The Nether Scroll Chapter 6: Lady Wyndyfarh's Grove and Galimer's Imprisonment
Book: The Nether Scroll | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Lost Empires, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-1566-8
This chapter is where everything falls apart. And it’s completely Tiep’s fault. Sort of.
The POV returns to Druhallen as they descend into Lady Wyndyfarh’s grove, and Abbey takes her time with the details. The air is so thick with magic that Dru feels vitalized in a way he hasn’t experienced since visiting Candlekeep. The flowers glow with subtle light. Everything from the moss to the trees feels imported from somewhere else, maybe somewhere beyond Faerun itself.
Lady Wyndyfarh up close is nothing like Dru expected. She’s elf-height but not quite elvish. Her skin has a warm, faintly russet pallor. Her hair is dead straight with crosswise stripes of darker brown. Her gown seems to blend into her body at the edges. And her fingers are a knuckle too long, tipped with nails that look more like talons.
She’s beautiful in a way that makes you feel like prey. When her gaze lands on Dru, he knows “what a rabbit saw when it beheld the hawk.”
The gem-colored insects are everywhere. Ruby bees in Rozt’a’s hair. Sapphire flies circling Galimer’s head. These are Lady Wyndyfarh’s spies and servants, tiny minds she’s magically awakened. Dru notices them because he’s a wizard. Rozt’a doesn’t notice at all.
The introductions are revealing. Sheemzher drops to his knees and raises clasped hands over his head. Rozt’a kneels too, and the worshipful look on her face actually disturbs Dru. Galimer handles it with perfect courtly grace. But Tiep? Tiep has no insect guardians buzzing around him. His natural resistance to magic means the bugs avoid him.
And Tiep has a stolen amber marker hidden in his shirt.
When Sheemzher makes the amber glow, the lump in Tiep’s shirt lights up. Lady Wyndyfarh’s face goes hard. “You killed. You murdered. You defiled.” Her lips don’t move when she says it. That detail is so creepy.
See, it’s not just the amber theft. When Tiep pried the marker from the tree, there was a black beetle sitting on it. One of Wyndyfarh’s magical servants. Tiep smashed it with his knife because it wouldn’t move. To him, it was just an ugly bug. To Lady Mantis, it was murder.
Galimer, bless his heart, tries to defend Tiep. “You believe a goblin over a man?” he shouts, and lunges at the woman. It’s the worst possible move. Dru was about to unleash a fireball but has to abort because Galimer is in the line of fire. Swallowing an unkindled spell is agonizing, and while Dru reels from the shock, Wyndyfarh wraps Galimer in magic that looks like a cross between spider silk and lightning. His body rises from the moss. Then both he and the lady vanish behind the waterfall.
Dru gets thrown across the pool. When he picks himself up, Galimer is gone. Tiep is crumpled on the ground. Rozt’a is standing with her sword half-drawn, looking like she wants to kill everything and everyone.
Behind the waterfall, there’s only smooth black glass where a cave should be. Dru can pound on it all he wants. Galimer is on the other side, in some mirror-image grove, sitting on a bench like a living statue.
The guilt lands on each of them differently. Tiep is genuinely devastated, though Dru notices he seems more shaken by the consequences than by the wrongness of the theft. He gives a big apology speech and swears to Tymora he’ll never do anything stupid again. Dru doesn’t buy it entirely, but he says “We’ll see.” He can’t bring himself to throw the kid out.
Rozt’a sits at the waterfall entrance all night, watching the black glass. She won’t leave her husband.
The resolution comes the next morning when Wyndyfarh opens the glass barrier and returns with Galimer and Sheemzher. But Galimer is not Galimer. He’s a warm statue. Standing, breathing, balanced, but utterly blank. He doesn’t recognize Rozt’a. He doesn’t respond to her voice or her kisses.
“Your husband contemplates the paths of his life,” Lady Mantis says. “It is a long journey and he has barely begun.”
Then comes the deal. Wyndyfarh won’t release Galimer until they complete a quest: travel to the ruins of Dekanter and retrieve a golden Nether scroll. A “Beast Lord” found the scroll and has been using it to harm her insect servants. She’s sworn an oath to Faerun’s goddesses of magic and cannot leave her glade. So she needs humans to do her dirty work.
This is where Abbey pulls the threads together beautifully. The group was already headed to Dekanter. Amarandaris wanted them to go there too. And now Lady Mantis is sending them on the same path, just through the mountains instead of the road. Dru suspects they’ve been played from the start, but he can’t figure out how. Tiep’s theft was pure opportunism. You can’t plan for someone else’s greed. Unless you know the person.
Rozt’a’s reaction to leaving Galimer with the beautiful, dangerous Lady Mantis is quietly devastating. Her attractiveness, Dru reflects, comes from competence and spirit. But leaving her husband with a woman of “enchanting beauty and wizardly might”? That hits her where armor can’t protect.
Lady Mantis tells them not to return to Parnast. Their horses and gear will be waiting outside the Wood. The Zhentarim are pursuing them. And she looks at Tiep when she mentions pursuit.
That look says everything. Whatever Tiep told Manya, it got back to Amarandaris. And now the Zhentarim are on the move.