The Temple of Yellow Skulls Read online

  “A demon prince,” Kri corrected him. He turned away and looked back out the window. “The Voidharrow carries the taint of the Abyss. Perhaps Vestapalk wishes to add the power of the skulls to that of the Voidharrow.”

  “Demon princes are powerful beings.”

  “Yes,” said Kri. “Very powerful.”

  Albanon swallowed. “What happens now? You said the small amount of Voidharrow accidentally released by the Order wiped out a village. If Raid is deliberately spreading the Voidharrow …”

  His words trailed off. Kri glanced at him, then out the window once more. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, yet harsh. “Look at Fallcrest, Albanon, and remember what you see. I fear that it’s all about to change.”

  The eladrin looked down on the town that had been his home for seven years. It was market day and Fallcrest’s green was bustling with people. If none of this had happened—if Nu Alin had not murdered his master, if the vial of the Voidharrow had not been stolen—he might be down there with them.

  “Why is Vestapalk doing this?” he asked quietly. “What does he want?” He glanced at the cleric. “How do we stop him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kri. “Not exactly.” His face tightened, deep wrinkles growing even deeper. “Raid is the key. He’s the danger now. He’s the one actually spreading the disease.”

  Albanon pressed his lips together. “We need to tell someone about this. If there’s a danger to Fallcrest, the guards need to be on alert. The Lord Warden needs to know.”

  “No,” Kri said sharply. “What do we tell them? That a dragon in possession of a source of tremendous power threatens their town?”

  Albanon raised his eyebrows. “That’s what I was thinking. Kri, we need help.”

  “Nobody can know about the Voidharrow. Not yet. Why do you think the Order of Vigilance kept it a secret? Imagine the panic. Imagine the greed—do you think the adventurers who sought the treasure of the Temple of Yellow Skulls for so many years did it just for the gold?” Kri shook his head. “We’re on our own for now.”

  “We have friends we trust,” said Albanon. “We can send word to Roghar and Tempest in Nera and Falon and Darrum in Nenlast.”

  “And how long will that take?”

  “We defeated Vestapalk before.”

  Kri gave him a long, hard glare. “When Vestapalk was just a dragon. He’s more than that now.” He shook his head again. “We need to know more. Forget Vestapalk for now. We need Raid and we need him quickly. He has the answers to our questions.” The cleric turned away from the window to one of the stone-topped tables in the study. His pack lay on it. Reaching deep inside, he produced a scroll case, then selected one parchment from the sheaf within. He laid it out flat on the table so that Albanon could see it. “Does this look familiar?”

  Albanon looked and nodded. The creature depicted on the parchment resembled Raid’s new form in almost every way. It had the same long limbs and gnarled joints, the same wide-stretched head and gaping mouth—save that its head didn’t carry the vestiges of humanity on one side that Raid’s did. The creature in the drawing carried no weapons and wore no clothing. It hunched over on all fours, supported by its long arms, though it looked like it would be able to stand on two legs if it desired. The artist had colored the drawing: yellow and orange for the hide, bright red for the multiple slit eyes clustered on its face and the fan of crystals that rose across its lower back.

  The picture was old. “Where did this come from?” Albanon asked.

  “The archives of my Order,” said Kri. “This drawing and others like it were made as a record of events in the village that Dravit Nance destroyed. We were surprised by Raid before. This time we can be prepared.”

  A spatter of red-brown marred the parchment. “There’s blood on the drawing.”

  “The Order of Vigilance does not have a peaceful history.”

  Inspiration struck Albanon. “Kri, what about the Order of Vigilance? They already know about the danger of the Voidharrow and if they have access to magic like you and Moorin, they can be here quickly.”

  Expression seemed to drain out of Kri’s face. “That … isn’t possible.”

  The old man sounded less certain of himself than he ever had before. Albanon glanced at him. “I know you said the Order was small but surely—”

  “The Order is very small,” said Kri harshly. “I am the last of it.”

  Albanon blinked and stepped back. Kri remained where he was, leaning on the table as if it was all that was keeping him upright. “The last … but you said the other members were responsible for recruiting people to follow them into the Order.”

  “I didn’t say they were successful.” Kri rubbed his forehead. “After the Voidharrow was released into the village, the Order underwent a crisis.”

  “Whether to destroy the Voidharrow or not?”

  Kri’s lips tightened. “Yes. And no. I didn’t tell you the whole truth about Dravit Nance, Albanon. He didn’t release the Voidharrow in an effort to destroy it. He released it in order to witness its effects.”

  Albanon stared at him. “He released it deliberately?”

  “When the other members of the Order discovered what he’d done, they tried to stop it, but there was little they could do except make a record and scour the village. Dravit had infected himself first—some among the Order speculated later that he had gone mad, perhaps under the influence of the Chained God. It took the strength and lives of several members to defeat him. The survivors were faced not just with the question of what to do with the Voidharrow but how to deal with Dravit’s treachery. In the end, they separated. A small order became even smaller.”

  He spread his hands. “That was another reason I was coming to visit Moorin—the Order was just the two of us. The third to last of us, Raven Shirai of Colmane, died half a year ago. I was with her at the end. Now I’m all that remains.”

  Frustration gnawed at Albanon’s guts. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth from the start?”

  “Because I was afraid of how you’d react. Because perhaps Moorin hadn’t told you about the Order because he knew how you would react.” The cleric took up the drawing of the demon and returned it to the scroll case. “It changes nothing now. The only help we get from the Order of Vigilance will come from its histories and research.”

  “But—” Albanon started again, Kri just gave him a scowl. The eladrin blew out his breath and stepped up to the table. “If that’s what you think and Moorin thought, then neither of you really know me. You said I would make a good member for the Order.”

  Kri paused and looked up at him. “A good member of a dead Order.”

  “I still want to be a part of it. What Dravit did is in the past. I can’t let what he did to that village happen to Fallcrest. I want to carry on Moorin’s work. I want to fight Vestapalk and help to contain the Voidharrow.”

  Kri laughed bitterly. “Albanon, it’s too late to volunteer for that. You’re already in the middle of it.” But then he gave a grim smile and nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Welcome to the Order of Vigilance.”

  Albanon felt a rush of pride amid the lingering fear of what they faced—then a sharp disappointment as Kri casually turned away to put the scroll case back in his pack. “That’s it?” said the wizard. “Shouldn’t there be an oath or something?” Kri snorted.

  “We’ll get to that later,” he said. “For now, try not to die.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Raid’s brief return to the Temple of Yellow Skulls left him feeling bolder. Maybe that boldness came in speaking with Vestapalk. Maybe it came in seeing how the brutes he had transformed for his master had taken dominance in the ruins. However it came, when Vestapalk talked of a new age coming, Raid felt as if he could see the future. After he left the temple ruins with his three personal minions, he turned north toward the village of Winterhaven.

  When he’d been planning his expedition to the Temple of Yellow Skulls, Raid had studied maps of the Nentir Val
e and dismissed using Winterhaven as his base of operations in favor of the larger center of Fallcrest. But with his new form came different goals. The hills and isolated dales around the village were a perfect hunting ground. Small farms were tucked down into the little valleys and also the lodges of hunters. Raid and the brutes descended on both, tearing through farmers and hunters—but leaving them alive where possible. Vestapalk wanted the Voidharrow to spread. As he crouched over bloody bodies, waiting for the disease to take hold, Raid dreamed of the day when he would be able to unleash his killing instincts.

  Farms and lodges weren’t the only opportunities to present themselves. A camp of orcs became Vestapalk’s minions, as did a den of kobolds. A war party of hobgoblins provided sport. Only a couple remained alive to infect, but Raid made certain that those who escaped the Voidharrow by dying did not slip comfortably into the Raven Queen’s realm. Farms, lodges, camps, caves—Raid left them all empty behind him. Some of the transformed brutes he sent back to Vestapalk. Some he kept with him.

  He found servants for himself as well. Hearing wolves howl one night, he left his four-armed followers behind and slipped out into the darkness. On his own, he could move silently. His new form could see perfectly by even the dim light of the moon. Once he found the pack, he waited and let the pack find him. When he felt them watching him, he unleashed his power against them. From then on, red-eyed wolves padded after him and obeyed his commands. In camps and on farms, there were often other beasts, all of them helpless before his power. Most he used as he required, then gave them to the wolves or the soldiers. As much as he relished spreading the Voidharrow on Vestapalk’s behalf, there was something far more satisfying in spreading his own taint to the beasts of the world.

  It was his part in the new age, he realized one night as the wolves snapped and snarled around him. The beasts were his domain. They were his to twist and bend against the order of the old age. Through their corruption, he would help bring in Vestapalk’s new age. And they would never, ever defy him. He started allowing a few of the animals he encountered to run free, the better to sow chaos.

  He tried infecting one of the wolves with a scratch from his claws, just to see what would happen. The abomination of fur and fangs that resulted had not lived long.

  Of course he didn’t neglect his task of singling out those exceptional individuals who might suit Vestapalk as exarchs. The dragon had taught him a lesson—he stopped looking just for those who were big or strong or fast and started watching for those who managed to fight back against his attacks. A dragonborn taken at one of the hunting lodges near Winterhaven. A farmwife who came at Raid armed only with a frying pan. There were others. He didn’t bother counting. Nor did he give up entirely on choosing big and strong. When his wolves located an ogre napping in the afternoon heat, he made certain to take the creature alive.

  He sent it back to Vestapalk with two newly transformed brutes and one of his own as guards. His three minions had changed after the visit to Vestapalk. They were more aggressive, more fractious. More free willed. Raid almost suspected they were developing their own characters and sense of will. He wasn’t sure he liked that, but at least he could trust them with jobs like taking his prisoners back to the Temple of Yellow Skulls. Especially since he couldn’t easily go back himself.

  Before he’d left, Vestapalk had given him new instructions. “Stay out. Don’t return to Vestapalk. Make signs of your presence known—the ones who know of your existence will understand. Haunt the roads. Don’t make it too difficult for them to find you.”

  “I know where they are,” Raid had growled. “I want to hunt them down. I want to hear their screams.”

  The dragon’s eyes had narrowed and his mouth had curled. “You’ll still hear their screams—and the sounds will be sweeter because they’ll know they’ve been outmatched.” And Vestapalk had laughed.

  Raid would be both trap and bait, and after a time, he realized that he liked that idea. When he was done hunting the hills around Winterhaven, he turned back to the southeast and followed the road to Fallcrest. He took travelers off the road—one or two, never enough to put an end to traffic altogether out of fear—and sometimes looped back on his own path to strike a second time in the same spot. He waited.

  Patience was rewarded. About two days outside of Fallcrest, he crouched in the trees alongside the road and watched a peddler and his woman—their faces conveniently hidden—fuss over the dead horse before their wagon.…

  The first rumors reached Fallcrest only a couple of days after Uldane’s recovery: Farms around Winterhaven had been left bloody and uninhabited. The town guard in Fallcrest wasn’t overly concerned. Winterhaven had its own small guard and a volunteer militia, enough to investigate and deal with bandits and raiders.

  Albanon knew in his guts that neither bandits nor raiders were behind the attacks. “It’s him,” he told Kri. “It’s Raid.”

  “Possibly,” the old cleric agreed. “But we need to be certain.”

  Shara provided certainty. She returned from a visit to the Blue Moon with information from scouts passing through town. “There are hunters missing in the Gardbury Downs south of Winterhaven. Other hunters have noticed strange things, too—unusual tracks, fewer goblins and kobolds around than usual. One reported seeing bulky figures from across a valley that looked like they were wearing red armor across their shoulders.”

  “Raid’s demons,” said Albanon, and Kri nodded—but slowly.

  “He’s moving around too much. We need to know where to find him.”

  A few days later, news came that travelers were disappearing along the King’s Road to Winterhaven. “Now we go,” said Kri.

  They slipped out of town and across the river while the Fallcrest Guard was still figuring out what to do. Gold from Kri’s pack had bought the peddler’s wagon, the horse to pull it, and a few other things besides. Their role would be stranded travelers, surely a tempting target for Raid. Shara and Uldane’s knowledge of the area made choosing the place where they would lay their trap easier: On the edge of the rugged Downs, the road passed between thick forest a dozen paces back on one side and a steep slope on the other. If Raid wanted to try and sneak up on them, he would only be able to approach from one direction. And the steep slope would serve its own purpose as well.

  Albanon had thought that the slow ride out to their chosen location—the old nag drawing the wagon at a leisurely amble, the possibility that Raid might come upon them before they were ready for him—was the most nerve-wracking part of their plan. He quickly discovered that he was wrong.

  Waiting for Raid once they were in position was far more nerve-wracking than traveling. If someone had told him just two weeks earlier that he’d be standing along the road hoping to draw the attention of a marauding demon, he would have laughed at them.

  And unfortunately, they’d had to kill the horse. As old and swaybacked as the beast was, they couldn’t risk that Raid might turn it against them as he had Shara and Albanon’s mounts at their first meeting. Kri did the deed, placing his hands on either side of the horse’s head and murmuring a prayer to Ioun. Light so intense it seemed to light up the horse’s eyes from the inside had flashed and the beast had gone down. The horse looked so peaceful it might have dropped dead of old age—if you could ignore the smell of cooked meat.

  Albanon pushed the oversized hat that hid his face and ears back just enough to wipe his forehead. “How long should we wait?” he asked to fill the silence.

  “As long as we need to,” said Kri. He bent over the dead horse, moving around it as if his attention could convince it to rise again. He’d taken to the role of old peddler with remarkable ease.

  Which left Albanon to play the role of wife, in spite of his suggestions that Shara was more naturally suited to the part. His objections had been ignored. He plucked at the shapeless dress that covered his robes as Kri’s smock and breeches covered his golden chainmail. “What if another traveler comes along before Raid does and offers
to help us?”

  “We tell them someone has already come by and taken our loyal son to fetch aid in Winterhaven.”

  “They’re not going to believe that if they get a close look at me.”

  “A man my age can’t be picky about his women,” said Kri. “I certainly wouldn’t chose a wife that talks us much as you. Be quiet and listen for the signal.”

  Albanon sighed, rubbed his forehead again, and glanced up at the carrion vulture that had been circling ominously over the horse’s carcass since early afternoon.

  It had departed. For a moment, Albanon was glad of it. Then he wondered what the bird’s absence might mean. “Kri, the vulture’s gone.”

  The cleric stiffened. His hand dipped inside his smock to touch his hidden holy symbol. Albanon heard breath hiss between his teeth. “Raid’s here!” he snapped at the same moment a harness bell jingled from inside the wagon. An instant later, the trees on the far side of the road erupted with roars and howls and thrashing bodies. Albanon whirled.

  Raid led the attack, racing in with axes held high, his too-wide mouth open to show too many teeth. Three fierce wolves ran at his side, foam flying from their jaws. Two of the four-armed demons thundered along behind, roaring with inhuman voices that left chills running up and down Albanon’s spine.

  In truth, it was a smaller force than they’d feared it might be. That didn’t make his bowels feel any less loose. Remember the plan, he told himself. Remember the plan!

  Right on cue, the arched canvas cover over the wagon flew back, flung away by Uldane. Shara stood, lifted a cask over her head, and threw it hard at the paving stones before the charging creatures. Even as it shattered, splashing lamp oil across the road, Uldane kicked at a latch inside the wagon box. The side of the wagon swung down and three more casks went rolling out.

  Then it was his turn. Albanon’s staff lay inconspicuous at his feet. He flicked it up with his toe, caught it in midair, and slammed the butt of it back into the ground as he screamed an arcane word.