The Nether Scroll - Lynn Abbey [56]
"Sheemzher make safer," he continued. "Sheemzher go now. Sheemzher back quick."
The goblin and his spear disappeared into the bog. Tiep wanted to follow, but his sore, bleeding feet were glued to the ledge. It was Tiep's regular chore to set the nightly picket line for the horses and, mindful that some might blame him for their misery, he got to work looking for a good place to tie off the rope. Rozt'a took pity on him.
"I'll handle the horses. You find yourself a place to sit. And get those boots off before your feet fester."
Beshaba's mercy-Tiep hadn't considered that possibility.
His feet weren't as bad as he feared. He'd lost a slab of callus from his left heel, and the big toe on his right foot was bloody; nothing a slathering of second-skin lotion couldn't handle. Rozt'a dragged their medicine chest over and mixed the lotion in a brass bowl. The most important ingredient went in last: a few drops of sickly green oil from a silver flask embellished with a rose-colored Lathandrite agate. Tiep counted five drops in all and flinched in advance, knowing how badly the potion-drenched cloths would sting when Rozt'a wrapped them around his feet.
"You'll survive," Rozt'a assured him.
Tiep didn't trust himself to answer. He couldn't nod without sending a stream of tears down his cheeks but he only yelped once, when Rozt'a squeezed his big toe, making sure that the lotion worked deep.
Druhallen scrounged wood from the bog-forest-no great challenge there-and got a fire going, which for a competent wizard was no great challenge, either. The wet wood smoked vigorously and the smoke was foul, but it got rid of the bugs. They were glad to have it, at least until Sheemzher returned.
"No flame! No flame!"
The dog-face thrust his spear into the fire and battered it apart. Dru's eyes narrowed and his fists clenched in a way that usually meant a fireball was due. Sheemzher saved himself with a single word and a gesture toward the clouds.
"Dragons."
"What kind?" Dru asked, because it made a difference.
"Big!" Sheemzher replied, which meant, probably, that the Greypeaks weren't home to one of the more benign dragon species.
The bugs came back-with a few thousand of their closest friends. It was a struggle to eat their cold supper without catching a few buzzing specks in each mouthful. Doubly difficult for Tiep because his feet hadn't stopped throbbing and he couldn't escape his bugs, even temporarily, by moving about on the ledge. He'd peeked beneath the cloths a few times: the second-skin oil was living up to its name. Tiep's feet felt like they were on fire, but the swelling had already gone down and the raw skin on his left heel was toughening.
Night came sooner than it would have out in the open as the clouds and mountains combined to stifle the sunset. Tiep braced himself for absolute darkness, then discovered that the bog made its own eerie light: lazy will-o'-the-wisps rose from the ground. They swirled higher and higher until they bumped into the clouds where they dissipated slowly.
The result was enough light to see shadows and movement, enough light to watch Sheemzher open up his striped waistcoat-it looked bedraggled now, though the dyes were good and the colors hadn't run together. He fished out something that hung from a cord and writhed. A rat, Tiep realized just before the goblin snapped its neck. He impaled the freshly-killed rodent on his spearhead then used the bloody weapon to draw a perimeter around their camp.
"Do you think that will keep the dragons away?" Rozt'a asked.
"Demons, not dragons. Sheemzher know. Sheemzher remember. Demons not cross blood."
Dru overheard and chortled, "That's a new one!"
Rozt'a silenced him with a well-aimed hiss, then added, "Do you want to draw straws for the first watch?"
"No-I'm awake until midnight anyway. This place isn't what I expected, so I need to make some changes in what I'm remembering. We need to be able to hide as well as fight. I'll