Lynn Abbey - The Nether Scroll

Body contact with a body unaffected by the compulsion was apparently sufficient to keep Rozt'a free from the Beast Lord's compulsion but holding hands wasn't enough contact. Tiep draped his arm around her shoulder and kept it there as he weighed the risks of leaving the dead-end tunnel.

On the up side-the Beast Lord had his worshipers' complete attention, which meant no one was paying any attention to the chamber walls. Rocks had toppled since the whistling began and not drawn a sideways glance from the Beast Lord or his swaying congregation. On the down side-if Rozt'a slipped back into the Beast Lord's power or his own immunity weakened…

The down side won.

Tiep stayed put and watched the newly hatched swordswinger enter the green-glowing pool. The enslaved goblins joined hands in a circle around the pool. They blocked Tiep's view; he took that as a sign that Tymora hadn't abandoned him. His confidence rebounded-he and Rozt'a could wait. The pool chamber had been empty when they first arrived; it would become empty again.

He hoped.

Rozt'a leaned against him. She shuddered every few minutes. At first, Tiep thought that was the Beast Lord trying to get into her mind, then he noticed that his shirt was damp and he realized that she was sobbing. He'd be sobbing, too, if he let himself think about what had happened or what likely lay ahead, so he remembered the good times.

There had been good times in Tiep's life, but not many that didn't involve Galimer, Druhallen, or Rozt'a. He felt tears brewing and tried to think of nothing at all.

Time passed-more than a few minutes, less than an hour. The pool-side ritual showed no sign of ending: The goblins were still in a ring, and all the swordswingers were in the water. The Beast Lord was going from goblin to goblin, massaging their scalps with his tentacles. Tiep could watch now, he was beyond nausea.

A rock shifted to the right of their tunnel. Tiep thought nothing of it; other rocks had shifted. It would be a while before the chamber completely recovered from the shaking it had received when the egg hatched out a swordswinger.

Another rock moved and Tiep heard a sound that could have been a boot crunching over gravel. All the sounds had come from the right side. He tightened his hold on Rozt'a. He saw a shadow, then a silhouette.

It was tall enough, but the shape was wrong-headless and hunch-backed. It stopped in front of the tunnel… turned. It was lop-sided now, and maybe it did have a head… maybe it was carrying something over its shoulder.

"Dru?" Tiep called in a voice not loud enough to reach his fingertips. "Dru?" he called, a bit louder.

"Tiep? Is that you, Tiep?"

Dru came down the tunnel. Tiep got Rozt'a on her feet and they met him halfway. The lump on Dru's shoulder was the goblin, who wasn't moving and might have been dead for all Tiep knew or cared.

There was safety in his foster father's embrace, and not merely because they'd found each other. Druhallen hadn't merely thrown off the Beast Lord's compulsion the way Tiep had. Being a wizard, Druhallen kept the Beast Lord at an arm's length-at two arms' lengths. As soon as they'd entered Dru's shadow, Tiep felt the pressure ease in his mind. By the time they were touching each other, Rozt'a stood tall without any help from him, though maybe magic had nothing to do with that.

"What happened?" Tiep whispered. "Did you get the scroll?"

"Later. We've got to get out of here while the Beast Lord's distracted."

So much for impressing Druhallen with his cleverness.

Dru wasn't worried about being seen or heard as they escaped from the pool chamber. Speed was more important, and keeping a hold of Rozt'a.

"You can take care of yourself, can't you?" Dru asked.

Tiep straightened proudly. "Sure I can."

"Good. Stay close and be ready to grab Rozt'a if she breaks away. She's got no defense except what you or I can share with her. I'll whisk up some light as soon as we're out of range."

Out of range was farther into the escape tunnel than any of them would have liked. Rock fall cluttered the path. They couldn't move fast, or quiet, and there were no guarantees that the Beast Lord had called all his swordswingers to the pool chamber. Dru was in command of their path and pace. He said he remembered the way, but there was a danger they'd miss an intersection in the dark. Tiep was relieved when Dru finally cast his light spell. Not only did that mean that they were beyond the Beast Lord's compulsion, but they could see fallen rocks and the intersections, too.

They got more good news when they returned to the spot where they'd battled and blasted the Beast Lord's swordswingers. The corpses were untouched.

"No one's come back for their dead," Rozt'a said. Her voice was shaky, but her mind was working again. "That means the ones that ran off haven't reported yet and there've been no other patrols."

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.