The combined might of the crawler, Redulfo’s sorcery, and our steel afforded us slow but steady progress toward the farmhouse. Hours passed. A glimmer of dawn glowed above the eastern horizon. Hope whispered to me that we might make it through this night alive.
That moment, of course, was when the dozer conked out.
“That figures,” said Redulfo.
Lithaine checked the coal forge and found the fire still burning. When Redulfo tried the throttle, the gears ground together. The entire machine began to rattle ominously. No steam belched from the stacks, which meant that—
“She’s going to blow!” Lithaine cried.
We were surrounded by a grumbling, buzzing carpet of lemming imps extending in every direction as far as we could see. Drawing back to a perimeter around the crawler, they gnashed their fangs, licked their chops, and awaited our next move. We had two choices: stay on the crawler and die in the explosion, or wade into the imps and kill as many as possible before they devoured us.
I extended my hand to Amabored. “It’s been an honor fighting at your side, brother,” I said.
“Likewise, Elberon of the Isles,” Amabored said.
Lithaine and Redulfo joined us. Together we drew our swords, the wizard raising his flute, and we saluted one another. If I had to die, I was happy to die with these men.
Jumping from the rattling, smoking crawler with sword drawn, I felt only the dull acceptance of a cow in the slaughter pen, waiting my turn for the killing bolt. And then: For the briefest of intervals—no more than a fraction of a second—every lemming imp around us vanished. I saw clearly the empty farmland around the city: the fields unsullied, the farmhouses still and quiet in the pastel dawn, the untrammeled road leading back to the city. The horrid earsplitting buzz from the lemming horde likewise blinked out.
It happened so fast that it barely registered in my brain. The pastoral scene vanished in an instant, and the noisome sea of snarling imps once again surrounded us.
Blinking, I glanced at my fellows. “Did you guys see that?” I asked.
“Close your eyes!” Redulfo ordered. “Try to picture the scene again in your mind—imagine that the imps are gone!”
We did so. In my head, I conjured a vision of the empty landscape. No sea of imps. No trail of dead ones behind us. The buzzing of the horde receded, as if I had dipped my head into a pool of water—and then the sound ceased altogether.
“Now open your eyes,” Redulfo said.
We opened them. Lo and behold, the lemming imp horde had vanished. The landscape appeared again just as we had briefly seen it, looking for all the world as if the horde had never existed. The crawler too, was now clean, with no traces of the imps’ black blood that had coated it only moments before. The cuts, bruises, and bites we had taken in battle were likewise gone.
“What. The. Fuck?” I asked.
“It was all a goddamn fucking illusion!” Amabored said, whirling around to take in the full view of our surroundings. “A fucking spell!”
“Then what have we been fighting?” I asked, still slow on the draw. “Nothing?”
“Nothing is exactly what we’ve been fighting,” Redulfo said. “This was all high-level sorcery, the work of a master illusionist. Whoever he is, he’d have to be at least Fifteenth Level to pull this off.”
Lithaine pointed toward the distant farmhouse. “Then he must be over there.”
The amorphous green cloud of Chaos still hung over the farmhouse. While there might be no imp queen there, the presence of Chaos was no illusion—and whoever had pulled this trick was still there.
The front door of the farmhouse opened, and a cloaked figure ran into the garden. He was too far away to make out his face. The figure crouched down, and then blasted upward into the sky like a roman candle, moving so fast that he left a small sonic boom in his wake. Within a second, he had vanished into the clouds.
Before we could process this turn of events, we were startled out of our stupor by the broken-down crawler, now rattling like an avalanche of scrap iron. That hadn’t been an illusion, either. The immense steam pressure began to pop the rivets, which whistled past our ears like bullets.
“Run for your lives!” Lithaine shouted. We ran. With an ear-crunching RHUMP!, the crawler blew. We hit the dirt as twisted iron plating, gears, wheels, pieces of tread, and flaming coals rained down around us. The dozer blade thudded into the ground two feet from Amabored’s head.
A moment passed before we felt safe enough to rise. We stared at each other, still unsure of what had happened or why. Then Amabored rolled to his feet.
“Well, that was fun,” he said. “Let’s get back to the city. Who wants grub?”
25
The wizard rocketing into the stratosphere was Jaspin, of course. Three years after the fall of the Blue Falcon, he had reappeared to fuck with us. It was always Jaspin. Years after the lemming imp incident—which led the Lord Mayor to lock us in the tollbooth for a week until he was satisfied that we hadn’t pulled it off ourselves—we still wondered why the wizard had bothered. Why fake out the entire city with a phantasm? Why make us fight nothing for six hours? What was the point?
It had all been an elaborate bluff. Jaspin thought that my father had somehow returned the Skull to me, and he followed the devil’s very real threat with a bullshit ruse designed to trick me into donning the Skull again. Even the most powerful wizards have their blind spots; Jaspin’s mistake was in thinking that I had a fucking clue.
The Rat King, which we found ourselves facing in the Redhauke sewers just a year later, was not an illusion. How happy we would have been to find out that it was.
For once, we were able to hang back and let someone else stare down the beast. This was Melinda’s show, and we knew it. As we stood crowded around one of the alcoves, swords drawn but useless, Melinda stepped forward to confront the King. Reflected torchlight capered in the eyes of ten thousand rats crouching on every available surface in the dank, dripping stone gallery. The vermin horde was silent, expectant, waiting only a word from their abominable liege to overwhelm us. Their sheer numbers reminded me of the lemming imp episode; squeezing my eyes shut, I imagined the rats gone, just as we had done with Jaspin’s phantasm. When I opened them, the fuckers were still there.
The Rat King slumped on its barge and awaited Melinda’s approach. Within the foul mass of fused rat-flesh constituting its body, two red eyes lingered on her. The thing radiated a malevolent intelligence that was not so much evil as indifferent; it bore us no more regard than we bore any rat we might see scurrying around the refuse of the city.
“Greetings, Lord of Vermin,” Melinda announced, bowing low. “I am Melinda the Blade, Over-Boss of the Thieves Guild. I come to treat with you. We seek your permission to pass through these tunnels and flee the city.”
When the monstrous hive of ratness spoke, its voice was the sound of a thousand rats squeaking words in unison. Gooseflesh rose on my arms.
“You may not pass,” the Rat King said. “We are charged with keeping this gate closed.”
“Charged by whom?” Melinda asked. Respect paid, she stood straight to regard the foul king as its equal. “Surely the Vermin Lord submits to no master.”
“We serve none,” the Rat King squealed. “But we are allied with the Lord of Pestilence, who commands the army above.”
“You ally with the invaders? To what end?”
“The Pestilent One asks us to spread coughing-death to the two-legs above. Should we do this, he grants that we may feast on the flesh of the dead. We will feast as none have on the Woerth. We will take our place as rulers of the above.”
We all pondered this for a moment. If the rats released a plague upon the city, Eckberd would need do no more than wait a few weeks, walk through the front door, and set his slaves to sweeping up the bones.
“Surely, you are prepared to leave the city after the feast,” said Melinda.
“We will not leave the city. We will rule. We are the Vermin
Lord.”
“What will you eat when all the two-legs are dead? Has Lord Eckberd promised to tend the fields outside the city? To raise the cattle? To cast fishing nets into the Everdeep? Surely, he has promised you these things.”
“He has not promised these things.”
“Then your great host will take on these tasks? You will no longer subsist on the leavings of the two-legs? Shall the vermin scavenge no more?”
“You speak ill of us. We are the Vermin Lord. The great host brings tribute. This is the way of it.”
“Really? Then the feast you propose is naught but a last supper. For when the two-legs are dead, soon thereafter will the Lord of Vermin surely die.”
“You dare say so!”
“That is the way of it,” Melinda said. She shrugged, breaking eye contact with the King. “It need not be so. Long have the two-legs ruled the city together with the Vermin Lord. Two-legs rule above, and the vermin rule below. The vermin feast on the fruits of this partnership. So it may be until the end of days.”
“How may it be so?” the Rat King asked. It leaned forward on its throne to tower over Melinda, who stood her ground. “The Lord of Pestilence is powerful. He will take the city by force. The Vermin Lord would die with the two-legs. We must ally with him or perish.”
Then Melinda turned to look at the rest of us, and her eyes met mine. She motioned me forward. When I stepped up, the Rat King reared back, its thousands of rat-mouths hissing and squealing in unison.
“Put away your sword, you idiot!” Melinda whispered. I did so, trying hard to will the blood away from my face. The Rat King settled down.
“Lord Eckberd wants only this man here,” Melinda said to the Rat King. She pointed at me. “We cannot give him this man, or all things on Woerth will end, including the Vermin Lord.” She glanced at me again, her eyes narrowing to slits. “I would that it were not so, for I would freely turn him over.”
“You say it is so,” said the Rat King, “and yet the Pestilent One promises us life.”
“Eckberd is the empty vessel into which the Deathless One pours his worthless words,” said Melinda. “If you help us spirit this man and his companions away from the city, I tell you now that he will turn his army aside, for his master is not yet strong enough to draw the Free Kingdoms into open war.”
“What is this to us? We care nothing for Free Kingdoms.”
“It may be so. But you care yet for your horde, I think. Know this, Lord Verminous: The Lord Mayor is dead. The Redhauke Guard are broken. Sklaar himself has fallen. But I am Melinda the Blade, Over-Boss of the Thieves Guild and the last seat of authority in this city. Redhauke is mine. And I make this promise to you: Help this man escape, and together we shall rule the city—two-legs above, and the vermin below, as it has always been. The horde will want for nothing.”
The Rat King collapsed back onto its throne. Its component rats conspired together, whispering rat lips to rat ear, rubbing their tiny pink paws together, their knotted tails writhing like a wall of pink earthworms. Gathering itself together again, it regarded Melinda with the glowing coals of its eyes.
“The Blade will give us your infants? Your young ones?” it asked. “We desire the taste of their flesh. The Pestilent One promises us this. Will you also?”
“No,” Melinda said. “Our young ones are precious to us, just as yours are to you. But you will eat well. That, I can assure you.”
Silence again, but for the conclave of whispering rats. We were all afraid to breathe.
“You speak well and true,” said the Rat King to Melinda. “It will be as you say. Follow us.”
Melinda turned back to us. Her look of relief told us how close we had come to disaster.
“Let’s go,” she said.
26
The Rat King’s barge pulled away, hauled by a second team of giant water-treading rats pointed in the opposite direction. The attendant rat horde scurried back to their holes like filaments of iron repelled by a magnet. We followed behind: Amabored, Lithaine, Redulfo, Wilberd, Cassie, and me. Cassie refused to look at me. The snub catching his eye, Amabored sidled over.
“Don’t sweat it, man,” the barbarian whispered. “You’re already in there.”
“The only place she wants to see me is in a grave,” I hissed back.
“You’re a known liar now,” he said. “That makes you a bad boy. Chicks love bad boys. Before, she was only considering fucking you. Now, she’s trying to figure out how to let you fuck her without it looking like she’s forgiven you.”
“You really are a total douchebag.”
“Card-carrying.” Amabored slapped me on the back and moved up to take point.
Heading east, we cut through the sewers for about a quarter-league. Then the Rat King turned south, where the tunnels narrowed, and it was forced to relinquish the barge. The foul mischief of intertwined rats surged forward through knee-deep sewage, spilled forth to fill the tunnel, scurried along dripping stone walls, and crawled inverted on the ceiling with red eyes gleaming in the dark.
At last, we saw dim light ahead. Melinda turned to address us.
“There’s a sluice gate ahead that leads to the Whitehorse,” she said. “My friends will be waiting for you with a few small boats. If there’s trouble, this is where we’ll find it.”
And so, we did. The light brightened, then resolved into partitions of daylight: the gate. Before the gate stood a figure in silhouette. We could make out no details other than the outline of a broad, black cloak and hood. A few more steps, and we saw a black scythe inverted, its point resting on the ground, its pommel gripped by the figure’s leather-gloved hands.
“Say, isn’t that…?” Lithaine began.
“…the fucker who was leading the pit devil around on a chain?” Amabored finished. “Yeah, I think so. Elberon?”
It was him. Our first encounter came beneath the Blue Falcon—and so explosive was that encounter that the quantum shock wave destroyed that legendary inn. Our second encounter came three years later, when he appeared in Hundred Fountain Square with Malacoda in tow. In both cases, I had felt him mark me from somewhere behind the impenetrable darkness of his cowl. Thrice now this man had appeared to thwart me—and while I might have a hundred questions for him, every one of those questions could be answered by watching his head roll away from his twitching corpse.
“Let’s grease that cocksucker,” I said.
Lithaine, Odin love him, stepped up and launched a trio of arrows at the figure. The asshole merely raised a medium-sized kite shield—or, as it appeared to us, a kite-shield-shaped negative space—and the arrows disappeared into its black, fathomless depths. Then Redulfo blew an arpeggio on his flute and cast a massive fireball. It rocketed high over the squirming mass of the Rat King, exploded at the end of the tunnel, and engulfed the figure in a hellstorm of flame. When the flames died down, we saw him crouching unharmed behind his shield.
“What the hell are you doing?” Cassie cried. “You’re giving away our position!”
She was right—but it was too late for recriminations. The figure rose and stretched forth a gloved hand. The perimeter of the shield glowed red, like neon tubing. The Rat King, which until that moment seemed prepared to overwhelm the cloaked figure, stopped cold. Every rat within its mass turned to look back at us. Somewhere deep within the twisted mess of vermin, the red eyes of the Rat King narrowed to slits. It charged toward us, an avalanche of rat flesh, a crumbling wall of gnashing teeth and rending claws.
“Holy fuck!” I cried. We turned to run. Then, racing forth from the back of the party, came Wilberd. We had forgotten all about him, which was easy to do since he never spoke. He ran straight for the dark nucleus of the Rat King. The mass of vermin rolled over him like a wave rolling into a half-pipe. For a moment, the monk disappeared, and we feared him dead.
There came the horrid, ear-splitting awfulness of a thousand rats all screaming at once. Wilberd rolled out of the rat-mass and into the sewer water. In his han
ds he held a throbbing, blood-engorged mass of rat-flesh about the size of prize-winning pumpkin. Making eye-contact with me, he lobbed the rat-pumpkin in my direction.
I knew what to do. Swinging my axe in a deadly parabola, I sliced through the rat-pumpkin, cutting it in twain. Another horrible echoing shriek, and the Rat King collapsed in a crashing, thunderous rain of rodents. Those vermin that could get away scurried into any hole they could find. The remainder of the Vermin Lord lay in twitching, clotted clumps of dying rats.
That left the cloaked guy—time to take his measure. Shouting an oath, I ran toward him with axe raised. The cloaked figure swung up his own rune-covered blade to absorb my blow.
Our blades connected. There was a thunderclap and a flash of blue-white lightning. I flew backward until I crashed into my companions and sent them flying like bowling pins.
We all rose to our feet. Acrid smoke filled the clammy air. The tunnel gate was open; the cloaked figure was gone.
“That fellow has some bag of tricks,” Redulfo said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Who was he?”
“I don’t know,” I said, slinging my axe across my back. “But I’ll see him again.”
27
We stood at the open gate, waiting for the boats to come in. There was no more trouble; Redulfo’s fireball had gone unnoticed. My mates gathered together to light their pipes, which gave me leave to step over to Cassie.
“Come with us,” I said. “We need a cleric. We’ll all be dead in a fortnight if you don’t come.”
Her face was red and pinched, full of rage. Not for the last time, I found myself burning with guilt and shame. If she had just told me to go fuck myself, her road would have been far smoother. Even then, I knew she couldn’t.
The Screaming Skull Page 27