The Temple of Yellow Skulls Read online

  The soldiers scattered, trundling off on muscular legs to carry out their master’s command. Vestapalk turned to Raid. “Vestapalk doesn’t care about ‘worthy.’ Worthy is for the gods. Vestapalk wants commanders who will serve him well and without fear. Go back out into the Vale. Bring me more like that one.”

  Anger burned on the human side of Raid’s misshapen head. He glared at Vestapalk as if the dragon’s reprimand had shamed him. Vestapalk’s eyes narrowed slightly but he didn’t move.

  Finally, Raid bowed his head. Briefly. “Yes, Master,” he said. His gaze stayed down for no longer than it took to utter the words before he looked up again, though. “There was something else. We were confronted.”

  “Confronted? Someone dared attack you and you still only managed to bring Vestapalk a coward?” The dragon turned to stalk back to where Tiktag waited.

  Raid’s face tightened. “The ones who attacked us fled from me. One of them was a priest. He used holy light against me.”

  Vestapalk paused. “Holy light?”

  There was curiosity in his voice. In any other creature, Tiktag might have even said there was concern. Raid didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve had prayers to the gods turned on me before,” he said. “When I was just Hakken … before you blessed me with the Voidharrow.” His face wrinkled. “This was different. It hurt more.”

  “Then you deserved it. Learn from this lesson.” Vestapalk looked skyward and Tiktag felt a shiver at the blankness that drifted across his face. That the dragon listened to the Eye again, even if just for a moment, was a comforting familiarity. “There are those who know about the Voidharrow—or at least believe they do.” He looked back to Raid. “How did this priest find you?”

  “I think it was a coincidence. He was traveling with people I knew, friends of one of those who helped me recover the skulls. Apparently that friend wasn’t as dead as I thought. Somehow he escaped the temple. He was hiding near the lizardfolk camp. The others must have thought they were rescuing him.”

  The chill that had run along Tiktag’s spine and tail earlier returned. The halfling. Raid was talking about Uldane. So that’s why the halfling had been lurking around the temple ruins. And Tiktag had let him escape. More than ever, the wyrmpriest wanted to slink away in to the shadows, to find the deepest, darkest hiding spot he could and jam himself into it. Close your mouth, he thought at Raid. Don’t say anything more!

  But Raid didn’t. His face twisted. “They laugh at me. They still doubt my strength. I will hunt them down and show them what I can do. They won’t laugh then. I don’t know the priest—he used his prayers to keep me back and I had prisoners to return to you or I would have gone after them—but I know the others.” He squeezed his fists until blood trickled between his fingers. “Albanon. Uldane. Shara … they will be mine.”

  A long hiss broke from Vestapalk as he whirled around. Tiktag wanted to cower. Even Raid had the sense to flinch in alarm. “Shara?” the dragon spat. “Uldane? You’re sure these are the ones?”

  The confidence with which Raid carried himself seemed to break at last. “Uldane was the one who escaped from the temple,” he said. “He’s the one who helped retrieve the golden skulls.”

  Vestapalk’s hiss rose into a rumbling—rose and kept rising as his body convulsed with rage.

  No, Tiktag realized, not rage. Vestapalk was laughing. The red stuff between his scales flared like embers. His strange liquid eyes glowed. His claws clenched and loosened, digging gouges into the ground of the courtyard. Raid looked to Tiktag in confusion but the kobold only felt the same thing himself.

  Long devotion to the dragon won out over his fear at what Vestapalk had become. Tiktag moved closer and asked, “Master? Are you—?”

  Vestapalk’s laughter ended in a long, hissing draw of breath. “If this is no doing of the Eye’s, then destiny itself favors Vestapalk,” he said. He glanced at Tiktag. “Wyrmpriest, go make sure Vestapalk’s brutes follow his instructions. Inspect any vines they bring back. Make sure they are strong.”

  “Master?” asked Tiktag, his confusion only growing—but Vestapalk had already turned his attention to Raid.

  “Shara is a human female and Uldane is a halfling male, yes?” the dragon asked his lieutenant. “And this Albanon—a dragonborn? A tiefling?”

  “An eladrin,” said Raid.

  Vestapalk nodded, his mouth pulling back to bare his teeth. “Yes. A wizard. Vestapalk remembers him.…”

  Neither of them paid any further attention to Tiktag, as though he wasn’t there at all. If Tiktag had felt small under the combined gazes of Vestapalk and his creatures, he felt even smaller at being ignored. He moved away and fear crept back over him. Fear and the urge to blame Raid for stealing Vestapalk’s attention from him. But Raid was only part of the problem, wasn’t he? He was only a symptom of Vestapalk’s transformation. The signs that he and Vestapalk had read together in the guts of animals, and that the dragon had seen in his visions of the Eye, were wrong. The Eye had promised transformation, but whatever the Voidharrow was turning Vestapalk into, it wasn’t something that he was meant to be.

  Tiktag clenched his teeth and looked back at the dragon. “I will find a way to save you, master,” he murmured under his breath. “Even if it is from yourself.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ioun, All-Knowing Mistress … Ioun, who writes the Book of Insight … Ioun, lady of Kerath-Ald where all knowledge lies.…” Kri swung a small censer in time with his invocation, spreading a haze of fragrant smoke that seemed to glow with its own gentle light. “Ioun, font of lore, your servant begs your aid: Lend your holy strength to Uldane Forden. Take his fever, make whole his body, and rouse his spirit.”

  Stretched out on the bed before the old cleric, Uldane groaned and writhed suddenly. His arms thrashed and his legs kicked—coming perilously close to striking the censer. Biting back a curse, Albanon grabbed for the halfling’s ankles at the same time as Shara seized his hands. Kri gave them both a harsh glare, but didn’t for an instant hesitate in his chant. “Ioun, All-Knowing Mistress.…”

  Uldane relaxed under Albanon’s grip, and for a moment the wizard felt the same sense of panic he had when they had fled through the night beside the Witchlight Fens. Between one heartbeat and the next, Uldane had gone limp in his arms. Albanon had felt certain his friend had died and yet they didn’t dare to stop for fear of Raid’s pursuit; they’d ridden for miles more before they could even slow to check on him.

  But that had been on the back of a galloping horse. If Uldane hadn’t died then, he wasn’t going to die in his own bed in the Shining Tower.

  At least, Albanon hoped he wouldn’t.

  Albanon looked up at Shara, only to find her already looking at him. She nodded and he knew she was thinking the same thing as him. Between them, Shara and Kri knew a fair bit about healing. Once back in Fallcrest, they’d ransacked the tower’s supply of healing herbs. The cleric’s prayers were useful for healing the wounds of battle, but against exposure and infection, they were less effective. “Let the body do its work,” he had counseled. “That’s the best healing.”

  After a day of watching Uldane burn with fever, his wounds festering and his body growing weaker as they sat by his bed, even Kri had relented. “There’s a ritual I know,” he’d said. “A direct invocation. There’s no guarantee it will succeed—”

  “We’ll take that chance,” Shara had said.

  Had they waited too long?

  Uldane groaned again. This time Albanon was ready. He held on to Uldane’s legs. The halfling had surprising strength for someone so small and so sick. Even Shara struggled to hold his arms. Kri’s chant rose in volume, filling the dim, smoky room. “Ioun, font of lore, lend your holy strength to Uldane Forden! Take his fever! Make whole his body! Rouse his—”

  “Aahhhh!” The shriek that burst out of Uldane seemed to lift him entirely off the bed. Every muscle in his body contracted at once, bending him into an agonizing arc. He remained stiff for three lo
ng heartbeats, his eyes wide and rolled so far back in his head they showed only white, then the seizure ended as abruptly as it had come over him. He collapsed back to the bed, trembling and shaking.

  Kri lowered the censer and nodded. Albanon released Uldane’s legs—cautiously. Shara let go of his arms. Kri’s hand went to his holy symbol in silent tribute to his god, then he reached out to lay it against Uldane’s forehead.

  The halfling jerked bolt upright at his touch. “Vestapalk!” he yelped. “Vestapalk is alive!”

  “Hush!” Shara dropped down onto the bed and gathered him into her arms. “Hush, Uldane. We know.”

  Uldane relaxed into her embrace like a child waking from a nightmare. Tears squeezed out of his eyes. They shone in Shara’s eyes, too, as she looked at Kri. “Thank you,” she said.

  Kri’s mouth just tightened into a thin line. “I’ll have my thanks when he can tell us what he saw.”

  Uldane was out of his bed before nightfall. By the time the moon had risen, it was all but impossible to tell he’d been wounded. A slight gauntness was the only sign that he’d even been sick, and Uldane set about remedying that with gusto. He cleaned out the tower’s pantry and sent Albanon jogging down to the Blue Moon in search of more food.

  “I feel like I haven’t eaten in days!” Uldane said as he tore into one of the roasted chickens the eladrin brought back.

  “You probably haven’t,” said Shara, sitting beside him at the table in the tower’s kitchen. “The fever will have taken a lot out of you, too.”

  Splendid snorted. “You’re forgetting that he always eats like this.” The pseudodragon hopped across the table to glower at Albanon. “And you, going off without me. Look at what happens!”

  The refrain was familiar. Splendid had muttered some variation of it since they’d arrived back at the Shining Tower bearing Uldane, except that respect—surprisingly—for Albanon’s worry over his friend had kept her voice quiet. Now that the halfling was healed, it seemed everything was back to normal. “You said you didn’t want to come,” Albanon said yet again. “And we needed someone here in case Uldane came back on his own.”

  “You’re right. Someone needs to look after you. If I’d been there, your leg wouldn’t be mashed to a pulp.”

  Uldane actually stopped eating and looked up at that. “You got hurt rescuing me?”

  “Just a bruise,” said Albanon. “It was nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Splendid’s voice rose into a squeal and she turned to Uldane. “Under his robe, his right leg is black and purple from his hip down.”

  Heat rushed to Albanon’s face. Before Uldane could say anything, he added, “From when my horse bashed me against the tree you were hiding in.”

  The halfling broke into a grin—a grin that faded quickly as his gaze shifted past Albanon. Shara’s expression sobered as well. The wizard twisted around.

  Kri stood in the doorway behind him. “I have been patient,” he said.

  “Now? But we were just having fun,” said Uldane. Albanon could hear the attempt at levity in his voice, but there was something else under it: fear. He turned around to look at the halfling. While Uldane’s face was as bright and smiling as ever, his eyes were dark and haunted.

  “Now,” said the cleric. He stepped into the kitchen. “Here, if you want to. Eating, if you want to. I can’t wait any longer, though. I shouldn’t have let you lie ill as long as I did. I need to know what happened to you—and to Raid.” He glanced at Shara and Albanon. “Have you told him what we found in Andok Sur?”

  Shara scowled at him. Albanon answered for her. “Kri, he’s still recovering—”

  Kri ignored her and looked at Uldane. “We went back to the necropolis where you fought Vestapalk,” he said bluntly. “We didn’t find him, but we found a tribe of kobolds in the process of transforming into the same demons Raid had with him.” The cleric dragged out a chair and joined them around the table, not taking his gaze off the halfling. “Now what did you see? Where did Raid take you?”

  Uldane drew a slow breath. Shara put her hand over his. Uldane shook it off. His face had gone pale but his jaw was set and his eyes met Kri’s. “Raid told us,” he began, “that he wanted to look for the treasure of the Temple of Yellow Skulls.…”

  Albanon had never thought of Uldane as a storyteller before. Usually his tales ended up taller than an ogre and woollier than a dwarf’s chest, if his attention didn’t wander off entirely during the telling. This time, though, he stuck to his story. Even the most unlikely parts had the ring of truth. All of them listened as he described the descent into the tunnels below the ruined temple, Raid’s opening of the hidden inner temple, and their battle against the elementals there.

  When he described Raid’s treachery, Shara’s hands squeezed into fists. “Bastard!” she spat. Uldane barely blinked. His face like stone, he continued the story of his escape, of following Uldane back through the temple with every intention of putting a dagger into him only to discover Raid facing off against an eerily altered Vestapalk in the ruins.

  “It was strange,” he said. “Vestapalk looked like he was sick. He was bleeding around his scales and eyes and he had blisters on him. He still looked strong, though, and even bigger than he did when we fought him. Raid challenged him and I thought Vestapalk was going to take him out with one bite, but then they said something to each other and Vestapalk let Raid up. Raid got out one of the skulls and offered it to Vestapalk.” Uldane shivered. “And Vestapalk … inhaled it.”

  Albanon blinked. “He inhaled it?”

  “Like he was breathing it in. Something came off the skull and Vestapalk sucked it in like smoke from a pipe. But I think it was more than that.” He wrinkled his face. “The skulls made this kind of wailing, like they were frightened. The one that Vestapalk breathed from screamed, then all of the skulls went quiet.” He sat forward. “I think Vestapalk inhaled part of the demon that was imprisoned inside that skull.”

  Across the table, the color drained from Kri’s face.

  “Kri?” Albanon asked. “What is it?”

  The old man ignored him, all of his attention on Uldane. “What happened to Vestapalk?” he asked.

  “He roared and started thrashing around like he was in pain,” said the halfling. “I didn’t see much more than that. The kobold wyrmpriest that was with Vestapalk when we fought him before came out of nowhere and surprised me. He used some kind of poison magic on me—that’s when I ran.” Uldane slumped back in his chair. “The last I heard of Vestapalk, he was still roaring, but it sounded as if he’d just won a fight.”

  “And Raid?” asked Kri. “What happened to him?”

  Anger crossed Uldane’s face. “I didn’t stop to find out. The next time I saw him was when I was trying to hide from the lizardfolk and he was already … like you saw him. He attacked with those four-armed monsters—I never saw them before—and some feral dogs that seemed to be under his control. Raid sent them in first, then he followed. They tore through the lizardfolk like they were nothing.” He looked up Shara. “That’s when I saw you coming and tried to warn you.”

  “We could have handled them,” the warrior said confidently.

  “No, you couldn’t have. I may have been delirious, but I saw you try to fight Raid.” Uldane shivered again. “If Kri hadn’t been there or Raid’s monsters had been able to join in, you’d be as dead as the lizardfolk.”

  “He didn’t kill all of them,” Albanon said. An image of the three lizardfolk he’d seen writhing on the ground came back to him. “Some of them he wounded.”

  Kri’s gaze darted to him, sharp like daggers. “Tell me.”

  Albanon tried to hold his voice steady as he described the lizardfolk’s injuries, the glint of crystal against the raw skin. Uldane frowned at his words.

  “Raid’s monsters knocked some of the lizardfolk out,” he said. “That’s why Raid followed them into the fight: he stopped first and deliberately scratched them with his claws.”

  “Delibe
rately?”

  “He wasn’t tucking them into bed.” Uldane flexed his fingers and raked the air.

  The legs of Kri’s chair squealed on the floor as he stood abruptly and left the table. He didn’t look back, but Albanon caught a glimpse of his expression as he strode silently out of the kitchen. The old man’s face was as grim as if he’d just witnessed a death.

  Shara looked startled. Uldane’s eyes went wide. “What did I say?”

  “The lizardfolk … what Raid did.…” Albanon found his thoughts and his words stumbling over each other. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Uldane, was there anything else? Do you remember anything strange that Raid might have said to you? Anything about the Elemental Eye or something called the Voidharrow?”

  Uldane’s eyebrows went up. “He did say something to one of the lizardfolk. ‘The Voidharrow will take you. You will serve.’ “He looked from Albanon to Shara and back. Panic crept into his expression. “What is it?” he asked, his voice rising. “By the gods, what’s going on? What happened to Raid?”

  “Shara, tell him about the Voidharrow.” Albanon rose and went after Kri.

  He almost expected to find the cleric back in the library, but Kri had gone all the way to the top floor of the tower. With his hands clasped behind his back, Kri stood staring out of the tall windows at Fallcrest below and the sweep of the Nentir Vale beyond. He didn’t move as Albanon entered or acknowledge him as the wizard took a place beside him.

  Albanon let him remain silent for a time before he said, “Raid is the Gatherer that Vestapalk left Andok Sur to meet. Vestapalk infected him with the Voidharrow and now he’s deliberately infecting other beings with it.”

  Kri stood still for a moment longer, then his head dipped down. He let out his breath softly. “Yes.”

  A chill wrapped itself around Albanon. “What about the golden skulls from the temple? Do you think Vestapalk really drew the essence of a demon out of one?”