The Nether Scroll - Lynn Abbey [12]
"Vengeance," Dru countered. "Your mother's vengeance."
"We've gotten vengeance. There were thirteen Red Wizards on that hilltop. We've learned all their names and slain three of them without going to Dekanter. We'll slay the rest when we can, if we can. Going to Dekanter won't get us closer to any of them. All Dekanter gets us- gets you-is a chance to cast that scrying spell you've been cooking up for years. All right- suppose you do scry something about the glass disk? Suppose you see a red-robed wizard carry it out of the mines, then what? You've never been able to answer that question for me, Dru. Are you going to start excavating with strangers around-Zhentarim strangers? Sweet Mystra, you've always said, 'Don't let the Network know we think there's a connection between Ansoain's death and the Red Wizards'! If you ask me, it would be easier if we were traveling with Amarandaris. At least then we'd know the thief-"
"Strangers! Red Wizards! Zhentarim!" Rozt'a erupted. "Gods! Take your pick and the Pit take them all. We're all born little people and if we're clever well stay little people, beneath the notice of the mighty for good or evil. You find what you're looking for, Druhallen, and our troubles are just starting."
Dru defended himself: "If I'm right and the Red Wizards are kindling their spell circles with Netherese magic and Netherese artifacts, then the rest of Faerun's got to know before the Weave is torn. The Netheril Empire came down in a day because wizards got greedy."
"The Weave's not our responsibility. I've said it before: She was my mother!" Galimer shouted. Galimer never shouted, but the heat and frustration had gotten to them all. "You've spun a yard of conclusions from a single strand of suspicion, Dru. I say, sell that damned disk and be done with it."
Dru opened his folding box-a different one than he'd carried on the Vilhon Reach-and removed the disk. He held it up in the summer light.
The disk had not yielded its secrets easily. Ansoain had been dead for two winters before Druhallen knew the inscription was written in the language of the ancient Netheril Empire. Another seven winters passed before he'd taught himself enough of that forgotten language to attempt a translation… Those who see me see darkness, while he who holds me casts the sun.
In his heart Druhallen believed that the first part of the inscription described the disk's function as a vault where several wizards could pool their potential magic; and the second part described the might a wizard wielded when he unleashed that pooled potential. But other interpretations were possible. There was no definitive concordance of Netherese with any modern language. In other contexts, the word Druhallen had translated as darkness meant death or blindness; and at least one elven authority insisted that casts the sun was a metaphor for insanity.
Galimer and Rozt'a agreed with the elves and so, five years ago, Druhallen had spent the winter at Candlekeep, where for a hefty price in gold a blind seer had plunged into a trance. She'd vindicated a few of Dru's cherished suspicions. Before it fell into the grass on the Vilhon Reach, the disk had belonged to a red-robed necromancer from Thay who commanded the potential magic of twelve other wizards less skilled than himself. But the Candlekeep seer had been unable to determine what precise role the disk had played in casting the spells that slew Ansoain and so many others that day, or how a Netherese artifact had wound up in a Red Wizard's hands.
Go to Dekanter, the seer suggested when her trance had ended. Go to the Mines of Dekanter in the Greypeak Mountains. The Netherese mages congregated