The Temple of Yellow Skulls

by Don Bassingthwaite

  “The first of many,” said Vestapalk. His cruel smile grew wider. “Gatherer, your service is only beginning!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nu Alin woke to find his host’s nose bloodied and his face full of grass and dirt. In the back of his mind, Apech the minotaur scratched at the walls of his mental prison, trying to escape while his jailer was unconscious. Nu Alin slapped him down with hardly a thought and rolled over to stare at sunlight filtered through leaves. His head spun with the movement.

  The last thing he remembered was the Voidharrow flaring brighter than the sun, brighter than anything Nu Alin could think of. It had exploded out of his awareness with such power that he could imagine he’d actually seen it with Apech’s eyes. It had lit up the distant horizon like a second dawn, so intense it had seemed to turn the trees around him to winter-bare skeletons. So intense it had overwhelmed him.

  There was something more to it as well, an additional sensation, though he couldn’t quite name it. An ancient memory returned to him: the moment when a mere human had joined with the Voidharrow and begun the transformation into something else. No, that wasn’t quite right. What he sensed from the Voidharrow wasn’t like his own transformation—it was like the transformation of those who had followed Albric and likewise been consumed by the Voidharrow.

  The Herald was needed. He pushed Apech’s body up and continued his journey to the beacon that was the Voidharrow. With every step, the dizziness left by the surge in the Voidharrow faded a little more, replaced by exhilaration. The Voidharrow was still distant, even at Nu Alin’s tireless pace, but it felt much closer. The time he had waited for so long was almost at hand!

  Dizziness and exhilaration together—along with the intensity of his focus on the Voidharrow—contributed to his stumbling into the ambush.

  One moment he was alone, striding through the forest. The next, he had the sensation that he was being watched. Nu Alin slowed his pace, but kept moving as he scanned the trees around and ahead. There was nothing to see with his host’s eyes. He extended his own senses outward and discovered half a dozen hidden figures, bandits lurking along the trail he had chosen to follow through the wood. Two up in the trees would be archers while the others, lurking to either side of the path, would be thugs. Nu Alin was still considering whether to stop and deal with them when one of the figures moved from hiding and stepped out on to the path ahead.

  The bandit was a tall human, lean and desperate looking. He pointed an old sword with a much notched edge at Nu Alin. “In a hurry, minotaur?”

  So that was how it would be. Nu Alin slowed to an easy walk. “The time it will take to deal with you is no delay,” he said.

  The bandit’s eyes widened slightly as he looked him over. His gaze flicked to someone out of sight, then back again. Nu Alin knew the man had seen the wounds Gerar the gnoll had inflicted on his host body, now sealed with his own silvery-red form. The cracks that showed around the eyes of any host body Nu Alin used harshly were probably also visible. He walked a little closer to the bandit.

  The old sword wavered, then grew steady. “Stand where you are!”

  Nu Alin stopped obediently. The bandit smiled, confidence restored. “You’re a long way from Thunderspire,” he said. “We have you outnumbered. I’ve got four archers in the trees and twice as many men in the woods”—noise rose on cue from the hidden thugs in an attempt to convince their victim of the lie—“so if you want to continue your journey with your life, you’ll throw down everything you’ve got.”

  Apech had been carrying a few trinkets when Nu Alin had taken his body. Some loose coins, a pretty stone, a good knife, shiny brass cuffs. Nu Alin pulled them out or took them off, and threw them to the ground. Then he tossed down the empty pouch from the minotaur’s belt and even the belt itself. The crossed harness of leather straps that Apech wore across his chest. The bandit started looking nervous again.

  “That’s enough,” he said. He gestured with the sword. “Move away.”

  Nu Alin stood his ground. “Come and take them. They’ll do you no good. You’re going to be dead soon enough. You and all your men. You and every living thing in this world.”

  The bandit with the sword flinched. There was a curse from the bushes, then a command. “Loose!”

  Nu Alin staggered as arrows zipped from the trees and thumped into Apech’s broad chest. He righted the minotaur’s body, looked down at the arrows, then wrapped a fist around each and ripped them free. The silvery-red crystal of his form bubbled up in the wounds. The bandit stared at him.

  The voice in the bushes rose high. “Kill him!”

  Waving an assortment of weapons, the remaining bandits broke from hiding and charged. Two more arrows thumped into Nu Alin, then the archers’ shots were blocked as the bandits surrounded Nu Alin. They could still be a nuisance, though. He couldn’t just let them continue to loose arrows into his host body. The first bandit to reach Nu Alin was a slight man wielding a quarterstaff. Nu Alin caught a blow from the staff on his forearm, before wrenching it out of the bandit’s grasp with his other hand. A twist of Apech’s massive shoulders, enhanced by his own flowing form wrapped around the corded muscles, sent the staff whirring through the air. There was a crash and a yell cut brutally short, followed by another crash as the first archer’s body fell out of the tree.

  The slight bandit tried to retreat. Nu Alin grabbed him by the throat. Pain blossomed in Nu Alin’s back as another bandit plunged a dagger into Apech’s kidney. Nu Alin pushed himself into the wound, seized the slight bandit with both hands, and flung him into the dagger man. Both men went down, but the dagger man staggered back to his feet—the slight bandit stayed on the ground, choking on a crushed throat. Nu Alin lunged across him for the dagger man. The fallen bandit’s ribs crunched under his hooves and the dagger man screamed as a sharp horn drove into his belly. Nu Alin lifted him up, then twisted his head and hurled him away. Blood and scraps of his guts clung to Apech’s horn. He flicked them off as he turned back to the remaining bandits.

  There were no more arrows. The second archer had wisely fled. Only the bandit with the notched sword and another man, presumably the actual leader of the bandits, with a spear remained. They stood shoulder to shoulder with their weapons pointing at Nu Alin, but not moving, caught halfway between the urge to fight and flee.

  Exaltation flooded Nu Alin. “Your kind are too weak,” he told the men. His voice was a rasp in Apech’s broad chest. He could feel his substance pulsing and dripping like tears around the minotaur’s eyes. “You will be easy prey in the age that comes. If you cannot harm the Herald, what hope do you have against his master?”

  It was too much for the bandit with the sword. He whimpered and tore away from his leader, sprinting for the concealment of the bushes.

  No minotaur should have been able to move as Nu Alin did. He leaped high and felt muscles tear as he did, but just knitted them together with strands of his own being. His jump took him clear over the bandit leader and into the fleeing swordsman. Hooves caught him in the hips, shattering bones as Nu Alin drove him to the ground. The man wailed and squirmed, possibly unaware of what had just happened to him. Nu Alin crouched over him, took his head in Apech’s big hands, and snapped his neck.

  When he looked up, the bandit leader had vanished from sight—but not from Nu Alin’s senses. The man ran like a rabbit, ducking and dodging among trees and bushes with scarcely a sound. Nu Alin rose and strode after him.

  “The world you know will end in rivers of lightning and seas of blood!” he roared. “Iron forests will sprout leaves like knives and your organs will hang like sodden fruit from their branches.” He increased his pace to a charge. Nothing stood in his way. He ignored the bite and sting of thorns and saplings. Small trees fell under his hooves. “The sun will look down on deserts of ice, the moon on mountains of bone, and the only stars will be the flash of red crystal wings bringing death to all things!”

  His pursuit closed the distance to the fleeing bandi
t. Even over the crash of his charge, he could hear the bandit leader’s panicked weeping. And though the call of the Voidharrow still burned strong in his mind, Nu Alin did not think it would begrudge him a moment’s sport in his journey.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sergeant Murgeddin, the old dwarf in command of the guards at Fallcrest’s eastern gate, waved to Albanon and the others as they rode back into town. “Good journey?” he called cheerfully.

  “Not really, no,” said Kri and rode on past the guard without even pausing.

  Albanon reined in his horse and paused beside Murgeddin. “Sorry,” he said. “We didn’t exactly find what we were looking for.”

  “Few ever do, lad, few ever do.” Murgeddin looked up at Shara as she rode in with Splendid draped across her shoulders. “Are you going to bite my head off, too?”

  Splendid answered for her. “Probably not. Dwarves taste bad.”

  Murgeddin eyed the pseudodragon and drew a rattling breath as if preparing to spit. Splendid’s eyes went wide and she leaped from Shara’s neck into the air. Hovering safely out of range, she glared down at the grinning dwarf. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Probably not. Pseudodragons make easy targets.”

  Splendid let out of a whistling hiss of annoyance and swooped around as if to show off her agility. Shara ignored her and leaned over to Murgeddin. “Have you seen Uldane?” she asked.

  Murgeddin’s eyebrows went up and he shook his head. “Not since you rode out, but you know he’s a hard one to keep track of. I don’t go out of my way to watch for him when we’ve got real troublemakers in town.”

  Shara cursed under her breath and threw an angry glance at Albanon. “The tower,” she said and urged her horse on. Albanon sighed.

  “Thanks, Murgeddin,” he said. “If you do see Uldane, tell him we’re looking for him. Splendid, come on.” The pseudodragon gave one last taunting twirl, then settled on his shoulder. Albanon tucked his heels into his horse’s side and turned it after Shara and Kri.

  By the time he caught up to them before the Shining Tower, Kri already had the tower wards down. “Stop doing that!” Albanon told him.

  “Learn to improve your wards,” the old cleric said irritably. “There was a massive flaw in them.”

  Albanon scowled. “It wasn’t a flaw. I left it like that so”—he glanced at Shara—“so Uldane could get in if he needed to.”

  The warrior woman’s face brightened and she all but leaped off her horse in her haste to reach the door. She threw it open and charged inside, calling Uldane’s name. She was back out in moments. “He hasn’t been here since we left,” she said.

  “We’ve only been away a few days,” said Albanon. “His note said he’d be gone that long, too.”

  “I don’t like it.” Shara hauled her gear off her horse’s back and threw it inside with a thud and a crash. “I’m going to ask around about him. I’ll be back.”

  “Wait! Shara—” Albanon swung himself down from his horse, but he was already too late. She vanished along the road to the lower town before he could stop her. Sighing, he turned to Kri—and found him marching into the tower without so much as a glance back. Sighing again, Albanon set to work removing tack and gear from their horses. “Looks like it’s just you and me again, Splendid.”

  The little pseudodragon shifted awkwardly.

  Albanon closed his eyes and leaned his head against a horse’s neck. “Fine. Go.” He heard her whistle of delight and the rattle of her wings; he opened his eyes to see her flitting up to one of the tower windows. “You wouldn’t have been much help anyway!” the eladrin called after her, then turned back to the horses.

  He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that the others had so quickly gone off on their own. The ride back from Andok Sur and the Old Hill had passed mostly in silence. Shara had been wrapped up in thoughts of finding Uldane and renewed vengeance against Vestapalk while Kri had been consumed by … whatever consumed him. The cleric of Ioun might as well have been a follower of Vecna, the dark god of secrets, for all he shared of his thoughts. Albanon had ended up spending most of the journey trying to talk to Splendid.

  Shara wanted to find Vestapalk to mete out the vengeance he’d avoided by not dying before. Kri wanted to find the dragon to determine exactly what exposure to the Voidharrow had done to him.

  And Albanon wanted to take them both by the scruff of the neck and bang their heads together until they started working with each other. He felt torn between them when they really had a common goal. On the one hand, he wanted to help Shara—and Uldane, when they found him—avenge the friends and family Vestapalk had killed. On the other, he wanted to help Kri investigate the mystery of the Voidharrow as a tribute to his master, Moorin, slain by Nu Alin in his attempt to recover the vial. What Vestapalk had done with the Voidharrow to the kobolds beneath Andok Sur was proof of the urgency of that investigation. All trails led ultimately to Vestapalk. If they could find him, they’d all gain something.

  If only, he thought as he finished with the horses and carried the last of their gear into the tower, they knew where to start looking.

  After Albanon washed away the grime of travel and changed his clothes, he went looking for Kri. He found him in the library, surrounded by piles of books pulled off of the shelves. The cleric didn’t look up as Albanon entered. Or when he dragged up a chair and sat down across the desk from him. Or when Albanon cleared his throat—although he did grumble, “You want something?”

  “I know this library,” Albanon said. “If there’s something you’re looking for, I can probably help you find it.”

  Kri snorted. “I would be no priest of Ioun if I couldn’t find my way around a library.”

  Albanon studied—upside down—the book he was reading. He recognized the ornately drawn maps that decorated the crinkling pages. “The History of the Frontiers of Nerath?” he asked. He looked at the other books Kri had collected. Most were collections of tall tales and legends. A few were proper histories of the Nentir Vale. “What do you hope to learn from that?”

  “That kobold said Vestapalk left Andok Sur in search of the Gatherer.” Kri turned a page. “I’m looking for a clue to what or who that might be.”

  “It might not be anything in the Vale,” said Albanon. “Vestapalk could have left the region. Dragons can fly a long way.”

  “The world is large. The Nentir Vale is small. When I have exhausted the possibilities in the Vale, I will look beyond it.” He turned another page, then another, lingering over an illustration that Albanon recognized as the dwarven city of Hammerfast on the eastern edge of the Vale. “Besides which, I have a feeling that the dragon has not gone far.”

  Albanon remembered how he’d held his holy symbol and swept a hand across the shelf in Moorin’s study where the vial had lain for so long. “You can sense the Voidharrow!”

  Kri scowled into the page. “Only when I’m close. No—I believe that something drew Vestapalk to the Vale and he isn’t finished here yet.”

  “Andok Sur and the vial,” Albanon said promptly.

  The cleric paused and finally looked up at him. The scowl hadn’t left his wrinkled face. Albanon felt an urge to shrink back under that glare. “No,” said Kri. “Use your brain and tell me why you’re wrong.”

  Albanon grimaced and considered his assumptions, just as he would have if Moorin had set a problem before him. “Shara only broke the vial against Vestapalk by accident. He wasn’t looking for it. But when we fought him, he babbled something about the Herald arriving soon.” He glanced at Kri. “Nu Alin was in pursuit of the vial. If we hadn’t encountered and defeated him, he might have gone on to Andok Sur after it. And if he was the first being infected by the Voidharrow, he could be considered its herald.” He frowned, turning the facts over in his mind. A chilly certainty formed in the pit of his stomach. “Vestapalk was in Andok Sur to meet Nu Alin.”

  “Whether he knew it or not,” said Kri, nodding. “Shara told me that one of the first times she
and her friends encountered Vestapalk, they surprised him as he stood over the disemboweled corpse of a horse, as if searching for an omen in its entrails. The histories of the Order relate that Albric the Accursed was also led by omens and visions before he became Nu Alin. I suspect that Vestapalk and Nu Alin were both led to Andok Sur by omens. If further omens or visions are leading Vestapalk in search of the mysterious Gatherer, perhaps omens are also leading the Gatherer to Vestapalk. He or she—or it—might already be in the Nentir Vale.”

  “Or anywhere else,” Albanon said.

  Kri scowled again at the suggestion. “The world is large, the Vale is small,” he repeated stubbornly. He turned his eyes back to his book.

  Albanon wrinkled his nose and wished he could take back his words. For a moment, Kri had actually seemed to warm toward him. “Shara knows a lot about the Vale,” he said. “She’s traveled through much of it and her father before her.”

  “And I intend to ask her about that when she returns from her fool’s quest for your halfling friend,” Kri said coolly.

  Albanon slumped in his chair. It was going to take more than a subtle suggestion to get the cleric and Shara working together. “It’s too bad Moorin wasn’t still alive,” he said. “He knew a ritual for locating people. He might have been able to find Vestapalk.”

  “I know the same ritual,” said Kri, turning pages again. “Unfortunately, it requires more supplies to conduct than I have available—or are present in your tower stores. Or, I suspect, are commonly available for purchase in a town like Fallcrest. Besides which, there is a limit to what spells and prayers will reveal. I told you, the Order has tried rituals in the past. The gods and their servants will not answer questions about the Voidharrow.”

  Albanon sat up. “What about a question about a dragon? We wouldn’t be asking about the Voidharrow, only Vestapalk.”