Lynn Abbey - The Nether Scroll

Two more of the long-limbed swordswingers followed the goblins. Slaves, he realized. Slavers and slaves. Slavers, slaves, and unnatural creatures hatched out of a metal egg. The pattern wasn't enough to reconcile Tiep with his goblin nemesis, and if Druhallen was dead because he'd stayed behind with Sheemzher, then no goblin was safe from Tiep's revenge-but he'd kill them cleanly, not like this.

With the egg chamber closed off behind them, Tiep saw two choices: stay where they were, hiding in the shadows, or get closer to the light and a better understanding of what they were up against. Tiep put his hand on Rozt'a's shoulder and together they crept forward. If only all his choices were that simple.

Most of the dust had settled, which meant that it was still pretty bad but Tiep could see all the way across the chamber. The tunnel where they'd first entered the chamber was open. If they could get to it-no, make that when they were ready, they could get out. Tiep didn't let himself think that he and Rozt'a might have to leave without Druhallen, but he did regret not paying closer attention when Sheemzher picked their path through the intersections.

Tiep had other things to worry about before then. By rough count, about ten swordswingers had herded about forty goblin slaves to the center of the chamber, facing the large, glowing pool. Nothing was said-at least nothing that Tiep heard, but after a few moments four of the healthier goblins went to work shoving fallen rocks to the sides of the chamber.

The goblins knew what they were doing. They'd done it before-the chamber was ringed with heaps of fallen rock. Tiep recalled the twisted metal debris in the egg chamber. This all had happened before. The big open egg with the golden scroll on top wasn't the first transformation egg. There'd been others; they'd exploded. The goblin slaves had cleaned up here in the pool chamber and in the egg chamber, too. All Tiep had to do was wait and the slaves would show him a way to the egg chamber.

Of course, forty slaves and ten swordswingers meant a lot of bodies between them and Druhallen, but Tiep was a born optimist. He'd offer freedom to the slaves-never mind that he didn't speak a word of their language. They'd get the message the instant he took a swing at one of the swordswingers. He and Rozt'a would have forty allies. By Tymora! They'd have guides, too, back to the surface! They'd be heroes.

And he'd be the biggest hero of all A high-pitched whistle disrupted Tiep's glorious daydream. The goblins who'd been shoving rocks abandoned their work. They rejoined the other slaves and they all bowed themselves low on the stone. Even the sword-swingers bowed low.

The pool got brighter. Tiep expected that whatever was going to happen would happen there. He wasn't looking at the chamber walls and couldn't see the walls to his immediate right and left. The tall man in a full-length dark cloak was several strides into the chamber before Tiep noticed him. He'd gone another stride before Tiep realized the tall man wasn't alone: one of the long-limbed swordswingers walked naked beside him.

The naked swordswinger didn't have a sword or the sense great Ao had given ants. It stumbled at every step and would have fallen if the tall man hadn't held it firmly by the upper arm. The pair approached the bright pool. The whistling got louder. Strange patterns flickered across the man's cloak. Writing, Tiep thought, spells.

The man had to be a wizard. Druhallen dressed like a shopkeeper, but Galimer would have worn a flashy cloak like that. Sememmon had been dressed like a merchant, too, that night when Tiep had tried to cut his purse strings. Dru and Sememmon were better at magic than Galimer was-especially Sememmon. Maybe the man in the flashy cloak wasn't as good as he thought he was. Maybe that was why his egg exploded and his monster had the blind staggers.

It would have fallen into the pool if the tall man hadn't reached left to grab Tymora have mercy!

Tiep's thoughts shattered. Man? Man? Had he thought the cloaked magician was a man? Tymora protect him, that thing was no man.

Tiep didn't know what race the cloaked figure had been born to, and didn't want to know. He called it a nightmare and begged his goddess to wake him up, but he wasn't asleep. Even after it had captured its stumbling slave and no longer faced the tunnel where he and Rozt'a were hiding, Tiep couldn't banish the horrific image from his mind's eye.

The nightmare magician's skin was a mottled purple in the pool's pale green light and stretched dried-corpse tight over its bones. Its head was too large and bulged behind, as if its brain had burst the back of its skull and then kept growing. Its eyes were a dull white with neither pupils nor irises. But it wasn't a nightmare because of its skin or its eyes or because its brain hung out of its head. The magician was a nightmare because it had four ropy tentacles hanging off its face.

The tentacles writhed and twitched. They caressed the bald head of the clumsy swordswinger. The other swordswingers pounded their chests while the crouching slaves rocked from side to side and the whistling grew so loud it was physically painful.

Tiep clapped his hands over his ears, which helped a little, and watched with open-jawed astonishment as the clumsy swordswinger folded its arms to its chest. It wove its mismatched fingers together, which might have been a of response to the tentacles caressing its head, but reminded Tiep of nothing so much as an insect about to feed The mantises!

The bug lady's messengers!

The metallic egg and Sheemzher's tale of the Beast Lord sacrificing his wife and a mantis and getting a demon in return.

Sheemzher's wife hadn't been exchanged for a demon, she'd been merged with a bug and transformed into one of the long-limbed swordswingers. The nightmare with worms on his face was the Beast Lord. Tiep imagined the look on Druhallen's face when he-the street rat with worse-than-no magic talent-told him how he'd figured out what was going on underneath Dekanter.

Then, like a cold breeze on a hot day, Tiep recalled that his foster father was trapped in the egg chamber. The breeze became a blizzard. If Tiep was right about the egg chamber and the egg, then that naked, just-hatched creature standing in front of the nightmare could be all that was left of Druhallen.

Come closer. Come closer. Share. Feed. Open your mind A thought that was not his own rode the whistling sound into Tiep's mind. The Beast Lord's tentacles lost none of their horrific qualities but, suddenly, Tiep wanted to be near them, to feel them against his skin, to offer up his paltry thoughts and emotions to a superior mind for its amusement, its pleasure.

Tiep was not alone in striding forward. All of the slaves did, and the swordswingers… and Rozt'a. He wasn't alone until he fought the compulsion and threw it out of his mind. The whistling went away, too, and Tiep swore to himself that he'd never again complain about the way magic didn't work around him. Then he reached out to stop Rozt'a from taking another step toward the nightmare.

Rozt'a fought him more vigorously than she'd fought him at the egg-chamber wall, and for no good reason. Desperate to avoid attention, Tiep punched her on the chin. Striking his foster mother was one of the harder things Tiep had done, good cause or bad, but it broke the Beast Lord's hold over her. Rozt'a was herself again-the remote, passive self she'd been since they'd found a solid granite wall between them and the egg.

Unless the Beast Lord had walked through stone, Tiep was sure the other egg-chamber tunnel was somewhere-not far-to his right. More than anything in the world, he wanted to find that tunnel and get back to the egg chamber. He was gathering his courage for a walk along the pool chamber wall when Rozt'a succumbed to the Beast Lord's compulsion for a second time. This time a hug, rather than a punch, was sufficient to keep her beside him in the dead-end tunnel, but the moment Tiep released her, she surged again.