The Nether Scroll Chapter 8: A Day of Stones, Blood, and Hard Truths in the Greypeaks
Book: The Nether Scroll by Lynn Abbey Series: Lost Empires, Book 4 (Forgotten Realms) ISBN: 0-7869-1566-8
Chapter 8 opens with something I genuinely appreciate about Lynn Abbey’s writing. Druhallen wakes up and just… thinks about retirement. He’s fantasizing about buying a little spell shop in a well-run town, marrying, maybe having kids. The man is pulling gray hairs from his beard and daydreaming about boring, predictable, wonderful normalcy.
And honestly? After everything this party has been through, I’d be looking at real estate listings too.
But of course, the Greypeaks don’t care about Druhallen’s retirement plans.
Another Day, Another Ambush
The group pushes forward with Sheemzher riding on Hopper because the goblin is too beaten up to walk. The mood is grim. Dru and Rozt’a are barely speaking after an awkward moment where he tried to comfort her and she basically froze him out. Tiep is recovering from his blistered feet. Nobody is talking. And the sky is full of red dragons.
Eight dragon sightings in one day. Two of them at the same time. Both full-grown reds.
Then the rocks start falling.
Unseen attackers up above the trail start raining stones down on them. Dru improvises brilliantly here. He takes a shielding spell designed to slow arrows and casts it on the rain itself, reasoning that if the wind is throwing rain sideways, maybe ensorcelled rain will slow the stones too. It’s the kind of creative spellwork that makes Druhallen fun to read about. He’s not the most powerful wizard. He’s just really clever about working with what he’s got.
The spell helps but doesn’t stop everything. Tiep catches a stone to the forehead while saving the horse Ebony from bolting off a cliff. The kid goes completely dumbstruck. Vacant eyes, no comprehension, just standing there like a target dummy. So Dru casts a gloom spell on the attackers, buying them enough time to move.
But the same creatures ambush them again in the next bog. This time they go straight for Sheemzher, and we get to see Dru pick up his ax-shaft and go to work. It’s brutal. He calls it butchery, not battle, and he’s right. These creatures are outmatched in every way.
Who Are the “Demons”?
Here’s where things get interesting. After the fight, Sheemzher absolutely loses it. His hat got destroyed in the battle and he stomps on it, then starts stabbing the corpses with his spear while screaming “Demons!” over and over.
Dru stops him and points out the obvious. The dead creatures have goblin-like features. One hand has five fingers identical to Sheemzher’s. The other has seven twisted, deformed fingers. These aren’t demons. They’re mutated goblins.
Sheemzher won’t hear it. Five fingers means people. Seven fingers means demons. Period. End of discussion. And Dru recognizes a lost cause when he sees one. Dwarves deny they’re related to duergar. Elves disown the drow. Apparently goblins have their own version of refusing to acknowledge ugly cousins.
But Dru is already connecting dots. Someone is meddling with goblins. Transforming them. And when Rozt’a suggests the Red Wizards might be involved with Netherese magic again, Dru realizes she might be right.
Sheemzher’s Real Story
They find a cave for the night and Dru finally gets Sheemzher talking. What comes out is genuinely heartbreaking.
Sheemzher was somebody back in Dekanter. Born to privilege (by goblin standards), a proven warrior, married to a woman named Elva whom he clearly loved. She gave him six children in four years, including twins twice. He was on track to become an elder, maybe even Ghistpok himself one day.
Then the Takers came.
Here’s the thing about Sheemzher’s story that hits different. During the goblin worship ceremonies, everyone drank wine and passed out. But Sheemzher had stopped drinking years earlier because it gave him terrible headaches. So he pretended. And one night, when everyone else collapsed, his wife Elva stood up and walked away like a sleepwalker.
Sheemzher followed her underground. He found a colony of mindless goblins. He found an egg, a device where his wife went in one end and something else came out the other. She was gone. Transformed into one of the “demons.”
And then he found a mantis in a box that told him to take it to Lady Wyndyfarh. So he did. And the Lady told him to wait for “good men” who would come. He waited six years.
Six years.
The Real Stakes
Dru puts it together. The egg is an athanor, an alchemical device for transmutation. Powered somehow by a Nether scroll. And whatever mage is running it, they’d need power on the scale of the sun or the ocean to make it work on living creatures. The sun, the ocean, or forbidden Netherese magic.
And Dru realizes that he has to beat this mage if he wants Galimer back.
The chapter ends with Dru and Rozt’a talking quietly by the cave entrance. Rozt’a admits she still loves Galimer, that there’s not enough gold or magic in the world to change that. It’s the most honest moment between them in the whole book so far.
But the final line belongs to Rozt’a’s practical mind. She’s not worried about goblins, she says. She’s worried about what Sheemzher will do when he figures out that his “good lady” doesn’t care about saving goblins either.
That’s the kind of observation that keeps you reading.