The Screaming Skull

by Rick Ferguson

  Back in the day, however, he was just Redulfo: a First-Level wizard clinging to a rung on the social ladder somewhere between privy-cleaners and customs agents. Apprentice wizards were laughed at, spat upon, shoved around, de-pantsed, beaten and humiliated, and they had to take it like the pencil-necked geeks they were. Woe be unto anyone, however, who got on a wizard’s bad side; those who survived their apprenticeships to become powerful sorcerers invariably returned to settle old scores. You could be sitting in a tavern chatting up a wench when some scrawny mage to whom you gave an atomic wedgie ten years prior would appear at the door to vaporize you. Me, I always made friends with wizards. I’ve only beheaded the ones who had it coming.

  In those days, Redulfo seemed like a shrimp who needed protecting—particularly in those first weeks inside the city, when the Redhauke Guard scoured the streets searching for the rogue wizard who had caused the Great Stampede. Perhaps you haven’t seen what five thousand head of terrified cattle can do to a city: buildings reduced to rubble, cobblestones slick with gore, gnome scum and imp-spawn looting every shop and stall from the Bazaar to Hundred Fountain Square. The looting brought out the Guard in force to cordon off entire city blocks and pump crossbow bolts into anything that moved.

  For weeks afterward, cows roamed the streets shitting on everything. They wandered into pubs, upset apple carts, chewed their cud in the middle of the street, and lumbered into churches. Finally, the Lord Mayor appealed to old Sklaar, the Grand Thaumaturge of the Wizard’s College, for help. Sklaar sent faculty and students into the city to fry the cows, which were then scooped up by roving posses of butchers and turned into steaks, roasts, and hamburger. The tanners came after.

  We felt bad about the destruction, but we sure as hell weren’t going to spend winter outside the city walls. That was for chumps.

  Besides, we had tempered the destruction with the good deed of getting those kids out of Doomtown. The kids turned out okay; afterward, the child snatchings seemed to stop. Years later, I’d occasionally pass by a gaggle of teen street-urchins regaling their younger companions with tales of the fierce young giant who had dragged a thousand wagons full of children into the city.

  And the rest of Doomtown? Once the herd passed through the Chimera Gate, about half of the refugees came flooding in before order was restored. At the Lord Mayor’s orders, guards lined up in regiments ready to mow them down with crossbow fire. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. The site of the Chimera Gate lying in ruins seemed to snap the city awake; maybe it wasn’t a great idea to attack a starving mob. So, Redhauke rallied. The High Council ordered the construction of a refugee camp near the Pit, the Godsway churches opened their granaries, and the newcomers settled in. I hadn’t known Barlan, but I wished he were around to see it. The refugees were unemployed and homeless, but at least they’d live—most of them, anyway.

  It might have been the terrifying rumors that finally awakened the city’s sense of compassion. Word had come from the North that more refugees were fleeing before an army led by Plague Knights. At the head of this column, rumor had it, rode Lord Eckberd the Pestilent, he who had slain the kings of Kenwood, Helene and Varnalla in the Dread Wars some five hundred years earlier. Survivors recounted a skirmish line of rats that flooded into towns and villages to infect the population before the Plague Knights sallied forth to murder every living thing that remained.

  In his famous treatise The Balance, Sir Michael of Moorcock argued that the wars of the Multiverse were waged not between Good versus Evil, but rather between Law and Chaos: Logos and Hellfire, the two fundamental and unalterably opposed forces in the Multiverse. Every universe was a manifestation of this war. When the cosmic scales in any universe tipped too far to one side, an Eternal Champion would arise to restore the balance. Five hundred years ago, the Dread Wars had found Chaos nearly triumphant. To restore the balance, the legendary warlord Arturus had led a quest including Koschei’s former apprentices Gygax and Rigsby, dwarf warrior Storm Stonegorm, Eckberd the Bold—before he was slain and reincarnated as Koschei’s warlord—the elven priestess Gemalatel, and the Cloud Rider Wanbli to cast down the Deathless One and restore the Balance. If Lord Eckberd had indeed risen again, could Koschei be far behind? If we wanted to see an entire tavern full of drunks shit their pants, we need only mention Koschei and wait for the minor-key chords followed by the ominous silence. We did it often, just for laughs.

  When we weren’t rumor-mongering, we were trying to figure out our next move. The only topic off-limits was the apparition witnessed by Lithaine. Anyone who mentioned the ghost found the elf’s dagger at his throat.

  “You better keep a low profile,” Amabored told Redulfo, as we sat nursing ales at what would become our regular haunt, the Suds ‘n Shade. The proprietor, a retired illusionist named Jaspin Spellbinder—yes, that Jaspin Spellbinder, the goddamn shit-stained asshole—didn’t ask any questions, provided that you didn’t start any shit.

  “No kidding,” said Redulfo, sulking in the corner. “Right now, I’m as useful as tits on a walrus.”

  “Walruses don’t have tits?” I asked.

  Together, the four of us had enough coppers to pay for a single room and a week’s worth of short rations. We needed jobs, and soon. Once the heat died down, Redulfo planned to take his letter of recommendation from the noble lord of his hometown and apply for entrance into the School of Thaumaturgy. He couldn’t go near the place, however, until the residue of enchantment wore off. If the College detected any Twelfth-Level magic on him, he’d be out of the city on his ass.

  While Redulfo laid low, the rest of us explored our new home. Even on the cusp of winter, the sensory assault was overwhelming. The smells hit you first: the deep, sultry aroma of a hundred spices hovering in a lurid cloud over the Bazaar; the briny stench of the fish markets; bread baking in the bustling kitchens of the Merchant Quarter; those were the welcome smells. In contrast, there was the hallucinogenic cloud of body odor radiating from 100,000 citizens from a dozen different races—if you could bottle the stuff, you could napalm villages with it. With no sanitary system to speak of, raw sewage and offal was tossed into pits and poured into the sewers. You could tell when a rat-catcher was nearby the wide swath his smell cut through the crowd—not even the cutpurses would get near one. There was the giant cat-box smell wafting over from Gnome Row, and the unnamable horror emanating from the Pit near the Mere Wall. Have you ever sat across the table from an arch-devil cutting a juicy fart after a meal of sauerkraut and boiled eggs? I have. The Pit was worse.

  Amabored, Lithaine and I were all fighters. If we wanted work, we had to apply to the Fighters’ Chapter of the Adventurers Guild. Because any half-wit with a notched sword and a buckler could call himself a fighter, the waiting list was long. The turnover rate, on the other hand, was the highest of any Chapter. Send ten First-Level fighters into a dungeon, and maybe two would come out. We were cannon fodder, and we knew it.

  Here’s how adventuring works in Redhauke. As an aspiring fighter, you take any work you can get—bouncer at a brothel, dockworker, stable boy, message runner, census taker—whatever manner of humiliation you can endure. Your goal is to get apprenticed to one of the adventuring trades. Blacksmiths, armorers, fletchers, and swordsmiths all must grease the Guild to land a contract supplying the thousands of adventurers who funnel through the city. After suffering through one shit job after another while avoiding a shank in the ribs or some gut-rotting disease, you begin to figure out who’s who. You chat up flea-ridden dwarfs in alehouses, bang homely waitresses, or suffer the sweaty advances of swishy nobles until you get word that Bob the bowmaker or Sam the swordsmith is in the market for an apprentice. If fortune smiles, you might land a decent guildmaster who doesn’t beat you or whore you out. After a year or two, he might nominate you for Guild membership. At that point, you’re put through the Exam.

  The Exam happens twice a year and draws apprentices from all over the Free Kingdoms. Designed by guildmasters and administered by journey
men, the Exam consists of fifteen highly diabolical and dangerous feats of skill designed to test your intelligence, strength, wisdom, dexterity, and constitution. You’re dropped into pits filled with scorpions. You’re forced into corridors filled with collapsing ceilings, whirring scythes, swinging pendulums, and springing spikes. You’re thrown down a chute naked into a water tank full of baby dragon eels. The final contest is usually against an ogre, a giant cave spider, or a dire wolf—to the death, of course, with clerics standing by to heal mortal wounds.

  Only a congenital idiot would subject himself to such torture. No way were we going to play it straight. Winter was setting in, we needed jobs, and Amabored had contacts. There was a black market in Guild memberships, and we were going to tap into it. Who got anywhere in life without cutting a few corners?

  5

  It was during this period that I first met Melinda the Blade. Although I have much to atone for in life, she tops the list. No one goes through life sinless—that is, if you believe in sin. I believe in it because I can’t figure out the evolutionary purpose of guilt. Is guilt merely the state of conflict between the ego and the superego that our mind-melding wizards say it is? Guilt over big crimes, like murder or adultery, may indeed have evolved to ensure social cohesion and the survival of the species. But what about guilt over everyday, petty sins? What biological purpose does it serve? Why feel guilty because you fucked someone over? Who gives a shit but the person you hurt?

  Melinda the Blade was her nom de guerre; I never knew her real name. I first encountered her while guarding pipeweed shipments imported by Saggon, Over-Boss of the Thieves Guild, on midnight smuggling runs by barges plying the vast underground canals that serve as Redhauke’s circulatory system. It was deadly dull work, mostly sitting around rolling knucklebones with whatever lunk-headed swordsman with whom you happened to be paired that night. Back when organized crime was run at the family level, drug shipments were hijacked as often as the sun rose. Once Saggon the Large consolidated underworld power in the Thieves Guild by simultaneously executing twenty-three key crime family heads during the Feast of the Fountains in 3930, the resulting monopoly effectively ended hijackings. Lately, drug heists had ticked back up again, which set Saggon’s teeth on edge. Armed guards began accompanying the barges, while swordsmen oversaw unloading on the Under-Canal docks.

  For Amabored, Lithaine and me, petty thug-work for the Thieves Guild represented our best chance of gaining Adventurers Guild admission; save up enough scratch, and we could bribe our way past the Exam. Saggon paid shit, but working for him gave us an excuse to act like big swinging dicks instead of the tiny tadgers we were.

  On one particularly dull and freezing night deep in midwinter, Lithaine and I were minding our business, smoking a phatty on the dock with Barry and Tim, a pair of mouth-breathers whom Saggon’s man picked up at the marina. A barrel filled with burning refuse passed for warmth.

  We were guarding a one-horse dray upon which sat piled high dozens of barrels stuffed with the finest gnome leaf this side of the Brandywine Bridge. As we smoked, the barge from which we had unloaded the shipment slipped along the canal and into the darkness; our orders were to stand by until a charlie arrived to drive the wagon through the Warren to the subterranean warehouse earmarked for storage. Though noble and commoner alike smoked pipeweed as often as they could get their hands on it, it was nonetheless illegal, for no reason other than the barrels full of cash made by the Guard and the Thieves Guild as they respectively enforced and broke the prohibition laws. Only gnomes could smoke it legally. The corresponding resentment resulted in many of them getting stomped on—especially the ones who sat smugly in front of their quaint little round doors smoking their ridiculous long-stemmed pipes.

  The dock stood about one hundred chains below Hundred Fountain Square, within the massive vaulted tunnel through which ran the Grand Canal that bisected the underbelly of the city from Mere Harbor to the Whitehorse River. The Under-Canals were miserable places to spend your time—the air wretchedly cold and clammy like a bucketful of fish heads, the canal water brimming with the offal of the city, the stone walls glistening with poisonous slime and the Rat King’s army continually massing for attack. It took a week of shivering down in those godforsaken canals before I started dipping into the pipeweed with the rest of the boys. To stay sane in this line of work, you had to stay stoned.

  “Let me get this straight,” I was saying to Lithaine. “You really haven’t hit puberty?”

  One of the most enjoyable ways to pass the time was to get Lithaine fired up and watch the flaming magma ooze out of his ears. The surest way to get him fired up was to question his elfness.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he said, blood rising to the tips of his pointed ears.

  “So how does it work? You’re too young to knock up an elf maiden, right?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Then I’m right. You’re still in short pants.”

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your fucking pie hole.”

  “What about whacking off? Do elves pull the taffy? Shake hands with the bishop? Groom the wookie?”

  “Groom the wookie,” repeated Tim the swordsman. Tim might have laughed, had a pair of throwing-stars not thunked into his forehead and sent him to his reward at that very instant.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” I cried. Before my pipeweed-addled brain could signal my sword hand to draw steel, Lithaine had drawn his bow and launched a pair of feathered shafts at a cloaked, masked figure perched on the high catwalk that ran the perimeter of the canal. The second shaft pierced the man’s throat. He flipped over the railing and plunged into the fetid canal water.

  Three more throwing-stars—two buried themselves in Barry’s throat, dropping him, while the third bored into my cheap boiled leather cuirass directly above my left nipple. A stab of pain, and then blood dribbled down my chest. A quick calculation quantified the danger: throwing-stars did one to four points of damage, and I had twelve health points. I couldn’t take much more of this.

  Out of one eye, I saw Lithaine take aim at two more would-be ninjas crouched on the opposite catwalk. Out of the other, I saw the horse rear up and lunge forward. Someone had grabbed the reigns. A lost shipment would be a mere prelude to the loss of our heads beneath Saggon’s knife. There was nothing for it: I launched myself at the dray just as the hijacker sent the horse flying up the long, curved ramp twisting high into the darkness.

  Hanging on to the dray was a chore. If the driver had noticed my crash landing, he wasn’t letting on. Creeping forward atop the barrels as the wagon rattled and thumped up the brick ramp, I could barely discern the slight cloaked figure hunched over the reigns. All I needed was a hand around his neck, and that would be the end of him.

  As I crept forward to make my move, the driver whipped around—revealing the flat, heart-shaped face of a woman. I had time only to note a pair of burning emerald eyes and a nimbus of curly auburn hair before the woman planted a mailed fist in my face. I went flying. An extended pratfall down the ramp found me battered, bloodied, and glaring at the dray as it disappeared into the gravelike darkness.

  Fucking hell, I thought. Three months in Redhauke and already I had to hightail it out of town.

  Lithaine approached, wiping the blood from his sword. He helped me to my feet.

  “Did you get a look at the driver?” he asked.

  “I did,” I said. “And I’ll see her again.”

  6

  Probabilities collide, sending other people careening into our lives: siblings, friends, lovers, rivals. If you live long enough, a lot of them hurtle right back out. When I watched Melinda walk out of my life for good, back into the sewer tunnel beneath Redhauke after the gory demise of the Rat King, I understood that I’d never see her again. What I didn’t get was how quickly everything I knew about her—her face, her voice, the smell of her hair, her laugh, her smile, her sex—would rush away from me, as broken waves surg
e back to the sea. When I think of her now, I see only the faintest of phantasms, memories as wisps of smoke, white fractals spiraling upward in the dark. We’re all ghosts to someone.

  Now, I recall every detail, and I’m here to tell you that it’s a hell of a lot better to forget. I need only cast my gaze inward to stand once again in Hundred Fountain Square as two bronzed, bare-chested Cloud Riders, their hair streaming in dark ribbons, their white wings outstretched, descend in a flourish through the bitter February cold. High above Redhauke, a phalanx of Riders herds the thunderheads piled in tall purple columns above the city spires. It is three years after I entered Redhauke; nearly a year has passed since Melinda stepped through the Hellmouth and was seemingly lost to me forever.

  Legend had long told of the winged warriors who bent the weather to their will. That day, seeing them in the flesh reminded those of us in the Square that we really didn’t know shit about anything. Between these two descending riders, they held the reins of four winged horses bearing a litter. They landed, and the steeds pranced fitfully, their breath steaming as if from a forge, their wings flexing fitfully. A crowd of gawkers filled the Square.

  Any hope I had of blending into the crowd died when the Riders fixed me with their gazes. In those days, I couldn’t pass a single day without one thing or another landing on me like a fucking cartoon piano.

  One of the Riders, a woman with skin the color of polished oak, thrust a spear under my nose. “Be you Elberon of the Isles?”