The Nether Scroll Chapter 2: Fifteen Years Later at Dawn Pass
Book: The Nether Scroll by Lynn Abbey | Series: Lost Empires, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-1566-8
28 Eleasias, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR)
Fifteen years. That’s the time jump between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. One chapter ago, Druhallen was a teenager with a broken wrist swearing vengeance on a hilltop. Now he’s a grown man leaning against a rough-plank wall in a Zhentarim village called Parnast, and his wrist still aches when he thinks about Ansoain.
A lot has changed. The duo became a trio became a quartet. And the simple vow of vengeance turned into a fifteen-year research project that’s about to collide with Zhentarim politics.
New Partners
After Ansoain’s death, Dru and Galimer picked up Florozt’a. Everyone calls her Rozt’a. She’s a swordswoman who sold her blade to a Zhentarim captain who treated her badly. When he pushed too far, she left him on the ground. She ended up stranded on the road with nothing but her sword and a leaking waterskin. Dru and Galimer hired her on the spot, more from pity than need. But she fit.
Here’s where things get complicated. Rozt’a fell in love with Dru, not Galimer. She ambushed Dru with a kiss one night. She talked about marriage and children, and Dru’s blood turned to ice. He strung her along for over a year until she announced she was pregnant. And he reacted badly. Very badly.
They had a fight that woke the neighborhood. Dru walked out. By spring, guilt dragged him back. Rozt’a and Galimer were married. The baby had died in the womb and nearly killed Rozt’a. She could never have children again.
So now they travel together, the three of them plus Tiep, a street kid Rozt’a adopted from a temple in Berdusk. He’s charming, clever, good with horses, and an incorrigible thief. The boy sheds simple magic like water off a duck, which makes him frustratingly hard to enchant.
Stranded in Parnast
They came to Parnast at the western end of the Dawn Pass Trail because Galimer arranged a contract to escort a merchant coming off the Anauroch desert. The real reason? Dru wants to reach the ruins of Dekanter.
Years at Candlekeep paid off. A blind seer confirmed the glass disk was forged at Dekanter, lost there, and found there not long ago. She taught Dru a spell that could reveal the disk’s full history, but only if he found the chamber where it was made. It took three years to collect reagents and another year to master the spell. And now he was less than a week from Dekanter.
But the contract fell apart. Their merchant clients ran off with different escorts. The Zhentarim have moved the trail away from Dekanter. Lord Amarandaris, the local Zhentarim boss, has declared the ruins off-limits. And there are goblin refugees everywhere, displaced from the Greypeak Mountains by some unknown upheaval.
Rozt’a is furious. Galimer is defensive. Dru is trying to keep the peace while privately wondering if they’re going to be stuck in this tiny Zhentarim village for the entire winter. Parnast is the kind of place where the trade trail is the only reason it exists, and once the dust storms and blizzards start, nobody goes anywhere until spring.
The Disk and the Theory
In the middle of the argument, Dru pulls out the disk. After fifteen years, here’s what he knows:
The inscription is written in ancient Netherese. It translates roughly to: “Those who see me see darkness, while he who holds me casts the sun.” Dru believes the first part describes the disk’s function as a vault where several wizards can pool their magical potential. The second part describes the power a wizard wields when he casts that pooled magic.
But other translations are possible. “Darkness” could mean death or blindness. “Casts the sun” might be a metaphor for insanity. Galimer and Rozt’a agree with the insanity interpretation. They think Dru is chasing shadows.
Dru’s bigger theory is that the Red Wizards of Thay are using ancient Netherese artifacts and forbidden spells to power their devastating circle magic. And if they are, then the Weave itself, the fundamental structure of magic in the world, could be at risk. The Netheril Empire destroyed itself in a single day because wizards got greedy. Dru believes it could happen again.
Tiep
Then there’s Tiep. The kid comes home from the stables with a gift for Dru: a lump of expensive myrrh resin. He says he won it gambling with a hostler. The whole scene is perfectly written. Tiep’s story is just plausible enough that you can’t prove he’s lying, and just sketchy enough that everyone knows something’s off.
“I don’t cheat,” Tiep insists. “The guy said he could throw double-three five times running. I let him make his throw four times, then I dared him to throw his fifth double-three with my dice.”
Of course Tiep had dice on him. Of course his dice are “absolutely pure, honest, all-around square.” And of course the hostler, who was cheating with loaded dice, couldn’t hit his number with fair ones.
Dru warns him that Parnast is Zhentarim territory. Galimer warns him that the Network doesn’t just punish you; they seduce you into working for them. There’s no “just this once” with the Zhentarim.
For an instant, Dru thinks he sees naked terror flash across Tiep’s face. Maybe they’re finally getting through to the kid.
But Dru keeps the myrrh. And he believes his foster son. That tells you everything about how this little family works.