart raced, his lungs labored—The damned
goblin wasn't even looking up at the Dethek runes for guidance!

The light spell revealed Sheemzher standing on his toes in the intersection. He turned
slowly to the right, then to the left. His eyes were shut, his nose was pointed up, his nostrils
were wide, and he sniffed the still air like a dog.

After a few moments of this behavior, he chose the right-side path. "Come," he said.
"Come. Sheemzher remember. This way."

Dru had beaten back his fear—or he thought he had. His feet weren't moving. "You remember
what?" Dru asked, sounding like Tiep. "This can't be the path you followed six years ago, not if you
followed Elva and the Takers underground from that black stone."

"Sheemzher remember smell, good sir. Sheemzher never forget egg-smell. Smell stronger
this way. This way, right way, good sir. Come."

"Bad eyes, good ears," Rozt'a muttered, repeating the common wisdom. "Good nose, too
... I guess ... hope." The light spell made all of them look pale, but Rozt'a's face had no color
at all.

They hadn't gone far when they came to an intersection that offered three choices and
more Dethek runes. Sheemzher took the middle path. Dru committed the runes to memory.
Wizards trained their memories the way warriors sharpened their swords and merchants
counted their coins. They didn't make mistakes—Druhallen of Sunderath didn't make mistakes
when he memorized.

Make a mistake with a fireball and he'd be dead instantly. Make a mistake inside Dekanter
and there'd be time enough for despair.

The mountain was all around Druhallen, pressing inward, interfering with his memory and,
maybe, his judgment. They kept going forward because that was easier than making a
decision to turn back.

The squared-off, rune-marked corridors gave way to rougher, unmarked passages. Newer
passages, Dru thought, and wondered why.

"Not far," Sheemzher announced when they came to another intersection.

They heard that before in Weathercote. This was their eighth crossing, the third with no
runes, the third where they'd followed the straight-ahead path. Dru looked for something ...
anything ... physical to commit to his memory.

He heard something instead, down the left-hand path—garbled sounds that might have been
voices. Sheemzher tugged Dru's sleeve. The goblin's ears were as good as a man's.

"Quick! Quick, good sir!"

"What are they?"

"Demons, good sir," the goblin predictably answered. "Quick!"

Dru called the light close and dimmed it to a firefly spark. They linked hands and trusted
Sheemzher to lead them through the darkness. No one spoke, but they weren't silent. Their
boots clattered on the stone. Rozt'a's sword clattered against her hip. Tiep yelped and Dru
had never heard anything half so loud as the hammering of his heart... until he heard the
sound of pursuit.

Daring a backward glance Dru saw light and shadows behind them. Whatever the demons
were, they didn't have a goblin's dark vision advantage over humankind. Dru planted his feet
and the quartet came to a stop. He fingered his folding box and found a sliver of quartz near
the hinge.

"Roz—What do you think? Stand or run?"

She swore once and whispered her decision: "Stand. Everybody, flat against the wall and
hope they've got to get close before they can start fighting. What about you, Dru? Can you
fire them from here?"

He rubbed the quartz between his fingertips, warming it. "I'd sooner give you an
advantage. By the time I have something to aim fire at, there won't be enough time for me to
blur you."

The blurring spell would make Rozt'a shifty and elusive in the eyes of anyone trying to
attack her. It was like armor, without the weight or encumbrance and usually she welcomed it.

"I'll take my chances."

That wasn't the answer he'd hoped to hear. "There's risk to fire—they might not be against us
until we use it and we could find ourselves with nothing to breathe afterward."

"We're here to steal a golden scroll. Burn them." Rozt'a surged forward to take the point
position in the tunnel.

Druhallen shifted the crystal to his offhand and retrieved a cold ember instead. They
waited in the dark until he saw something he considered more silhouette than shadow.

There—he thought, aiming the spell as an archer would aim an arrow. He felt a prick of icy cold as
it leapt off his fingertips. A magician could track his own spells; a good magician could track the
spells of others. For several heartbeats, the question in Dru's mind was: do they have a good magician
with them?

The answer, when it came, was a resounding No! Blinding light and screams filled the
tunnel. Dru's fireball eliminated an unknown number of their pursuers, but not all of them. His
aim had been slightly off, or his timing—whichever, the magical fire had erupted behind the front
ranks of pursuit. If they hadn't had enemies before, Dru and his companions had them now. The
silhouettes that raced toward them had thrown down their own torches and were lop-sided with
drawn swords.

There was no advantage left in the darkness. Druhallen let his light expand and rise to the
ceiling, then weighed his next move, defense or offense? Blur Rozt'a or throw more fire? He
knew what Rozt'a would say. She'd rather have him take down one of the long-armed
swordswingers coming toward them. Dru could cast a fiery streak with the ember bits that
remained on his fingers after the fireball, and he did, as soon as the kindling power had
flowed back to him.

He aimed for the base of the forefront swordswinger's neck and his head disappeared in a
sphere of flame. The three behind the first never hesitated; that was ominous. They leapt
over their fallen comrade and two of them attacked Rozt'a together.

Dru recovered quickly from the fire spell. He had two more memorized. The angles were
bad now that Rozt'a was fighting. The odds of hitting her were almost as high as hitting one of
her opponents. Dru took aim at their third pursuer, the one hanging back. He'd lost the
advantage of surprise. The fellow dodged and, despite the close range, wound up singed, not
burned.

Rozt'a backpedaled and, for an instant, Druhallen was closer to the attackers' swords than
she was. Using the torch as if it had been the ax shaft he'd left behind, Dru beat steel with
green wood. It was a close call—a chunk of wood went spinning in the air—but Dru survived and
retreated.

He dropped the bit of quartz. There wasn't anything he could do for Rozt'a except prepare
his second and last fireball, in case they attracted more attention. There was something
Sheemzher could do, and he did it well. The goblin scurried forward, low to the floor, and
jabbed his spear at Rozt'a's opponents whenever they tried to get beneath her guard.

Sheemzher didn't draw blood, but he kept the swordswingers off-balance until Rozt'a did.
With a shout and a swallow-tail slash, she disarmed her right-side attacker and made sure
he'd never swing a sword again. The goblin got past Druhallen and finished the wounded
attacker with a thrust and a twist. In that moment, Rozt'a got the upper hand on the other
swordswinger. She put him down with a two-handed cut across the mid-section.

The third attacker—the attacker that Druhallen had singed—beat a retreat. Dru's last fireball burnt
itself out without stopping him.

"I'm whole," Rozt'a declared before anyone asked.

"And I," Dru added. "Sheemzher? Tiep?"

Tiep answered that he was fine. Sheemzher's attention was on the corpses. Druhallen
called the goblin off before he butchered them; then he willed his light magic to its greatest
radiance.

"Demons!"

The goblin was wrong, but the bodies belonged to creatures unlike any Druhallen had
seen before. They had the torsos of men, the limbs of elves, the faces of goblins, and the
jewel-red eyes of Wyndyfarh's mantis servants. The corpses were bald and instead of either
pointed or rounded ears, their skulls bore what appeared to be parchment drumheads behind
their temples. Their skin was a shade lighter than Sheemzher's, but scaled in places,
especially around their hands. They had four fingers, two of which were jointed; the other two
were rigid and opposed like an insect's claws. The pair wore scabbard belts for their weapons
but nothing else in the way of clothing. Short of cutting them open, Dru couldn't tell if they
were male or female.