The Screaming Skull

by Rick Ferguson

  “Then I pray for your strength, in contemplation and in battle, Elberon of the Isles,” Cassie said. “May Athena grant you courage, first fighter. If our Shield Maidens may assist you in your struggle, please call upon us.” She pushed her chair back.

  “It may come to that,” I said. “But before you go, I’d like to pay you a compliment. It’s the least I can do for the woman who saved my life.”

  The priestess settled back in. “A compliment? Go for it, Slick.”

  “Even though I’m the king’s son,” I said, “I’ve never had luck with the girls at court. I was kind of a joke, really. One day, my mate Darlen told me that a fleet admiral’s daughter, newly arrived from one of the outer isles, had a crush on me. I didn’t believe him, because why would she? But he insisted it was true, and he arranged a court dinner so I could have a look at her. Any girl with a crush on me must look like the ass-end of a berserker, I thought, so I wasn’t much excited. But when Darlen pointed her out to me—holy Moses. She was a knockout, the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid eyes on. And it was true—she did have her eye on me. Not because I was royalty, either. She hadn’t even known I was Olderon’s son until Darlen told her.”

  “And then she ran screaming for the hills?”

  “No.” This woman has a mouth on her, I thought. I didn’t yet know the half of it. “We hit it off for a while until she dumped me for another admiral’s son. I took it hard—but while it lasted, I dared to believe the world could be wonderful.”

  “Touching. How does it translate into a compliment for me?”

  Leaning forward, I looked deep into her eyes and took her hand.

  “I was getting to that,” I said. “She was indeed the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid eyes on—until today. For you put her to shame, Cassiopeia of Collanna. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  10

  That story had the virtue of being true. Not that the truth mattered; to be close to Cassie, I deemed no lie too egregious. The proof came at our next meeting when I stopped by the temple to deliver a spray of wildflowers for her altar. Noticing the lust in my eyes, she asked the obvious question.

  “I’m not going to find out you’re married, am I?” she asked.

  For a moment, I thought of Melinda in the catacombs below the Blue Falcon, mouthing the words to me: I love you. And then a voice in my head, speaking words familiar and yet somehow foreign: You’ve seen how much pain we cause Melinda. Don’t you want the chance to save her from it?”

  Perhaps it was my conscience. If so, it took one look at Cassie for me to tell my conscience to fuck off.

  “Not me,” I said. “I’m free as a lark.”

  11

  At least I married Cassie before I knocked her up. Not so with Melinda. What can I say? It’s not like I’m Johnny fucking Appleseed. I am, within the meager subset of women who find me attractive, monogamous. Sure, I plowed my share of fields back in the day, but only when Cassie and I were broken up. For real, Amabored could field a fair-sized army comprised exclusively of his bastards.

  Even now, I wonder how differently things might have turned out. If we each create and destroy an infinitude of universes every second, then there exists a universe near to this one in which Melinda bore my child. One in which we live, if not happily ever after, then at least in peaceful coexistence. In that universe, perhaps Cassie rose to high prominence among the Athenians. Maybe she even became the Oracle herself, and was counted among the wise—and, because she never got involved with me, she’s still alive. Do I blame myself for her death, in this universe? You bet your ass I do. I would gladly have died in her place, and that I’m still alive is all the proof I need that Odin hates my guts.

  Alas, we only know the universe in front of our noses. In this one, I wish I had treated better the three women whose only mistake was to love me. It’s pointless to regret the past, which is nothing more than a probability wave receding from the knife-edge of the present. We can take comfort knowing that our worst sins only probably happened. Who needs a god to absolve you when the Multiverse will do it for you?

  Sometimes, your sins catch up to you before you’ve sinned—a certificate of deposit on karma, if you will. For example, the year prior to meeting Cassie, I stumbled into the Suds ‘n Shade one brisk October morning for a planning session with the boys. Since Saggon’s fall and Jaspin’s disappearance, Melinda now used the place for her office. She kept Guild business out of it, however, which left it the de facto watering hole for Redhauke adventurers. I must have looked as ashen as I felt, because Amabored immediately called to Trilecia for more wine.

  “You look like a dragon sat on your face,” Redulfo offered.

  “Melinda’s pregnant,” I said, slumping into a chair.

  “No shit?” asked Lithaine.

  “Knocked up like a cheerleader.”

  I waited for the boys to silently congratulate themselves for avoiding my fate. Then Redulfo patted my back. “Congratulations,” said the wizard. “That is, unless condolences serve better.”

  “Thor’s hammer, man, why didn’t you just come on her tits?” Amabored asked.

  “She was drinking the potions every week,” I said, head in hands. “Lady Hagg mixed them herself. How could this happen?”

  “Look, dude, there’s the door,” Lithaine said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “Make a run for it. Go live your life.”

  “What do you know about it, magic boy?” Amabored asked the elf. “Talk to us when you’ve seen a woman naked.”

  “I saw your mother naked. She fucks for fish heads down at the docks.”

  “My mother would be too busy laughing at your tiny elven dick to fuck you.”

  “I can’t fucking leave her, man, not after all we’ve been through,” I said. “She saved my life, for Christ’s sake. She nearly died herself. Plus, she needs my help pulling the Guild together. She’s in deeper shit now than when Saggon was around.”

  “Do you love her?” Redulfo asked.

  “Love her? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s a simple question. Do. You. Love. Her?” The wizard peered at me from over his round Lennon-specs. “If you do, then what’s the problem?”

  Amabored leaned forward, a cat regarding a cornered mouse. “You’re going to be a dad. Shit, man, that’s great. Congratulations, really. We should have a toast. Trilecia—the wine!”

  All three of them, my only real friends in the world, regarded me with varying degrees of sympathy and bemusement. The mark of a devoted friend is someone who can see right through you.

  “Fuck you, assholes!” I cried, and stormed out of the bar.

  12

  Of course, I stormed right back again, climbed the two flights of steps to Melinda’s office, kicked out the supplicants, and begged her to marry me. She threw her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. At that moment, I did love her—didn’t I? At least, I loved the idea of being in love with her. That she loved me, I didn’t doubt. There was less dishonesty in her than in most honest women, even if she did run a vast criminal enterprise.

  Her hold on said enterprise was tenuous, however, which precluded an open wedding. So, we risked a small one instead, held at the Suds ‘n Shade and attended only by my mates and her few trusted friends. Lithaine was my best man; Melinda’s Second, a feisty sparkplug named Fiona, served as her maid of honor. Afterward, we opened the bar to general merrymaking. It filled quickly with well-wishers and backslappers, most of whom were there to curry favor with Melinda. Outside, two-dozen handpicked Guild archers crouched on the rooftops surrounding the bar.

  The boys shoved a flagon of ale into my hand, hoisted me on their shoulders, and paraded me around the room to the raucous play of the minstrels. They dumped me in front of Melinda. Laughing and dripping with ale, I shoved the flagon in her direction.

  “Come, wife—a toast to the bambino!” I said, pointing to her stomach. “Let’s give him his first hangover!”

 
; To my surprise, Melinda shook off the flagon. As Fiona pulled her aside for a quick conference, Amabored clapped me on the back and stuck a cigar in my mouth.

  “My sympathies, brother,” he said. “The elf was right—you should have run when you had the chance.”

  Then the bar was rattled by an earthshaking explosion that thundered in from somewhere near the city center. Everybody hit the dirt. For a prolonged moment, we all lay prone, rafter-dust falling upon us in thick flurries. We heard distant screams, followed by the sound of a bone-jarring voice drenched in bass and reverb.

  “Let’s go,” said Amabored as we all raised our heads. He leaped up, grabbed his sword from the rack near the door, and raced outside. The rest of the wedding party followed. Melinda took my hand and we ran out together, partners in whatever shit-tornado life was about to throw at us. Other than the tiny rodents of doubt gnawing at my guts, it felt good.

  The explosion had drawn the crowds out of the pubs and tenements that slumped together on Specter Street. The curious and the alarmed alike spilled out onto the cobblestones and surged toward the source of the explosion, which appeared centered on Hundred Fountain Square some ten blocks away. That bystanders always move toward a source of obvious danger is a phenomenon I have yet to unravel, but there it is.

  Caught up in the throng, we were wedged apart by the shuffling humanity. Amabored’s snow-white mane bobbed ahead of us, while behind us Lithaine and Redulfo forced their way through the swelling horde crammed like a blood clot in one of the city’s arteries. The crowd forced us into a shuffling penguin-walk. Near the square, the booming voice thundered and railed. Then a blast of hurricane-force wind roared around us, flattening everyone in its path for a good block. Melinda and I remained upright. Ahead of us, Amabored now stood clearly visible—the crowd around him had been blown over like stalks of wheat.

  “Good work, wizard!” Amabored called back. Behind us, Redulfo gave a disinterested shrug.

  We jogged down the now-clear street. Turning down this lane, sprinting up that one, we soon found ourselves at the back of another, larger throng gathered around the perimeter of the square. Hundred Fountain Square is a literal, rather than a fanciful, name: There really are one hundred fountains spread across the massive plaza, ranging in size from small cherub-carved birdbaths to the immense Genius of Waters, with its twin hundred-foot-tall marble sea-drakes bowing before an immense marble likeness of Arturus. As we approached, thick columns of steam broiled off the great fountain. Through the obscuring clouds of vapor, we caught glimpses of smoke and flame.

  Then came that deep bassoon voice, bellowing with menace, and our hearts quavered. Melinda and I had heard that voice before.

  “YOU HAVE THREE DAYS,” the voice boomed. “MAY NOT THE DEATHLESS ONE CONSIGN THEE TO THE OUTER VOID? MAY NOT HE SEND THIS CITY TO PERDITION?”

  Glancing at Melinda, I was alarmed by her pale, stricken countenance. She gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. The last time we had heard that bellowing bass voice, three years earlier, I had been… somewhere else. My mind raced, trying to forge a connection to the past. We pushed forward for a clearer view, and there he stood: His Satanic Highness Malacoda, Dire Malebranche of the Eighth Circle of Hell and pledged vassal to Beelzebub, who brought us so close to grief.

  The devil’s immense torso rippled with taut muscle. His bull’s head sported a massive pair of curved, pockmarked, and iron-shod ebony horns from which depended barbed chains festooned with the shrunken heads of children. His fur-bearing ram’s legs ended in splayed, scaly hawk’s talons. His skin, marbled red and black, was carved with runes borne with great malice and pain. Two clawed hands gripped a monstrous spiked iron mace upon which orange flames danced and capered. Ragged bat-wings beat the air. Hellfire spewed also from his nostrils, and he was wrapped in a poisonous black cloud.

  The fog obscuring the past cleared, and I remembered: I had battled this devil in the bowels below the Blue Falcon. To vanquish him, I had donned the Screaming Skull itself. After the battle, Melinda sacrificed herself to save the souls of those doomed children. How had I beaten the devil? That part of our battle was shrouded in darkness.

  Here, though, was something different: The devil was bound neck and wrist by manacles attached to heavy black chains. These chains were gathered in the hands of a figure wearing a knee-length cloak lined with leather died blood-red, black horseman’s boots, and black leather gloves. The man’s face was hidden, shadowed within the folds of a thick hood. From his belt hung a pair of wicked, curved daggers. Strapped to one forearm, the blackest of black kite shields, its surface so dark that no light seemed to escape it, carved out negative space. When the devil strained forward, the figure drew hard upon the chains, jerking it backward. There was something hidden in the shadows of this man’s hood that was far worse than the devil. The hood turned toward me.

  I felt the man mark me—and then I remembered, even as my memories of wearing the Skull had grown dark. He, too, had appeared beneath the Blue Falcon. When I had finished with the pit devil, I had done battle with him—I was certain of it. He had come there to murder me, to take both the Skull and the Girdle—and now here he was again.

  Then a tinny, human voice near the front of the crowd dared to speak.

  “Peace, Your Satanic Highness!” said the voice, which belonged to a portly noble bearing a ruby-topped staff. It was the Lord Mayor of Redhauke himself, who had come to treat with the devil. “Peace! Tell us your desire, so that we may grant it, and beg your leave!”

  “PEACE?” the devil roared. His rumbling, roaring laugh set the crowd to wailing. Those of us still standing would have broken and run if we could. We were now all within the circle of the devil’s glamour, however, and none could flee unless the devil willed it.

  “PEACE?” Malacoda roared again. “NONE HERE SHALL KNOW PEACE IN LIFE OR IN DEATH. THOU LIVEST AT THE PLEASURE OF THE DEATHLESS ONE.”

  This certainly wasn’t the devil’s usual talk. Malacoda was in character, and clearly enjoying himself.

  “YOU HAVE UNTIL THE NEXT SUNSET. DELIVER UNTO ME THE SKULL AND THE GIRDLE AND THOU MAYEST YET LIVE. REFUSE OR DELAY, AND BE DESTROYED.” Then the devil turned to his captor and spoke in sotto voce. “Look, is that good enough? I hate that fucking medieval pussy-talk. Get me a drink before I vomit.”

  The figure said nothing, only yanked on the chains until the devil roared with rage. “YOU OUT THERE, ELBERON? I TOLD YOU THIS WASN’T OVER, FUCKSTICK!” Malacoda bellowed. “SHOW YOURSELF, MORTAL!”

  Every friendly eye turned to me. Melinda took both my hands in hers.

  “Oh Elberon,” she whispered. “What do we do?”

  Amabored thrust his face before mine. “I thought the Skull was gone for good?” he growled.

  Before I could answer, the devil roared again, a wrenching snarl of fury drawn straight from Hellfire. The crowd screamed and quavered. Malacoda raised his flaming mace on high and brought the weapon down with a monumental crash onto the tiled plaza. The resulting shockwave flattened everything within a hundred yards. I flew backward through the night until I caromed off a marble basin and hit the ground in a flailing heap. With that crescendo, the pit devil vanished in an obscene gout of orange-red plasma.

  The air was rent with rancid vapors and choking dust. Flames licked the rooftops of surrounding buildings. Citizens stumbled to their feet, either standing in a daze or administering to those with cuts and broken bones. Battered but intact, I picked myself up. Nearby, Amabored helped Redulfo to his feet. Lithaine staggered over, pressing a kerchief to his bloody nose. Everyone was alive and accounted for, except—

  “Melinda!” I shouted, whirling around. I spotted her sitting upright near the remains of a dolphin-shaped fountain. She saw me and smiled. I ran to her.

  “Thank the gods!” I cried, kneeling beside her. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I think so.” She tried to stand, then staggered and doubled over in pain. I grabbed her. Clutching me, she cried out and bent double again
. What I saw then bent my mind permanently.

  On her white wedding gown, a red rose bloomed. Melinda touched her fingertips to the stain, centered between her legs. They came away crimson.

  “I’m sorry—” she said, and then fainted in my arms.

  13

  That was a kick in the ass, and no mistake, as Sam Gamgee might say. One moment, you’re expectant parents; the next moment, you’re not. To say Melinda was devastated doesn’t begin to describe her sorrow; it was as if the devil had reached into her body, removed her beating heart, and laughed at her as he threw it into the dirt and stomped on it with his cloven hoof. The pain and trauma of the miscarriage were not limited to the necessary physical process of expelling the dead fetus from her body; it was also the external manifestation of her psychic pain. Unable to console her in any meaningful way, I wandered the city that following day in a daze, alternating between rage at the devil and his mysterious master for demolishing our lives, and depression at the certain knowledge that our loss was somehow my fault.

  I had no idea where that fucking Skull was, either; as far as I knew, it had been lost forever in the Hellmouth. The Girdle, on the other hand, was now permanently fused to my torso; wherever the girdle went, my torso would follow, the rest of my body notwithstanding. Failure to deliver both to Malacoda by the next night, however, might find the devil abusing me like a truck-stop condom. I was in a pickle.

  Your first Malebranche will set you back on your heels; so will your first dragon. While you can’t reason with a pit devil, however, most dragons are eminently reasonable. I encountered my first würm during the fallow years, after the fall of Helene but before we descended into the Valley of Sorcerers. At last, I had achieved Tenth Level in the Adventurers Guild—a momentous event in the life of a swordsman, one accompanied by copious perks and benefits. A Tenth-Level fighter can build a keep, attract men-at-arms to fight under his banner, and receive the title of Lord, which sounds pretentious until people start calling you one. Most importantly, you can tax the local peasants—the key to real wealth. Hauling sacks of coin and jewels out of some dank dungeon is fine as far as it goes, but I have yet to meet the hero who wouldn’t rather sit on his ass instead. Maybe Amabored, but he had unfinished business.