Lynn Abbey - The Nether Scroll

"Druhallen!" Rozt'a called sharply. "He's made a good point-what are we going to do?"

"Yeah, that's all I want to know. I don't care about the goblin."

"We'll go back. It's there. The scroll's still there. I can sense it-see its shadow when I look for magic. It's been displaced in time."

Feeling bold after Rozt'a's support, Tiep asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You've heard the expression: He got kicked into the middle of the next tenday? Well, that's where the scroll is. Not as far as the middle of next tenday, though, maybe midnight, or dawn. It's already drifting backward. The Beast Lord wasn't surprised that it was missing. Maybe the scroll gets displaced every time it uses the athanor."

"You keep saying 'it,' Dru," Rozt'a said as soon as he'd finished talking. "Isn't the Beast Lord a he? Wyndyfarh said 'he.'"

"The Beast Lord's some sort of mind flayer, Rozt'a."

Tiep had heard of mind flayers before, but not from any of his foster parents. His mates in the Berdusk alleys used to whisper about mind flayers every time someone disappeared. As if it took big scary monsters to make a kid vanish from the streets.

"What sort of mind flayer?" Rozt'a asked in a serious voice.

"I wish I knew. The pieces don't fit together-it's alone, renegade, and using magic. The one thing I'm sure I do know about mind flayers is they don't touch magic. I'd almost pay good money to see Amarandaris's face when he realizes he's not dealing with a minor beholder."

"Is that what the Zhentarim think they've been trading with?" Rozt'a shuddered. "I'd rather take my chances with a beholder. What about Lady Wyndyfarh. She said the Beast Lord was a nuisance. What do you suppose she thought he-it-is?"

"That's just the question I want to ask Sheemzher here when we bring him around."

Tiep was satisfied. The dog-face didn't have a prayer if he'd crossed Dru. There were some nasty spells written inside Dru's wooden box, spells he never memorized unless he had to. Galimer once said that Dru could make the dead sit up and answer questions. He could unravel a goblin's secrets without half trying.

Of course, Sheemzher was sitting on a few secrets Tiep didn't particularly want Dru or Rozt'a to hear, which meant Tiep was in favor of necromancy. According to common wisdom-the only sort of wisdom Tiep laid claim to-dead folk answered only the questions they were asked. If the goblin were dead and Dru didn't get around to asking, specifically, What do you know about Tiep and Zhentarim? then Tiep's secrets were safe.

Not that Tiep, himself, didn't want to know how the goblin knew the Network had its hooks in his hide.

Damn Sememmon, anyway. Why couldn't the Dark Lord just have killed him when he'd made his one, admittedly huge, mistake on the streets of Scornubel three winters ago? But no-o-o-o, Sememmon had led Tiep back to a warm, comfortable room and offered him dark red wine-which Tiep prudently hadn't touched.

You've got a talent, boy, that deep, silky voice had purred. It would be a shame to waste such a talent. I could use that talent; and then I might forget how I discovered it.

Tiep had cut his teeth in the streets. He'd had no illusions about Sememmon's offer but he'd kept his pride and his honor. He'd told the Dark Lord that if the Zhentarim wanted him to betray his foster parents-if they wanted to use him to put pressure on his foster parents, then Lord Sememmon should kill him where he stood, because he'd never do it.

Sememmon had listened, smiled, and said: I don't want you to betray your foster parents, Tiep-and I warn you, the day you betray them will be your last. From time to time, the Zhentarim have need of men and women whose hearts are good and who do not know our faces. Druhallen of Sunderath, Galimer Longfingers, and the woman who calls herself Florozt'a are such folk, but you're not like them, are you, Tiep?

Tiep wasn't. He'd never been, never would be, and he did "favors" for Sememmon. Not many. Not often. And never anything that he wouldn't have done on his own. He'd never drawn blood, directly or indirectly-at least as far as he knew. He'd been offered rewards for his services-which he hadn't taken. Sememmon's memory of a midnight indiscretion on the Scornubel streets remained as sharp as ever.

The Dark Lord would never forget that night. Tiep had understood that much after he'd completed his first "favor" a week after that first meeting. He'd been too ashamed to tell Dru, Galimer, or Rozt'a what had happened. The shame had only grown as the months passed and he'd continued to do Darkhold's bidding-the last time in Parnast. He hadn't stolen the myrrh; he'd won that exactly the way he'd claimed. He hadn't stolen anything in Parnast.

The second night of the dust storm, when he'd been heading home from Manya's, Zhentarim henchmen had accosted Tiep and marched him upstairs above the charterhouse. Amarandaris gave him a sealed blue bottle-the kind ladies used for their perfumes-and instructions to put it in a certain saddle bag at a certain time. Tiep hadn't asked questions and he hadn't gone back for his reward, either. He'd been careful-doubly, triply careful the way he'd learned to be when he was doing Zhentarim "favors."

Tiep wasn't worried about getting caught by any town or guild's law. He worried about his foster parents finding out that he'd fallen deeper than they imagined possible.

Gods! In Weathercote, when Dru and Rozt'a had blamed him for Galimer's imprisonment and he'd thought they were going to turn their backs on him right there, it had almost been a relief. Tiep wasn't ashamed of stealing the lady's amber in Weathercote, or even of smashing her bug.

Sheemzher had set them all up and tricked him specifically. The goblin could die right now and Tiep would dance a jig on his grave.

But somehow Sheemzher had known about him and the Black Network.

"I don't know, Dru," he said, trying desperately to sound like Galimer. "Sheemzher's spent a lot of time with that bug lady. She's probably tangled up his mind. It's not his fault; he's just a goblin, but you can't trust anything that he says. I don't think it would be worth asking him. His answers would only make you mad and crazy."

6 Eleint, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR) The Greypeak Mountains

"You're probably right," Druhallen agreed before shifting Sheemzher's unconscious weight to his left shoulder. "But I plan to ask him all the same."

It was ungentlemanly-unfatherly-but Dru suspected he might see something other than compassion in the young man's eyes and until he shifted shoulders, Sheemzher's head blocked the view. It wasn't like the youth to smooth the goblin's road, though he and Rozt'a had been urging Tiep to do just that since they'd left Weathercote Wood. Lately Tiep was like a weathervane in a thunderstorm: pointing first this way, then that, and very likely to burst into flames at any moment.

"I doubt that Lady Wyndyfarh has been any more honest with her goblin than she has with us," Dru continued. "But it will be interesting to learn what she has told him about herself. Sheemzher's got a good memory-have you noticed that when he tells you what someone else has said, he gets it exact, right down to the accent?"

"I knew a rag-picker whose parrot squawked in couplets. Didn't make the bird a poet."

Dru heard resentment and saw fear in Tiep's eyes. "It told you something about the man who taught the parrot, didn't it?" he asked gently.

"The rag-picker didn't teach the bird anything. Some woman taught it; it squawked with a woman's voice."

"I'd say you've won my point for me," Dru said softly through a not-completely repressed grin of triumph.

Tiep grumbled something Dru chose not to hear and fell back to walk beside Rozt'a where he complained loudly about sarcastic wizards who'd forgotten what it was like to be a young man. Rozt'a shushed him with a hiss and they walked on in grim silence.