The Nether Scroll (25 page)

Tiep and Rozt'a packed their gear while he moved the horses to the highest part of the
gully. The animals were balky and Hopper was lame on his cracked hoof. By lightning-light,
Dru examined the damage. Barring a miracle, they were going to lose another horse—another
loyal friend—but that was a problem for after the storm.

He'd guessed it would be bad—everything else had been—but all Dru's years on Faerun's roads
didn't prepare him for the fury of a mountain storm. The wind came from every direction, including
straight down, and pushing walls of rain with it. Thunder became a continuous full-body assault and
the lightning strikes came so fast and bright that Dru's eyes adjusted to their brilliance. He saw his
companions as statues that moved with jerky motions. Conversation was, of course, impossible, and
thought itself was difficult as the weather waged war over their heads.

They had one bit of luck—their gully drained well enough. Water came off the rocks in torrential
streams. It rose to their ankles, but no higher. It was high enough to sweep Sheemzher away from
Dru's side. Between one lightning flash and the next, the goblin latched onto Tiep and Tiep
latched onto Hopper's tail.

Dru's relief was short-lived as a rock the size of his skull glanced off his shoulder. It would
have crushed Sheemzher if the flood water hadn't moved him first, and they'd all have been
flattened if it had been the herald of a larger rock fall such as they'd seen from the High Trail
above the goblin camp.

As they lived it, the storm seemed to last forever. When it had ended, reason said no more
than an hour had passed. The danger would linger until the mountains above them shed their
water, which might be hours or days—Dru didn't know mountain weather well enough to choose.
He was checking Hopper's hoof again and bracing himself to give Rozt'a and Tiep the bad news when
Rozt'a squatted down beside him.

"We're going to have to put the old man down before we leave," she whispered, telling him
before he'd found the words to tell her.

"Does Tiep know?"

"He thinks it's not as bad as it looks." She sighed. "It'll break his heart."

Dru's mind was empty; then he found the words, "I'm ready for that scroll-shop in
Scornubel with a hearth behind and a bedchamber above."

Rozt'a leaned against him. "Whatever you say, as long as it gets us out of here."

Druhallen patted Hopper's leg then stood up, giving Rozt'a a hand as he did. "We'll try the
sentience shield," he said, making the decision on the spot. "Give him grain—all the grain he
wants." He scratched Hopper's long, damp forehead. "They're always hungry; that's what Amarandaris
said. We'll be welcome if we come leading enough food to feed every mouth in sight. Don't panic
when you come up one pair short when you're counting gloves. I'm borrowing them."

"What for?"

"Magic. An enchantment to protect the hands of whoever goes after that golden scroll
next."

"Then you're not borrowing them, are you?"

"No, but I need them."

"Make sure your magic works; that's all I ask."

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

Dekanter

Druhallen awoke with water dripping onto his face. The gods knew how long the drops had
been striking his forehead. He couldn't guess; puddles were everywhere, and his clothes
were as soaked as they'd been when he'd surrendered the watch to Rozt'a.

Rose-gold clouds floated in the east, but the sun hadn't risen and the camp was quiet.
Rozt'a, on watch, acknowledged Dru with a nod, nothing more, when he sat up. The goblin
was still asleep with his arms flung over his eyes, and Tiep was with the horses. There was
no eye contact between them the first time Dru walked by, but when he returned Druhallen
was ready for the sure-to-be-difficult conversation.

Tiep raised his head. He saw Druhallen coming and chose to look at his feet.

"She told me," the youth mumbled.

Dru hitched up his soggy pants and squatted beside Hopper's hindquarters. The hoof
crack had widened overnight. The gelding stood with the affected leg bent and his weight on
his other three hooves. He twitched and whickered plaintively when Druhallen ran a hand
down the bent leg.

Dru was no ranger or druid. He couldn't heal a horse any more than he could heal himself,
but a man who'd lived nine months out of twelve on the road for twenty-odd years learned a
few things about horses and their feet, will he or nil he.

He said, "The old man's hurting."

Tiep wrapped his arms around Hopper's neck and supported the horse's head on his
shoulder. "It'll get better when it dries. I'll take care of him. Hopper trusts me to take care of
him."

"You've earned that trust, and you still have to take care of him. You know what that
means. Hopper's about your age. That's young for a man, but old for a horse. Something like
this was bound to happen."

"I thought we'd give him to a farmer with a fallow field—"

"And you wouldn't have to be there when the time came to put him down."

Dru stood and met Tiep's hurt-angry stare. He held it until the young man looked away
again.

"Isn't there anything you can do? A binding spell to pull the edges together. An
enchantment—"

"No."

"What good are you? What good is magic at all?"

Tiep was an expert when it came to returning pain.

Dru swallowed hard and said, "No good at all this morning." He put an arm around Tiep's
shoulder and let the youth shrug free. "Did Rozt'a tell you the plan?"

"Bastards," Tiep spat. "Cruel, heartless bastards—both of you."

"That's neither true nor fair. You know Hopper's not walking out of these mountains. You
know it, you just don't want to admit it. We could let him go the way Cardinal went or we can
endow a feast down in the quarry and maybe—just maybe—that gets us on the goblins' good side
long enough to get that scroll on its way to Weathercote. Suppose you ask Hopper which way
he'd like to go?"

Tiep shook his head but said nothing.

"You don't have to go into the quarry with us, Tiep. You can stay up here with the gear and
the rest of the animals. Gods know we should set a watch—"

"Isn't that the same as giving him to a farmer?" Tiep's eyes were bright, and his voice was
thick.

Dru nodded. "Except the farmer's not as unpredictable as those goblins are apt to be."

A weak smile lifted Tiep's lips. "If we're going to sacrifice Hopper to get out of this stink-
hole, then I'm going to be there when it happens. The last thing he sees will be me."

"No promises, Tiep. Anything can happen down there. Kicking over a hornet's nest would
be less exciting than leading a ton of meat into Ghistpok's camp."

Druhallen draped an arm around Tiep again. This time the youth didn't shrug him off.

"But you—?" Tiep lifted his chin. "You'll do it, won't you, Dru? You left a place for mercy in your
memory last night, didn't you?"

He nodded. What Tiep and the others called his "mercy" spell was the simple flame spell
he studied most nights. The difference was in the delivery. No one asked him how it felt to
cast fire into an animal's skull. They didn't want to know. "The old man won't suffer," Dru said
softly; he'd see to that. "Go tell Rozt'a that you're coming down to the quarry with us. See if
there's anything she wants you to do."

Tiep gave him a penetrating, slit-eyed stare. "Yeah. Sure. I get it."

Perhaps, he did. Tiep disentangled himself from Dru's arm without another word, leaving
Dru alone with the old horse. This wouldn't be the first time, of course—there'd been Cardinal
just a few days ago and more than he could readily count in the years previous—but "mercy" was
never easy. He leaned into a horse-scented mane and revisited the past until he felt a tug on his
sleeve.

"Good woman sad. That one sad. Good sir sad. Sheemzher ask, why sad. Sheemzher
show way. Way good. People good. Why all sad?"

Dru looked down and tried not to resent the interruption. "Hopper's cracked a hoof. It
started on the way into Parnast. We should have had him shod as soon as we got there, but
never got to it. Rock like this is rough on their hooves at the best of times and Hopper's an old
man among horses. All the rain we've had, especially last night. Standing in all that water the
way he was, it got worse in a hurry."

The goblin clutched his hands behind his back and crouched to examine Hopper's injury.
"So little?"

"That's all it takes for a horse. You could hop, or use a crutch, but Hopper needs all four
legs, all the time. If we were somewhere else, maybe we could nurse him along, but he'd stay
lame, and we're here, not somewhere else."

"Sacrifice, good sir? That one says, we're going to sacrifice Hopper to get out of this stink-
hole. Sheemzher understand stink-hole. What be sacrifice, good sir?"

Druhallen pushed damp hair back from his forehead. He studied the risen sun and the
crystal flecks in the nearest gray boulder. "Sacrifice is doing what hurts in the hope that
everything will turn out right in the end."

"Hurt good sir or hurt Hopper?"

"If the good sir doesn't hurt, Sheemzher, then it's not much of a sacrifice."

Sheemzher reached up to scratch his head. They both noticed he was carrying a
somewhat soggy chunk of bread.

"For you, good sir. Good woman says, That damn sack leaked again and we lost two
loaves. Eat it quick or it'll go to waste."

Dru took his breakfast. The first bite tasted about as good as it looked. "Tell her, Thanks.
Now. Tell her now."

The goblin gave him the same look Tiep had given him and went off to brighten Rozt'a's
morning. Dru ate the bread—no telling when he'd eat again, except it wouldn't be down in the
quarry.

They were ready by the time the sun was an hour above the eastern mountain crest.
Druhallen thought they'd have trouble getting Hopper out of the gully, but they took it slow
and Hopper placed each hoof, even the cracked one, with exquisite care. He wasn't the
brightest horse ever foaled, nor the strongest, nor most handsome, but he was steady,
reliable, and above all else, he trusted them completely.

Hopper balked at the top of the spiraling quarry steps. Dru had worried about them, too,
but the steps had been carved ages ago by dwarves, not goblins. Considerably wider than
they were high, the Dekanter steps were proportioned so that legs and feet of many sizes—
dwarves, goblins, men and even horses—could find a comfortable stride.

Midway down the first stairway they were noticed by the goblin camp. The same high-
pitched keening that had heralded the hunters' return yesterday echoed off the granite. A
column of perhaps twenty goblins snaked out of the camp. They met the column at the
bottom of the third-tier steps.

Their escort was made up entirely of male goblins, all toting spears and all lean to the
point of emaciation. Amarandaris hadn't been exaggerating about the food situation at
Dekanter. The Parnast refugees had more flesh on their bones than Ghistpok's elite. The
refugees were better dressed, too—which said something about Parnast charity but wasn't truly
surprising. Goblins weren't craftsmen. They might weave a reed basket or two, but not cloth. Goblin
society, such as it was, depended on trade, raid, and outright theft. When Amarandaris backed away
from Dekanter, he'd destroyed its prosperity and condemned it to dwindling rags.

Dru had calculated pure, physical hunger into his strategy, but he'd underestimated the
effect that leather boots and whole cloth could have on desperate minds.

Grimy hands tugged his sleeves. One bold fool reached for his belt. He swatted the pest
away and told them all firmly to keep their distance.

"Lead us to Ghistpok. We've come to talk to Ghistpok."

The goblins squabbled among themselves, and one whose rags were a bit more
extensive, if in no better overall condition, barked goblin language at Sheemzher.

"That one," Sheemzher said, pointing at Druhallen. "Speak that one."

The escort leader brandished his spear a handspan in front of Sheemzher's nose and
shouted more goblin-speak. Dru couldn't understand a word, but he got the meaning easily
enough. Ghistpok's goblins didn't speak the Heartlands' dialect, or, more likely, they wouldn't
speak it.

Peculiarities aside, Sheemzher spoke the Heartlands' dialect well enough and without
Wyndyfarh's faintly foreign inflection, which implied that he'd learned humankind's common
language here, in Dekanter. As Sheemzher should have learned it in Dekanter. A race could
scarcely be called sentient if it didn't teach its children a useful dialect of humankind's trade
language. Humankind shared Toril with many sentient races but outnumbered all of them
together. There were sentients who didn't speak the trade-tongue, but Druhallen was quite
confident that Amarandaris hadn't stooped to yips and snarls when he told Ghistpok to stop
the warfare and raiding.

Of course, Ghistpok hadn't stooped either.

Before he started lording himself over Ghistpok's goblins, Dru wisely remembered that
these scrawny ragpickers had survived the loss of at least three Zhentarim groups.
Amarandaris had shut down Dekanter's slave market and relocated the Dawn Pass Trail
rather than lose more men ... or take the sort of revenge for which the Zhentarim were justly
infamous.

Dru caught himself staring at the goblin who shouted at Sheemzher and asking himself if
the ragged stranger's eyes were a little too large and red, his fingers a little too long? And
could those marks on his face be scales, not scars?

"Sheemzher, your relatives don't seem to want to speak to us. Have we got a problem?"
he asked when the tirade showed no signs of ending. "Should we take our gifts and leave in a
hurry?"

He watched the Dekanter goblins, looking for signs that they understood what he'd said.
The signs were there: hands moving along a spear's shaft, quick glances exchanged
between goblins, and longer glances at Hopper's flanks. They understood what he'd said,
and they'd stopped speaking to men. Were they angry that the Zhentarim had disbanded the
slave market, thereby depriving them of whatever goblins called luxuries?

Were they angry enough to kill? Amarandaris hadn't implicated Ghistpok's goblins in the
massacres, but was believing Amarandaris any wiser than believing goblins?

Probably not.

The strongest wind blowing through Dekanter was confusion—the breakdown of goblin life
as it had been lived for generations. Sheemzher confirmed Dru's perspective when he said. "Many
changes here, good sir. New people. New ways. Sheemzher listen, learn. No problems, good sir. No
hurry. Sheemzher follow Outhzin. Good sir, all follow Sheemzher. Ghistpok soon."

The goblin with the biggest rag collection was Outhzin and Outhzin led them across the
quarry bottom. Dru had the sense that Outhzin thought he was in command. Outhzin could
perhaps count twenty spears against three swords and was entitled to his opinion. Dru
thought otherwise, but wasn't about to prove it; though he had fire, blur, and his pall of gloom
literally on his fingertips.

The procession was quiet as long as they were on the steps, but once they reached the
quarry bottom Ghistpok's goblins formed a circle around them and with words and obscene
gestures made clear their fascination with Rozt'a.

The harassment came to a head when one of them—the same goblin who'd reached for Dru's
folding box—darted into the circle and grabbed at Rozt'a's thigh. She backhanded her attacker, lifting
him off his feet. By the time he stopped moving, he was on his rump and nearly six feet from where
he'd started.

The procession stopped as half the goblins laughed and the rest leveled their spears.
Rozt'a drew her sword.

"Druhallen—?" she called, making sure he was ready to back her up.

"I'm ready," he replied and brushed his right hand along his left sleeve, plucking a cold
ember from the cloth before he drew his sword partway from its scabbard.

The fallen goblin bounded to his feet. He snarled something at his companions that
quieted them, then he pointed his spear at Rozt'a's gut.

"Tell him, if he takes one step toward me, I'll kill him. Tell him he needn't worry what
happens next, because he'll be dead."

Sheemzher dutifully translated and added, "That one young, good woman. That one claim
good woman. Good woman belong that one. Mistake, yes?"

"Belong to him!" Rozt'a sputtered. "Is he out of his mind?"

"Sheemzher not know, good woman."

"Well, you tell him—you tell all of them that I've got a good husband and a bad temper."

Some of the goblins chuckled before Sheemzher translated a word, confirming Dru's
suspicion that they understood the language they wouldn't speak. The instigator goblin wasn't
laughing, or lowering his spear.

"When you're done with that, Sheemzher," Dru said loudly, "tell everyone that I'm her
husband and that my temper is worse."

He drew the sword and held it the way he'd have held one of his axe shafts. The stance
must have been convincing. The instigator stood down, and they were moving again.