Lynn Abbey - The Nether Scroll

Rozt'a made her way to the black mare, Ebony, and the bow she kept lashed to the mare's saddle. "I'm going to put a little fear into those beasts, whatever they are," she muttered.

"Let it rest," Druhallen told her, kindly but firmly. "He's meat now, nothing more, and you don't have arrows to waste."

"They're not natural creatures, Dru. They shouldn't be tolerated."

Dru had removed the ring he used to ken strangers and held it up to his eye. He squinted through the opening.

"Who's to say what's natural and what's not?" he asked cryptically when he'd finished his examination and returned the ring to his finger.

Tiep would have given much to ask Dru what he'd meant by that remark, but there were four horses between him and the wizard. They paid their final respects to Cardinal and headed toward Sheemzher.

It was rock and bog, bog and rock after that. Somewhere above the thick, gray clouds, morning became afternoon. The air heated up, the light breeze died, and breathing got difficult, especially on the bogs. Then it started to rain: a fine, steady rain that threatened to last all day and most of the night, too. Sheemzher's hat looked good enough to steal as Tiep's soaked hair stuck to his face and streams of water ran beneath his clothes to his boots. In no time at all, he had blisters like mushrooms on his heels and toes.

Tiep tried limping, but limping didn't help when both feet screamed. Rozt'a noticed he was lagging and asked what was wrong.

"We've got Galimer's kit. When we stop for the night, I'll mix up a batch of his second-skin lotion and you'll be good as new by sunrise."

"I'm slowing us down. I'd keep up better if I were up on Hopper's back," Tiep replied, angling for a reprieve.

Rozt'a held firm, "The going's worse now that it's wet. We'll hold the pace down. Slow's best in the rain, anyway."

Slow or fast didn't make half the difference that up or down made, with downhill being a lot worse than up. Tiep was sure his toes bled with each downhill stride. He thanked Tymora when the rain stopped. Then the bugs came out and he knew Tymora had abandoned him to Her sister, Beshaba, Maid of Misfortune. The bugs were worse in the bogs. Man, woman, horse, and goblin, they were all surrounded by buzzing, stinging, biting clouds.

They were in a bog when a dragon flew overhead. Tiep didn't actually see the dragon, but he heard its bellow.

There was no mistaking that sound. It awakened primal dread in a human heart and sheer terror in a horse. Bandy, the big mare that toted their heaviest gear, panicked at the sound. Her front end went up, carrying Dru with it, while her hind legs sank into the bog.

Dru could have used some help getting himself and Bandy steadied, but Rozt'a had her hands full with two frightened horses while Tiep had put his extra arm to work grabbing Fowler's lead when that gelding broke free from Dru and Bandy. Sheemzher was useless. The horses didn't much like his smell at the best of times. All together they burned a year's worth of luck before order was restored. Bandy was gray with sweat and Druhallen didn't look much better, but they were both standing steady, both whole.

"I've had enough for one day," Dru said once he'd caught some breath.

Tiep wasn't going to argue, not the way his feet hurt. Sheemzher said they'd be safer on the rock than on a bog, and that wasn't worth arguing with, either, though it meant staggering onward. The goblin eventually got them to a ledge-call it a very hard beach on the shore of a tree-covered lake-that he said was safe.

"Sheemzher make safer," he continued. "Sheemzher go now. Sheemzher back quick."

The goblin and his spear disappeared into the bog. Tiep wanted to follow, but his sore, bleeding feet were glued to the ledge. It was Tiep's regular chore to set the nightly picket line for the horses and, mindful that some might blame him for their misery, he got to work looking for a good place to tie off the rope. Rozt'a took pity on him.

"I'll handle the horses. You find yourself a place to sit. And get those boots off before your feet fester."

Beshaba's mercy-Tiep hadn't considered that possibility.

His feet weren't as bad as he feared. He'd lost a slab of callus from his left heel, and the big toe on his right foot was bloody; nothing a slathering of second-skin lotion couldn't handle. Rozt'a dragged their medicine chest over and mixed the lotion in a brass bowl. The most important ingredient went in last: a few drops of sickly green oil from a silver flask embellished with a rose-colored Lathandrite agate. Tiep counted five drops in all and flinched in advance, knowing how badly the potion-drenched cloths would sting when Rozt'a wrapped them around his feet.

"You'll survive," Rozt'a assured him.

Tiep didn't trust himself to answer. He couldn't nod without sending a stream of tears down his cheeks but he only yelped once, when Rozt'a squeezed his big toe, making sure that the lotion worked deep.

Druhallen scrounged wood from the bog-forest-no great challenge there-and got a fire going, which for a competent wizard was no great challenge, either. The wet wood smoked vigorously and the smoke was foul, but it got rid of the bugs. They were glad to have it, at least until Sheemzher returned.

"No flame! No flame!"

The dog-face thrust his spear into the fire and battered it apart. Dru's eyes narrowed and his fists clenched in a way that usually meant a fireball was due. Sheemzher saved himself with a single word and a gesture toward the clouds.

"Dragons."

"What kind?" Dru asked, because it made a difference.

"Big!" Sheemzher replied, which meant, probably, that the Greypeaks weren't home to one of the more benign dragon species.

The bugs came back-with a few thousand of their closest friends. It was a struggle to eat their cold supper without catching a few buzzing specks in each mouthful. Doubly difficult for Tiep because his feet hadn't stopped throbbing and he couldn't escape his bugs, even temporarily, by moving about on the ledge. He'd peeked beneath the cloths a few times: the second-skin oil was living up to its name. Tiep's feet felt like they were on fire, but the swelling had already gone down and the raw skin on his left heel was toughening.

Night came sooner than it would have out in the open as the clouds and mountains combined to stifle the sunset. Tiep braced himself for absolute darkness, then discovered that the bog made its own eerie light: lazy will-o'-the-wisps rose from the ground. They swirled higher and higher until they bumped into the clouds where they dissipated slowly.

The result was enough light to see shadows and movement, enough light to watch Sheemzher open up his striped waistcoat-it looked bedraggled now, though the dyes were good and the colors hadn't run together. He fished out something that hung from a cord and writhed. A rat, Tiep realized just before the goblin snapped its neck. He impaled the freshly-killed rodent on his spearhead then used the bloody weapon to draw a perimeter around their camp.

"Do you think that will keep the dragons away?" Rozt'a asked.

"Demons, not dragons. Sheemzher know. Sheemzher remember. Demons not cross blood."

Dru overheard and chortled, "That's a new one!"

Rozt'a silenced him with a well-aimed hiss, then added, "Do you want to draw straws for the first watch?"

"No-I'm awake until midnight anyway. This place isn't what I expected, so I need to make some changes in what I'm remembering. We need to be able to hide as well as fight. I'll wake you when I'm done, and you can keep your eyes open until dawn."

Tiep wasn't terribly surprised when neither one of them had given a thought to him. Galimer was Tiep's advocate when it came to both chores and privileges. Without Galimer, he was a child again. Rozt'a didn't want him to grow up, and Dru didn't think he could. On the whole, Tiep found it easier to deal with Dru's prejudices.