The Nether Scroll Chapter 7: Bog, Bones, and Dung Beasts in the Greypeaks
Book: The Nether Scroll | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Lost Empires, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-1566-8
If you’ve ever played a D&D campaign where the DM puts the party through a miserable overland journey just to make them appreciate civilization, that’s this chapter. Except it’s actually good.
We’re back in Tiep’s head, two days out from Lady Mantis’s grove, and the kid is in full regret mode. He wishes the “bug lady” had cast her spells on him instead of Galimer. Being a mindless statue sounds better than following a goblin through the Greypeak Mountains.
The travel writing here is genuinely excellent. Abbey splits the Greypeaks into two types of awful: treacherous and weird. The treacherous part is the trails, which are basically glorified ledges barely wider than a horse. One stirrup bangs against the mountain. The other hangs over empty air. And unlike the Zhentarim trade routes, nobody maintains these paths. Every step is a gamble.
The weird part is the valleys, which turn out to be a vast flooded basin. The mountains form a bowl, part-filled with stagnant water that’s rotted the inner peaks into broken spires. Where you’d expect a lake, there’s a floating bog-forest. Trees as tall as ten men growing on ground that sways like reeds when the horses walk through. The whole landscape undulates.
And there are giant leeches underneath.
When the goblin drops that detail, Tiep’s reaction is so human: “The dragons that Sheemzher said dwelt in the unbroken clouds sounded better than giant leeches.” Same, Tiep. Same.
The first real disaster hits on a rocky descent. Cardinal, the gelding that usually carries Galimer, loses his footing and falls into a dry ravine. Broken legs. Dru rappels down on a safety rope and puts the animal out of its misery. It’s quick and sad and practical in a way that marks these characters as people who’ve lived hard lives on the road.
They redistribute Cardinal’s gear and switch to walking. Then they get to watch from a ridge as scavengers butcher the horse raw. These aren’t ordinary animals. Some are gray, goblin-sized. One has a bear’s face. Another has a rattish tail. And one has an extra arm growing from its shoulder that whips around like a serpent.
When Rozt’a wants to put arrows in them, Dru stops her. “Who’s to say what’s natural and what’s not?” he asks after examining them through his magic ring. That cryptic response hangs in the air.
Then comes the rain, the blisters, the bugs, and a dragon flyover that panics the horses. It’s just pure misery stacked on misery. Rozt’a wraps Tiep’s bleeding feet in medicated cloths that sting like fire but heal fast. He can’t even walk to find a good spot to sit.
That night, Sheemzher draws a perimeter around camp with a rat’s blood on his spear. “Demons not cross blood,” he says. Dru laughs, but Rozt’a shuts him up fast. When you’re sleeping on a ledge above a glowing bog, you don’t mock protective rituals.
Here’s where the chapter gets really interesting. Dru and Rozt’a divide the night watch between themselves. They don’t include Tiep. This is the clearest signal yet that they’ve lost trust in him. When Tiep confronts Dru about it, the conversation is raw and honest. Tiep makes valid points about being set up and conned. Dru concedes those points. And then, in a move that’s either trust or a test, he lets Tiep take the watch.
Tiep immediately uses the opportunity to drag Sheemzher out of his blankets and interrogate him.
This scene is uncomfortable to read. Tiep grabs the sleeping goblin from behind, chokes him, and demands yes-or-no answers. He punches Sheemzher in the gut multiple times. He smashes the goblin’s head against the rock. It’s clearly wrong and Tiep’s rationalizations are weak. He wants to prove Sheemzher is working for the Zhentarim. He wants to protect his family. But the brutality is disproportionate and Abbey doesn’t let the reader forget it.
The interrogation gets interrupted by something far worse. A smell hits them first. Then something soft and warm wraps around Tiep’s ankle and he’s airborne, being thrashed against stone by a creature that is, essentially, a sentient mound of predatory dung. An otyugh, Dru later guesses, though he’s never seen one above ground.
The beast projects its hunger directly into Tiep’s mind. Visions of gore, raw meat, viscera. It bashes him against rocks. He’s about to die when Dru arrives with fire spells. Rozt’a hacks off one of its serpentine arms. Sheemzher distracts it with his spear. They drive it into the bog where something else drags it under.
And here’s the kicker. Sheemzher covers for Tiep. When Dru asks what they were doing outside camp, the goblin invents a story about smelling the creature and waking Tiep to investigate. He protects the boy who just beat him.
Dru buys it, mostly. But he tells both of them that horses aren’t worth dying for. And Rozt’a patches up the goblin’s injuries without ever guessing they came from Tiep’s fists.
“Debts were mounting,” the chapter ends. “There’d have to be a reckoning soon.”
That line carries weight because the debts run in every direction. Tiep owes Sheemzher for saving his life and covering for his cruelty. He owes Dru for trusting him with the watch. And now the goblin has something over him, a debt that can be called in at any time.
The Greypeaks are breaking them down, physically and morally. And Dekanter is still ahead.