The Nether Scroll

Drawing on a reserve of strength he hadn't suspected, Dru leapt the bank and raced across the trail, looking for trouble as he ran. The trail was clear of monsters and Zhentarim, but Tiep was in the midst of a seizure. The youth was sprawled on the ground, his heels pounding the ground and his arms flailing through the air. Druhallen dropped to his knees to help Rozt'a restrain him and took a fist on the nose. The pain was exquisite and for several moments he could do nothing at all. When his muscles unlocked, Tiep was lying quiet.

"Are you all right?" Rozt'a asked.

He didn't bother answering as blood leaked from his nose and tears burned his cheek.

Rozt'a brushed her hands vigorously as she stood. "That's it. I'm steeping Wyndor's herbs for both of you."

Dru winced. Wyndor's herbs were a last resort, a very bitter last resort that tortured a man as they healed him. "If you do that, we'll be stuck here until tomorrow night plus the day after if we wait for the sun to ride."

"If I don't, you might be dead," Rozt'a countered as she flipped open their medicine chest, "or too sick to drink it."

That was another problem with Wyndor's—if the patient were too far gone, the herbs would kill before they healed.

"We've got to keep moving, Roz. As little as I wanted to bump into Amarandaris before, I want to see him even less now when we're traveling with that golden scroll. It's a miracle he hasn't caught up with us before this. We used up our miracles last night."

"That's why I'm steeping the Wyndor's. Don't argue with me, Druhallen. You're in no condition to win. Did you leave the skins by the stream?"

He stood up. She was right about his condition but he hadn't reached the point where he couldn't haul two waterskins back to their camp.

Tiep, whose eyes had opened during his exchange with Rozt'a, wobbled up and followed him.

"You don't have to worry about Amarandaris," the youth said from the top of the stream bank.

Dru braced the skin in the cool water and, while the water flowed into it, bathed his throbbing face. "You know something about him that I don't?"

The youth didn't answer right away. Dru worried he might be having another fit, but what he saw when he looked up was worse: guilt, deep and old.

"He pretty much told me I was on my own. He figured you'd find a way out of Parnast before he was ready to leave. Told me what to look out for, with you and the goblins and all, and told me to leave a written message in Yarthrain. He wouldn't have given me the name of someone in Yarthrain if he thought he'd catch up with you—us—before we got there."

Druhallen let the waterskin slip through his ankles. "You think that, do you?"

Tiep nodded.

"How long you been working for them?"

"Two, maybe three, years."

Anger quickened Dru's pulse; his lacerated face burned. "Come on, Tiep. I'm not a fool. What is it? Two years or three?"

"I tried to tell you! I've tried every time they ask me a favor. I knew how you'd react so I didn't dare—until now. It's safe to camp a day or two. Safer than on the main trail. No one's coming here."

"Amarandaris isn't—if I believe you. That doesn't say no one's coming."

The youth bolted for the camp. Dru let him go. He tied off the waterskin and hoisted one to his left shoulder, opposite the pain, the other under his right arm. Rozt'a had a fire going and was waiting with a pot for the water to steep Wyndor's herbs. He had half a mind to tell her to prepare half the amount she'd measured out, but that would mean that he'd be telling her what Tiep had been up to, and he wasn't feeling that generous.

"You tell her what you've told me," he whispered to Tiep as he walked past the sullen, shaking youth, "and be quick about it, or you'll wish you'd never been born."

"I've wished that for years."

He didn't say anything while Rozt'a steeped the bitter herbs or when she handed them each a steaming mug. Tiep emptied the mug in three gulps; Dru had never seen anyone gulp Wyndor's. The stuff was as potent as any brew this side of magic. His was cool by the time he finished it, and by then the herbs were starting to take effect. He said he'd take the first watch—he thought he could fight the seediness until midnight, hoped he could memorize a spell or two before the shakes and nausea overwhelmed him. Rozt'a put her hand on his shoulder and guided him to his knees. "Sleep it off. You can stay up all night tomorrow."

Dru's thoughts were an unholy amalgam of Amarandaris, Tiep, and the Beast Lord as he slipped into delirium. He lived the rest of the night and all of the next day in a twilight of dreams and memories. In his few moments of lucidity he craved water, which Rozt'a gave him, and raved about the pain from a spike driven upward through his skull.