Lynn Abbey - The Nether Scroll

Dru shifted the goblin again at the next intersection and gave him a thump on the back for good measure. They'd returned to the dwarven tunnels. The overhead carvings were familiar and Dru was confident that the next intersection would be the last one before they hauled themselves out of the mountain. He'd be relieved to see the sky again but wasn't looking forward to squeezing himself through that tiny hole in the ceiling.

Sheemzher had promised to lead them out by another route "C'mon, little fellow, wake yourself up!" He thumped the goblin's back again. "Tell me if this other passage leads to the surface."

Not a squeak or twitch.

"Do you want to try another way?" Rozt'a asked with cold enthusiasm.

"No-but you're going to have your hands full getting me out of here."

She did and so did Tiep who pushed from below. The passage wasn't as bad as Dru had anticipated, perhaps because a steady rain had made the granite around the hole slick.

They'd been underground long enough for the sun to set. Dru's light spell functioned in the rain, but not well. He kept it throttled so it wouldn't draw attention from Ghistpok's goblins in the quarry, but that meant more shadows than light reaching the ground as they picked their miserable way back to the horses. Rozt'a fell and Dru came down one rock face on his rump with the goblin upside down in his lap. A more traditional wizard would have lost more than his dignity, but Dru favored leather breeches. His dignity and more remained intact.

Who'd ever have thought that a mountain range could be as wet as a seacoast marsh or the fabled jungles of Chult?

The horses welcomed them and welcomed the grass nets more. Tiep volunteered to fix their supper, reminding Dru that adolescence was temporary and the youth was their best cook. Rozt'a volunteered to help him, which was an extraordinary event and not a good omen for digestion. She'd been subdued since emerging from the Beast Lord's compulsion; losing a slice of memory must have cut deep. Tiep could reassure her about what she'd missed and if words weren't sufficient, Dru could unfold his box down to its bottom and study the spells written in the compartments that held sprigs of rue, hemlock, and lashes from a blind man's eye.

He was going to have to dig down that deep anyway, if Sheemzher didn't bestir himself.

They'd laid the goblin out on the only dry patch of stone in the hollow and examined him as thoroughly as he and Rozt'a knew how. He had a lump on his head and burns on his palms, which they'd slathered with second skin, but no other visible injuries. Rozt'a had uncorked a bottle of aromatic spirits. Though the restorative was potent enough to get a reaction from the horses standing ten paces away, it had no effect on the goblin.

Druhallen knew a spell that would create forced rapport. Ansoain had said it would bridge between a wizard and any sentient mind. He and Galimer had cast it successfully on each other, but rapport with your best friend could hardly be called forced and some authorities questioned goblin sentience It was a complicated spell, too, and would cost him a fair amount of firepower if he committed it to memory after midnight.

He knew another spell that would turn a pair of Rozt'a's leather gloves into gauntlets sturdy enough to hold a piece of the sun if it happened to be stuck in the top of a huge brass egg. Tiep's ill-gotten myrrh from Parnast made that one possible, but it, too, would leave a big footprint in his mind and a hole after he cast it. He'd rather enchant the gloves than force a rapport with their goblin.

Everything would be easier if Sheemzher would just wake up, but prudence dictated that Dru make himself familiar with the rapport spell's logic and ritual before he convinced Rozt'a to give him a pair of her sword-handling gloves. He was lost in contemplation, when he heard Rozt'a calling his name.

"We've been talking," she said and indicated Tiep who stood beside her in the rain and faded light spell; Sheemzher was still unconscious. "We've put together some conclusions about what's going on-Tiep has, actually. He's thought things through. I think you should listen to him."

Dru realized he was hungry enough to eat two suppers and that Rozt'a's hands were empty, as were Tiep's. Whatever the two of them had been up to, it hadn't involved the preparation of food. Disappointment stung and soured. "When don't I listen to you, Tiep?"

The youth's lips rolled and tightened. "It's about the Beast Lord and how he's really a mind flayer-"

— " 'It,' Tiep. Mind flayers are hermaphrodites."

"Herm-what?"

"They're all built the same. Maybe they mate, maybe they don't, but they're all the same: no males, no females. Can't tell 'em apart."

Dru winced when Tiep blushed. Some men sounded like their fathers; he sounded like Ansoain. Rozt'a touched Tiep's arm, but only made the blush worse.

"Right-" Tiep's voice chose that moment to crack. He cleared his throat several times while both Dru and Rozt'a tried not to look at him, then he tried again. "Well, I watched what went on at that pool with the light in it and I think I've got it figured out. Those ugly critters that butchered Cardinal and tried to butcher us a couple nights ago, they're not demons, they're goblins who've been put through the Beast Lord's egg. Those swordswingers, they started off as goblins, too, but the Beast Lord mixed them up with the bug lady's bugs, so they're cleverer than goblins."

It wasn't the way Dru saw events unfolding, but Tiep's view had merit. "Could be that way," he admitted. "My problem is that there's never just one mind flayer. They're supposed to be like ants or bees. They live in colonies and take orders from something called an Elder Brain. Just like the queen bee in a hive, once the Elder Brain establishes a colony, it never leaves. It can't. Its whole body has been transformed into a huge brain that floats in brine instead of blood-"

"The pool!" Rozt'a declared. "The pool was empty. What did you say after you came back from seeing Amarandaris-the Network pulled out because there'd been war under Dekanter? I'd say the Beast Lord's lost its Elder Brain and now its losing the whole war."

Dru shook his head. "Sheemzher's never said Beast Lords, not once. It's always Beast Lord, by itself. Even Amarandaris talks about trading with a single beholder."

"But if they all look alike-?" Tiep made a nauseated face. "Who'd want to look close enough to see if today's mind flayer is the same one you saw last year?"

"Good sir, Beast Lord not mind flayer."

Rozt'a, Tiep, and Druhallen all focused their attention on Sheemzher who'd propped himself up on one elbow.

"What is it, then?" Dru asked, expecting a familiar answer.

The goblin howled, "Alho-o-o-o-on!"

Dru rubbed his forehead wearily. Sheemzher wasn't stupid, no more than a young child was stupid when it thought that size-bigness-determined the value of a coin. But, like a young child, Sheemzher saw the world on his own terms. "That may be the word that goblins use," he explained, "but men say 'mind flayers'."

"Goblins say nothing, good sir. Good lady say: alho-o-o-o-on!"

Sheemzher howled again and Dru had great difficulty imagining that the keening sound had originated in Wyndyfarh's slender, elegant throat. He'd never heard of an alho-o-o-o-on, either, and it was simply inconceivable that Ansoain would have failed to acquaint him and Galimer with such an unusually named beast.

When the goblin finished his howl, he added, "Mind flayers alive living things. Alho-o-o-o-n dead living thing."

Dru, who'd been leaning against the rock, trying to stay as much out of the rain as possible, literally leapt forward and to his feet. "Undead? The Beast Lord is an undead mind flayer? Mystra's mercy-that explains the rest." His initial burst of excitement and satisfaction faded fast. "You knew," he said. Disbelief kept Dru's anger in check. "You knew what was down there. You knew, and you led us down there without a word of warning…"