The Screaming Skull

by Rick Ferguson

  Lindar was the exception to the rule. Some nights he would hit the mulled wine hard, and then run his mouth about politics. We wanted to argue politics like we wanted an acid enema, but what can you do when you’re sharing a campfire? Lindar supported the Talon Republic, for Christ’s sake, and he never shut up about it. When we reached Gorm to deliver Malcolm into Empress Wilomina’s hand for marriage, I’ll be damned if Lindar didn’t offer her his sword.

  “I despise that fascist shithole,” I told him, a fortnight out from our fateful descent into the wreckage of the Sky Ship that had crashed in the Pustiu Waste. “My father spent twenty years in the Horst mines, so don’t tell me about the Talony. They flog you looking crossways. They burn gays at the stake. They rape the peasants and give tongue baths to the nobility. They spend every dime they have on wars while their infrastructure falls to ruin. Wilomina is ruling over an ash heap.”

  “Nice military uniforms, though, one might add,” said Malcolm, who sat nearby nursing a flagon of warm milk. “If one likes birds, that is.”

  “The Gnome Kingdom will get wiped off the map, and rightly so,” said Lindar. “The Free Kingdoms ordered them to lay down their Chaos weapon. They refused. What’s the Talony supposed to do—wait until an Ur-imp vaporizes the Imperial Promenade? If there’s even a one-percent chance of a Chaos breach, then it was worth invasion.”

  “But they’re funding the war with dwarf gold, and the juice is running,” I said. “Meanwhile, they can’t keep the street lamps on at night. A ruler should keep taxes low, the streets clean, and the pubs full. If anybody starts any shit, finish it. Give the vassals a wide berth. Provide a basic social safety net. And keep your fucking hands out of my business. You’re a guy who likes cock? Go for it. You want to shoot heroin into your eyeball? God bless. You like to fuck donkeys? Have at it. Life is hard enough as it is.”

  “Citizens of a great nation must pay a price for its greatness,” said Lindar. “And a great nation must be a moral one.”

  “Listen to yourself. You worship a massive imperial state that coddles the rich, runs the military on credit, and fucks the middle class. You’re a goddamn oligarch.”

  “Or a plutocrat,” said Malcolm.

  “Don’t dare to include the Talony among the Free Kingdoms,” said James. “Free republics don’t lock up and torture citizens without due process, even if they are gnomes. Now take Kenwood, for instance—”

  “You admire Kenwood only because you want to dip your quill in Princess Arianna’s inkpot, ranger,” said Andrigan. “And piss on your republic, besides. A strong monarchy is the only sensible form of government. King Hammershield has ruled the Highlands for eighty years, and we enjoy more wealth and freedom than any land south of the Waste.”

  “Hammershield is paid for by the Baronies,” I said. “He does what he’s told. He can’t even launch a sea pickle without permission.”

  “Shall I introduce my mace to your colon then, fighter?” Andrigan growled, his eyes glowing like coals in a forge.

  “Bring it, stunty.”

  “You’re all barking out of your asses,” said Amabored, as he emptied the last of his wine flask into his flagon. “The only government I trust is a dictatorship with me in charge. I sure as hell wouldn’t trust any of you ass-hats to run anything but your mouths.”

  “The Talon Republic is the greatest country on Woerth, and Malcolm should praise the Star Maiden that he’ll help guide that blessed nation into the new Millennium,” Lindar said. By way of punctuation, he thunked his dagger point-first into a nearby tree stump. “Would anyone else dare say a word against her?”

  “Long live the Talon Republic,” said Amabored, raising his flagon.

  3

  Even after Wilomina declared herself the Black Empress and launched her final solution against the Gnomes, Lindar stuck by her. Only when her true master was revealed did he come to his senses. His worldview imploded, and he filled the resulting vacuum with madness and depression. Now twenty years had passed without any of us seeing the crazy bastard in the flesh.

  Then one day, Andrigan got word to me that his cousin Fordigan was opening a new gold vein in the Horst Mountains and had spotted Lindar in the foothills. My interest was piqued; Lindar was a still a brother, after all. Might it be possible still to bring him back amongst the living? What had twenty years done to the crazy bastard? With these questions in mind, I put out word on the aether asking for volunteers to help us track him down. With Amabored embroiled in war, James taking it easy, and Lithaine still plugging up the Hellmouth, Andrigan was the only taker. In early September of my sixty-first year on Woerth, Wilberd and I met him in Kenwood. James was roaming the outback somewhere, but he had left word to his steward to house and provision us.

  “He’ll never come voluntarily,” I told Andrigan. “We’ll have to black-bag him.”

  “We’d best hope he hasn’t kept up with his sorcery,” said the dwarf. His beard, now white and lengthened with age, was bound in so many elaborate knots and braids that it looked like an afghan blanket.

  “If he tries anything, good luck to him. Christ, what the hell? He could’ve picked up the phone. The rest of us have stayed in touch.”

  “He was always as crazy as a vine-chewing hobgoblin, fighter. We simply found his madness useful. It’s not as if the rest of us can lay fair claim to sanity.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s push off.”

  Accompanied by a small band of retainers, we took the Long Ferry east up the Beradon for fifty leagues or so, drinking James’s parting gift of Kenwood bourbon from the deck as we watched the rugged hills east of the kingdom drift past in a lazy processional. Rather than cross the Wyvern Mountains via the Sorrowful Pass, where we had nearly come to grief so many years before, we chose to travel under them via the Rockway, the new subterranean highway carved by the dwarfs in the years after Koschei’s fall. It ran for nearly a thousand leagues from the Gold Hills to Vulturmunte, the new mining settlement on the Talony side of the mountains.

  After a month on the Rockway dodging caravans and coughing up the endless tolls, we found ourselves one mid-October evening surveying the spectacular wind-sheered peaks of the Horst Mountains from cousin Fordigan’s deck overlooking the bustling mining encampment at Vulturmunte. Fordigan broke out the gnome leaf, and we packed our pipes while he updated us on Lindar.

  “He’s a curious sight,” Fordigan told us as he lit his pipe. “Like a wildman or a prophet. We tracked him to a cave in the foothills. For days at a time, he’ll hide within. Mysterious lights illume the cave mouth at night. When he leaves, it’s to fish or hunt elk. What will ye do with him, then? Is it an old score ye aim to settle?”

  “Just have a look at him, mostly, cousin,” said Andrigan. “He was a brother in arms, and we don’t forgo those bonds lightly. If his mind is gone, mayhap we can offer aid. If alone he wishes to be left, then alone we shall leave him.”

  “Maybe it was the pickling that broke him,” I offered. “He was dead for weeks. Who knows what he saw on the other side?” Hopefully not a Ki-Rin, I thought.

  “Being dead was the least of his troubles, brother,” said Andrigan.

  “No doubt,” I said. “In retrospect, death seemed to agree with him.”

  Fordigan fetched two of his wives to ply us with beer and more smoke, and our thoughts turned aside from our cranky friend. Contrary to belief, dwarf women aren’t necessarily hideous. They’re short, but they’re game, with tits that last for days and milky thighs the color of pistachio shells. If I told you that I’d tagged a few dwarf women in my day, who are you to judge? I fucked an elf maiden once, and she just laid there like a gunny sack.

  4

  The next day found the three of us crouching outside Lindar’s cave with our retainers armed to the teeth. The cave lay well concealed at the bottom of a steep defile about a half-day’s ride from Vulturmunte. By way of preparation, we had spent a few hours hanging glyphs of warding, charms of protection, and magic dampeners. As we waite
d for a sign of our long-lost friend, Andrigan and I passed the time rolling knucklebones. Wilberd, the wiseass, said nothing.

  Day passed into evening, and still we saw no sign of life in or around the cave. At last, a lone elk appeared, picking his steps smoothly down the jumbled rocks of the defile. The elk stopped upwind of us and displayed a noble profile, his majestic silhouette limned in dying scarlet sunlight.

  “Ah—supper,” said Andrigan. He reached for his crossbow.

  “We shouldn’t attract attention,” I whispered. “What if he’s set traps?”

  “Then let’s spring ‘em and draw him out. In the meanwhile, I aim to eat that beastie.”

  At that moment, the darkening defile was pierced by a shaft of white light that streaked from the cave mouth and drilled a smoking hole the size of a grapefruit clean through the elk. The beast collapsed dead. The light vanished.

  “Jumping Christ!” I cried.

  “We’d best rush him before he recharges,” Andrigan said.

  Vaulting over our cover, we ran serpentine for the cave mouth with our retainers spread out ahead of us in a rough skirmish line. We heroes gather men-at-arms under our banners not so much to fuel our egos, but rather as an insurance policy: The more swords at your command, the less likely you’ll die in battle. Super-villains surround themselves with nameless henchmen for the same reason—the smart money always sets the odds. I never understood what was in it for your typical red-shirt, who seemed to have no inner life, no reason for existence besides serving as cannon fodder. Why is there never a shortage of them? Beats me.

  Sure enough, we made it no more than five yards into the narrow cavemouth before half our squad fell dead to sorcery: this one incinerated by a fireball, that one sucked screaming into a Soul Vortex, two more pulverized by a Force Hammer. Those remaining simply tucked tail and ran, and who could blame them? That left the three of us crouched breathless within a rock alcove as strobing purple light pulsed from deep within the cave. The cave walls thrummed with powerful sorcery.

  “Has he shot his wad, do you think?” asked Andrigan, clutching his mace.

  “Hell no. He’s been hanging spells in here for years,” I said. I chanced another glance around the wall. A hail of spectral bullets exploded the rock in front of me. “Lindar!” I shouted. “If you’re back there, show yourself! It’s us!”

  He answered with a Sonic Tsunami that nearly took off our heads. We’d never take him by frontal assault. Then Wilberd tapped me on the shoulder; with his index finger, he made a twirling motion in his palm.

  “The Dervish?” I asked. “You can still do it?”

  The monk nodded. As troublesome as I found that prick, his skills had proven decisive in many a dire situation in which swords were useless, like this one. While Andrigan and I crouched against the wall, Wilberd stood, linked his thumbs and forefingers in a diamond shape, and mouthed chants to his mystery god. After a few minutes of this stuff, he began to rotate: slowly, then picking up speed; faster, then whirling in a tight circle like a figure skater on crystal meth. He became a deadly blur, his speed such that his horn would slice through plate armor as a knife through Neufchatel. Then he spun out like a human cyclone into the cave tunnel.

  “Impressive trick, that,” said Andrigan. “No wonder you haven’t killed him yet.”

  We raced behind the monk, now kicking up a tornado of cave dust and debris, and advanced down the tunnel. Balls of scorching plasma, spectral laser beams, and forks of blue lightning caromed off his whirling form. Entering a widening chamber, we glimpsed a wretched, twisted form wrapped in a cloak and wielding a knobbed staff—and then the figure vanished in a gout of smoke and flame. The concussive effects of the Teleportation spell flattened us. Wilberd careened around the cave before tumbling into an exhausted heap.

  “By the seven beards of the First Fathers!” Andrigan said as we picked ourselves up. “Did you see him? Like a twisted wraith, he was. What deviltry is this?”

  “The worst kind,” I said. The low torchlight revealed evidence of a mind savagely consuming itself: the cave walls hung with imp skins, various humanoid heads thrust onto spear points or depending from hooks, shelves stacked full of moldy tomes, cloudy jars in which unspecific organs floated. On a small table sat a ceramic bust that looked like Elvis Presley, except when it didn’t. In one corner, a small mountain of pheasant and fish bones lay carelessly tossed. The place stank of offal and madness.

  Wilberd tapped my shoulder and pointed up. We craned our necks to find giant, ragged, red elvish script scrawled across the rock above our heads. We could all read it, so no one spoke aloud what the script spelled out:

  GYGAX MUST DIE

  “Gygax?” asked Andrigan, stroking his ringed beard. “Isn’t he dead already?”

  “As far as I know, yes,” I said. And so he was, if the stories were true. Gygax the Great, who had helped found modern sorcery as Koschei’s apprentice; Gygax, who had saved the Woerth by joining Arturus’s quest to slay his former master; Gygax, who, with his life-partner Rigsby, had founded the School of Thaumaturgy to train generations of wizards. No one knew what sparked the final row between the two wizards, long ago in the Valley of Sorcerers. Once the local barons finally worked up the nerve to send a search party into the Valley, months after the very Shadow Mountains themselves quaked from the force of the wizards’ sorcerous duel, they found only one burned corpse in the Workshop of Telescopes, which they identified as Gygax’s—but let’s face it, the local yokels weren’t exactly experienced forensic investigators. Maybe it was Rigsby’s corpse, or the gardener’s, or a stable hand’s. There was, in fact, no hard evidence that Gygax was dead. Had Gygax faked his own death? If so, why? I mean, what the fuck?

  “But even if he isn’t dead,” I continued, “how the hell would Lindar know anything about it? And why would he want to kill him now?”

  “We missed our chance to ask him, fighter,” Andrigan said. “If Lindar it was, then he has no desire for our counsel. And seeing this place, he was right to seek solitude.”

  As we spoke, Wilberd noticed something tall and oval-shaped concealed under a blanket in a shallow alcove off the north wall. The monk sidled over and pulled the blanket away, revealing a mirror—but not just any mirror. Oh, no.

  It was the accursed Black Mirror itself—a relic of the Penultimate Universe and a gift from the Violet Queen to Koschei, given long centuries ago. We recognized instantly its contours, its polished obsidian frame, the leering abominations carved into it. We quailed before its utterly dark, featureless negative space reflecting nothing but the Void. Oaths sprang unbidden to our lips.

  “Fuck me!” cried Andrigan.

  “Holy jabbering monkey-Christ!” I cried.

  “!” exclaimed Wilberd.

  “So, there’s the source of his madness,” Andrigan allowed, after another long moment of stunned silence had passed. “That crazed elf must have braved the Dread Keep itself to retrieve it. We may have to take him out, fighter.”

  “Brother,” I said, “If it comes to that, I’ll dice with you for the honor.”

  5

  We first encountered dimensional mirrors on our way to kill Redulfo the Black, the reincarnated black-dragon version of our friend holed up somewhere in the Workshop of Telescopes. After the Crimson Hand resurrected him, Redulfo flew from the topmost spire of the Crimson Citadel to the Valley of Sorcerers, where he claimed the Workshop as his own. The Hand’s goals were opaque; for reasons known only to them, they were concerned mostly with sewing war between the Free Kingdoms and the Dread Plain. Redulfo throwing in his lot with those goddamned arthropods caused us a lot of grief. From that cesspool also sprang Garrin, the Grimmreaper, dispatched by the Hand to collect Koschei’s Phylaxes before I could. I was in a race with that fucking asshole before I even knew who the hell he was. You might assume that when you look in a mirror, you’ll recognize yourself. That notion isn’t always true.

  It took us a day to recover from the bugbear assault in th
e Shadow Pass. After that warm welcome, you’d have had a tough time convincing us that we had a chance to reach Redulfo. There’s fucked, and then there’s ass-fucked.

  For example: With his jellied leg, James wasn’t going anywhere. We loaded him up with firewood, split our rations with him, and then bid him adieu. I gave him my wineskin and pressed a vial into his hand.

  “This is a Holocaust potion,” I told him. “If things look hopeless, you know what to do.”

  “Blaze of glory,” said James with a grim smile. “Keep your powder dry, Elberon.”

  Parting from our friend for possibly the last time, we continued our march toward certain doom. By midday, the pass descended below the tree line, and the forest canopy thickened over our heads. The Rangers’ Subcommittee of the Adventurers Guild had tagged this forest Lawful Evil; as we tromped along the winding ridgeline further into the forest’s clutches, we could sense the malice in the trees as they loomed over us, threatening us with their grasping branches. The sun plunged below the high ridge walls, turning the sky into blood.

  Then, we saw the first signs of the arachnids: thigh-thick strands of hairy webs draped over the higher branches. As we continued west, the strands gathered in numbers, coalescing at last into eldritch webs festooned with the shriveled corpses of birds, beasts, and humanoids.

  “If Redulfo has promised them our blood,” said Malcolm, “then it will be a long night.”

  We stopped to make camp. Knowing better than to build a fire, we sat circled with backs facing inward as we chewed venison jerky and fingered our blades, waiting for the hammer blow to strike. I drew first watch. While the others burrowed into their bedrolls, the sky blackened, and a wan half-moon limped above the horizon. Two hours of ominous silence passed. As I was about to raise Lithaine for the next watch, I spied along the tree line the first cluster of red eyes, burning like pinhole glimpses into the forges of Hell. There came another cluster, and another. Soon, we were surrounded by a phalanx of glowing crimson orbs. Segmented legs clicked and clacked as the creatures spun their foul webs in the dark.