The Screaming Skull Read online

  When Jaspin and his apprentices finally emerged from the cellar with the flaming imp skulls in hand, the ten or so other patrons in the bar fell silent. All eyes were on us. My feet went ice-cold, and I found myself glancing sideways at Amabored. We had heard tales of Telepath drinkers who returned from their trips less than whole; some were now sprawled in the gutters of Redhauke screaming in terror from unseen horrors. Had either of my companions given me an out, I would have taken it.

  Then again, the money was spent. How could I expect to brave monster-filled dungeons if I couldn’t handle a stiff drink?

  “Bottoms up,” Amabored said to Lithaine and me.

  “Nice knowing you fellows,” said Redulfo. He moved farther away down the bar.

  9

  With a final prayer to my ancestors, I thrust my face into the flames and poured the hot liquid down my throat. Immediately, I perceived a fantastic ripping sound, as if a sheet of parchment as large as the Woerth was being torn asunder. The Suds ‘n Shade disappeared. I plunged headlong into a spiraling black tunnel filled with stars. My stomach rocketed into my throat; my balls felt as large as roc eggs. Filled with brain-exploding terror and elation, I fell through this cosmic wormhole for what seemed like hours as planets, stars, and galaxies swirled around me in a maelstrom of creation.

  In the vast interstellar distance, I perceived a pinprick of green light. As I rocketed forward, the pinprick grew larger, filled my frame of vision, and resolved itself into what appeared to be a green meadow. It was adorned with yellow and white wildflowers, carpeted with thick-trunked trees, and canopied by a vast clear dome from which emanated a brilliant spectrum of pastel light. On the green meadow, creatures danced together in an undulating circle to what sounded like an ethereal chorus of pan flutes but wasn’t.

  I landed gently in their midst. The grass felt aware. My presence seemed to delight the circle of dancers, who twirled closer to me and continued their revelry. They looked like leprechauns—about three feet tall, ruddy-faced, bearded and apple-cheeked—but they could, bizarrely, trade body parts with one another. As they danced, they popped off their heads and lobbed them to each other, broke off their arms and passed them around the circle, and tossed their legs into the air. It’s still some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen.

  All I could do was sit up on the grass and look around. The terror and elation were gone. The memory of the drink, the Suds ‘n Shade, and my friends receded into the past. Then one of the detachable faeries danced a jig over to me and thrust his bulbous little face close to mine.

  “Xdvlvpad flgasvvee vidkisfavdkn,” the creature said. It laughed. I laughed back.

  “Say what?” I asked.

  “Skfe, veredskszf, sd sdfdavnfaf,” it said.

  And then, from behind me: “He’s trying to teach you.”

  Twisting around, I beheld the most amazingly flamboyant creature I had ever seen. It was chimeran in nature, tall and powerful, with the head of a dragon, the antlers of a fourteen-point imperial buck, and the proud mane of a lion king. His thick, muscled hide was covered in iridescent fish scales, and he bore the tail of a lion to complement the mane. He sat before me sphinx-like, with forelegs outstretched. Even in that pose, he towered over me by a good eight feet.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “This is the First Universe. This is where it all begins. The dance of these creatures creates the Multiverse,” the creature said. “When someone like you shows up here, they tell you the secret of creation. The meaning of life. Why we’re here. The Big Answer to the Big Question.”

  “I see,” I said, not seeing at all. “But I can’t understand them.”

  “That’s the joke.” The creature sighed. He appeared weary of the whole business. He glanced around disdainfully at the dancing sprites as they continued to chatter and trade appendages. “They know you can’t understand them. No one else in the Multiverse can speak their language. It’s the only irony available to them, apparently, and they never tire of it.”

  “But I can understand you.”

  “So you can. Do you find that point interesting?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Ah. Names.” The creature rose on its hindquarters, and I noticed that it possessed an impressive pair of eagle’s wings. “You can call me Jo. I’m a Ki-Rin.”

  “A what?”

  “I’m a harbinger of good fortune,” Jo Ki-Rin said, “but I left Fortune’s employ aeons ago. Now I’m a free agent. I’ve been tasked with giving you a message. I knew you were coming here, so I arranged a meeting.”

  “A message? What message?”

  The creature seemed pained by the conversation. “You are about to embark on a quest,” Jo Ki-Rin said. “This quest will place your life in considerable and continual danger, as it will the lives of your friends. You will at first believe your quest is to save the Woerth. But you’ll learn that the fate of this place, the First Universe, is at stake as well. If you fail, then the Multiverse itself will end, blah blah blah. Do I really have to go through the whole speech?”

  “A quest? Fat chance.”

  Jo rolled his eyes. “Let me break it down for you. You’re a hero. Heroes go on quests. You’re part of the monomyth. You have to meet a wizened mentor—that’s me—descend into the underworld, confront your anima and reconcile with your feminine side—"

  “Seriously, what the fuck are you on about?”

  “A-hah! See?” The Ki-Rin pointed a hoof at me. “You’re refusing the call. Classic monomyth. Oh wait—maybe that makes me the Herald. I thought I was the Mentor.”

  “Say, wait a minute,” I said. “If these leprechauns speak a language that no one else in the Multiverse knows, then how do you know what they’re saying?”

  Before the Ki-Rin could answer, that jaw-rattling, tearing noise returned, and I found myself hurtling backward through space and time. The same ball-crunching fear returned, too. After what seemed like several eternities, I found myself collapsed on the floor back in the Suds ‘n Shade. The stench surrounding me came from the pool of my own vomit. Raising my dripping head, I saw the blurry figure of Redulfo hovering over me.

  “How long?” I croaked.

  “What do you mean, how long?” Redulfo asked. “You drank your drink, fell off your stool, and barfed up your lunch. You haven’t been out for more than a minute.”

  I sat up, a feat made more difficult by the cannonball weight of my head. Nearby, Lithaine and Amabored rose uncertainly from their own lakes of alcohol and stomach bile.

  “Now, that’s what I call a drink,” said Amabored.

  10

  That fucking Jo Ki-Rin. On the blessing-curse continuum, he ranked somewhere between a festering boil and a sucking chest wound. Had I really journeyed to the mystical First Universe and witnessed the Dance of Creation, or had I simply ingested too many drugs at once? Either way, I wasn’t about to undertake some stupid quest when I hadn’t even scoured my first dungeon. The Ki-Rin, I decided, must have been simply the manifestation of my unchecked Id.

  “The Ki-Rin was the manifestation of your unchecked Id,” said Jaspin Spellbinder, after each of us told the story of his Telepath experience. We had each experienced a vastly individual trip; Amabored had briefly found himself manifested in an alternate universe as an albino warrior-king wielding a demon-possessed black sword that drank souls, while Lithaine became, at some point in the future of a far-distant universe, a middle-aged human who smoked too much pipeweed and delivered pizzas for a living. Once you drank your first Flaming Telepath, why would you ever order another?

  “What’s an Id?” I asked.

  “He means you’re a raving egomaniac with delusions of grandeur,” Amabored said.

  “Or deeply insecure,” said Redulfo.

  “Or both,” Lithaine added.

  “How about taking the spotlight off me?” I asked. “Lithaine was a fucking pizza delivery guy. What does that say about his Id?”

  “Maybe he’s the pizza guy’s Id,” s
aid Jaspin. “Maybe all of you are merely avatars of pencil-necked geeks and dorkwad losers in some other universe.”

  “If I’m somebody’s idea of a fantasy, then I feel sorry for him,” said Redulfo.

  Amen to that. Not for a moment did I consider that the Ki-rin might be real—until I saw him again. About four months later, we had finally bribed enough bureaucrats to secure our Adventurers Guild membership cards and were now legally entitled to seek fortune and glory. My official stats were on file in the Guild office: 18 Strength, 12 Dexterity, 11 Intelligence, 15 Wisdom, 14 Constitution, and 12 Charisma—all above average numbers, they told me, although I never understood exactly what charisma was supposed to measure. Was it the ratio of the whiteness of my teeth to the depth of my dimples? Did it measure my ability to talk my way out of a jam? To score chicks? What if my charisma had been low? It can’t help your self-esteem to be told you have the same charisma score as a hill troll.

  Scouring the Guild bulletin board for jobs, we found in Hardcastle, a barony two days’ ride from Redhauke, a noble who needed some hard boys to clear the catacombs beneath the family estate. A long-departed wizard had laid a curse on the place and trapped all manner of creepy-crawlies inside to protect his treasure hoard. It was strictly standard-issue dungeon-crawling. The noble offered us a straight split on the booty, with the Guild cut coming out of our end. We were ready to take the bit in our teeth.

  The inaugural adventuring party consisted of Amabored, Lithaine, Redulfo, a Christian cleric we had hired named Father Kellogg of Battle Creek, and me. We lacked a rogue, but we had enough muscle to bash our way through most obstacles and a spellcaster to boot. Besides, the Guild had rated this dungeon suitable for adventurer levels One through Three. What could go wrong?

  We geared up with seven days of hard rations each, parchment and ink to map out the dungeon, torches, tinder and flint, coiled rope, several quivers of arrows, oiled and honed swords, quilted armor, bucklers, and shields. We had even pooled enough money to buy a true extravagance: a Health potion, sealed in a clay flask and ready for the quaffing whenever the padre ran out of blessings. Having gained admittance to the Wizards College, Redulfo had his First-Level spell Mystical Missile locked and loaded. Our marching order was likewise set: Amabored and I in front as the offensive line; Lithaine behind us, ready to run routes as the wideout; Redulfo beside him as the quarterback; and Father Kellogg in the back as the halftime trainer ready to inject us with cortisone and dole out amphetamines like candy. The end zone was our destiny.

  So it was with the utmost confidence that we entered the noble’s manor house, found the secret wizard’s chamber accessible only through the trapdoor hidden behind the ballroom fireplace, and confronted the ten-foot-high brimstone gargoyle that barred entrance to the dungeon proper. We had only to solve the hieroglyphic puzzle carved into the gargoyle’s protruding stone tongue to learn the password, and we’d be shitting out gold auratae back at the pub.

  An hour later, we still couldn’t figure it out. As much I had hoped to keep my super-strength a secret, I figured a little demonstration would impress the boys. Move that big stone fucker five feet to the left, and we were in business.

  “Step aside,” I said to Redulfo, who had been studying the puzzle in detail over the bridge of his spectacles. “Let’s do this the old-fashioned way.”

  “Maybe we ought to think about this for a minute—” said Redulfo.

  “Thinking’s for pussies.” I searched the gargoyle for the right angle of attack. The rest of the party took a few steps back. As I rammed my shoulder into the statue’s side and heaved, the familiar electric surge flowed from the girdle, through my limbs, and into my extremities. Brimming with giant-juice, I felt the statue give.

  Then a savage, white-hot jet of flame roared from the gargoyle’s lurid mouth and incinerated Father Kellogg where he stood. He went up like a scarecrow soaked in lamp oil. There was nothing left of him but a pile of ashes.

  “That’s just fucking swell!” Amabored roared. “What do you do for an encore?”

  “Look, I was only trying to help!” I said.

  “Next time you want to help, do us all a favor and stab yourself in the fucking heart!”

  “Wait a minute—I got it,” Lithaine said, sidestepping the departed Father Kellogg’s ashes to gaze closely at the gargoyle’s tongue. “It says, What’s brown and sounds like a bell?”

  “Dung?” Redulfo asked.

  With the loud grumble of stone on stone, the gargoyle slid ten feet to the left. The movement revealed an open trap door and a set of rough-hewn steps that descended into darkness.

  “What a lame riddle,” said Redulfo.

  “Let’s go kill some monsters,” Lithaine said, bounding to the steps with torch in hand. With a final wistful gaze at Father Kellogg’s remains, the party headed for the steps—everyone except me. Lithaine turned to give me a questioning look.

  “Fuck you, assholes,” I said. “Go scour the dungeon without me.”

  Lithaine and Redulfo looked to Amabored, who only shrugged, hurled a wry grin back at me, and then leaped down the steps. The other two followed. Fucking assholes, I thought—but I followed them anyway.

  Still pissed off at Amabored, I lagged behind. The steps dropped us into a small antechamber with an open steel-shod door at the opposite end. We crept through the door into what looked like a guardroom, through which we passed to enter a long corridor that hooked to the right. As soon as Amabored rounded the corner, the skeletons struck.

  Racing to catch up, I found the others locked in battle with a dozen skeleton warriors. Animated skeletons are the pigeons of the dungeon world. They’re easy to animate; all you need is a human heart, which you can find for sale in nearly every magic shop, and which you must eat. A necromancer with a treasure stash to guard need only hang a low-level Animate Dead spell on a pile of bones and be on his way. As we gained experience, we could eventually sweep away a skeleton horde like so many dust bunnies. To lowly First-Level warriors, they’re nasty buggers: leering skulls, gaping eye sockets, clattering bones, and the choking stench of arrested decay. You can’t slide a sword into a skeleton’s belly because he doesn’t have one. A mace or morning star will stave in the skull, but absent such weaponry you’re forced to swat them with the flat of your sword or bash them with your shield. Bows are useless.

  A skeleton scimitar bit into Lithaine’s shoulder. The elf fell back, blood streaming, and dropped in front of me. That left Amabored to take on four bone boys himself. Having dispatched three skeletons with his only spell, Redulfo now cowered behind a barrel.

  “Potion!” I shouted to Redulfo.

  The magician produced the Health potion from his pouch and flung it my way. I uncorked it and poured the precious elixir past the blood bubbles forming on Lithaine’s lips. We could only hope that the apothecary hadn’t ripped us off.

  Good news: Lithaine’s mortal wound filled with a warm golden glow as the power of logos began to knit his savaged flesh together. Within two minutes, he was shaken but whole. Neat stuff, that. In my universe, we can’t build an internal combustion engine, but we can heal mortal wounds in a snap.

  I ran to Amabored’s side, and the two of us made short work of the remaining bone boys by jamming our swords into their gaping jaws and twisting the blades. Amabored was nicked up, and I took a shallow wound in my shield arm—but everyone was alive.

  “The padre could have turned those fucking things,” Amabored said as he sheathed his sword.

  “Look, what do you want me to do about it?” I asked. “I’m sorry I fried our cleric, and that’s that.”

  “At least you made up for it,” said Amabored. “Let’s move on.”

  Proceeding on our dungeon sweep, we found what we’d come to know as the usual assortment of monsters and traps: were-rats, a nasty pack of kobolds, a cave spider, a couple of zombies, concealed blowguns, hidden spike-filled pits and the like. When you scour enough dungeons, you come to realize how little tho
ught goes into most of them; it’s as if some pimply teenaged loser sits in his parents’ basement drawing them on graph paper and randomly inserting monsters, traps, and treasure. The booty included a random collection of precious gems, about a hundred gold pieces, a glowing +1 dagger, another Health potion, and a +2 battle-helm that Amabored won after we diced over it. We were stoked—until we stumbled onto the hydra.

  11

  That the hydra’s presence was a clear message from my father occurred to me only after I learned that he was behind the whole fucking Quest. Hydra Bay, Hydra Rock; the Lordship was replete with geographic features named after the multi-headed beast. My father could be clever when he wanted, but he was seldom subtle.

  We had found our first secret door in the dungeons beneath the manor house. Our “Intro to Dungeon Sweeps” class at the Adventurers Academy advised us that secret doors were often portals to untold riches that most adventurers passed blithely by. False bookcases, faux candlesticks, busts of Plato hiding buttons, sliding panels—we saw all of them. Why dungeon designers constructed so many hidden doors, when reinforced oak and a strong lock would serve just as well, was anybody’s guess. They were so ubiquitous, however, that we spent twenty minutes looking for them in every room we entered.

  We searched every square inch of this place with no luck until Lithaine spotted a mirror in the wizard’s bedroom and stopped to shift it so he could see his own mug. From a small skylight leading to the surface 200 feet above our heads, a faint shaft of sunlight lanced down, refracted off the mirror, and struck the wall near Redulfo’s head to reveal a hidden keyhole.