The Nether Scroll

"We've each got a pair of guardians. Spies, I think, for our host. You've got the pretty ones. Tiep had jet-stone beetles. She said something about murder and defiling just before the fat hit the fire. I thought she meant Gal and I and gleaning the reaver—or maybe I thought I could distract her. The boy must have killed one of his bugs, and not by accident."

Rozt'a's scowl deepened. "I didn't hear her say anything like that."

"And I didn't hear you pleading for Galimer. This isn't an ordinary place, and Lady Mantis isn't an ordinary wizard—"

"You're blaming me for this?" She turned that glower on Druhallen.

He supposed there had been a nasty edge on his voice and that, in the unspoken regions of his heart, he did blame her. One thing did follow another and without Rozt'a's dream—her change of heart—they'd never have followed the goblin out of Parnast. Still, Dru remembered life with five older brothers and knew that blame grew best in guilty soil.

The bees returned to Rozt'a's spiky blond hair. She didn't seem to notice them.

"What's cut stays cut," Dru said to himself and his onetime lover. "Blaming each other isn't going to get Galimer back."

Rozt'a purged her hostility with a sigh that left her chin resting on her breastbone. "We'd better talk to Tiep ... find out what he really did ... what he thinks happened."

Dru nodded and followed Rozt'a.

Tiep lay flat against the moss as they approached. He raised his head, revealing the face of remorse which was quite possibly sincere, albeit too late.

"You had to steal some amber," Dru said, a statement of fact, not a question. Tiep seemed to shrink, but that was wishful thinking of the purest, unmagical sort. "What else, Tiep? What else did you do? Think hard—did you step on a bug, a black beetle-y bug?"

If he'd been trying to unnerve their foster-son, Dru couldn't have chosen a better question. He'd seen corpses with better color than what remained in the boy's cheeks.

"Did you?" Rozt'a demanded. Her voice was cold enough to worry Druhallen.

"He set me up. I told him I was going to take the amber out of the tree where I'd hidden during the reaver fight, and he said 'go ahead'... sort of... the way he says things so you think you know what he means, but later, maybe, you don't. Maybe you misunderstood."

Dru shook his head, a gesture wasted on Tiep, who was staring at the ground. "It's not the amber, Tiep. She called you a murderer. We've got watchers ... bugs. Yours are shiny black beetles. Do you remember seeing one? Stepping on it?"

The youth's mouth worked silently while he worked up the courage to say, "I smashed one. With my knife. It was sitting on the amber. It wouldn't shoo away, so I smashed it."

Rozt'a moaned and turned away.

"It was a bug!" Tiep protested. "An ugly, nasty bug and it wouldn't fly away. All it had to do was fly away ... or walk. I wanted the amber, that's all. I wouldn't've smashed her damn spy, if it had gotten out of the way. I swear—I wouldn't have touched the amber, either, if the goblin hadn't twisted his words around to trick me. They set a trap for me."

"And you walked straight into it."

Tiep accepted Druhallen's conclusion; at least he said nothing to contradict it. There was silence among them until Rozt'a asked, "Why Galimer? Why did she take my husband instead of Tiep? He hasn't stolen anything. He hasn't smashed a bug. Their trap was for Tiep."

Tiep was weak. So was Galimer, in some ways. Dru raked his hair. Sometimes that helped to stir his thoughts. Not this time. "Lady Mantis is different, not human, not elf either."

"Not even close," Tiep agreed. "Too shifty. Way too shifty. Blink and she's a woman with arms and hair. Blink again and she's a hawk the size of a woman with wings instead of hair and the gods know what for arms—except that they end with talons like enough to rip your heart out. I was thinking, maybe she's a dragon or a god."

Dru considered the possibilities. Gods had walked Faerun in recent years and wrought the havoc only their kind could inflict on mortal folk. A year ago, priests of every stripe emerged from their temples to assure those who'd survived that the gods had returned to their proper places and were forbidden to return. Gods in general weren't known for their obedience, but a man had to believe something and Druhallen had believed that he'd get safely to his grave without meeting one on the road, or in the Weathercote glade.

To the best of his knowledge, he'd never met a dragon, but Ansoain had drilled him and Galimer on their salient traits. He replied to Tiep with a shake of his head, "Her magic's different. I can't describe it easily and, Mystra knows, I'm no archmage, but my gut says this lady's on another path altogether. She's tampered with our memories—just reached out and rearranged what we remember. We don't know what actually happened—"