The Temple of Yellow Skulls

by Don Bassingthwaite

  Something hooked his legs out from under him. The gag soaked up a gasp as Albanon tumbled briefly through the air and smashed head first into solid stone. Bright blotches swam around his vision; a thin ringing filled his skull along with biting pain. He groaned, and this time he did vomit thin bile into the hood.

  Hands that were more delicate than the brute’s but strangely no less strong pulled him to his feet. The fouled hood came off. Albanon stared into the face of a female drow.

  A female drow with silver-red cracks pulsing around her eyes. Albanon had seen those cracks around Tempest’s eyes once. Fear churned his stomach a second time.

  One of Nu Alin’s hands shot out and clamped around his throat, choking off air and bile alike. Albanon convulsed in agony as his lungs heaved and sucked down the vomit. The drow’s eyebrows just rose like thin, white spider legs. Nu Alin smiled. “The wizard’s apprentice. I thought I recognized your presence. I owe you for your attempts to trick me when we met before.”

  The drow’s arm barely seemed to twitch, but suddenly Albanon was flying again. This time his shoulder took the impact of his landing. He ended up on his back, staring up at the rose-tinted sky of morning—until Nu Alin strode over, grabbed a handful of his robes, and hauled him half-upright. A hand ripped Albanon’s gag off violently. The drow’s face bent over his and she opened her mouth.

  In place of a tongue, a thick tentacle of red crystal curled out. Albanon’s head spun so badly he could barely think, but his gaze was drawn to the writhing appendage as it drooped toward his own gaping mouth. He tried to close his lips. The drow’s other hand grabbed his jaw and forced it wide.

  An inarticulate scream rose out of Albanon’s chest. He struggled, but Nu Alin’s strength held him easily. The demon’s fluid form oozed further out of the drow’s mouth. It brushed his cheek, scraping across the skin and into his mouth—then it was gone, sucked back into the drow. Nu Alin chuckled and straightened.

  “No,” he said in the drow’s voice. “That won’t be your end. My master has something much more painful planned for you.”

  Nu Alin hauled him to his feet and dragged him through the ruins. Albanon was dimly aware that with his mouth free and his vision clear, he finally had the opportunity to cast a spell. His mind still reeled with pain and the shock of the demon’s torment, though. He tried to gather his will and felt the magic slip through his thoughts.

  Focus, he told himself. Focus! You can’t die like this!

  They emerged into the courtyard where Raid had first presented him to Vestapalk. Brute demons clustered around the edges of the open space, jostling each other like children at a market fair. Vestapalk crouched in the center of the courtyard, liquid eyes closed but head weaving back and forth as if the dragon was listening to voices only he could hear.

  Between dragon and demons were the prisoners from the pit. Thick wooden posts and ancient stone pillars had been dragged into the courtyard and forced down between the age-worn paving stones. To each was bound one of the prisoners: humans, orcs, goblin, lizardman, ogre, halfling, dwarf, another drow.…

  One post remained empty. Nu Alin pushed Albanon to it.

  “Not there, Herald,” said Vestapalk without opening his eyes. “That place belongs to a special servant.” The dragon’s mouth crooked. “Put him with the drow. Brothers shouldn’t be separated.”

  Nu Alin turned without comment and hustled Albanon toward the post where a drow male was bound, presumably a survivor of the previous night’s attack. The drow’s white eyes narrowed at their approach. “Eklabet!” he called in Elven with a wheedling tone. “Eklabet, I don’t know what’s come over you but if you can hear me—”

  “She can hear you,” said Nu Alin in the same language. “She just can’t do anything about it.” He gestured and a brute lumbered forward to hold the drow while Nu Alin swiftly tied Albanon beside him. Nu Alin stepped back and grinned. “Like reflections in a mirror,” he said, then turned and moved to Vestapalk’s side.

  Albanon stared at the drow. It was indeed almost like looking in some magical mirror that rendered white to black and black to white: the drow’s dark skin to his pale, white eyes to his blue, bone-white hair to silver. The drow scowled back at him and said, still in Elven, “You wear a wizard’s robes, eladrin, but I’m guessing that if you can’t save yourself, you’re no good to me.” He rested his head against the wood of the pillar. “Quarhaun.”

  It took a moment for understanding to penetrate Albanon’s battered mind. The drow was offering his name. “Albanon,” he said in return.

  “Is it too much to hope that a band of eladrin feyknights are waiting for just the right moment to rescue you?”

  Albanon thought of Shara, Uldane, and Kri. They weren’t exactly knights, but they were his only hope. But no. He knew Kri. They wouldn’t be coming for him. They wouldn’t risk it. He put them out of his mind. “We’re on our own.”

  The drow’s face curled into a sneer. “We?” he said. “The only thing ‘we’re’ likely to do together is die.”

  Albanon couldn’t hold back a shudder. “We’d be lucky to die.”

  Quarhaun twisted around to look at him, eyes wide, but just then Raid strode into the courtyard—and Albanon knew immediately who the final post was meant for. Tiktag scuttled along in front of Raid, shepherded by the demon. The kobold’s scaled face was tight with terror. He met Albanon’s gaze and almost immediately looked away. Albanon could understand his anger. If he hadn’t tried to enlist Tiktag in his escape, the kobold might not be among Vestapalk’s prisoners.

  Then again Tiktag had threatened to blind him and had almost killed Uldane. That took some of the edge off his sympathy.

  “What do you mean by ‘we’ll be lucky to die?’ “Quarhaun demanded.

  Albanon felt a half-mad grin twist across his face. How bad must things be, he thought, if I’m counting a kobold and a drow as the closest I have to allies? He turned to face Quarhaun. “Vestapalk is going to turn us into demons.”

  The drow blinked.

  “Demons?” said Vestapalk’s weird double voice. The dragon’s eyes were open and staring at them. “Demons,” he repeated, rolling the word on his tongue as if savoring it. “Beings of the Abyss, perhaps, but so much more than demons.”

  “Your exarchs, then.” Albanon surprised himself at the angry challenge. “A demon is still a demon.”

  “You might be Vestapalk’s exarchs—if you survive.” The dragon rose. Two strides brought him looming over Albanon and Quarhaun. “Nu Alin has told Vestapalk how the Voidharrow first entered the world. Some of these things Vestapalk already knew because the Voidharrow sings in his veins and the Elemental Eye whispers in his ear. Some of them he did not know. Some the Eye did not wish him to know and tried to keep from him.” He lowered his head to look into Albanon’s eyes. “You are the heir to those who tried to prevent the coming of the Voidharrow and then sought to guard it. They never understood what they faced. The gods would not speak of the Voidharrow, would they?”

  Albanon’s anger faltered. “How did you know that?”

  “The gods deny the Voidharrow—but they created it. When they chained Tharizdun, they created it. Why was Tharizdun imprisoned?”

  It took Albanon a moment to realize that Vestapalk actually expected a response. As he fumbled for the answer, Quarhaun spoke first. “Because Tharizdun created the Abyss.”

  The dragon’s gaze flicked to the drow. “With a seed of evil, yes? But when a seed exists, does it ever exist alone?”

  Albanon glanced at Quarhaun, hoping he would answer this question as well. Quarhaun just looked back at him. Vestapalk hissed at both of them. “No! No seed exists without a source. Tharizdun planted the seed of the Abyss, but the gods planted the seed of the Voidharrow.” He reared back and his double voice rose. “Vestapalk is the Eye. Vestapalk is the Progenitor. Vestapalk is the Voidharrow Incarnate!”

  His liquid eyes narrowed and his voice dropped. “Vestapalk is the end of this age and the begin
ning of the next.” He turned away.

  “Master!” Tiktag, now tied to the last post, tried to reach out but his hands were bound close. “Don’t do this,” he begged. “I have served you well. I’ve read the omens at your side—”

  Vestapalk flashed enormous teeth at him. “You read the omens, but you didn’t see their true significance. Even Vestapalk failed in that. But you are loyal, Tiktag. Embrace your transformation and it will be rapid. Not all are as favored as you.” The dragon stepped back to the middle of the courtyard, his tail whipping the air, and looked around at all of his various cowering and bold, weeping and defiant prisoners. “You will serve,” he said. “You will all serve.” He raised his voice. “Herald! Gatherer!”

  From the far side of the courtyard, Raid and Nu Alin came forward. The face of the drow that Nu Alin inhabited was alight with anticipation. Her flesh bubbled and bulged obscenely, and Albanon could imagine Nu Alin’s fluid form churning within. Raid’s hideous face betrayed nothing, but he carried over his shoulder the leather sack that Vestapalk had previously coiled around. They both stopped in front of the dragon. There were no gestures of submission or respect. Raid simply swung the sack down from his shoulder and opened it.

  Uldane had described sinister whispers and frightened wailing when Raid had opened the sack of golden skulls before. Nothing he’d described had prepared Albanon for the sound that filled the courtyard. No physical throat could have produced that noise. He heard it less with his ears than he felt it in his mind and in his soul. It tore at him, a cacophony of rage and fear and madness. The sound ripped an answering cry out of him. Quarhaun groaned. Prisoners around the courtyard whimpered and yelled and bellowed in agony. Even Nu Alin and Raid, even the unresponsive brute demons, looked uncomfortable.

  Only one being in the ruins seemed unaffected by the noise. Vestapalk looked down into the bag. “Wail and cry,” he said. “Vestapalk has listened and heard all of your threats. You were defeated long ago. You are nothing. You are captives, Vestapalk’s to do with as he pleases!” He slapped the sack with the back of a forefoot and the wide leather neck slumped over. Perfect golden skulls, gleaming in the light of dawn, rolled out to clatter across the stones of the courtyard. Nu Alin and Raid darted around to gather and return them to the sack, but Vestapalk plucked one from the ground. Pinching it between two talons, he held it up before his eyes and stared for a moment into its metallic sockets.

  Then his chest expanded as he inhaled. Against the background of the screaming skulls, one voice rose in a shriek. The gleam of the gold seemed to rise from the skull in Vestapalk’s grasp, streaming through the air and into the dragon’s mouth. The bright shine of the skull faded. The crystalline shimmer of the Voidharrow grew.

  When the shriek had sunk to a whisper, Vestapalk sighed and let the skull drop. It hit the ancient stones of the courtyard with a hollow clang that sounded far more like iron or lead than gold. The rage of the skulls shifted, became more like fear. Vestapalk didn’t hesitate. “Another, Gatherer.”

  Raid held up a second skull. Vestapalk didn’t bother contemplating this one; he simply drew breath. A second shriek faded to an agonized whimper. “Another—”

  His lean, corded body shuddered abruptly. Pain flickered across his face and he snarled at the dulled metal of the skull in his grip. “Do not fight Vestapalk!” He thrust the spent skull at Raid and Nu Alin. “Two more. Quickly!”

  Nu Alin pushed two skulls into his grip and Vestapalk drew on the essences of both at the same time. The shimmering flow of power was stronger this time. Albanon thought he could almost see inhuman faces, distorted by incredible agony, in the streaming light. When Vestapalk finally let the skulls drop, he didn’t sigh—he gasped like a laborer releasing a burden. His expression twisted. His tail, stretched out behind him, writhed and beat against the ground. He shuddered again and a low groan broke from his throat. He twisted his neck, snapping it back and forth. Raid looked at Nu Alin in concern, but the Herald just stared up at Vestapalk and smiled.

  Slowly Vestapalk’s neck straightened and his heaving chest eased. The wail of the skulls faltered. Vestapalk reached out and folded the sack shut with one talon. “You have waited centuries,” he said. “Wait a little longer. Your power will return and Vestapalk will take it again.” He sighed and stretched, then looked around the courtyard to Albanon.

  And the eladrin felt a shudder run through his own body. Power radiated from Vestapalk. His eyes swam, sparkling like running water, flashing like fine rubies. The Voidharrow dripped off of his scales like sweat and ran from his jaw like rain. The dust and stone where it dripped twisted and seethed as if alive. He smiled and spoke, dragon voice almost entirely hidden beneath a crystalline ringing.

  “This is what you and your kind tried to prevent—but could not.”

  Vestapalk turned to Tiktag. The kobold whimpered and tried to duck away, but Raid had bound him too well. The best he could do was tuck his face into his scrawny shoulder. “Tiktag,” said the dragon, his voice thick, “look at Vestapalk.”

  Tiktag’s head came up slowly, unwillingly. Vestapalk bent over him. His tongue emerged from his mouth, a single drop of the Voidharrow pooling on its tip. With the tenderness of a parent, Vestapalk brushed his tongue across Tiktag’s forehead, smearing it with the Voidharrow.

  Then Vestapalk moved away to his next prisoner, the human woman. His tongue ran around his jaws, gathering up the Voidharrow. “Look at Vestap—”

  His words were lost in the scream that ripped out of Tiktag. The kobold’s head slammed against the post at his back as blisters erupted through his scales. Blood—true blood, not silver-red Voidharrow—oozed from his mouth and nostrils.

  The largest blister swelled in the center of his forehead where Vestapalk had anointed him. As Albanon watched, the skin split and red crystals burst out of the center of his forehead like pus forced out of an infected wound. Tiktag’s eyes rolled back in head and his scream became one plaintive, tortured word. “Massterrr!”

  Terror broke over the courtyard like a rock thrown into a looking glass. Prisoners who might have grown numb to fear struggled like animals to escape their bonds. The four-armed brutes that crowded around the courtyard answered their cries with mocking roars and shrieks. Vestapalk, however, seemed entirely absorbed in the ritual anointing of his captives—his features were tight with concentration, his every movement focused and deliberate. The chaos didn’t touch him. When the human woman didn’t raise her head to him, he just stared at her until Nu Alin stepped in, seized her head with drow hands, and forced it back hard enough to wring a cry from her lips. Raid shouted at the brutes, bringing some forward to restrain the struggling prisoners. Others came of their own accord to surge around the captives as if taunting them.

  At Nu Alin’s side, Quarhaun cursed and thrashed, wrenching at the ropes that bound them together. Every time he pulled, the bonds dug deeper into Albanon’s flesh, but the eladrin hardly noticed as he stared at Tiktag. The kobold writhed like someone wracked with fever but with strength far greater than Albanon would have expected.

  Strength great enough to snap limbs and joints. Tiktag jerked suddenly against his bonds and Albanon watched one of his legs twist sideways. Hip pulled from its socket. The kobold threw back his head, but if he screamed it was lost in the greater din of the courtyard.

  Albanon forced his eyes away, but it seemed as if there was nowhere to look. He might have stood in the middle of a plague-house. He stared at the human woman, who now stood with all of her limbs locked stiff as blisters swelled against sweat-slicked skin. He stared at the lizardman that Vestapalk had turned to after, long strips of scales peeling away as he struggled in his bonds. At the old dwarf, his thick beard slipping from his face in wet clumps to reveal raw flesh beneath. At the ogre, the goblins—at all of the prisoners as the dragon made his way around the courtyard, anointing each in turn with the Voidharrow.

  The disease began the same way in each: with blisters, the flush of fever, a shee
n of sweat. Then crystals sprouting, like a crest or a birthmark, where Vestapalk’s tongue touched. The prisoner screamed or bellowed or cried out as joints cracked, bones stretched, and muscles swelled. Skin split, revealing changes in color and texture.…

  Albanon forced his gaze above the nightmare scene. He needed to look at something else, something beautiful and familiar, before his mind shattered and he succumbed to despair. He lifted his eyes above Vestapalk’s horde, above the ruins, to the rising sun.

  And to the small form briefly silhouetted as it ran across the top of a ruined wall.

  Uldane?

  His mind had to be playing tricks on him.

  No, Albanon realized. No, it wasn’t! As if feeling his gaze on it, the figure paused for a moment and gave him a barely visible nod, then darted on into the shadows.

  They’d come for him. Where Uldane was, Shara wouldn’t be far behind, and possibly Kri as well. His heart rose. They’d come to his rescue after all.

  As fast as his heart rose, though, it fell even faster as a much larger, much closer figure put itself between him and the sun. Vestapalk looked down at him.

  Albanon swallowed as he stared up at the dragon. Quarhaun stopped struggling and spat an oath in Elven. Vestapalk smiled at both of them. “The demons of the skulls feed the power of the Voidharrow,” he purred. “What would take hours or days if one of Vestapalk’s horde wounded you will be rapid. You have caused Vestapalk problems, but he has great hopes for you. You have been truly exceptional. You will serve well.”

  His tongue flicked once and Quarhaun gasped. It flicked again and Albanon felt something warm like spit on his forehead.