The Nether Scroll

3

30 Eleasias, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR) 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."

Dru understood the words but not their meaning. "I'll mind the path and the light," he assured the codger and kept going.

Beyond the fields the path became a track through wild-flower meadows. Dru thought about the wood-gatherer. If the codger's words had any meaning, then men who weren't wizards shouldn't enter the Wood and those who were should stick to the path. But the codger hadn't gathered his kindling on the meadow side of the brook, which left Dru wondering about the Parnasters themselves.

As far as he knew, the Dawn Pass Trail was as old as men and had always skirted the Greypeaks. It had connected the ancient Netheril Empire, now lost beneath the Anauroch sands, with the Sea of Swords to the west and the Moonsea to the south. Whenever Parnast had been founded, it would have seemed reasonable for the village to have grown up where the trail divided rather than a half-day's journey to the west. It would have been typical of the Zhentarim to re-found the village at that more useful place once they'd come to dominate the area. Gods knew, the Zhentarim weren't averse to uprooting villages for their own convenience.

Sememmon might possess the least brutal reputation among the Zhentarim princes, but that was damning the master of Darkhold with faint praise. Amarandaris would burn the village and march the survivors to oblivion, if Sememmon twitched in that direction. It was that threat of annihilation that gave most Zhentarim villages their bitter, weary atmosphere-an atmosphere notably absent in Parnast. It was as if the Parnasters tolerated the Zhentarim, rather than the other way around.

What would have enabled a few farmers to bind the Black Network to good behavior?

The path cleared a hilltop. Weathercote Wood burst into sight, a lush wall of greenery on the far side of a brook which this late in summer scarcely needed a bridge. On the Parnast side the bridge came down in a gravel-filled ditch. On the Weathercote side, there was untrampled grass and nary a hint of a path.

The light, apparently, was wrong.

Bathing was impossible in the shrunken brook, but Druhallen could, and did, kneel in the delightfully frigid water. With no one watching, he splashed himself until he was soaked to the skin. During the past three days he'd sworn that he'd never complain about cold again, but it wasn't long-not more than a quarter-hour-before he was shivering and headed back to the patch of sunlight where he'd left his boots, belt, and folding box.

Dru watched the forest while the sun dried the clothes on his back. Once, hundreds of black birds took flight at one swoop. They cast a shadow across the sun, but there was nothing magical about crows raiding the grain fields. After the crows, the Wood erupted with a locust racket and, for a moment, Druhallen suspected magic. He rose… took a step toward the bridge…

The bugs fell silent.

The light wasn't right.

He gave the Wood until mid-morning to reveal its magic. Locusts racketed a few more times and once, when his attention had wandered a bit, a fox poked its head through the thicket. But before Dru could get a better look, it had vanished.

Dru headed back to the village; Weathercote could keep its secrets. Nearing the palisade, he heard shouting and the unmistakable honk of camels: a caravan had followed the storm off the Anauroch. Druhallen quickened his pace, but stopped short once he was through the gate.

Until that moment, Dru would have guessed that a desert caravan held a dozen camels, perhaps as many as twenty. Instead, there were easily twice that-the exact number was impossible to count-each with a pair of desert-dressed handlers and a merchant retinue, and all of them were shouting. Parnast's single street and the courtyard between the charterhouse and its stable had been transformed into chaos incarnate.

A few men, quieter than the rest and dressed in cleaner clothes, made themselves obvious. They were the Zhentarim inspectors, checking every pack and purse, making sure that their master and, especially, they themselves got a cut of the loot.

Loot there was. The riches of Anauroch and the east were on display beneath the Parnast sun: carpets and tapestries, carved sandalwood chests, and brass hammered into shapes both functional and fantastic. Amarandaris would lay claim to the best, but he couldn't keep it all and, like as not, neither he nor his men would find the rarest, the most precious objects the desert had yielded up.

That meant there'd be merchants looking to get out of Parnast as quickly as possible with hired magic that didn't dance to the Zhentarim tune.

Druhallen looked about for Galimer's golden hair and found Rozt'a instead. Their bodyguard was perched on the courtyard fence, absorbed in animated conversation with another leather-clad, sword-wearing woman. She waved as Dru walked by, but didn't invite him over and he didn't intrude.

There were few enough women living Rozt'a's life. When Rozt'a met one, she tended to embrace the woman as a long-lost sister, even if they'd never met before. It was just another of the many things Dru didn't understand about the woman who'd wanted to marry him.

He spotted Tiep. The youth's wild, dark curls were unmistakable amid a clutch of desert-wrapped heads hunkered within a ring of rope-bound chests and knotted sacks. Dru knew what they were doing before Tiep's fist shot up. As best Druhallen could figure, Tiep had learned to throw a pair of dice before he'd learned to walk. The youth knew the rules and strategy of every game played for money. Dru was certain Tiep cheated-luck simply couldn't account for his winnings-but he'd never been able to catch him, and neither had anyone else.

Another slow turn on his heels and Dru still hadn't found Galimer. If his partner wasn't part of the courtyard throng, then he'd already decided which merchant had the most to offer and was inside the charterhouse negotiating over tea and wine. Dru had no intention of interrupting that discussion, either, but he wanted an advance look at whatever had caught Gal's eye. He was halfway to the porch when an unfamiliar voice hailed him from behind.

"Druhallen! Druhallen of Sunderath!"

There was very little about the lord of Parnast that set him apart from other men. Of average height, weight, and coloring, his appearance was easy to describe, easier to forget. It wasn't until he'd closed the distance between them that his dark, predatory eyes became noticeable.

Dru held out his hand, demanding a peer's greeting, which brought a one-beat hesitation to Amarandaris's forward progress, but the Zhentarim lord recovered quickly. He clasped Dru's right hand in his own and swung his left arm out for a hearty shoulder clap which guided Dru toward the eastern end of the porch.

"Druhallen-you're just the man I've been looking for!"

A sharp sting, like that of an insect, only very cold, penetrated Dru's shirt. Another man-a man with no magical talent or training-might have shrugged and kept going. Druhallen knew he'd been touched by superficial spellcraft, probably from one of the many rings Amarandaris wore. Dru himself wore such a magic-probing ring on the middle finger of his right hand. Twisting that hand, he brought the bit of metal to bear above the veins of Amarandaris's wrist.

He learned nothing from the exercise that he didn't already know. Amarandaris was a wizard of middling skill. Most Zhentarim of any stature were at least that good with the craft.

As was Druhallen himself, which Amarandaris should have known, since he'd known about Sunderath.

"We need to talk, Dru," Amarandaris said loudly enough to be overheard, if there'd been anyone else on the porch.

"Let's go inside," Dru replied, leaning toward the double doors to the common room.

Amarandaris clamped his fingers over Dru's wrist. "Upstairs."

Druhallen had the physical strength and, perhaps, the magical strength to escape. He grinned broadly, like a dog baring its teeth, to let Amarandaris know that he'd be polite, but not coerced. The Zhentarim lord returned the grin and released the captive wrist, though he kept a hand on Dru's shoulder.

"I was told to expect a stubborn man," Amarandaris said, pushing Dru ahead of him.

That wasn't anything Dru wanted to hear from a Zhentarim wizard-and he didn't think of himself as particularly stubborn. Cautious. A man who was honest and wise needed to be cautious when dealing with men like Amarandaris. If Dru had been a stubborn man, he would have insisted that Amarandaris precede him up the stairs.

Amarandaris's retreat covered the third floor of the charterhouse, a level that could not be seen from the ground.

From its porch, Amarandaris could see the Greypeaks, Weathercote Wood, and the distant yellow haze of the desert. Two human men sat with their backs to a wall and their faces toward the stairway. They were on their feet with their weapons drawn when Dru first noticed them.

At a word from Amarandaris, they sat again on benches flanking a single door. Dru stepped aside-he would get stubborn before he'd open the door to another mage's private quarters. Amarandaris flashed another grin, released the latch, and pulled the door open.

"Be welcome."

The Zhentarim lord lived comfortably above the charterhouse: upholstered furniture, plush carpets, an abundance of colored glass, gold, and silver. Maps hung on every wall, more detailed than most Dru had seen and speckled with knowledge the Zhentarim rarely, if ever, shared. He squinted for a glimpse of Weathercote. The Wood was speckled with yellow and black dots whose meaning wasn't obvious.

Sheets of parchment covered Amarandaris's ebony desk. Three abacuses, each one with a different arrangement of wire and beads, sat on the parchment. A checkered counting cloth was folded in one corner and a set of inkwells sat in another. The inkwells were gilded and sat in a crystal base, but they were functional and well used. Amarandaris worked as hard as any honest man.

On a side table a sparkling sphere kept the air moving and kept it fresh as well-no desert grit rasping Amarandaris's throat or disrupting his sleep. Beside the sphere was an enameled tray with a matching ewer and two exquisite blown-glass goblets.

Amarandaris filled a goblet with wine from the ewer. He offered it to Druhallen.

"Sit," the Zhentarim suggested, indicating the largest of his upholstered chairs. "Make yourself comfortable."

Dru accepted the goblet without drinking from it and refused the invitation to sit. Amarandaris filled the second goblet and tapped its lip against Druhallen's before repeating his request:

"Sit down, man."

"What do you want?" Dru grumbled as he sat in a different chair. He sipped the wine. It was sweet, fruity, and definitely not local. Poisoned? Not likely; Amarandaris wouldn't be going through his gracious-host rituals if he'd had poison on his mind.

"Word is that you want to go to Dekanter."

That was hardly a secret. The merchants they'd failed to meet could have told Amarandaris that much.

"Until this year the Dawn Pass Trail did wend that way."

"Last year," Amarandaris corrected. He settled in another chair, a twin to Druhallen's except that it stood behind the desk. "Why Dekanter? It's far from the roads you've been working-the roads you worked with Bitter Ansoain."

Druhallen shrugged. He'd never heard that epithet before, but remembered how Ansoain would rant after she'd had too much to drink. It fit, and failed to intimidate him. "Why Dekanter?" he repeated, mimicking Amarandaris's tone. "Why not? It's old. It's our history, not dwarves or elves."

"Yes." The word flowed slowly out of Amarandaris's mouth, like the hissing of a large snake. "Very human. One never knows what will turn up at Dekanter. I hear you're looking for something very specific."

Despite himself, Dru stiffened. "An answer: How did she die?"

"Oh, come now, Druhallen. We all know how Bitter Ansoain died. You and Longfingers made sure of that. And we know that the Red Wizards killed her; don't tell me you don't know that, too. Would you like to know why?"

Dru forced himself to relax with another shrug. "There was more to that bride than we knew-or something in her dowry. Or her Hlondeth suitor changed his mind."

"Let's say he'd incurred debts of a most unpleasant kind, and that he kept his side of the bargain."

Air escaped Dru's lungs. So the Zhentarim named Galimer's mother Bitter Ansoain. So they knew more about her death than he'd been able to learn after all these years. So they'd kept track of him and Galimer and passed that knowledge along to a man like Amarandaris in a village like Parnast, where Dru had never been before. So what? Ansoain herself had said: Assume the Zhentarim know everything that happens and live your life accordingly.

"I pity the girl. May I assume there was a girl? We never saw her."

"A pity," Amarandaris agreed. "You're not looking for her, are you? Not thinking that you can rescue a fair, ill-fated maiden?"

Dru shook his head. "We weren't headed for Thay."

"But you're looking for Thay at Dekanter, yes?"

That was, of course, exactly what Druhallen hoped to find, though he'd scarcely admit it. "For treasure… Netherese artifacts."

"A glass disk? A focusing lens? Something that might explain how the Thayans ambushed you or how they control their minions while they're casting spells?"

Their eyes met and locked. To be sure, Druhallen had talked about the disk since arriving in Parnast, but only in their room where he'd laid a ring of wards. He wasn't fool enough to think his wards were proof against Zhentarim spying, but Dru did believe that no one could have compromised his wards without his knowledge and he knew, even as he sat staring at his wine, that his spells were intact.

Of course, his intentions need not have been discovered by magic. Any one of his partners might have talked out of turn. Dru suspected only one of them. If he'd had the power to be in two places at once, the second place would have been in the corner of the courtyard where Tiep gambled, and he would have thrashed the boy without mercy. If Dru had had that power, which he didn't. He was rooted in one place, in Amarandaris's place, and the Zhentarim with the unmemorable face was asking close-to-the-bone questions.

"If you know to ask the question, you know the answer."

"I don't suppose you'd sell it to me?"

Dru set his goblet on the desk and shook his head.

"At least allow me a look at it. I know Dekanter, Druhallen. I know what's been found there in the last two decades… and I know who's found it."

"If you knew everything that's been found and everyone who found it, there'd be no need to buy my disk."

Amarandaris refilled Dru's goblet. "I'm prepared to pay quite handsomely. We're prepared, that is. A year's profit, I'd say; a year for all three of you." He held the glass out.

"Then it must not be important. I've never heard of the Zhentarim paying handsomely or otherwise for anything you truly wanted."

"Stubborn," Amarandaris repeated and set the goblet down. "Very stubborn. Name your price, Druhallen. Walk out of here with something to show for your efforts."

"My life?" Dru stood up. "My friends' lives? If you know so much about me, Amarandaris, you know I'm not going to bite your bait. I walk out of here with what's mine, or I don't-and I'm not talking about an antique."

"Sit, Druhallen. Sit down. Nothing's going to happen to you or your partners."

Amarandaris's predatory eyes searched Dru's face. He held himself calm and the eyes blinked, the man sighed.

"Stubborn?" Amarandaris mused, as if there were a third party in the room, which was always a possibility. "Stubborn or ignorant? Perhaps if you understood more about our situation-and it is our situation, Druhallen-you'd find it easier to cooperate. Let me start at the beginning; we're the newcomers in this corner of the world. The Netheril Empire was founded five thousand years ago out there in what's now the Anauroch desert. Four thousand years ago, a Netherese explorer by the name of Dekanter found the mines that bear his name. The Empire hired dwarves to extract gold, iron, silver, mercury, and platinum, not to mention the finest black granite in the Western Heartlands from the Dekanter Mines."

"I knew all that," Dru complained, "except for the mercury."

"Then I'll jump ahead a thousand years. The ore veins are empty and no one in the Empire wants or needs granite because they're all living in cities that float through the clouds. The dwarves have packed up their picks and the mines are gathering dust when a Netherese archmage reduces his floating city to falling pebbles."

"We'd call the city 'Sunrest'," Druhallen repeated the name he'd learned at Candlekeep. "The proper Netherese pronunciation eludes me, but I know the letters. I could write it down for you."

Amarandaris sat back in his chair. "No doubt you could and no doubt you know that for the rest of the Empire's long life, Dekanter was the place-the only place-where Netheril's mages did serious research and made their mistakes. Think about that for a moment, Dru-may I call you Dru? A veritable honeycomb of wizards. A Netherese Elminster in one corner, a Manshoon in another, and a Halaster holed up down the hall. Its been nearly two thousand years since the floating cities crashed but if your friends at Candlekeep tried to sell you a map of Dekanter, I'm here to tell you it's worthless."

Dru's hand dropped to his belt before he could resist the impulse to move it. The scryer had given, not sold, him such a map.

"Burn it," the Zhentarim advised. "Forget you ever looked at it. The Mines change every time it rains-and it rains all the time at Dekanter. Passages open and close. Things appear… and disappear. Sometimes we find bones; sometimes a corpse that's warm and soft. Sometimes we recognize them, most of the time we don't, not by several thousand years. The Netherese played with time and space, Druhallen, and they didn't trust their neighbors. Dekanter's haunted, my friend, and that's just the beginning."

Amarandaris sipped his wine, waiting for Dru's reaction which came in the form of a quiet question.

"The Red Wizards of Thay-?"

"— Were the Red Wizards of Mulhorand until a few hundred years ago, and Mulhorand was there the day Netheril died. Do you think you're the first man who's tried to connect Red Wizard magic with Netheril?"

"I never gave it much thought," Druhallen admitted. "I've wanted vengeance for Ansoain, and I want to know how they beat us so easily. Beyond that, I didn't talk about it much-" except to his partners. "After a few quiet years, I didn't think anyone cared-the Zhentarim, the Red Wizards, anyone at all."

"We always care about trade, Druhallen, and the safety of the roads. It's very simple. My associates have watched you indulge your hunches since Bitter Ansoain died. We know you found an artifact, taught yourself the script of Netheril, and nearly beggared yourself at Candlekeep-you should have come to us, Dru, gold would have flowed your way. But Candlekeep couldn't answer your questions-or ours. We suspect-we strongly suspect-that you left Candlekeep with a spell that will connect your disk with Dekanter and the Red Wizards of Thay."

Dru squeezed the goblet stem and nearly broke it. Tiep wouldn't be so lucky. It had to have been Tiep who'd mouthed off. The boy didn't understand how magic worked and was constantly underestimating, or overestimating, a spell's effects.

"Of course, you've worked alone, in secret, trusting no one with your suspicions-especially the Zhentarim."

The Zhentarim had told a joke; Dru forced himself to crack a smile. "Especially the Zhentarim-for all the good it seems to have done me."

"I'd say it's done you a world of good, Druhallen of Sunderath."

Amarandaris picked up a folded scrap of parchment and scaled it across the desk. The sheepskin was blank at first, then a bold, elegant script emerged from a minor enchantment. Though the letters were common, the language was not. Dru couldn't make sense of more than one word in ten, and most of those were his own name.

"He takes a personal interest in your progress," Amarandaris said before Druhallen had finished extracting what little he could from the script. "If I were a wagering man, which I'm not, I'd wager that he knew Ansoain before she was quite so bitter."

He was almost certainly Sememmon, Lord of Darkhold, and the author of the letter in Druhallen's hand.

"She didn't talk much about her past," Dru said and laid the parchment on the desk.

"Not many of us do," Amarandaris agreed. "Now, can we get back to business, my friend? Your arrival is not unexpected, but it comes at an awkward time. We, that is the Zhentarim, find ourselves besieged-"

"My condolences-"

"Are unnecessary. Just now I cannot guarantee your safety in Dekanter, and, as you can perhaps guess, I'm obligated to guarantee it. If it were only the Red Wizards taking advantage of-shall we say some disruption in our regular trade between here and Zhentil Keep on the Moonsea… well, I know I can count on you against the Red Wizards. Unfortunately, the Wizards are the least of Dekanter's problems-or Zhentil Keep's."

The Zhentarim paused and shuffled the papers on his desk.

"It's Beshaba's backside in Dekanter, Druhallen. War… below the ruins. We had a good trade set up: a few artifacts, some fur and feathers from the interior Greypeaks, and a steady supply of starving goblins. They breed like vermin and never have enough food. We dealt with Ghistpok and Ghistpok dealt with the Beast Lord. There's always a Ghistpok on the ground above Dekanter. Ghistpok means chief, or something similar in their language. Ghistpok would sell his own children to the highest bidder, and I imagine that he has more than once."

"Spare me the moral indignation, friend. I've got no love for the goblin-kin, but they're no worse than humankind when it comes to buying and selling their own."

Amarandaris tipped his glass, acknowledging the insult. "If Ghistpok's selling his children today, he's not selling them to us. When I came to Parnast twenty years ago, common wisdom was that the Beast Lord was a minor beholder, a very minor beholder. The goblins worshiped him as their god, and the Zhentarim made the usual offerings to keep the peace and maintain our market. Things started changing about seven years ago. Little things-new Beast-Lord rituals. Raiding parties. War parties."

Only the Zhentarim would describe war as a "little thing."

"The Dekanter goblins are fierce; the males are, anyway. Maybe it's their Beast Lord cult, maybe it's the water. Get 'em fired up, point them at your enemy, and they won't quit until they're all dead. In a real fight, goblins last about an hour; demand for goblin war-slaves, as you can imagine, is steady. In Dekanter, Ghistpok's tribe got greedy. They wiped out the other clans, at least the males. The females, the children-they took to the mountains."

Amarandaris took another sip of wine and topped off his goblet. "Look around you. Parnast's always had a few goblins. Only a few because, well-" He made a helpless gesture. "This is a free village, Dru. Oh, some of the merchants who come through here peddle flesh on the side and not every scut-driver is on wages, but there's no slave market here. No buying or selling, not of men, or elves, or dwarves-not even goblins. That, my friend, was Dekanter's function; we do other trade here."

Dru thought of the Weathercote dots, but now was not the time for curiosity or interruptions.

"Suddenly, we've got refugees-goblin females with their children. The farmers made room at first, but a few became many became the plague you see around us now. Three years ago I went down to Dekanter myself to have a word with Ghistpok. I'd have had a word with the Beast Lord, too, if I could have found him. End the raiding, stop the warfare or else. Ghistpok groveled good, and a month later, our garrison got slaughtered as it slept and two cart trains under our protection never got to Yarthrain. You may imagine I suffered the loss personally. I went down to Dekanter with forty men and a taste for vengeance.

"Ghistpok swore it wasn't him, that demons came out of the ground. They hauled away half his men and all the garrison. He said he prayed to the Beast Lord but by the time the Beast Lord showed up, it was too late. Then he hauled out the last of my men to back him up. The poor fellow was half-dead, but he said the attack was undead and magic. Zombies and ghouls came out of a black fog and left the same way. I put him to the test, to see if his story held up, because zombies aren't demons and my man didn't know why there were no corpses or graves. The test killed him, but the story held. You recognize parts of the tale, don't you, Druhallen?"

Reluctantly, Dru nodded. "Red Wizards. They used a black fog on Vilhon Reach. There were corpses, though-parts of them."

"I thought so, too. I rebuilt the garrison, even armed the goblins and paid tribute to the Beast Lord. The next year they caught a passel of Red Wizards red-handed. My man in Dekanter sent a messenger up the trail with the good news. I went down to do the interrogation myself. This time there were corpses-parts of them. Ghistpok swore my men had turned on one another until not one was whole or standing. The goblins had looted the garrison, of course, but they'd left my dead alone.

"They're a strange breed. Ghistpok's goblins. They said my men had become demons before they died. Goblins are always starving; they'll eat anything, including their own dead, but not anything they call 'demon.' They won't touch a demon, not even to bury it. It's a cult thing, something to do with transformation and deformity. The Beast Lord doesn't tolerate imperfection."

"What about the Wizards?" Dru asked.

"We found bits of them mixed in with the rest. Tattoos, you know. If I believed Ghistpok, whatever possessed my men to kill each other possessed the Wizards, too."

"And did you believe Ghistpok?"

Amarandaris stared into his goblet. "Not until I'd lost another garrison and two more cart trains. I cut my losses and moved the trail. Didn't help with the goblins. They're still descending on us. I interrogate them-or have my men do it for me. Interrogating a goblin is like asking a four-year-old who stole the cream. They're still talking about demons and how Ghistpok's tribe raids everyone else. They're taking males and females now. The gods know what they're doing with them, because there's no slave trade at Dekanter any more."

"Sounds like you've had some difficult explaining to do down in Darkhold," Dru said after a sip of wine.

"Not yet." Amarandaris's smile was thin and anxious. "As I said, it's been a bad year, especially at Zhentil Keep. You're not hearing me say this, but Manshoon and the Council have upped stakes and moved to the Citadel of the Raven, northwest of Zhentil Keep. The dust hasn't settled, but it will and in the same patterns as before."

"Good for the Black Network, bad for you."

Another anxious smile flitted across Amarandaris's face. "That caravan outside is the first of two that will arrive today."

When Dru raised his eyebrows, Amarandaris pointed toward a window where a polished spyglass was mounted in a splendid brass-and-wood frame.

"Another the day after tomorrow, and two the day after that. I don't mind mules and I don't mind oxen, but I tell you, two camels is one too many and several score of them is insanity. I'll be busy, but in, say, a week everything will be sorted out. The camels will be gone, mules will be headed west, and carts will be rolling south. You'll be with the carts, and so will I. We'll travel together-you and your partners, I and all the men I can spare. When we come to the turn-off, the carts will go down the new trail while the rest of us will take the old one to Dekanter. There's no other way to get there, Druhallen, not for you when I have to guarantee your safety to my superiors."

Dru uttered an oath he'd learned from his eldest brother.

"Perhaps that fate awaits us all," Amarandaris replied without blinking. "But not by my will. Not by the will of my lord at Darkhold. I only want the results, Dru." Amarandaris spread empty hands on the table. "Keep the spell. Just let me share what you learn when you cast it. Give me something useful to take to Darkhold."

"Can't help you, Amarandaris. My advice is, Get a necromancer if you want to know what's been killing your muscle." Dru stood the goblet on Amarandaris's desk. He headed for the door. "Thanks for the warnings though. I'll tell Galimer Longfingers what you've said and that I think we should leave Parnast the way we came."

Amarandaris looked as if he'd just found half a worm in his apple. "I've made you good offers, Druhallen. Think hard. We'll talk again before you leave."

Druhallen marched down the stairs with his heart pounding in his throat. Although Dru's conversation with Amarandaris had touched many sensitive subjects and proved that the Zhentarim had been watching over their shoulders for a good many years, Druhallen was convinced they'd gotten their best information from someone who should have known better. Dru poked his head into the commons, hoping to see Galimer alone at a table, but his friend was elsewhere. From the porch, he scanned the courtyard, looking for Tiep. Lady Luck was watching out for her orphans; despite a thorough search of the yard, Tiep's dark curls were nowhere to be found.

Druhallen was behind the stables by then and rather than wade through the throng a second time, he took the long way home, following the timber palisade and rehearsing the words he'd use to recount his conversation with Amarandaris and his suspicions regarding Tiep.

The palisade path was shadowed and empty. Dru walked quickly, his mind on other things, until a squeal of dire pain halted him. The sound was repeated, louder and more desperate. A pig meeting the butcher, he thought. Parnast had absorbed one caravan since sunrise and another was on the way. The kitchen kettles would be hungry.

He continued a few steps, but the shrieking continued. A butcher wouldn't let an animal suffer; it soured the meat. Druhallen detoured into a maze of sheds and alleys. There was laughter, now, with the squealing. He'd loosened his knife and composed his mind for spellcasting before he came to a wide spot where a handful of men-most of them yellowed with the dust of Anauroch-had gathered at the open door of a chicken coop. The squeals came from within the coop, but no bird made them.

"What's happening here?" Dru asked the nearest man.

"Caught the bastard red-handed."

Never mind that he'd been planning to pound some sense into his foster-son, Dru's immediate concern was that Tiep had gotten caught and, whatever he'd done-even if it were a hanging offense-no one deserved the pain and terror radiating from the chicken coop. Dru shouldered his way to the open door and looked inside.

Not Tiep. Not Tiep.

With the dust and feathers and shadows, Druhallen couldn't be sure what the men were doing but their prey was smaller than Tiep. And, if it wasn't Tiep then, strictly speaking, it wasn't Dru's problem. Some of the men around the coop-perhaps all of them-were Zhentarim of one stripe of the other. With Amarandaris making veiled threats, Dru didn't want or need to get involved with Zhentarim justice. A man couldn't fight every battle or right every wrong The victim broke free. About the size of a goat, it charged toward the doorway's freedom and collided with Druhallen, who was blocking it. He looked down: a battered and bleeding half-grown goblin clung to his leg.

"Kick it back over here," one of the batterers commanded.

An ugly, little face, made uglier by blood and bruises, peered up at him.

Point of fact: Druhallen didn't much like youngsters of any species. If he'd known that Rozt'a wasn't going to produce any, he might have agreed to marry her. Children, though, didn't sense his prejudice. They flocked to him like ants to honey. Smudge-faced, aromatic offspring would run away from their mothers for a chance to tug on his sleeve or ask him inarticulate questions. Every time it happened, he felt the urge to pick the little pest up by the neck and toss it into next week… and every time he resisted the urge.

He resisted it again.

"You've made your point," he said in his sternest voice.

"We ain't yet," a different man complained. "It's still alive."

Goblins weren't unnatural creatures. They were male and female, like humans, elves, chickens or goats-though from what Dru could see, he didn't know if he was risking his life for a boy-goblin or a girl.

"I said, it's over. I'll take this one back to the charterhouse. Lord Amarandaris can investigate your charges."

Dru knew that Amarandaris would welcome that chore about as much as he'd welcome a punch in the groin, but the name, he hoped, would have a chilling effect on the bullies. It did, for about three heartbeats. Then the man who'd asked Dru to free himself with a kick, made a grab for the goblin's long, twisted ears.

Druhallen had an instant to crush ash between his thumb and middle finger. Darkness like a foggy night in winter filled the coop, but the spell he'd cast was more than illusion of weather. Sadness and lethargy flowed with the fog. One of the men who'd been beating the goblin began sobbing and none of the others tried to stop Druhallen as he backed away.

Gloom continued to grow and thicken. It ate all the light in the alleys. One man ran away screaming. He was the lucky one; the rest were caught up in melancholy that might not dissipate before sundown-close quarters enhanced the spell, making it stronger and more enduring than it would be otherwise.

"Come along, little fellow," Dru said to the goblin still clinging to his leg. "Let's get out of here."

He reached down to pry the goblin free and lift it higher. The goblin trembled and hid its face in the crook of Dru's arm, more like a dog than a child. A naked, filthy, feral dog that reeked of rotted food. Druhallen had just about conquered the need to gag when he felt bony fingers fumbling with his belt.

"Behave!" he scolded, imprisoning its hands within his own.

It began to gnaw on his knuckles and he was tempted to let it go altogether. He should have known better. Goblins were incorrigible. But, having begun the rescue, he held on until they were out of his spells' influence.

"Run off with you," Dru suggested and gave the scrawny child a push toward the palisade.

Naturally, the goblin wouldn't let go of his hands. He didn't know what to do next when a goblin female shot out of the natural shadows. She grabbed the youngster. It shrieked as loudly as it had in the chicken coop then both it and-presumably-its mother were gone.

Dru was more than a little relieved, more than a little dirty, and in a fine mood to tell Rozt'a and Galimer about the day's misadventures.