Lynn Abbey - The Nether Scroll

If he'd taken a moment for pragmatic thought, Dru would have known that his fireball stood little chance of breaching Lady Wyndyfarh's protective spells, but Galimer's desperate and purely physical attack had even less hope for success and it placed the gold-haired wizard in the path of Dru's burgeoning spell.

There was no dilemma, no need for a split-second decision. Dru would not harm Galimer. He opened his hand and the unkindled fire dissipated in the air. His body reeled from the shock. Swallowing a spell was more difficult than casting it. Color and contrast faded from his vision, but not enough to free him from the sight of sinuous magic leaping from that dark claw. A cross between spider silk and lightning, Wyndyfarh's magic spun itself around Galimer, swiftly concealing him in a clouded whorl. Foolishly, Dru made a grab for his friend as Galimer's light-shrouded body rose from the moss.

The next thing Druhallen knew, he was on the other side of the pool and his spine ached. He was flat against a rock. Both Galimer and Lady Mantis vanished behind the waterfall. Sheemzher followed them, his arms waving frantically and his hat flying off his warty head. If he'd had the strength-or the spell-Dru would have fried the misbegotten creature as he ran. But Dru's mind was empty of magic-completely empty-and the goblin also escaped behind the waterfall.

With the skirmish over and lost, Druhallen checked himself for unsuspected injuries before standing. Upright, he had a full view of the glade, including Tiep, who hadn't moved from the spot where he'd fallen but was clearly alive. The young man crouched on the moss with his head between his knees, his back to the bright-blue sky. Rozt'a stood beside her foster son. She'd sheathed her sword, but that seemed the limit of her sympathy.

Dru left them alone. He approached the waterfall from his side of the pool. At first glance, there seemed to be a cave behind the cascade. Perhaps there was, the stone he found was black, glassy, and clearly unnatural. He pounded it with his fists and put his shoulder into an accommodating hollow.

"Try magic," Rozt'a suggested from the opposite side.

Her voice was ominously flat. Dru looked to see if she was angry or in shock. He couldn't tell; her face was hidden in shadow.

"I'm done for the day," he admitted and waited for her response, which came in a slow, ragged sigh.

"What happened? One minute he was standing there, the next she'd snared him. I begged her to let him go, and she looked at me as if I were dirt."

Dru searched his memory for the sound of Rozt'a's voice and found nothing. Perhaps she'd pled for her husband after he'd been hurled across the pool, though he didn't think he'd lost consciousness in the air or after landing. Perhaps they'd seen and remembered different things. That implied some potent notions about Lady Wyndyfarh's magical mastery. Dru gave up on the cave-that-wasn't and joined Rozt'a on the temple side of the pool.

"Gal challenged her," he explained. "Something about taking the goblin's word over Tiep's-"

"Damn! A setup!"

She tried to force her way past him to the glassy stone. In a fight with weapons, Rozt'a had Dru beat cold, but he held his ground easily against her half-hearted shove.

"We better talk to Tiep first, before either one of us goes leaping off a cliff. He had something that wasn't his. When the dog-face made the stuff glow, there was something shining in his shirt. A piece of amber, I guess."

"Damn," Rozt'a repeated herself, this time with a scowl in the youth's direction.

"There might be more. Have you noticed the bugs?"

She gave a puzzled shake of her head and stiffened when Dru reached for her face.

"Steady," he advised and carefully-very carefully- mussed her hair.

The ruby bees took flight reluctantly. They wouldn't have flown where Rozt'a could see them if Dru hadn't been insistent with his fanning.

"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."