The Screaming Skull

by Rick Ferguson

  The charm had degraded enough to allow our mouths to move. “He’s just visiting, you said?” I whispered to James.

  “He’s a mate,” James said. “What can you do?”

  Given the number of armed men camped along our route, I began to wonder if James’s Rangers could take them in a pitched battle. The figure of 200 men was obviously outdated; there were easily 500 soldiers camped in the forest. They were seasoned veterans, bearing the arms and armor of a dozen kingdoms, their past crimes and grievances forgotten for the opportunity to serve at Amabored’s pleasure, whatever that was.

  Soon enough, we had our first clue. Amabored’s men dragged us to a glade dotted with tents, dropped to their haunches, and lit pipes while they waited for us to regain the use of our legs. Another hour passed, and we could walk again. The captain ordered our hands bound. I cast a beckoning glance at James. He shook his head—not yet.

  Leaving behind the soldiers’ camp, we passed through the civilian campsite. The woods on either side of the trail were pimpled with more tents, smoldering campfires, and hammocks lashed between trees. There were no campers in sight. Had Amabored gone Kurtz on us? Was he now ensconced somewhere deep within the forest building altars to himself out of human skulls? A mile further in, we heard the faint sounds of percussion, pipes, and lutes playing. A festival, then. I relaxed a little. Amabored could always throw a good party.

  Then we saw the crosses.

  16

  There were a dozen of them reaching skyward on the north side of the trail, as incongruous as a pile of horseshit in the Kraken. Over each cross flapped a blue banner emblazoned with a winged sword—Amabored’s latest heraldry, we surmised. From each cross hung a crucified wizard. That they were wizards, there was no doubt; after you’ve been around them enough, you can pick them out of a crowd. They’re fond of facial hair and flamboyant dress, though they’re not as effete as you might think—I’ve known wizards who could break me in two, magic girdle notwithstanding. With their billowing, multicolored silks, now soiled with dried blood, these wizards looked like they might have hailed from up North, perhaps even from Amabored’s home in the land of the Tiger Nomads. They had been dead perhaps three days. The crows had already taken most of their faces.

  The guards waited while we paused to have a look at them. It took a lot to get James riled up. Crucifying men within his borders was a good way to do it.

  “That’s just great,” James said. “Who does he think he is, Pontius Pilate?”

  “Maybe he found them like this,” I offered.

  “Fat chance.”

  Fat chance indeed. We moved on. The music grew louder. We heard the buzz of a crowd, and the trail dumped us into a wide meadow, across which was spread a vast throng of young revelers. I dug the scene immediately. It was high summer, so the heat of the day had prompted most of these kids to drop trou, as it were. Topless young maids lounged in the flattened grass, twisting their hair into French braids or painting one another’s faces with crushed berries. Shirtless young men, their hair long and unkempt, their bodies bronzed, played hacky-sack in small groups or cooked veggie burritos on small hibachi grills. The pungent odor of pipeweed drifted out of the myriad tents dotting the meadow. Along the south edge of the clearing, a line of makeshift vendor stands sold everything from glass beads to hemp clothing to crude hand-painted portraits of Amabored in beatific poses playing the guitar or gazing reverently at the sky; every portrait included the winged sword motif. A stage near the opposite edge of the meadow supported a lively band of minstrels, noodling out melodies that drifted across the field as a crowd of dancers twirled in endless circles nearby.

  “It’s worse than I thought,” said James.

  One of the guards pointed at a sprawling, wooden-walled, multi-room tent on the far side of the meadow. “He’s in there,” the guard said. “He’s expecting you.”

  With that, the guards loosened our bonds. With no more reason to start any shit, we wended our way through the crowd towards the tent, stepping around the spun-out partiers sprawled on the ground. As men of stature, we were used to drawing wary stares from passers-by. No one here gave us a second look, however, unless it was to offer us “sheets,” “shrooms,” “molly,” a toke on a pipe, or a hit off a hand-rolled smoke. James was nonplussed, but I thought of how nice it would be to hang there awhile, enjoy the naked girls, and get bent like the old days in Redhauke. We were so poor back then that guarding drug shipments was one of the few ways we could make any money. Of course, we partook whenever we could. Being Lawful Good, James was opposed to mind-altering substances. We Neutrals could do as we liked—and believe me, we did.

  When we reached Amabored’s tent, I saw that little needle-dicked bug-fucker Xingo. That’s when the situation nearly got out of hand.

  From the old man, I inherited a short fuse. Since a short fuse leads often to a short life, I tried to keep my temper reigned in—but that gnome cocksucker had stuck a fucking poisoned dagger in my back, and I defy you to forgive somebody for that. When I saw his oily complexion and cheesy handlebar mustache, I was on him like a dwarf on a ham sandwich. He was lounging on a divan and pawing at a young maiden too stoned to care that his hands were in her pants. A nano-second after I laid eyes on him, I had pulled a small hand-axe from a stand near the tent’s entrance and sent it whistling toward the gnome’s skull.

  Age, unfortunately, had not slowed Xingo’s rat-like reflexes. He launched himself off the couch as the hand-axe thudded into it. The comatose maiden flopped to the floor. I whirled toward the gnome, and three daggers slammed into the doorframe a few inches from my head. He’d have to do better than that.

  “Let me trim that mustache for you, gnome scum!” I bellowed.

  “Sit on this, asshole!” Xingo answered, saluting me with his stubby middle finger.

  Left unchecked, the two of us would have leveled the tent trying to murder each other and killed a dozen innocent bystanders in the process. Fortunately, James tackled me before I could take another swing.

  “Turn me loose!” I cried. “I’ll pop his head like a pimple!”

  “This isn’t the time!” said James, holding me back. “Do you want to start a shooting war?”

  Xingo had scurried behind the bar, where he watched me with his beady rat-eyes. “You can’t touch me, fuckwad!” the gnome cried. “I’m under Amabored’s protection! Lay a finger on me, and he’ll part your hair all the way to your prick!”

  “Amabored protect you?” I scoffed. “Fat chance!”

  “The gnome’s right,” said a familiar voice from behind me. “He’s with me.”

  17

  “It’s like this,” Amabored said after order had been restored. “Anyone who pledges himself to my banner has his past sins utterly wiped away. ‘Plenary indulgence,’ I call it. A lot of people want the chance to start over.”

  Xingo had made himself scarce, which meant that I could relax my guard enough to enjoy a flagon of ale from Amabored’s private stash. Still, I kept my back to the wall. Never trust a gnome; if they weren’t all conniving, backstabbing little shits, they’d have been wiped out long ago.

  “That little puss-filled boil has tried to kill us both more times than I can count,” I said, “and you’ve forgiven him?”

  “Why not? He’s smart enough to stay close to his enemies, and I’m one of them,” said Amabored. “Besides, gnome assassins are useful and hard to come by. He’s promised to start rubbing out wizards for me.”

  “Speaking of wizards,” said James, “what about those poor bastards at the head of the trail? We’re trying to attract trade to this kingdom. Crucifixions are fine for the Romans, but they don’t play well in the Midwest.”

  “It was unavoidable.” Amabored set his ale aside and stood, stretching his white wings with a luxurious rustle of great feathers. When I say wings, by the way, I mean wings—Amabored had a real pair sprouting out of his back.

  He wasn’t born with them. For most of his life, Amabored was a
garden-variety human swordsman. Then, when we took our sojourn with the Cloud Riders during the Quest for the Sunless Sea, he met Bellasa. She was the Cloud King’s daughter, naturally, so he could marry her only by agreeing to enter the Sky Temple and take the wings to become one of her people. Sporting a pair of wings sounds cool, but to Amabored they were often a curse. They smelled like the flanks of a wet sheepdog, for one thing. He was always shedding goddamn feathers all over the place, for another. Lice were a problem. Seriously, there was almost nothing cool about them.

  He could really fly, though. I never understood the aerodynamics—to generate that kind of lift, you’d think he’d need a thirty-foot wingspan, but his spanned no more than ten. While he couldn’t take off from the ground, if he threw himself off a cliff, then he could soar with the eagles. He kept the wings as a tribute to Bellasa, but he stopped flying. As far as I know, he’s never been back to the Greensward.

  Shortly after he gained his wings, Amabored encountered another curse that temporarily turned his skin fluorescent green. Imagine for a moment that you’re an illiterate peasant residing in some messy border village, your head full of superstitious mumbo-jumbo, and a flying, glowing, green-skinned warrior with a sword that speaks thunder and hurls lightning bolts comes swooping into town. No wonder the peasants thought he was one of the Fallen. Though he no longer glowed green, he still cut an impressive figure, even in his advancing age. All three of us were used to attracting men-at-arms to fight under our banners. Amabored’s armies did more than follow him—they worshiped him.

  “Unavoidable?” James asked. His mustache bristled like a wall of spears. “You unavoidably had to nail those wizards to crosses?”

  “Ah, but these aren’t just any wizards,” Amabored said. He allowed the thinnest of smiles. “I finally caught him.”

  James and I exchanged glances. “You don’t mean—” I said.

  “Jaspin Spellbinder himself.”

  “Spinning Korean fuck chairs!” I cried. “Seriously?”

  “Didn’t you recognize the foul stench of donkey semen when you walked past the crosses?”

  Jaspin-fucking-Spellbinder! We had chased that fu-manchued hemorrhoid from one end of the Multiverse to another, and always he had slipped the noose—even in our moment of triumph, when Koschei lay dead before us, the Deathless One’s triumphant comeback tour cut tragically short when my battle-axe parted his hair all the way down to his throat. Who knew, way back when in those halcyon days of yore in Redhauke, that a nondescript if marginally shady tavern proprietor and retired mid-level illusionist would turn out to be the key guy fucking up our program? From the moment we first stumbled into the Suds ‘n Shade in search of cheap libations, that asshole was working for the Hand—when he wasn’t working for my father, that is. When we faced down the lemming imps, he was there. When we nearly came to ruin in the bowels of the Blue Falcon, he was watching. When the Empress Wilomina took up the Mace of Malice and became the Black Countess reborn, he stood beside her. His machinations nearly capsized our quest a dozen times, and always the wizard had escaped our clutches. Now here he was, lashed to a cross and drawing flies. Still, I felt little of the blue blaze of cold triumph I might have expected to feel at the sight. Mostly, I was disappointed that Amabored had gotten to the douchebag before I had.

  “I don’t believe it!” James said. “I thought Jaspin left this universe?”

  “He came back,” Amabored said. “The rest of them are his apprentices. They were working for the Sultan right before he razed my capital. Greedy motherfucker must have needed the dough. Let’s just say he never saw me coming.”

  “You lost your capital?” I cried.

  “The Sultan sent a fucking skeleton army backed with werewolf mercenaries. How was I going to stand up to that? Then Jaspin’s crew sent Nightshades to murder my clerics so I couldn’t send the lot of them back to Hell. The Sultan’s men sat on their asses and watched while the undead tore us apart. I saw the best soldiers in the Nomad Kingdoms eaten alive. Had to flee my lands with my tail tucked. Now, I find myself in need of a new army. So, here we are.”

  “Bloody Hell,” I said. We’d all witnessed such massacres in the past. For James and me, it was thirty years ago. While I’d been keeping my throne warm down South, Amabored had been fighting for his kingdom. Even for trained heroes like the three of us, the undead are a pain in the ass. Your average illiterate foot soldier shits himself at his first sight of a skeleton warrior, which leaves your veterans to face alone the red-hot anvil of death. Without a phalanx of priests to turn the Infernals, Amabored’s army never stood a chance.

  “You started a religion just so you could rebuild your army,” James said. It wasn’t a question. “I’ll be damned. But you might have asked me before you started cherry-picking my rangers. You know I’ll give you a wide berth, but that’s the kind of thing I can’t let go.”

  “You started a religion?” I asked.

  “What choice did I have?” asked Amabored. “I was broke. My country was gone. My army was decimated.” He took out pouch and pipe, and a moment later the pungent bouquet of pipeweed filled the tent. “There’s naught left in the Nomad Lands but boys and old bastards. And when you have no tender, declaring a jihad is the quickest way to recruit. The Sultan may be sleeping in my bed, but I'm still here. He couldn’t kill me. And he knows I’ll be back.”

  “You’re an evil genius, I’ll give you that,” said James. “So, what’s your angle?”

  “The Seven.”

  “The Seven are a myth,” snorted James.

  “Some of your rangers think otherwise,” said Amabored.

  To most scholars, the Seven Dragons of World’s End are an urban legend, like the old story where the guy picks up a fabulous elf maiden in a tavern and later wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with both his kidneys gone. Others claim they’re real, that they sleep in a cavern leagues below the Dread Keep surrounded by magma, and that their dreams create the Chaos music that powers all sorcery on Woerth. The Seven are said to be the Proto-Dragons, the spawn of Tiamat and the progenitors of each dragon species: Red, Black, White, Green, Blue, Silver, and Copper. The Time Lords Gygax and Rigsby—Koschei’s former apprentices and members of the original Quest that took him down—claimed to have vanquished and imprisoned them at Koschei’s behest. They even recorded the entire battle for posterity with Rigsby’s Staff of Seeing, although the authenticity of the recording remains in dispute. Naturalists examining ancient dragon skeletons, meanwhile, have pretty well established their evolutionary heritage; supposedly, they’re descended from prehistoric cockatiels. Either theory sounds plausible to me. After all, dragons are magical creatures, not trilobites. What do I know? I’m just a simple swordsman.

  “I always thought the story was bullshit,” Amabored said. “But then I had a vision.”

  “I told you he was nuts,” said James.

  Amabored grinned in acknowledgment. “As I stood knee-deep in werewolf limbs on the battlefield of Oxcipius Plain, watching the Sultan’s undead army slaughter my men, I was struck blind and dumb by a lightning bolt that descended from a clear starlit sky. It lit my ass up, and I fell to my knees. I was sure that I had been nailed with a Force Hammer by one of the Sultan’s clerics, and that werewolves would soon be fighting over my intestines. Then the sky was rent as if a great door opened between our universe and another—and I beheld, ringed with the holy light of logos, the winged and unbearably majestic form of Metatron, the Herald of El, He who dreams the Multiverse.”

  James and I exchanged glances. Time to get the butterfly net, James’ eyes told me.

  Amabored stood and cast his gaze heavenward. His eyes burned with righteous fire. If it was an act, then it was a good one; the guards near the tent entrance knelt before him and cast their gazes to the ground.

  “I feared that the Herald of the Word might turn me to stone right there,” Amabored continued. “When Metatron spoke, his voice seemed to issue from my spine and fill my head with expl
oding thunderbolts.

  “‘My child,’ spoke Metatron. ‘In one year hence, the Seven Children of Barbēlō, she who is called Tiamat, the Mother of Chaos, will destroy the Woerth with Hellfire. Only thou may prevent this. Wilt thou take up the Sword of El?’

  “‘But how?’ I cried. The sounds of battle, the devastation around me, the very ground on which I stood, all fell away as if I had slipped off a cloak. I stood naked, exposed before the majesty of the Throne. ‘Why me? What must I do?’

  “‘Thou must not allow the keepers of knowledge to open the Seven Gates. Slay the keepers, and the doors will close forever. Fail in this task, and the Hour of Chaos will arrive. The Woerth will be devoured.’”

  “You’ve told this story more than once,” said James.

  “And then, a vision of a shield, emblazoned with a winged sword, appeared before me,” Amabored continued, ignoring James. “The earth shook. Fearing that my life had ended, I collapsed on the ground. The sky split again with a blast of mighty trumpets, and Metatron vanished in a flash of blinding golden light. For a long while, I lay prone, convinced that I was dead. Hours later, with the sun approaching noon, I finally awoke. Around me lay my devastated army, their bodies already picked clean by poachers. Fortunately, so covered was I in blood and entrails that the Sultan’s men had left me for dead. The vision had saved my life.”

  “So, you had a vision,” I said. “What’s that got to do with nailing wizards to crosses?”

  “Everything. Don’t you see? ‘Slay the keepers of knowledge,’ he said. Wizards are the keepers of knowledge. ‘The Hour of Chaos,’ he said. That’s the turn of the Millennium, when the Bug kicks in and all Hell breaks loose. The Proto-Dragons sleep behind the Seven Doors; I have to slay enough Chaos wizards to ensure that the good guys can patch the glyphs guarding the doors. I’ve already taken care of the Spellbinder and his crew; there are only a hundred or so Chaos wizards left of high enough level to keep the Doors open. That limits the field considerably. Once I’ve rubbed them out, the Woerth will be saved, ushering in a new Millennium of peace—made possible by yours truly, the chosen Sword of El. Who wouldn’t join such a noble quest?”