The Nether Scroll Read Online Free Page B

poorly.
    Very poorly.
    They'd had a row that awakened the entire neighborhood. When the guard came to the
door, Dru had walked out, leaving Rozt'a in tears and Galimer standing beside her. By spring,
when guilt dragged him back, Rozt'a and Gal were married ... and childless. The baby who
would have been Dru's daughter had died in Rozt'a's womb and nearly killed her.
    Galimer had taken Rozt'a to Berdusk's Chauntean infirmary where priests had kept her
alive with prayers and rare medicines. The newlyweds were deep in debt and desperately
glad to see Druhallen of Sunderath.
    I've lined up enough journeywork that we'll have everything paid come autumn, but it
would be a blessing if you rode with us, Dru. I can handle the steady magic—wards, scrys, and
deceits—but I'm nervous in the pinch.
    Nervous in the pinch! Since his mother's death, Galimer hadn't cast a single spell from
horseback and his mind blanked at the least surprise. He could line up the work, but he
couldn't deliver it. Dru could, and backing the newlyweds for a season was the least he could
do.
    We'll ride together, Dru had said to his friend, while Rozt'a stays here and rebuilds her
strength. Come autumn, you and she will be ready to start your own family ...
    Not at all, Galimer had replied. The Chauntean priests had been explicit: fever had put an
end to Rozt'a's dreams of motherhood. Their future lay on the road, as it always had, with
him. What had been cut could be made whole again, if he'd consent.
    Dru had been speechless; Galimer and Rozt'a heard silence for consent. They'd left
Berdusk together and found ways to remain that way.
    "I'm telling you that it was a good contract," Galimer continued the dispute with his wife.
"Yes, they were strangers. We didn't know them, they didn't know us, and neither they nor us
had ridden the Dawn Pass Trail before, but they knew our references and I checked theirs. I
made concessions—we're the ones who wanted to stop at Dekanter for three days when the usual
layover is one ... was one. None of us knew what was going on up here, but we'd bargained
fair and—because we were strangers—we deposited the earnest money with an Acolyte of Law—"
    Rozt'a snorted, a clear sign that she was losing control over her anger and disgust.
"Unless he was wearing the Network's jewels, my sneezes have more power than your
Acolyte has in these parts."
    "As a matter of fact, she was—"
    Dru paid close attention to the wooden planks beneath him and the activity of a spider.
The Zhentarim in all their guises were a chronic irritation in the Heartland, but they claimed
the Dawn Pass Trail for their own and there was no one who could gainsay them. Honest
folk—and Dru considered himself, Galimer, and Rozt'a to be honest folk—could survive, even thrive,
in the Zhentarim shadow. The Network, itself, preferred to do business with honest folk; it was both
cheaper and safer. But when a deal soured on the Dawn Pass Trail, honest folk were vulnerable.
    In Parnast, the little village where Galimer had arranged for them to meet a merchant-
adventurer coming off the Anauroch desert, the Network was openly and utterly in charge.
Zhentarim cant echoed in the charterhouse and Zhentarim trade-marks were burned into
every piece of wood, including the one Druhallen stared at after the spider disappeared.
    The local Zhentarim lord, a human named Amarandaris, took a tenth of everything that
passed through the palisade gate, and his armed cohorts made certain that nothing failed to
pass through. The cohorts seldom had to use force. The Zhentarim were notorious for other
means of persuasion.
    West of the village, the Dawn Pass Trail was a six-day stretch of rock-slides, washouts,
and hairpin curves through the Greypeak Mountains to the town of Llorkh. The trail was wide
enough for a single sure-footed horse or mule. Merchants provided the goods, the gold, the
horses, and whatever magic they thought their goods deserved;