The Screaming Skull Read online

  The Screaming Skull

  The Chronicles of Elberon, Vol. I

  Rick Ferguson

  Phabulousity Press

  Table of Contents

  Preview: The Adventurer’s Guild

  I. They Call Me a Hero

  II. Let Me Tell You About My Prostate

  III. Embrace the Suck

  IV. Showdown at the Blue Falcon

  A Helpful Timeline

  Join the Adventurer’s Guild

  About the Author

  Also by Rick Ferguson

  Acknowledgments

  Preview: The Adventurer’s Guild

  Join the Phabulousity Press Adventurer’s Guild by providing your email address, and you’ll receive a FREE sneak preview of Part I of The Mace of Malice, Vol. II in The Chronicles of Elberon trilogy!

  You’ll also be automatically entered into a drawing to have your favorite fantasy role-playing character written into The Mace of Malice! Adventurer’s Guild members will also receive lots of other groovy stuff. It’s free and relatively painless! For more information, just visit the link provided at the end of this book. We’ll see you there.

  “Though much is taken, much abides; and though

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

  —Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  For Andy, Chris, John, Wa, and Wam,

  who helped a young man dream.

  BOOK I

  They Call Me a Hero

  1

  They call me a hero. They call me a leader of men. They, in this case, are my loyal subjects, all 850,000 of them, spread across the grottos, harbors and sparkling blue shores of a chain of islands no bigger than Hawaii. Shipwrights, fishermen, blacksmiths, nobles, commoners, men-at-arms—all drink to my health at their local taverns and regale each other with tales of my exploits, when I was a young man wandering the Woerth in search of fame and fortune. They wonder at my strength and courage. They spend coins with my profile stamped on them. To their eyes, they live in the most enlightened monarchy this side of Kenwood. They go to sleep at night convinced that they rest under the watchful care of a courageous and noble king.

  Bloody fools.

  You want titles? I got ‘em. King Elberon, Lord of the Tradewind Isles, Defender of the Faith, President of the Southern Shield, High Admiral of the Seven Fleets, Protector of the Iron Coast, and Friend of the Dolphins. Likely I have other titles of which I am not aware, honorifics bestowed upon me by one High Council or another at elaborate ceremonies at which I may or may not have been present. Who knows? None of them mean shit to me. My Trophy Hall is filled with the dusty relics of my past triumphs. Tapestries recount great battles at which I led my armies and fleets to astounding victories. The hall holds rare and powerful magical items: glowing armor that can turn a frost giant spear, shields that can withstand white dragon breath, swords that burn lustily with arcane powers. My private reserve holds more powerful and dangerous items still. I hardly look at them anymore.

  My father, the illustrious and well-storied King Olderon, once told me I have more wisdom than intelligence. It was the closest he ever came to paying me a compliment. When I first received my adventurer’s license, a lifetime ago in Redhauke, the Guild measured both attributes, assigning each a number value: fifteen for my wisdom and eleven for my intelligence. I never quite understood what those numbers measured, or where upon what scale they lay. Wilberd told me to be thankful I hadn’t tried to be a wizard.

  “Wizards need at least a fifteen intelligence to stay alive,” he told me.

  I never wanted to be a wizard; I was always a fighter by trade. The Wizards’ Code forbids spellcasters to wear armor or wield any weapon but a standard-issue dagger, so they can only lurk in the back of a raiding party, hiding from whatever monster is trying to disembowel them, and then waiting for the right moment to launch a Mystical Missile or a Flamethrower spell and run like hell. It’s not my style. Nothing pleases me more than the trembling thunk of my blade as it bites into the skull of an imp warrior. Always first to wade into battle, I stood like an unfaltering sea-cliff as waves of enemies crashed and broke against the great rock of my strength. I cut a wide arc of death around me. Sometimes I’d roll a critical hit and send some fucker’s head spiraling from his shoulders. If I got into trouble, the great sword of Amabored or the singing bow of Lithaine would haul my ass out of danger. We were badass motherfuckers back then—and we knew it.

  So, now I’m the King—even though, as the younger of two sons, I had no chance of inheriting the throne. To end up regent of some little kingdom that needed a man of stature to represent them at elven councils, to preside over feasts and revelries, to knock up a princess and produce an heir—that wouldn’t have been so bad, would it? I never wanted the big chair. Who needs the aggravation? I renounced my father’s kingdom to prove my worth, but it never occurred to me that he really was the smarter man. Now he’s dead, and my ass is warming his seat. Irony is a butcher’s trade.

  Olderon never saw it coming. Both he and my brother Eldernon were slain by Garrin, the Grimmreaper, whom I personally beheaded atop the uppermost spire of the Dread Keep to end the Dread Wars and save the Woerth. Even as I await the effects of the Remembrance potion, I can see my father’s headless corpse, blood flowing from his severed neck to mingle with the rain puddling on the stone battlements. The barbed tongues of memory lash my soul like a scourge.

  Of our confrontation after he murdered my father, I recall every detail. Garrin and I stood facing each other across the flat roof of the South Tower of Castle Kraken, he wielding the black blade Soulreaver, and me gripping the haft of my notched battle-axe. Garrin wore the cursed colors of the Hand: black leather lined with tanned human flesh, died blood-red. Even unto that night, no one living had ever seen his face. His hooded cloak framed nothing but darkness, negative space where his features should be. In his left hand, he clutched by the crown of its hair my father’s severed head. Fresh blood, ruby-red, streamed from the neck to run with the rivulets of rain on the stones. Olderon’s wild eyes—the eyes that had long ago regarded me most often with cold disapproval or contempt—stared at nothing. They were the eyes of a fish dying in the bottom of a boat.

  Curtains of rain swept over Garrin and me. Jagged lightning scarred the black sky. Thunder roiled across Hydra Bay and the port city of Tradewind, huddling below the castle. Around us, the Multiverse came apart at the seams—the chrome mountains and ghastly violet skies of the Last Universe bleeding into our own Woerth, shimmering into being and then vanishing as fast. Moments later, the greensward and turquoise dome of the First Universe winked in and out of being. The pipes of the Machine Elves, blanketing the sky with the music of creation, dissembled into cacophony. Reality itself was worn as thin as parchment. Somewhere close, the Violet Queen was watching.

  The bitch had very nearly won, thanks to this worthless turdloaf standing before me. One of us would die that night, I vowed. But first, I needed the truth.

  “Who are you?” I snarled, my voice broken by the howling wind.

  Then came his laugh—a laugh so familiar that it shattered my mind.

  “Don’t you know?” asked Garrin, sounding the doom of my heart. “Haven’t you guessed? Are you so great a fool?”

  “All right. We’ll do this the hard way,” I said, and charged.

  Yet neither of us died that night. Another year would pass before Garrin got got, and I got my revenge. Somewhere in Valhalla, Dad is wondering why it took me so long.

 
2

  You must think I have it soft: sitting on the throne of one of the most progressive kingdoms on Woerth, secure in my glory, basking in the love of my subjects, enjoying the carnal delights of my luscious queen. My sixty-fifth birthday is just ten days away, the celebration of which is the most anticipated event in all the Lordship, and maybe in all the Free Kingdoms. Why aren’t I shitting gold bricks of delight?

  Well, here’s what I found out, only two days ago: how long I’m going to live. I even know the exact date of my death. How would you handle that knowledge? Exactly how I’m handling it, I’ll warrant.

  I swear to Odin that Wilberd secretly despises me. He’s some kind of Buddhist, I think, although if most monks are as useless as this one, then I weep for Buddha. When we first met, he browbeat me for days to get a religion of my own.

  “What in blazes for?” I asked him.

  “Who are you going to praise after battle?” he asked me. “To whom will you dedicate your conquests? To what afterlife will you commend your soul?”

  We spoke at a back table of the Suds ‘n Shade Tavern in Redhauke. It must have been forty years ago now. I had lived in Redhauke for six years by then, enjoying the fruits of a comfortable adventuring trade, and saw no need to rock the boat by involving the gods. Wilberd had saved my ass from the Hand a month earlier, however, so I owed it to him to listen. He was under a vow of silence, and so technically not permitted to speak. When we were alone, he never shut up.

  “Who says I have to dedicate anything to anybody?” I asked. “Why should I live by rules concocted thousands of years ago by some prophet on a mountaintop who doesn’t know dick? I’d have to go to temple, sacrifice the fattest rams in my flock, tithe ten percent of everything I bring in—it’s a giant pain in the ass. No thanks.”

  “What alignment are you practicing?” Wilberd asked.

  “Neutral Good,” I said. “God bless you, but don’t fuck with me.”

  “There are perfectly good religions that will let you be a practicing Neutral. Pick one that fits your image. Something with a good God of War. What about the Greek pantheon?”

  “Zeus and that lot? Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Well, you’d better think about it,” Wilberd said. “It could save your life. You can call on your deity once per battle, and he has a five percent chance of blessing your victory. That’s across the board, no matter who you worship. Your god is obligated to save your neck.”

  “No kidding?”

  “You’d have to go on a side-quest afterward, but that’s a small price to pay. Think it over.”

  And so, I did. Taking a stroll down the Godsway, I wandered with my nose in the air through the pressing throng of supplicants winding their way amongst the fluted marble columns, past the shrines, temples, mosques, and cathedrals representing a buyer’s market of faiths spanning thousands of years and dozens of universes. You couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a messiah. Feigning disinterest, I collected the pamphlets pressed into my palm by old men who rent their garments, bathed in ashes, and flagellated themselves with cats-o-nine-tails when they weren’t pooling their money to catch the Saturday night donkey show over at the gnome whorehouse. Piety has its rewards.

  The truth was that I didn’t really buy any of it. The bit about having a god around to pull your nuts out of the fire appealed to me, however, so I shopped around. The Melnibonean gods, Arioch and that crowd, interested me, but I couldn’t deal with the angst. The Romans were mythology-stealing pricks, and who wanted to speak bloody Latin, anyway? Finally, I settled on the Norse pantheon. Their gods had style: Odin with his two ravens and eight-legged steed, Thor with his mighty hammer. If I pretended to believe in the whole song-and-dance, perhaps valkyries would one day descend from Valhalla to lift my broken corpse from some blood-soaked battlefield.

  So, I received my blessing from a staff cleric, paid the membership fee, and received, along with my ID card and pamphlet, a nicely-carved hickory staff that I still have to this day. Aesir and Vanir alike have served me well, and it’s easy to show fealty to a god like Odin whose only commandment is Thou Shalt Kick Ass and Take Names, who expects you to take his name in vain, and who will fuck up your life big time if things are going too well. Is there a flagon of ale reserved for me in Valhalla? Thanks to Wilberd, I now know exactly when I’ll find out.

  3

  This was just two days ago. Minding my own business, I was pruning the azaleas in the main courtyard of the Kraken. A well-tended garden soothes my restless heart, and my dotage affords me the time to indulge myself. Planting, weeding, pruning, mowing—I do it all. Astrid has hired gardeners behind my back, but I always smoke them out and kick their asses into the moat. The odor of freshly shorn grass, the line of well-trimmed shrubbery, the come-hither chaos of a flowerbed: I crave it all. And don’t get me started on the vegetable garden.

  I was wrestling with the azaleas when Wilberd appeared from around a hedgerow. His expression foretold trouble.

  “Go away,” I said.

  “I have good news,” Wilberd said.

  “War has broken out?”

  Did I mention that Wilberd has a unicorn horn sticking out of his forehead? Not a fake one, either. It’s a standard-issue magical unicorn horn, fused irrevocably to his skull. He got it by opening the wrong magic egg in the Temple of Pain Eternal, lurking on an island in the middle of the Sunless Sea. Most of the eggs were blessings—extra health, invulnerability, doses of speed. When Wilberd cracked his egg open, damned if a spiral, pearl-hued unicorn horn didn’t sprout right out of his forehead. Looked like it hurt, too; the poor bastard bled like a woman. At first, he took it poorly: sleeping on his back, suffering neck strain, and running into doors. He raced from one priest and wizard to another seeking a cure. It was a tough curse, though, and no one could figure it out. So, he learned to live with it. He was especially pleased to learn that it could split open an armored breastplate. Whenever I rib him about it, he lowers the horn as if he’s going to ram me. If he ever tried that shit with me, I’d remove that fucking horn and shove it up his ass. End of curse.

  Sensing my thoughts, Wilberd raised his horn. “Remember the Astral Telescope, the one you found at the Workshop? The one we used to search for Lithaine?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Probably should have destroyed it.”

  “Did you know that you can divine the future with it? You only get about ten seconds out of it before the image dissolves into an unblinking vagina-shaped red eye. But it does span all space and time—at least in this universe.”

  “Impressive. What did you see?”

  “I saw the moment of your death.”

  For a moment, I felt as if I were on the deck of one of my quinqueremes. The ground lurched and swayed beneath me. Suddenly, the knowledge of my mortality, the inescapable conclusion that someday I would die, would no longer draw breath, eat, shit, piss or fuck came crashing down on me. Twenty seconds of silence passed before I spoke.

  “Why the fuck would you look at that?” I finally croaked.

  “Had to look at something.”

  “Why didn’t you look at the moment of your death?”

  “Are you kidding? The knowledge would drive me mad. I wouldn’t even tell you what I saw, except that it’s such good news.”

  “Good news?” Hot surging blood stung my face.

  “You’re going to live to be one hundred and thirty years old!” Wilberd said, his voice spiked with that bitter potion of wonder and condescension I had come to despise. “Your birthday is but the halfway point. You’ll have the lifespan of two men!”

  My legs felt like creamed spinach. Dropping my shears, I collapsed onto a nearby stone bench. Frightful thoughts caromed inside my skull. Another sixty-five years—that was good, right? Shit, the average human lifespan in our pre-industrial society was about forty-five years. By contrast, elves didn’t even reach puberty until they were seventy-five. Dwarfs sometimes lived to be 250, as if anybody could stand to be around a dwarf f
or that long. Your average monkey’s cousin, however, was fortunate to see his grandchildren born. If the Telescope was correct, then I’d likely outlive my own son. My wife would be forty years in the ground.

  Who wants to live that long?

  If I could be thirty-five for an extra sixty-five years, then sign me up. Instead, I face another sixty-five years of decrepitude, of gazing with tragic longing at my cobweb-draped battle-axe, as impotent in battle as I’ll no doubt be in the sack. Meanwhile, my hair will fall out, my teeth will rot, my skin will shrivel, hair will sprout out of my nose and ears, and my brain will slowly putrefy in my skull. I’ll end up right where I started when I first arrived on this godforsaken rock, requiring caregivers to feed me and wipe my ass. Who wants it? Who needs it? Why live at all, when the greatest tragedy of life is to be born? We’re forced into the world against our will, we spend our lives utterly clueless, and finally, just when we manage to accumulate a little wisdom, Death bends us over the table without the courtesy of a reach-around. It’s all a steaming bowl of shit soup.

  For some while, I sat on the bench gathering my wits. The thought of wrapping my hands around Wilberd’s throat gave me passing solace.

  “Did it show you how I’ll die?” I finally asked.

  “Yes,” Wilberd said, now looking away. “You might not want to hear that part.”

  “Look, you’ve gone this far. I may as well have the rest of it.”