The Screaming Skull Read online

  “Don’t move that mirror!” I called to Lithaine.

  “Thus, the key,” said Redulfo, pointing to a key hung around his chest. We had swiped it from a hacked-up zombie right before setting a torch to it.

  “Give it a try,” Amabored said. “Everybody gear up. Kill anything that comes out.”

  We brandished our weapons as Redulfo inserted key into lock. With a low rumble and a shower of dust, a section of the stone wall shifted back and to the side, revealing a black maw of darkness that led—where?

  “Fuckin’ A!” Lithaine drew his sword and leaped into the black breach. A light blazed through the doorway. Then: a womanly scream, followed by the most bone-freezing reptilian screech we had ever heard.

  Smarter men would have run like hell. We grabbed our ball-sacks and charged through the doorway.

  Slaying a heavy-hitter like a hydra, or some other beast from the pages of the Guild’s Monstrous Manual, was a goal of any adventuring team. Besides the bump in experience and treasure, you could count on a nice PR boost—a portrait in the Guild newsletter, sometimes an interview, toasts in your honor at the Suds ‘n Shade, and the kind attentions of fortune-seeking wenches. Sure, you risked the Big Sleep—if I had a nickel for every two-bit hero I’ve seen incinerated, dismembered, or eaten alive by a big fucking monster, I’d have about a dollar-twenty—but once you slayed something huge, you were on the way to owning a keep in some green and pleasant land with a buxom noblewoman to knock up and your own passel of downtrodden serfs to work the fields.

  There was only one problem: Most adventurers don’t face a mature hydra until Fifth or Sixth Level. The Guild’s dungeon ratings are strict; into each dungeon, the Guild sends a Sphere of Seeing to map the place and record the presence of all beasties within. The Leveling Committee then assigns it a rating designed to prevent high-level heroes from clearing out lightly-defended catacombs just for the fuck of it, and chumps like us from wandering into a mountain keep full of Twelfth-Level thunder giants. A hydra in this dungeon meant that either someone fucked up, or someone set us up. We were mosquitoes facing a bug-zapper.

  We followed Lithaine into a vast, columned gallery with a broad stone catwalk lining the perimeter about twenty feet up. The gallery might once have been a gladiator pit or a bear-baiting arena; at present, it was the lair of a forty-foot-long, twenty-foot-high, six-headed, venom-dripping, roaring reptilian spawn of Chaos that looked to smother our adventuring careers in the crib.

  The hydra had Lithaine cornered. Two of its heads worried the elf while the other four whipped around to spear us with eight rheumy yellow cat-eyes. Rearing back, the heads loosed a quartet of ball-shriveling screeches, then charged us with jaws snapping.

  One of the heads snapped close, its hellishly hot stink-breath washing over me. Staring down the black gullet, I saw my doom. Terror flooded me. I swung my sword in a wild arc at the beast’s neck—and the girdle helped me to hew through bone, sinew, and meat. Black blood geysered in a high loop as the severed head flopped at my feet.

  “Did you see that?” I cried with joy. Turning to look for congratulations, I saw Redulfo drawn and quartered by two of the hydra heads. His ravaged torso slid to a stop at my feet, spraying blood and entrails across the stone floor. His legs landed elsewhere.

  Across the gallery, Lithaine had spent his last arrow. The elf drew his sword and charged the beast—only to be engulfed by two heads that turned him into bloody hamburger meat from the shoulders up. His headless body tipped over the catwalk and plummeted to the gallery floor.

  “Run away!” Amabored cried, but the barbarian was already being dragged by the legs back into the pit. Three heads pureed him, sending tissue and bone exploding in a red cloud from his mangled corpse.

  Before I had even a second to ponder the bloody deaths of my friends, the neck I had decapitated whipped back around just as two new heads sprouted from the bloody horror of the stump. Dumbfounded, I stood watching until another head took me from behind.

  It’s a common misconception that beheading is a humane form of execution. In fact, decapitation is the worst way to die. Whether you lose your head to an executioner’s axe or a hydra’s maw, you have a good twenty seconds to stare at your own twitching headless corpse before the lights go out. It’s a fucking trip.

  12

  So, I was dead. Having not yet acquired the Norse faith, I harbored no dream of Valhalla, where a flagon of ale might await me in the All-Father’s hall. Religion never did anything for me—particularly monotheism, an impossible ask of any god. At least polytheists divvy up their celestial needs. Need a healthy crop, or true love, or to slay the infidels? There’s a god for each prayer standing by to take your order. There’s no sense in praying to the same god for everything; facing such a barrage of contradictory supplications, what god wouldn’t tell his creations to fuck off? Monotheism turns you into a tight-assed prick obsessed with admission to the Heavenly Kingdom, the most exclusive club in the Multiverse. Angels don’t have genitals, for Christ’s sake. What good is Heaven if you can’t get laid there?

  Too young and cynical to give thought to the life everlasting, I mostly expected the Big Nothing. Instead, I found myself naked in a small, bare, black room with doors facing each other on opposite walls. Ambient light bathed me. Before I could try one of the doors, I heard that familiar music: the reverb-laden chorus of instruments that sounded vaguely like pan flutes but weren’t. Brilliant colors exploded in a spectral orgasm, and then: Jo Ki-Rin, perched proudly behind some sort of astral window. He stood atop a windswept, grass-covered hill. Cherubic white clouds skidded behind him. His mane rippled magisterially.

  “You again?” I asked. “You’re simply the manifestation of my unchecked Id.”

  “If only that were true,” said the Ki-Rin.

  “So, where am I? I was just decapitated by a goddamned hydra. This is the afterlife?”

  “You’re exceptionally dense, even for a human.” Jo took a moment to regard one buffed and polished hoof. “You’re not supposed to be dead—not for quite some time, anyhow. Somebody rigged the game.”

  “No shit. Hydras don’t grow out of the dungeon moss,” I said. “Who did it?”

  “You’ll figure that out soon enough,” said Jo. “So, here’s the deal. I can’t force you back to the Material Plane; the choice is yours. The door before you leads to the afterlife; open it, and you’re toast. The door behind you leads back to Woerth. Open it, and you’ll live.”

  Here was a pickle. Standing in the small room, I attempted to think profound thoughts, but I mostly thought about dinner.

  “Can’t I, you know, peek at the afterlife first? Just crack open the door a little?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Well fuck. I guess it’s back to Woerth then. I’m pretty hungry.” Then the light bulb went off. “What about my friends? Do they come back too?”

  “Of course not,” the Ki-Rin said. “This is your story. They’re just supporting characters. You can get more.”

  Then I realized that I had leverage. The Ki-Rin wasn’t saying so, but he—or whoever he was working for—wanted me to live. The game was rigged indeed.

  “Nothing doing,” I said. “Those guys are my friends. They’re integral to my story. Hell, it’s our story. If they don’t live, then I don’t live.”

  The Ki-Rin glowered at me from beneath his fur-lined brows. Potent and deadly magic radiated from him; if I pissed him off, he could vaporize me. As old as the Multiverse itself, Ki-Rins are guardians of the Law with whom even the gods know better than to fuck. That parties unknown had enlisted this one to serve as my guardian would later strike me so profoundly that I would spend an hour vomiting into the privy. For now, I had the fucker over a barrel.

  “All right,” Jo said. “They live. But you are now sworn to them in bonds of fellowship, and they to you. Your Fate lines are one. The Doom of Koschei is now their doom as well.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “If you’re going to send me back,
do it soon.”

  With that, the door behind me swung open—and I found myself back in my own body, now standing on the gallery walkway. My head was back on my shoulders, which was nice, but I was cut, bruised, battered, and drenched in hydra blood. Sprawled across the gallery floor, the hydra’s body smoldered like a pile of burning tires. Its six necks were headless, the stumps themselves sealed with what looked like flaming pitch. The corpse was riddled with arrows. Bloody hydra heads lay here and there with tongues lolling, their yellow eyes staring at nothing.

  “Holy fucking Christ, how did we do that?” a blood-soaked Amabored called from across the chamber.

  “Looks like we made that thing our bitch,” said Lithaine, who stood nearby bearing a bloody gash on his shoulder. His quiver was empty. “Wish I could remember how we did it.”

  Redulfo stood near an open barrel of black pitch. In one hand he held the blackened remains of a torch; that arm was coated in pitch up to the elbow. “We should be dead,” the wizard said. “Especially me—I have four health points.”

  “What can we say?” I asked. At the sight of my three bosom companions alive and breathing, I couldn’t help but grin. “We’re damn good.”

  By way of celebration, we filled our rucksacks to bursting with the hydra’s horde of gemstones, gold and silver coins, candlesticks, all the usual swag. Amabored found a Raise Dead scroll, which he tossed to me.

  “Something to remember him by,” Amabored said. I stuffed the scroll in my backpack and forgot about it until years later, when it saved my life.

  Then we scurried out of the dungeon and back to Redhauke. Two days of riding and hard drinking later found me creeping into Melinda’s subterranean room, deep beneath the Golden Gryphon Inn on Foundry Street. I squirreled out of my blood-soaked togs and tossed them into the fireplace. Just past midnight, I slipped into bed, where Melinda lay curled up naked under the quilt hugging her goose-down pillow. I spooned her. She stirred like a snoozing housecat.

  “How’d it go?” Melinda purred.

  “It went great,” I whispered. “It was to die for.”

  13

  Yeah, that’s right—I was boning Melinda. The terminal virgin got laid at last. Would I lie to you? I have nothing to gain. In a few days, I’ll most likely be dead again, no matter what Wilberd’s Astral Telescope says. This time, there will be no competing offers, and that’s fine with me. If the Woerth is consumed by dragonfire, at least it beats dying on the toilet.

  One week after Saggon assigned us to spy on his mystery woman, and six months or so before I died, I was thinking quite a bit about death. We were back in the dank underbelly of Redhauke, waiting for a barge to dock at one of the Under-Canal piers so we could unload the pipeweed barrels onto the waiting dray. As the horses stamped and chewed their oats, I scoped out the wagon’s false bottom. While the barrels would prevent egress from the top, a spring-loaded trap door in the undercarriage would provide a quick escape, should I need one. Was sealing myself in a potential coffin a bad move, especially if the wagon plunged over an embankment or was struck by flaming arrows? Of course—but lust knows no fear.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Lithaine asked as he poked his own nose around the wagon. “She’s just a chick. Besides, she might cut off your balls.”

  “Good advice from someone who hasn’t seen a vagina since he squirted out of one,” said Amabored.

  “I heard your mother shit you out in a stream of bloody diarrhea.”

  “Right into your mom’s mouth.”

  “For fuck’s sake, give it a rest,” I said, as a bobbing bow light emerged from the darkness of the canal tunnel. “The barge is here. You know the plan?”

  “If the woman shows, put up a light show of force before we let her run,” said Amabored. “You know the meeting place?”

  “I do. See you on the other side.”

  I crawled into the dray’s false bottom and gave a thumbs-up to Amabored, who sealed me in. The crawlspace allowed me only to lay on my back with about four inches of air between nose and wood. Torchlight glowed from the air holes in the floorboards. Nothing for it now but to wait for my cue.

  Next: the slow lapping of waves against the pier and thumping of oars as the barge arrived; Amabored conversing with the barge master; the tattoo of boots on the dock; and then a terrifying series of bassoon crashes as the crewmen dumped barrels onto the dray. I prayed to no particular god that the false bottom would hold.

  And then, chaos: shouts of alarm and the clatter of arrows against the wagon. A cry of pain, and the singing of Lithaine’s bow. Barge crewmen running back up their gangway to draw anchor—they weren’t paid enough to fight. Then a rocking thump as someone landed on the headboard, grabbed the reigns, and gave the horses a taste of the whip. The wagon leaped away from the pier and up the stone ramp towards the city surface. I could only brace myself; what a bad idea this was.

  If temporary, blindness can be cool. Tracking the wagon’s route through the city worked for about four intersections before it became hopeless. Creaking to a halt, we idled for nearly a watch; The hubbub of voices and stamping hooves told me that we were stuck in the nightly traffic jam at one of the city gates—possibly the Dragon Gate, though I couldn’t be sure. That the hijacker had chosen a public checkpoint, rather than one of the scores of secret exits, told me that Saggon’s men were a bigger threat than the Guard.

  At last the wagon lurched forward. Echoing hoof-falls through a long stone tunnel, and then we were on the open road. Panic briefly seized me—what if I couldn’t get back in the city again? I had little—a few friends, a room, some coins in my pocket, and the chance to become a player if I lived long enough—but compared to starting over with nothing, I was a rich man.

  An hour passed. Then two. When we finally wheeled to a stop, I surmised that we were a good three leagues outside the city. So frozen from the midwinter cold was I that my fingers couldn’t feel my sword pommel.

  There came a sudden chorus of raucous shouts and oaths. A steel-tipped crossbow bolt, dripping with black goo, pierced the wagon an inch from my nose. The peal of clashing blades rent the air. That sealed it. I couldn’t let this woman die before I had a chance to see her again.

  14

  I opened the false bottom of the dray and thumped to the frozen ground. The sounds of battle echoed. Rolling out from beneath the wagon, I surveyed the terrain. The wagon sat on an immense stone bridge spanning a deep river valley. It was the Stonesong Bridge, another one of Storm Stonegorm’s famous constructions, unless I missed my guess. The pregnant moon revealed forested, snow-covered hills and the glint of a frozen river far below. On the ground before me lay a headless corpse.

  A short distance away, the woman and her remaining ally were locked in combat with a circle of freakish dwarfs garbed in metal-banded bugbear skulls, giant horned helms, spiked shoulder plates, shrunken heads dangling from belts, and bucklers emblazoned with leering demons and the eight-pointed sigil of Chaos. Their faces were pockmarked, their teeth filed to razors. In place of a left arm, one dwarf bore a scorpion’s stinger.

  As I leaped up, one of the dwarfs slid steel into the man’s belly. He dropped. That left the woman alone to face ten foes.

  “Half-pints!” I cried, brandishing my sword. “Supper’s ready!”

  I crashed into the fray. My compound attack sent one dwarf head flying. I parted two more arms from torsos before the first axe blade bit into my forearm.

  Ignoring me, the woman launched into her own furious assault with short sword and dagger. She took out two more dwarfs, slickening the narrow stone bridge with blood.

  We had the dwarfs beaten—until the odds changed. The semi-circle parted, and another dwarf stepped forward: blazing red mohawk, gold eye fixed with a gleaming ruby pupil, beard threaded with copper rings, and a double-bladed axe bolted to his right arm in lieu of a hand. In his left hand, he held a chain leading to the collar of what you might call a muscled black dog. Then again, you might not call it a dog
—for, in place of a dog’s head, the thing bore a ring of dripping gray tentacles around a snarling, fang-filled mouth. A green cloud of pestilential stink drifted from the beast’s open maw. The tip of each tentacle sported a single, red-limned eye.

  “What the fuck is that?” I whispered to the woman. She ignored me still. Our exhaled breath mingled together in a sinuous cloud—a strangely thrilling detail.

  “By Beelzebub’s cock, it’s Melinda the Blade!” the mohawked dwarf growled. “All those stolen shipments, that was you—Saggon’s bitch. He’ll pay us five barges for the news, I’ll wager.”

  “You won’t live to bring him the news, squat,” Melinda said.

  “I’ll bring your head to his table,” said the dwarf. Behind him, his men chortled.

  “Draw steel, and let’s dance.”

  I brandished my blade. “Mind if I cut in?”

  “So, you needed a man’s help after all, eh bitch?” the dwarf growled. His hellhound snarled and snapped. “It won’t make a soul’s difference. You’ll die tonight.”

  “Maybe,” said Melinda, “but not before I toss this bauble into the river.” Over the bridge wall, she held forth a jewel-encrusted skull depending from a silver chain. Two small horns protruded from its forehead. An implicit threat, it dangled over the river valley far below.

  “The Skull!” the dwarf snarled. “How came you by this treasure?”

  “I found it in an outhouse down at the Pit,” Melinda said, her voice calm. “Saggon will pay you ten barges of gold for it. You want it? Come and get it.”

  Laughing a demon’s laugh, the dwarf clasped an amulet at his breast. Dwarf and hellhound both vanished in a thunderclap, accompanied by blazing scarlet light and cheap special-effects fog. The bridge shook. The remaining dwarfs pulled hand-crossbows from their belts, fired grappling hooks into the stone, and then leaped from the bridge trailing rope behind them into the chasm.