Skull Gate

by Robin W Bailey

  She didn't want to discuss it further. There were still things to do, and she gave orders. Kimon and Tras Sur'tian placed the children on the raft, then all their weapons, their boots, and the two special waterskins. Onokratos hobbled the horses and left them to wander along the bank. But Ashur fled when he approached, refusing such an indignity.

  When the old wizard finished he stepped carefully onto the raft, kneeled near the center between the sleeping girls, and clasped the line of shredded blankets firmly in his hands.

  They watched as water seep up through the boards. The riders would get wet, but the raft would float. Frost waded out into the bog. “We'll push you out as far as we can. If you pull too hard, some of those knots in the blanket strips might slip before we find the ferry rope."

  Kimon and Tras Sur'tian looked on dubiously from the shore.

  “Do I have to push by myself?” she added with a trace of caustic humor. She stared at Tras and winked, “You already stink from your first bath. Come on, make it squish between your toes."

  They looked at each other, shrugged, and joined her. The murky water lapped at their thighs. The mud indeed squished between their toes. The reeds and swamp grass parted reluctantly as they forced the raft through.

  As the swamp gave way to open lake, the bottom dropped away unexpectedly. Kimon yelped and went under, surfaced with a wild thrashing and splashing. As he treaded the water to stay afloat, he gave Frost a look to burn stone, then forced a sheepish grin. She and Tras shifted easily to a kicking motion, still pushing the raft.

  Then, a loud splash far to their right: all stopped, seeking the source. “There!” Onokratos cried, pointing.

  Frost slapped the water, exasperated, amused, proud. “Ashur!” she shouted as the animal swam for Skodulac. “You stubborn half cousin to a plow mare!” She looked at her comrades, rolled her eyes in relief. “For a moment,” she confessed, “I thought someone or something had us,"

  “This is no place for a fight,” Tras agreed.

  They redoubled their efforts to reach the island. Onokratos strained with all his aged might, hauling on the rope, making a growing coil between his knees. He uttered no complaint and wore an expression of earnest determination.

  A familiar trumpeting made her look up. Ashur waited impatiently on Skodulac's shore.

  There was barely a hint of sunlight remaining when they dragged the raft up on the rocky beach into the shadow of a high, stout tripod of old logs where the secured end of the ferry rope was anchored. They donned boots and buckled on weapons. Frost strapped Demonfang over her left hip, sword upon her right. Tras Sur'tian had only his broadsword and a dirk. Kimon donned his long sword, then for the first time since she'd returned it to him at the manor house, he unwrapped the cloth that concealed the beautifully wrought short sword. He held it up, and the sun's last rays rippled along its gleaming edge. He had no sheath for it but eased it inside his belt.

  Ashur trotted over and nuzzled Frost, his great horn sliding just past her shoulders. She pretended to ignore him, then relented and gave him a playful scratch on the nose. The unicorn nickered and ran down along the shoreline, kicking up mud and small stones.

  “I'll never get used to those eyes!” Kimon exclaimed, staring after Ashur.

  “What about the children?” Tras Sur'tian said.

  “They come with us,” Onokratos insisted, “at least my Kalynda.” He scooped up his slumbering daughter in his arms, allowing no debate. “I'll not leave her alone for a moment in this place.” His gaze raked the inland skyline. “Do you feel it, woman? The very earth tingles with evil."

  “You have a talent for the dramatic,” Frost scoffed. But she repressed a shudder. She could feel it. And now that she opened herself to it, the air fairly sang, an indescribable sensation that made her instincts scream, made her want to run back into the water where it seemed not to reach. Kimon and Tras were not aware of it, but Ashur was. She saw the creature's restless pacing for what it truly was. The unicorn sensed the island's special nature.

  Skodulac was a locus, one of those very rare places where the natural energies of the earth were amplified to supernatural levels.

  “It's not evil,” she said, not bothering to explain to her friends, “but it is power, raw and primitive. Can you manipulate it?"

  “I dare not try,” Onokratos answered, pressing Kalynda's head into the soft part of his shoulder. “It's too wild; I couldn't control it. I'm a wizard. My sorcerous skills are quite limited."

  It was wild. She could feel it prickling the soles of her feet, aquiver in the air she breathed, rippling like a soft wave on her skin.

  She could have shaped such power once, or at least tried. But she was a witch no longer. Onokratos was right to shut himself against this force. Even an adept might well fear to bend such energy to his will.

  “The first bright stars,” Kimon said, disturbing her reverie. Darkness was upon them.

  Tras Sur'tian slung the water-skins over his shoulder. Kimon gathered Aki in his arms. “Which way?” Frost inquired.

  “Inland,” answered the Korkyran. “Skull Gate lies at the island's heart."

  They trudged slowly up a rise and down between the yawning walls of a narrow canyon. Dyre Lake was quickly lost from sight, but its smell remained in the air. The terrain was rugged; stones turned treacherously underfoot as the seeing grew harder. Night swallowed them. Still, they kept moving.

  “Wish we had a torch,” Tras Sur'tian grumbled once.

  “Save your wishes,” chided Onokratos. “Or spend them on important things, like the souls of our children or the contest to come."

  “Wish we had a torch,” Tras repeated.

  Frost didn't know how long they walked. It seemed like forever, though the island hadn't appeared that large in the daylight. She began to fear that they were wandering in circles and made an effort to remember any strange shape in the darkness that she could use for a landmark.

  An outcropping of rocks and boulders rose on her right. The course took them near, and as they approached she realized it was not a natural formation. The largest stones were chiseled smooth. Strange characters were chipped into the surfaces. She traced the glyphs with her fingertips, trying to make some sense of them in the darkness. She counted the stones: three monoliths with smaller boulders piled around for support. Farther on, she thought she glimpsed a similar construction.

  “This must mark the outer perimeter,” Tras Sur'tian said suddenly. “According to tales, these things form a ring. The characters are probably warnings. No outsiders were allowed closer to Skull Gate than we are right now."

  They moved out upon a broad mesa. No grass grew, nor weeds or trees of any kind. The land had a blasted look. They walked unhampered by roots or loose stones. The stars burned with uncanny brilliance in the vast expanse of sky.

  They passed another of the stone constructions. Like the first, the individual boulders had been sculpted flat and engraved with runic figures.

  “This would mark the inner perimeter,” Tras Sur'tian claimed, running a hand over the stones. “The old stories must be true. These characters, if we could read them, would tell the histories of the people who once lived here, their births, marriages, deaths, and complete genealogies. Women would bring their babies newborns here, and priests would carve their names. Beyond this point, only the men were ever allowed."

  Frost spat and promptly stepped past the marker. “So much for another taboo,” she said stiffly.

  “How much farther?” Kimon asked, shifting Aki's weight to his other shoulder.

  Tras Sur'tian shrugged, offered to take the child, but Kimon declined.

  They came to an abrupt halt on the jagged lip of an immense crater. Frost muttered an Esgarian expletive as she peered over the edge, thanking her gods for sharp eyes and a cautious nature. In the darkness a careless man might have fallen. “Why didn't you tell us?” she said to Tras Sur'tian.

  “The legends refer to a valley,” he replied, shaking his head. �
�Nothing like this."

  “The legends are wrong, then,” Onokratos interjected. “Do you feel it?” He looked at Frost. “The power radiates from here. This is the island's heart."

  Frost swallowed and peered downward again. How far? she wondered. There was no stone to drop, no echo to help her judge. “I do feel it,” she answered soberly, and hugged herself.

  “Legend claims that Skodulac is haunted,” Tras Sur'tian said to fill the sudden silence. “Long ago, when Korkyra was a much smaller kingdom, this corner of the nation was dominated by a tribe of flesh-eating savages. During our expansionist period we sought to wipe them out with the blessings of the priests of the One God, to whom such an act was abomination. We nearly succeeded, though rumor has it some escaped and dwell today in the Creel Mountains of distant Rholaroth. I don't know the truth of that.

  “But Skodulac was special to them. It was a temple to their primitive gods, a training camp for their warriors, their last refuge, and finally their funeral pyre.

  “The histories say that when our forces finally breached the island's defenses, the savages threw themselves into a huge firepit of unnatural origin.” He paused, gazed thoughtfully into the blackness of the crater. “But all that was long ago."

  Frost turned to Onokratos. “When we started out, you spoke as if you knew this place. Yet you've said little since we set foot on the island, and this crater surprised you as much as the rest of us."

  The wizard stroked his daughter's hair, held her face close to his. “Gel told me the direction,” he answered. “He showed me a vision of Skull Gate. It's a vast arena unlike anything you've seen. A shame the night is so thick; I had hoped to see your expression when you gazed on it.” He shrugged. “Of the land itself, I know nothing; the demon did not enlighten me."

  Kimon shifted his burden again, careful not to be too rough with the little queen, but plainly impatient. “Well, if it's at the bottom, there must be a road down. Let's get on with it."

  Frost led them on a search around the crater's rim. The way down was, indeed, a road, wide-cut and smooth, excavated from the solid rock and earth. She marveled at its construction, knowing the great effort it must have taken to move such tonnage. She fancied she could hear the grunts and moans of the laborers, the cracking of the whips, the lumbering and creaking carts and wagons.

  Tras Sur'tian had called these people savages. She laughed silently at that smug judgment. There was nothing primitive about their artifacts. The carvings on the stone markers they had passed required considerable skill and artistry, not to mention patience; this road, like the gently sloping spout of a dark, bottomless bowl, rivaled the best Korkyran highways.

  If only there were more moonlight, she wished to herself as they descended into the deeper blackness. The earth formed increasingly higher walls on either side of them as the road led downward. The sky became a narrow, star-sprinkled ribbon. Maybe we should have waited for the dawn.

  “Why do the gods always prefer the dark?” Tras Sur'tian wondered aloud, echoing her thoughts.

  “If they do,” Kimon muttered, “then Orchos chose well. This is surely the anus of the world."

  “That's in Keled-Zaram,” Onokratos contradicted. “There's a cave, huge bats like you've never beheld—"

  “Onokratos.” She brought them to a halt. The lower end of the road was still nowhere in sight. A cloying fear ate away little pieces of her courage. The night was like a strangling thing; she had never feared the dark before. Now, it overpowered her, swallowed her up. It made her feel small and weak.

  She had been about to snap at the old man, stifle his silly, useless patter. Now, she thought better of it. “Why don't you try to summon your demon."

  He didn't answer for a long moment. “I have tried to call him several times. Twice since we left the upper edge."

  She uttered a quick, silent prayer. Orchos had bargained for five contestants. What would he do when only four showed up? She clutched her sword's hilt, finding no real measure of security in the contact. I've bargained badly and doomed my friends, she thought, cursing herself. I've bungled through this from the first. I've had no plan, no real course of action. Without Gel we may be lost. Orchos wanted the demon most of all.

  “By the One God!"

  She started as Tras Sur'tian's hand clapped her shoulder. Deep in private thought, she had missed the fact that the road had leveled and they had reached the crater bottom. She looked up, stared wide-eyed at the massive gate and wall that loomed before them.

  “Is it real,” she gasped, “or carven?"

  “It is the skull of the giant, Yahwei, whose footsteps were thunder on the earth when Man climbed down from the trees,” Onokratos said reverently. “It is quite real."

  “How do you know that?” Frost persisted.

  “I told you before, Gel showed me this place in a vision. How could I gaze on such a wonder and not ask the same questions that you do?"

  The stars twinkled through the huge empty eye sockets and the space where once a nose had been. The gaping mouth itself formed the entrance to the arena. The lower teeth were gone and the jawbone thrust deep into the earth. The walls that held Yahwei's skull upright extended to either side and far beyond the range of sight.

  “The walls are also made of skulls and bones,” Onokratos informed them. “Both human and animal mortared together. I can well believe Tras Sur'tian's charge that the builders were flesh-eaters."

  “I'm not sure I'd feel any better about this place in the brightest daylight,” Frost admitted softly, peering through the mouth into the arena's liquid blackness. Ashur nickered, and she smiled halfheartedly. She'd nearly forgotten the unicorn, he'd been so quiet since sunset. “He isn't sure, either,” she added.

  She gave the unicorn a couple of loving strokes, then she walked through Skull Gate into the arena.

  Ashur's warning cry came too late. She saw the flames that were his eyes swell to raging fury, then pain exploded in the back of her head; she bounced helplessly off the unicorn's shoulder as the ground rushed up to meet her and the air deserted her lungs.

  From the corner of her eye as she lay facedown in the dust she perceived a great, scaly thing as it bent over her, slavering, one taloned fist poised to rake the life from her body. Its drool splashed on her bare neck, icy cold and slimy. Its breath came harsh and rasping, and a malignant evil gleamed in its only eye. It reeked of all the charnel in hell.

  She struggled to draw a breath, to reach her sword as the razored claw flashed down. Old reflexes took over and she rolled, found her feet, tugged her blade free ... and swallowed hard.

  Moving on goat legs, her foe closed for a second blow, thrashing a spiked, reptilian tail. Half again as tall as she, its great arms reached for her. She fell into a fighter's stance, terror making tight fists of her hands around the sword's hilt. If it could hit her, she tried to reason calmly, then she could hit back. And what she could hit, she could hurt. She braced herself, raising the sword.

  But the creature stopped suddenly, let out a howl, an inhuman cry that was more than mere agony. It rose, erect, talons ripping at the sky, tail whipping spasmodically. It wailed again, and steam began to ooze from its saurian flesh, then a creamy foam that sizzled and popped.

  She jumped away as the monster toppled. It writhed, shrieking in the throes of death, kicking up the fine, powdery ash that covered the arena's floor. Within moments, the steam and crackling foam obscured its form. Frost could feel the terrible heat generated by its dissolution. A reeking stench filled the air. She watched until nothing remained but a damp, ichorous puddle.

  Tras Sur'tian stood just inside the gate, the last drops of the specially purified water pouring from the two ruptured water-skins that hung tellingly from his grasp. “I didn't think,” he said lamely, mouth agape. “I just swung the skins, and they ruptured."

  “Don't apologize,” she reassured him, going to his side. Ashur came, too, and nuzzled her shoulder. Kimon and Onokratos crept close. The children contin
ued to sleep unaware in their arms. “What was that?” Kimon asked, appalled wonder coloring his voice.

  “One of our foes, I would guess,” Onokratos replied warily, his eyes sweeping around for other dangers.

  A numbing chill descended over the arena. A cloud of vapor rolled from the crater's northernmost lip, blotting out the stars. Then, as they watched, the cloud shaped itself into a familiar visage, a nebulous face that grinned down at them.

  Well done, daughter! The lord of worms laughed, and the sky shook with the sound of it. She heard his voice deep in her head. From the looks on her comrades’ faces, they beard him, too. First round to thee, or rather, to thy Korkyran friend. Orchos laughed again. Stout, for such an old fellow, is he not?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tras Sur'tian shook a defiant fist. “Not too old, corpse-monger!"

  The wispy image of Orchos's face dissolved. “Thee honors me with such familiarity.” The god of death wore human form as he appeared before them, clad in midnight garments that shimmered like moonlight on black waters. A slight breeze stirred the iron gray of his hair. He looked altogether like a man, but for his eyes. They shone with a wisdom and knowledge that made his gaze impossible to meet.

  Even his voice was almost human. “I have waited for thee."

  Frost imitated the god's aggressive stance. “We had some difficulty on the way,” she announced. “One of our number is missing."

  His face crinkled in amusement. “Oh, he is not missing.” He made a small gesture.

  In the center of the arena a pale, mystical light suddenly radiated up from the ground, illuminating a tall wooden cross, and the demon crucified. A low moan bubbled in Gel's throat as he raised his head and saw them.

  Her eyes narrowed angrily, recalling what the demon had done to her. Gel groaned again, and the sound brought nothing but sweet pleasure.