The Nether Scroll

A fighter's morale, she said, depended in part on his confidence that he'd be given an appropriate funeral before his death was avenged. She seemed to think the Beast Lord cared about morale; she didn't remember anything that had happened after they'd found the granite wall. Tiep whispered and told her what she'd missed without going too deeply into the details.

"It's all a blank," she shrugged. "I remember hitting that rock until I saw stars, then nothing but a slice of empty in my memory. Damn strangest thing that's ever happened to me."

Privately, Tiep thought it was lucky more than strange, but neither he nor Dru said anything. And the goblin was still unconscious over Dru's shoulders.

"The little fellow knew what was happening, I think," Dru explained in a soft voice as they walked away from the swordswinger corpses. "I told him to jump, that we'd come back for it, but he knew a goblin was going to die, one way or another. He wasn't coming down without the scroll. He had both hands on it and was pulling for all he was worth when it came alive like a bolt of lightning and threw him against the wall. He started to come around once, when the Beast Lord was loading the athanor. I had to hit him pretty hard to keep him quiet."

Tiep was unimpressed. "You should've left him behind and come with us."

Dru replied with a sigh, nothing more.

"At least you got the scroll," Rozt'a added.

"No. We hid while the Beast Lord was loading up the athanor. I was pretty sure it couldn't see us as long as we did nothing to attract its attention. Things got pretty wild after it left and the transmutation was underway. I saw some things I'll never be able to explain and I think I lost a few slices of time myself—I never saw the scroll vanish, but when everything was done and over, there wasn't anything that I could see sticking out the top of that athanor.

"Something went wrong—you probably figured that much yourselves. The Beast Lord was a long time coming back into the chamber; I was starting to think maybe I was trapped in there. Mystra's mercy—I was starting to think that if I did get one of those doors open I'd find myself in the Outer Planes! It was just luck that I hadn't tried picking the locks on the athanor when the upper door finally cranked open. The Beast Lord had a hard time getting its newest swordswinger up and moving."

They'd come up to another intersection, which Dru had to study before leading them straight ahead. He forgot that he'd left his story unfinished.

Tiep wanted to hear the rest. "So the goblin made the scroll disappear. Then what happened?" He got another sigh for an answer. "What now? What did I say this time? He loosened it, didn't he? And that wrecked the magic, right? And now it's gone. Bully for Sheemzher—he didn't save a goblin or one of the damned bugs, and if it's really gone, how're we going to get Galimer back?"

Dru walked a little faster.

"Druhallen!" Rozt'a called sharply. "He's made a good point—what are we going to do?"

"Yeah, that's all I want to know. I don't care about the goblin."

"We'll go back. It's there. The scroll's still there. I can sense it—see its shadow when I look for magic. It's been displaced in time."

Feeling bold after Rozt'a's support, Tiep asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You've heard the expression: He got kicked into the middle of the next tenday? Well, that's where the scroll is. Not as far as the middle of next tenday, though, maybe midnight, or dawn. It's already drifting backward. The Beast Lord wasn't surprised that it was missing. Maybe the scroll gets displaced every time it uses the athanor."

"You keep saying 'it,' Dru," Rozt'a said as soon as he'd finished talking. "Isn't the Beast Lord a he? Wyndyfarh said 'he.'"

"The Beast Lord's some sort of mind flayer, Rozt'a."

Tiep had heard of mind flayers before, but not from any of his foster parents. His mates in the Berdusk alleys used to whisper about mind flayers every time someone disappeared. As if it took big scary monsters to make a kid vanish from the streets.

"What sort of mind flayer?" Rozt'a asked in a serious voice. "I wish I knew. The pieces don't fit together—it's alone, renegade, and using magic. The one thing I'm sure I do know about mind flayers is they don't touch magic. I'd almost pay good money to see Amarandaris's face when he realizes he's not dealing with a minor beholder."

"Is that what the Zhentarim think they've been trading with?" Rozt'a shuddered. "I'd rather take my chances with a beholder. What about Lady Wyndyfarh. She said the Beast Lord was a nuisance. What do you suppose she thought he—it—is?"

"That's just the question I want to ask Sheemzher here when we bring him around."