"Look," the youth continued, "I know it was my fault. Taking that amber wasn't just wrong, it was stupid—the stupidest thing I've ever done in my whole life. I'd give anything to go back there and just walk away from that tree with nothing to show for it, but I can't do that. I can't do anything except say my prayers to Tymora—which I did all night. I didn't sleep a wink. I know you can't forgive me, not now or ever. I'm not asking that, but, please Dru, don't throw me out. I can never make it up, but I'll try. I swear to Tymora—may She hear my words and hold me to them—I'm a changed man. I'm never going to do something stupid again."
Druhallen considered a number of replies. The boy was lying. Dru had seen him fast asleep, but maybe—considering that he, himself, had missed the sunrise and the goblin—Tiep deserved the benefit of doubt on that score. More significantly, he seemed more chastened by the consequences of his theft than by the wrongness of it. And most significant of all, even if Tiep were completely sincere, he was making a promise he couldn't keep. To be alive was to be stupid once in a while.
Rozt'a had gnawed one last mouthful of cheese from the rind and was chewing it slowly. Her face was without expression, but she was watching him carefully. Realistically, her foster son's fate and possibly her own future hung on Dru's next words.
He settled on, "We'll see," which sounded more evasive than he'd intended. "We have to get Galimer back before we start talking about the future."
Tiep had hoped for more and tried to swallow his disappointment. His silence would count in his favor when the time for reckoning did arrive. Rozt'a's attention had changed focus when she heard Galimer's name.
"Do you have a plan now that you've read up on your magic again?" she demanded.
Dru shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm ready to give it a try."
They followed him behind the waterfall where Dru took a stick of beeswax from his folding box and drew an eye-high, wrist-to-elbow diameter circle on the glassy stone. He uttered the Auld Thorassic word for "revelation." The wax sizzled like fat in a pan and gave off the scents of clover and roses. It was quite impressive but not notably successful. Dru's most reliable method for dispelling magic worked best on the spells he himself had cast or the non-specific enchantments that merchants—figuring any protection was better than none—bought by the scroll from wizard shops throughout Faerun.
The merchants were right about the value of protection, but Lady Mantis was no cost- cutting merchant. The glassy stone didn't budge. For a moment, though, and to Dru's eyes alone, it became darkly transparent. He glimpsed another rocky overhang, another waterfall, and a mossy greensward beyond it.
His spell was already waning, taking the transparent moment with it, when Dru made out three figures near a mirror-image marble temple. Softly striped Wyndyfarh and Sheemzher in his brilliant blue and green were unmistakable. The third figure, a slender, gold-haired hair man, had to be Galimer, but it was a changed Galimer who sat on a bench, slightly apart from the other two, and resembled nothing so much as a living statue.
The last of the wax evaporated with a pop! The vision ended and Dru stepped back from the stone.
"What was that supposed to be?" Rozt'a demanded.
"There's another grove, on the other side. I saw it through the spell. She's got Galimer there with her."
"And?"
"She's got him. They're talking, her and the goblin, not Galimer. Galimer's ..." He sought words that wouldn't push Rozt'a over the edge. "He's sitting on a bench by himself, watching the waterfall."
"What are we waiting for? Blast this thing and we'll grab him." Rozt'a checked her weapons. If the best his efforts had accomplished was a few moments of shadowed vision, then there was no way Druhallen could blast his way into Wyndyfarh's inner grove. He couldn't tell Rozt'a that, not yet.
"We're waiting to see if she'll come to us. A little restraint on our part—"
Dru got no farther with his argument when a damp wind whirled suddenly around them. Instinctively, he blinked and when he looked at the glassy stone again, it was gone. There was no twin grove, only a pitch-black emptiness and the sounds of falling water and steel sliding over oiled leather as Rozt'a drew her sword.
He closed his hand over her wrist. "Not yet."
She made a sound worthy of a lioness.
"We're on her ground, Roz. She can influence everything, even your dreams—or have you forgotten that? Let her come to us, or wonder why we haven't rushed to her. Let her do a little guessing for a change."
Rozt'a frowned, with Druhallen still clinging to her wrist, she shoved her sword home in its scabbard. She gave him a look that said, What's your hand still doing there?
