The Nether Scroll - Lynn Abbey [18]
What would have enabled a few farmers to bind the Black Network to good behavior?
The path cleared a hilltop. Weathercote Wood burst into sight, a lush wall of greenery on the far side of a brook which this late in summer scarcely needed a bridge. On the Parnast side the bridge came down in a gravel-filled ditch. On the Weathercote side, there was untrampled grass and nary a hint of a path.
The light, apparently, was wrong.
Bathing was impossible in the shrunken brook, but Druhallen could, and did, kneel in the delightfully frigid water. With no one watching, he splashed himself until he was soaked to the skin. During the past three days he'd sworn that he'd never complain about cold again, but it wasn't long-not more than a quarter-hour-before he was shivering and headed back to the patch of sunlight where he'd left his boots, belt, and folding box.
Dru watched the forest while the sun dried the clothes on his back. Once, hundreds of black birds took flight at one swoop. They cast a shadow across the sun, but there was nothing
magical about crows raiding the grain fields. After the crows, the Wood erupted with a locust racket and, for a moment, Druhallen suspected magic. He rose… took a step toward the bridge…
The bugs fell silent.
The light wasn't right.
He gave the Wood until mid-morning to reveal its magic. Locusts racketed a few more
times and once, when his attention had wandered a bit, a fox poked its head through the thicket. But before Dru could get a better look, it had vanished.
Dru headed back to the village; Weathercote could keep its secrets. Nearing the palisade, he heard shouting and the unmistakable honk of camels: a caravan had followed the storm off the Anauroch. Druhallen quickened his pace, but stopped short once he was through the gate.
Until that moment, Dru would have guessed that a desert caravan held a dozen camels, perhaps as many as twenty. Instead, there were easily twice that-the exact number was impossible to count-each with a pair of desert-dressed handlers and a merchant retinue, and all of them were shouting. Parnast's single street and the courtyard between the charterhouse and its stable had been transformed into chaos incarnate.
A few men, quieter than the rest and dressed in cleaner clothes, made themselves obvious. They were the Zhentarim inspectors, checking every pack and purse, making sure that their master and, especially, they themselves got a cut of the loot.
Loot there was. The riches of Anauroch and the east were on display beneath the Parnast sun: carpets and tapestries, carved sandalwood chests, and brass hammered into shapes both functional and fantastic. Amarandaris would lay claim to the best, but he couldn't keep it all and, like as not, neither he nor his men would find the rarest, the most precious objects the desert had yielded up.
That meant there'd be merchants looking to get out of Parnast as quickly as possible with hired magic that didn't dance to the Zhentarim tune.
Druhallen looked about for Galimer's golden hair and found Rozt'a instead. Their bodyguard was perched on the courtyard fence, absorbed in animated conversation with another leather-clad, sword-wearing woman. She waved as Dru walked by, but didn't invite him over and he didn't intrude.
There were few enough women living Rozt'a's life. When Rozt'a met one, she tended to embrace the woman as a long-lost sister, even if they'd never met before. It was just another of the many things Dru didn't understand about the woman who'd wanted to marry him.
He spotted Tiep. The youth's wild, dark curls were unmistakable amid a clutch of desert-wrapped heads hunkered within a ring of rope-bound chests and knotted sacks. Dru knew what they were doing before Tiep's fist shot up. As best Druhallen could figure, Tiep had learned