The Temple of Yellow Skulls

by Don Bassingthwaite

  Then the Voidharrow shoved itself under his skin and dug down into the bone beneath.

  Agony closed Albanon’s throat. He wanted to scream but couldn’t. He squeezed his eyes shut. It almost seemed as if he could feel the Voidharrow moving through him, seeping into his veins, worming its way into his brain. Dull aches formed in his joints and spread along his bones. Fever swept over him in a wave of fire, the onset of disease compressed into moments. Albanon became aware of strange patches of numbness on the surface of his skin. The blisters, a part of him realized. The numbness didn’t last long—if it had, it would have been a mercy.

  Pain condensed on his forehead. He felt the crystal crest of his rebirth tear through the skin. A scream finally forced its way out of his throat. His eyes flew open and would not close again.

  He would have endured the pain of the Voidharrow for an eternity if he’d just been able to shut out what he saw before him.

  “Albric and his followers were in the throes of the plague when the heroes caught them—still partly mortal beings, already changing into something else,” Kri had said of what the founders of the Order of Vigilance had witnessed long ago. “They became grotesques.”

  Tiktag was growing—or at least he was growing tall. As Albanon watched, his flesh turned thin and stretched over his bones. Spines broke through the skin of his shoulders, pushing up and out, then splitting in two to reveal a fine crystalline membrane between them. Wings, Albanon realized distantly. But still Tiktag thrashed as the Voidharrow worked upon him.

  Beside the kobold, the human woman’s body shriveled as her skull swelled. The bones of her cheeks and jaw cracked apart, then flexed in segments, like the limbs of some hideous insect. The lizardman thrashed arms and legs grown long, better suited to crawling on all fours than walking upright, but his movements were slower now, as if the Voidharrow had taken too much of his strength from him. As Albanon watched, he gave a last twitch and his long limbs went limp.

  The old dwarf, however, groaned as a second pair of arms and plates of red crystal forced him to hunch forward—a brute demon, Albanon realized, but with a fierce, mad brightness in his face that the other brutes lacked. The ogre, already big, got even bigger, its hands spreading until they were broader than shields, its legs growing into fleshy pillars. Long, pointed crystals erupted across its shoulders and its eyes all but shrank until they disappeared in a featureless head. The ogre bellowed almost as if the changes were a release.

  Maybe it was. Both of them had changed more quickly than either Tiktag or the woman. Vestapalk’s words to Tiktag came back to Albanon. “Embrace your transformation and it will be rapid.”

  Or, the eladrin thought, resist it and perhaps the transformation would be slowed. Uldane, Shara, and Kri were out there. Maybe there was still hope. Fight it, Albanon told himself. He tried to dredge up all of the anger he felt toward Vestapalk, toward Raid, toward Nu Alin. Toward the Voidharrow, the ultimate cause of everything that had befallen him. Fight it. He forced the words out of his lips. “Fight it.” He twisted his head toward Quarhaun and spat the command at him as if to back up his own will. “Fight it!”

  The drow’s black skin was lined with veins of liquid red crystal. His bones stood up against his flesh. His teeth, set in a grimace, bore a translucent sheen. The curse he snarled at Albanon through them was vile.

  “Fight!” Albanon urged again—perhaps too loudly.

  Vestapalk whirled on him. His head dipped and he peered at Albanon intently. A new pressure seemed to enter Albanon’s mind, shouldering past the pain on waves of the Voidharrow. For an instant. Albanon felt Vestapalk inside him. He screamed again.

  The presence vanished. Vestapalk hissed. “Fighting,” he said, “will only make the pain last longer. You serve the Voidharrow now. You serve Vestapalk.” He straightened. “Herald! Prepare to leave.”

  Nu Alin crossed the courtyard and took up the sack containing the golden skulls. Albanon saw Raid’s eyes go wide and watched him turn on Vestapalk. “The skulls are mine! I am the One Who Gathers!”

  The dragon snapped at him. “The skulls are Vestapalk’s,” he said. “You are still the Gatherer. Increase Vestapalk’s horde.”

  “What about the temple of the Elemental Eye?” Raid seemed angry. “The Chained God said that the power of the skulls would allow his temple to rise again.”

  “The Chained God,” growled Vestapalk, “does not have the power he thinks.” His liquid eyes narrowed. “Who do you serve, Raid?”

  The demon hesitated. “I serve Vestapalk. I serve the Voidharrow.”

  “Then if you wish greater power, seek it out and claim it.”

  Raid stiffened. “What? Where?”

  Vestapalk’s mouth just curved into a harsh smile, then he threw back his head and roared. The brutes roared along with him. So did the demons that had once been a dwarf and an ogre.

  And gods help him, a part of Albanon wanted to roar, too. To spit his anger at the sky. To inflict his wracking pain on the rest of the world. To embrace this torture and let it sweep him away.

  Vestapalk’s roar faded into a triumphant snarl. “A new age begins!” he spat. “And you—you, Vestapalk’s minions and his exarchs—will carry it across this world. Prove yourselves. Go forth and destroy. Spread the Abyssal Plague!”

  He turned in the center of the courtyard, liquid eyes raking those around him. “And if you can return to him again, your reward will be power even greater than what grows in you now.”

  Power. The idea rose up out of Albanon’s pain and, for a moment, pushed it back. If he gave in, he realized, the agony would end. Pain distorted his vision, stretched it out as if he was peering down a dim tunnel, but he couldn’t have missed the satisfaction that crossed Vestapalk’s face as the dragon looked at him one last time.

  Then Vestapalk bent down just enough to allow Nu Alin to vault on to his back. The demon settled his drow body, along with the sack containing the treasure of the Temple of Yellow Skulls, into the hollow between the base of the dragon’s neck and his wings. Vestapalk stood again and looked down at Raid. “When the plague has run its course, release those who survive. Let Vestapalk’s exarchs make their way to him.” Raid’s misshapen jaw tightened, but he nodded.

  Vestapalk looked to the sky, gathered himself, and leaped. Vast wings that shimmered like sheets of crystal spread out to beat against the air, pulling his lean form higher. The dust that swirled up should have stung Albanon’s eyes, but against the agony of the Voidharrow it was nothing. Pain was like a claw raking through his flesh. It was a razor dragged across his mind. It was ice in his veins, freezing the blood into jagged shards that cut him as they grew. His shoulder cracked and popped as something inside him forced its way between bone and muscle. Dark shadows swirled over him,

  Among them, Vestapalk banked in the air and looked down at those below.

  “The new age has begun!” the dragon bellowed, then turned and started to climb. Like a flood of hulking flesh and red crystal, like children chasing a peddler’s cart, brute demons raced from the ruins to follow him.

  Albanon wanted to follow the dragon. He needed to follow the dragon. The urge was a hunger almost as great as his need to inflict pain and destruction upon the world.

  The demon’s need to inflict pain and destruction, he told himself. Albanon strained as he tried to push back against the Voidharrow. Maybe his resistance showed on his face, because suddenly Raid was before him. A fist slammed hard into Albanon’s face, then another into his belly.

  The blows hurt far more than Albanon would have expected, as if his bones had turned thin and fragile beneath his skin. He choked and felt blood flow from his mouth, trickling slowly down his chin. Too slowly. Raid stepped close and one thick, rough finger swiped across Albanon’s skin. The demon held it up for him to see.

  Silver strands mixed with the red.

  Raid’s lips peeled back in a snarl. “You mocked me, Albanon. You defied me.” His hand shot out and wrapped around Albanon’s
throat. “Now you’ll be like me.”

  Anger—maybe his, maybe the demon’s—rose in Albanon. Getting a word past Raid’s grip was hard, but he managed it. “Never,” he choked.

  Raid’s eyes opened wide with fury. His free hand drew back for another blow.…

  The voice that rang across the ruins brought Raid spinning around and hope leaping into Albanon’s tortured soul. On the far side of the courtyard, Shara stood atop a low heap of rubble beneath the wall where Albanon had spotted Uldane. The halfling stood to one side of the warrior, Kri to the other.

  Shara held a crossbow in her hands. The moment Raid turned, she raised it, sighted along the stock, and loosed the bolt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was a bold gesture, but a useless one. The courtyard was just a little too far across for even perfect aim to have any chance of hitting a target. The bolt landed short and went skittering across the stones at Raid’s feet. He stared down at it, then up at Shara and her companions. Rage twisted inside him. Again! They dared to defy him again!

  This time would be the last. No orders from Vestapalk held him back. “Kill them!” he howled. “Kill them now!”

  Most of Vestapalk’s brutes had gone off in pursuit of him, obedient to the same need to follow that had tugged at Raid. Some had remained behind, though, and their tiny-eyed heads snapped around at his orders. Nostrils flexed and they moved, lumbering at first under the weight of their crystal armor, but more quickly as they gathered momentum. Not quick enough. Snarling, Raid drew his axes and raced into the lead. He could already imagine his blades biting into the flesh of the woman warrior!

  His prey stood their ground, the priest reaching behind himself and producing a second crossbow that he passed to Shara. Once again, Shara raised the weapon and loosed a bolt.

  The surprise as the missle punched into his chest was almost as sharp as the pain of impact. Raid staggered and stared for an instant at the feathered protruding just below his right shoulder. He hadn’t charged so far. If she hadn’t been able to hit him the first time, she shouldn’t have been able to—

  She’d aimed short. Shara had taunted him by aiming short. He snarled and tore the bolt from his flesh, ready to charge again. But now Uldane had a crossbow, too, and Shara was aiming for a third time. Brutes were passing him, but it seemed that the warrior had only one target in mind. Raid dove to the side.

  Fire flared in his leg and he rolled over with a second bolt buried deep in his thigh. He roared, not so much so with the pain of the injury but the humiliation of it. This was something that would happen to Hakken—it did not happen to Raid! He swung his axe at the trio, urging the brutes onward as he hobbled to his feet. “Forward! Attack!”

  The priest had the first crossbow reloaded and back in Shara’s hands, but there was a wave of hulking figures between Raid and Shara now—he felt a certain satisfaction in the frustration on her face as she tried to sight on him and couldn’t. His breath hissed between his teeth and he snapped the shaft of the bolt off short. The brutes closed in.

  At the last moment, Shara twisted and loosed again, then again with a reloaded crossbow from Uldane. Two brutes bellowed, though neither went down. Shara and Uldane leaped down from the rubble.

  The priest, however, stood, spread his arms, and bent his head in prayer.

  A bad feeling flashed through Raid. He’d seen this before. “No!” he roared. “Take him! Take him now.” Too late.

  Shards of light condensed from the air before the priest, spreading out in a long wall that flashed with blinding intensity. The brutes stumbled and tripped over each other as they came to a halt before the wall. Raid’s rage ripped through him in a wordless howl. The nameless priest and his prayers were taking on some of the hatred Raid had reserved for Shara and Uldane. He shoved at the backs of the hesitating brutes. “Go through! Go through or I’ll tear you apart myself!”

  They seemed to react more to his anger than his threats. Snarling as if his rage was contagious, the first of the creatures leaped through the wall. Snarls turned to hisses of pain as the light scorched their flesh, but they made it to the other side. Others made bold by their example, leaped to join them.

  Fully half a dozen of Vestapalk’s warriors had passed through the wall before there was a sudden groan and crash from the other side.

  Those brutes that remained on the courtyard side of the wall jumped back, Raid among them. A moment later, a single large, weathered stone rolled through the wall of light—and a moment after that, the light itself vanished to reveal half a dozen brutes writhing under fallen rocks. The ancient wall that had stood over the low heap of rubble had collapsed. It had been helped: Ropes left stretched on the ground and a long heavy stick marked where a key stone had been shifted to bring the wall down. Raid cursed.

  And while the remaining brutes stood and stared, one of them bellowed and clutched at a crossbow bolt that sprouted suddenly from between its two left arms. Raid whirled and caught the flash of red hair as Shara ducked back among the ruins. Raid cursed again. “After them!”

  The brutes jumped to obey his command, scrambling like hounds over the rocks that had buried the others. Raid almost followed them, but a nagging doubt pulled him around. He turned to look back at Albanon.

  There was no hope for him—the plague was advanced. Some of the other prisoners hung limp in their bonds, freed from the Voidharrow by death, but Albanon was still moaning and groaning as his body fought the plague. Shara and the others had come to the temple ruins for a reason. He had them on the run, but they might still try to rescue the wizard.

  Raid hesitated, then reached out and grabbed the last two brutes in the courtyard, pulling them around and pointing at Albanon. “Watch him,” he said. “If anyone comes for him, stop them.” His belly tightened with an idea, and he added, “But don’t kill them. Wound them.”

  Shara and the others owed Vestapalk new minions. All it would take was a scratch.

  The two brutes growled acknowledgement. Raid turned and plunged after the others, snarling the same order—wound, but don’t kill. The creatures had fanned out through the nearby ruins in their search for Albanon’s would-be rescuers. They weren’t having much luck. Raid watched brutes react as a bolt came hurtling from over a wall, stinging one of them. They converged like dogs on a piece of meat, but when they reached the wall, there was no one there. Their quarry had moved on. Another bolt cracked against crystal shoulder plates. The brutes reacted again.

  Raid paused for a moment, then slipped his axes back into the holsters at his waist and dropped to all fours. His new form made it easy. Like a wolf on the prowl, he padded through the ruins, swinging wide around the milling soldiers. Again he caught the flash of Shara’s hair as she darted for a new cover.

  Still staying low, he moved to get a better look at her position. She crouched behind a fallen column, peering just over top of it to watch as the brutes slowly spread out once more. Uldane crouched beside her, intent on cranking a second crossbow to reload it.

  There was no sign of the priest. Raid smiled to himself. Another distraction. No wonder Shara was only peppering the brutes with the crossbow. It would take more than a couple of bolts to kill any one of them, but she and Uldane weren’t trying to kill them, only keep them busy. The priest would be going for Albanon.

  The guards he’d left to watch the eladrin would make that more difficult. Raid could lead his stupid charges in closing around Shara and Uldane, then go and collect the priest.

  And if the priest somehow succeeded in freeing Albanon? Raid hesitated—then reached out with his power, chittering a summons under his breath.

  When they’d retreated in the night, the drow had left something behind.…

  Shara rose to a crouch, braced the crossbow on top of the fallen column, loosed the bolt, and dropped down again. A snarl from another one of the four-armed demons was proof that she had hit. Uldane couldn’t help smiling as he handed swapped crossbows with her. “Perfect record!” he whi
spered.

  “Just move,” she said tersely.

  Uldane had their next cover chosen. As the monsters came charging for the fallen column, he led Shara behind a long stretch of heaped rubble to a section of wall split by a narrow crack. “Good?”

  “As long as we keep leading them away, anything is good,” she said. She peered through the crack, then ducked back. “Where’s Raid?”

  “I haven’t seen him. Do you think he stayed in the courtyard? He looked too angry to stay.”

  “We need to find him.” Shara looked up at the wall. “Can you climb this? Keep your head down but see if you can spot him.”

  Uldane nodded. He scanned the wall for hand and foot-holds—the ancient stone offered plenty of both—picked his route and started up.

  He was just above the level of Shara’s head when the warrior’s hand grabbed his belt. “Uldane!”

  There was urgency in her voice. He glanced down and found her looking out into the ruins on their side of the wall. He twisted his neck around to follow her gaze.

  Three spiders bigger than he was perched on the rubble not ten paces away. There was a distinct red tint to their clustered eyes. Raid had found new friends.

  He started to climb down. The biggest of the spiders let out a low, threatening hiss. He froze.

  “What are the demons doing?” asked Shara.

  Uldane leaned over—slowly—until he could peer through the crack in the wall. The hulking creatures were spreading out around the hiding place they’d just abandoned. He held back a curse. If they had to fight the spiders, the demons would hear and close in from the other side. Raid, wherever he was, had them trapped. “The demons are looking for us again. What are we going to do?”

  Shara pressed her lips together. “I can take the spiders,” she said. “You hide. Keep drawing the demons away from the court—”

  A scream cut her off. Two screams, rising from the direction of the courtyard. And as horrible as it had been listening to the terror and agony of Vestapalk’s prisoners as the Voidharrow had infected them, somehow this was worse. The spiders shrank back, seeming startled by the sounds as well.