The Nether Scroll

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 the 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.