The Nether Scroll

"We've got to turn around," he announced. "There's no telling where the water's been or where it's going. This tunnel could flood in an instant."

They argued with him, Rozt'a and Tiep included, until water seeped through the seams of their boots and covered their toes. Backtracking to the previous intersection, Sheemzher declared that he'd made a mistake—

"Egg smell strongest this way!" He pointed down the right-side path, a down-sloping path where the stone was dry and the air was still. "Come. Come, good sir," Sheemzher tugged on Druhallen's sleeve. "Be brave, good sir. Trust Sheemzher. Sheemzher follow nose now, not memory."

Dru backed away and found himself face-to-face with Rozt'a.

"What have we got to lose?" she challenged. "Maybe the water's already drowned the alhoon."

He returned the challenge. "Can you drown the undead?"

He followed her down a corridor that ended over a seemingly dry hole in the floor. The hole was about as wide as Dru's arm was long. A free-spinning stone ring had been carved out of the granite beside it.

"Down now, good sir. Egg smell very strong, good sir."

Dru insisted they drop something down the shaft. Pointing at the ring, Tiep suggested tying off one end of the rope they carried. When completely uncoiled, the thirty-foot rope struck neither water nor bottom. Druhallen produced a handful of agate pebbles from his folding box and dropped them down the shaft. He'd counted to three before the pebbles clattered against stone.

"Egg smell very strong, good sir," Sheemzher repeated himself.

"Look at the ring, Dru." Again Rozt'a supported the goblin. "It's obviously meant to anchor a rope."

Two of Ghistpok's goblin's were already shinnying down the rope. "Get proof, good sir. Get scroll. Get friend."

Dwarves had hollowed the shaft out of the granite mountain. They could have easily clambered through it, with or without a rope. If anything, the chimney shaft was easier for goblins and not terribly difficult for a wiry youth or a slender woman. Druhallen conceded it was wider than the hole where they'd begun yesterday's exploration, but not by much. He prayed, as he'd seldom prayed before, that he didn't have climb up in a hurry.

The light spell revealed that they'd come to the oldest part of Dekanter—the twisting tunnels dwarf miners had made as they chipped out veins of metal and gems. The tunnel beneath the shaft stretched in two directions. Sheemzher sniffed the still air and swore the egg smell was stronger in one direction. He led the way.

Goblins could stand tall in a dwarf-cut tunnel, but humans had to scrunch their necks and shoulders if they wished to see where they were going. They hadn't gone far before Dru's muscles were aching. He was thinking about pain and futility and not paying particularly close attention to anything when his eyes caught a flicker of reddish light in the passage ahead of Sheemzher. He seized the goblin's neck and inhaled his light spell.

"See anything?" he asked.

"See dark, good sir. See stone." Sheemzher replied anxiously.

"Anything else?"

"Only stone, all same stone. See anything, good sir?"

By feel and memory, Dru pinched a bit of enchanted beeswax from a candle-stub in his folding box. He exhaled a spell across the wax then flicked forward. Around him, humans and goblins uttered their favorite oaths as a spider-web ward popped into view a mere ten feet ahead.

"Boundary wards," Dru concluded after a moment's study

The Beast Lord's enemies weren't in the quarry, they were deep in the mountain. The first explanation they'd heard in Parnast was that the Dawn Pass Trail had moved because the Beast Lord was at war with the Underdark, that shadowy realm beneath Faerun's surface. The Underdark was real, of course, but many of the catastrophes rumored to have their roots there had much simpler explanations—Zhentarim, Red Wizards, earthquakes, or plagues. Druhallen had dismissed the Parnast rumors when he first heard them and had discounted them ever since, especially when Amarandaris's conversation had focused on the Red Wizards, not the drow.

Even when he'd laid eyes on the Beast Lord and learned what it was, he'd resisted the rumors. Mind flayers were part of the Underdark world, but alhoons were exiles from mind flayer communities. What better place for an alhoon to establish itself than in an old mine that was underground but not Underdark? Finding wards here, far below the quarry, supported the idea that the Beast Lord, at least, believed it was not completely isolated from its former haunts.

"Can we get through it?" Tiep asked.

Druhallen replied, "Not without breaking it. If the Beast Lord's paying attention, it'll know something's loose down here." He turned to Sheemzher. "You've done your best, but this isn't going to work. We've got to turn back and wait until that passage we used yesterday is dry."

"No proof, Ghistpok not believe. Ghistpok not believe, no tomorrow. Go forward, good sir. Go forward, find proof—"