The Screaming Skull Read online

  “How did you get the skull?” Melinda growled. “When did you steal it? Tell me now, or I’ll show you how I earned my name!”

  “I—I don’t know about any skull!” I stammered. “I never saw it before until you bashed me in the head with it! I didn’t see it again until I found it in my room!”

  “You’re lying!” She took the knife from my throat and pressed the blade against my balls.

  “Do I look like I’m lying, lady?”

  That stopped her. For a lingering moment, she stared hard into my eyes. Then she removed her blade from my balls. I allowed myself a small swallow.

  “No,” she said. “You’re not lying.” She sheathed her knife, took the still-quiet skull from her pouch, and unwrapped it. Raising its leering countenance to her own face, she regarded it as the bard’s gravedigger might.

  “I don’t know what this thing is,” she said. “I only know that Saggon wants it. It’s the only leverage I have against him.”

  “How did you get it?” I asked. Relief finding me at last, my questions spilled out. “Why does it scream? What does it have to do with those fucking leaches? I mean, what the fuck?”

  “Later,” Melinda said. “We need a drink first.” She dropped the skull back into her purse and set it aside. Then a grin supplanted her scowl like the sun muscling its way through a fog bank. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a beautiful smile.

  When she dropped her cloak on a fall of pillows and disappeared into the kitchen, I took a moment to survey her apartment. Though the city above shivered in midwinter, Melinda had warmed her rooms with shallow brass bowls piled with dwarfen firestones—an expensive luxury. The sitting room lay redolent with color: tie-dyed tapestries dancing on the stone walls, couches bursting with pillows, bookshelves stuffed and groaning with tomes and scrolls. Tucked away on one shelf was a ceramic bust of Elvis Presley, looking for all the world like a Filipino waiter. A map of the city hung over the hearth. Off the main room lay the kitchen and a bedchamber. The décor stood in contrast to the woman herself, who favored grades of umbra and penumbra in her dress.

  A moment later, she emerged with two goblets of brandy. “Your name, swordsman? I’ll forgive you if you don’t give your real one.”

  “Elberon of the Isles,” I said. “And you’re Melinda the Blade, I gather?”

  “Not my real name, though I answer to no other,” she said. “To your health.” She clinked my glass. Her eyes were blazing emeralds.

  I eyed the glass. “I hope you aren’t being ironic.”

  “It was more like sarcasm.”

  We drank. It was good, expensive stuff, warm liquid gold.

  “I’m safe as long as I don’t become one of your henchmen,” I said. “In the three times we’ve met, I’ve seen a half-dozen of them die. You should dress them in red shirts.”

  “Make light of them at your peril, swordsman,” Melinda said. “They paid dearly for their loyalty.”

  “They must have loved you dearly to pay so dear a price.”

  “Perhaps they did,” she said, lowering her gaze. “Why were you in the bottom of that dray? Did Saggon set you to it?”

  “Now you have questions?” I asked. “I guarantee you that I have more. Shall we trade?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yes, he set me to it. He wanted to find out where you were holed up. He seems to think you’re a threat.”

  “I am a threat. Three months ago, I left him.” She raised her gaze to meet mine. “I was his Second.”

  “His Second?” I felt like a three-year-old attempting to master the obvious. Saggon’s Second—that meant she was in line to become the Over-Boss. It meant she had outfoxed every captain in the Guild, that she had amassed enough power to run the whole enterprise, that she had survived a dozen assassination attempts. It meant she was a badass.

  “I’ve worked for him since I was thirteen years old,” Melinda said. “He’s the closest thing to a father I have.”

  “You had a falling out?” I asked.

  “What did you think was in those barrels I hijacked?”

  “Pipeweed.”

  “Did you ever open one? Pick one up?”

  “Look, I’ve only been in town a few months. I don’t ask questions. If they didn’t hold pipeweed, then what did they hold?”

  “Drugged children,” Melinda said. “One child per barrel. The first night you saw me, there were twelve children in the cart. There were ten children in the cart on the Stonesong Bridge.”

  “Get the fuck out!” I said. “Children? Why?”

  She soon convinced me it was true. Saggon was importing child slaves into the city via the Chaos Dwarfs, then enslaving them to dig in the catacombs beneath the Blue Falcon. Melinda, meanwhile, had been hijacking shipments to smuggle the children to safe houses hidden in the hinterlands. Saggon had set the dwarfs on her trail—and the night I rode out with her, they ambushed her. Only her threat to the skull had kept the dwarfs at bay.

  “Why is Saggon digging beneath the Falcon?” I asked. “Why kids?”

  “I asked those questions myself,” Melinda said. “He was digging for that thing, of course,” she said, pointing to her purse.

  “The skull? Why? How did you get it?”

  Melinda refilled our glasses and told her tale. The excavation had been going on for a year, she said, although she only learned about it six months ago. At first, Saggon had set adult slaves to digging in the catacombs—only an idiot would rely on children to perform hard labor—but the slaves dug too deep. They broke into the prison of something ancient and abominable entombed beneath the Blue Falcon, and the sight of the gibbering fiend drove the slaves mad. Whatever it was, no slave could get near it and live. All work stopped.

  “And then Saggon sent me down there to find out what it was, and treat with it,” Melinda said.

  “Jesus,” I said. “What was it?”

  “Do you recall the legend of the first Quest of the Dread Plain?” she asked.

  Who didn’t? The tales were told to every schoolkid from Hydra Bay to the Northern Wastes: tales of that first generation of heroes, the Heroes of Old, as essential to any epic tale as dark lords or relics of great power. Woerth’s particular Heroes of Old had each become legendary: Arturus, the warlord who would later found Redhauke; Koschei’s apprentices, the arch-mages Gygax and Rigsby; the dwarf prince Storm Stonegorm, who designed the Blue Falcon for Arturus; Eckberd the Bold, later turned to the dark side; the elven warrior-priestess Gemalatel; and the Cloud Rider Wanbli, slain horribly by Eckberd. It was this group who retrieved the Black Mirror from Hell, closed the Hellmouth, and threw down Koschei. Arturus himself cut off the asshole’s head. For five hundred years, the Free Kingdoms had been at peace, secure in the knowledge that the threat from the Deathless One had been banished forever from Woerth.

  Fat chance. Of course, the first Quest was a mere prelude. In what part of the Multiverse isn’t that true?

  At my nod, Melinda continued. “The legend tells of a portal to Hell itself, buried deep beneath Redhauke—and that the Blue Falcon itself was designed to seal the breach between Hell and Woerth.”

  “You’re not saying—”

  “I am saying. I’ve seen it. And I’ve seen the creature that dwells there to guard the Hellmouth. It’s one of the Fallen—a devil straight from the pits of Malebolge. It eats children, Elberon of the Isles. It feeds on their souls.”

  I let this bit of news sink in. If she was playing me somehow, she belonged on the stage; the haunted look in her eyes was utterly convincing.

  “You say Saggon sent you to treat with it,” I offered.

  “The slaves uncovered the Hellmouth,” Melinda said. “The original portal from which Beelzebub attacked Woerth. I’m convinced of it. Whether the devil down there is set to guard Woerth from Hell, or Hell from Woerth, I can’t say. Fortunately, it’s bound by chains of brimstone—by whom or by what, I still don’t know—or it would have already destroyed the city. The devil is a liar, an
d it offers no sure answers.”

  “So, you did talk to it?” I asked. “Why aren’t you a dribbling idiot?”

  “Malacoda is a very particular devil. He says that no man can see his face and remain sane—and he means it literally. Women aren’t worth his time.”

  Continuing her tale, Melinda told of Saggon ordering her into the catacombs, his eyes strangely blank as she pleaded against it. Left with no choice, she descended to confront whatever evil lurked there. I’ve battled both demons and devils, and I can assure you that shitting your pants is the least of your worries. Nevertheless, Melinda crept into the hot, stinking tunnel glowing with lurid Hellfire, its walls writhing from the tortured souls entrapped within, with as much intestinal fortitude as any Fifteenth-Level adventurer. She crept close enough to speak to the creature while avoiding its gaze.

  “WHO GOES THERE?” the creature asked, its voice laden with bass and heavy-metal distortion.

  “Melinda the Blade, of the Thieves Guild,” Melinda called to it. “My master, Saggon the Large, sent me to parlay with you.”

  “PARLAY WITH THEE,” the creature corrected her. “IF YOU’RE GOING TO BLATHER ON, AT LEAST EXTEND THE PROPER COURTESY. THE NAME’S MALACODA. DIRE MALEBRANCHE OF THE EIGHTH CIRCLE, AT YOUR SERVICE. IF YOU MUST ADDRESS ME AT ALL, TINY MORTAL, YOU CAN ADDRESS ME AS ‘YOUR SATANIC HIGHNESS.’ IT’S BEEN MILLENNIA SINCE I’VE HEARD PROPER TALK.”

  “I come to parlay, your Satanic Highness,” Melinda tried again. “My master desires to treat with thee.”

  “GET ME OUT OF THESE CHAINS, AND WE’LL PARLAY,” the devil said.

  “Such is beyond my power, my lord,” Melinda said. “But if thou desirest anything within my meager grasp, thou hast only to ask.”

  “I NEED TO EAT,” the devil said. “I HAVEN’T HAD A BITE IN FIVE THOUSAND YEARS.”

  “Of course, my lord. What is thy desire?”

  “THAT FAT COCKSUCKER BOSS OF YOURS KNOWS. TELL HIM NOT TO INSULT ME WITH HIS PATHETIC SLAVES. I CRAVE FRESHER MEAT.”

  “Very well, my lord. Saggon desires only that he be allowed to continue his work in these tunnels.”

  “QUENCH MY HUNGER, AND HE CAN DIG AWAY.”

  “Thou art high amongst the Fallen, my lord. It shall be as you command.” With that, Melinda backed away, bowing low as she retreated down the obscene, fleshy tunnel. But the devil stopped her with a command.

  “HOLD ON A MINUTE,” the devil said. “SAGGON’S LOOKING FOR THIS, I THINK. IF I WERE YOU, I WOULDN’T GIVE IT TO HIM.”

  Malacoda tossed something down the tunnel. It bounced toward Melinda until it came to rest at her feet: a head-sized, copper-banded chest with a ruby-encrusted rune fixed to the curved lid. Without another word, she picked it up and ran like hell.

  She reported back to Saggon, who merely nodded and dismissed her. Of the skull, she said nothing. The next day, the Over-Boss sent forth emissaries to establish trade in child slaves with the Chaos Dwarfs from the Brimstone Hills west of Redhauke. A fortnight later, the first children were suffering under the lash far beneath the Blue Falcon. Saggon made them dig, their small hands clutching hand-shovels, their thin backs breaking under the hard labor of moving piles of rock until they collapsed—and then he gave them to the devil.

  “They die in terror, Elberon,” Melinda said. Her eyes shone with tears. “The moment I learned what Saggon was doing, I vowed to kill him. I’ll end this evil or die trying.”

  I took her hand. You might think it a calculated gesture, but I didn’t realize I had done it until she squeezed my hand with hers. “But why the trade?” I asked, after a moment. “Why not just snatch kids from the streets?”

  “It would draw too much attention,” Melinda said. “At least, once the well of street urchins ran dry. Children from the villages are missed by none but those who love them.”

  Suddenly it came to me—a bolt from the blue, as two frazzled synapses in my brain connected at last. “Holy shit! So that’s what the ghost was trying to tell Lithaine! That’s why we had to get those kids into the city!”

  “Excuse me?”

  Now it was my turn to spin a tale to beggar belief. I told her everything—my arrival in Doomtown, my introduction to my friends, our realization that children were in danger, the appearance of Lithaine’s ghost, and the cattle stampede into the city. She listened without interruption.

  “Now we know why the kids were disappearing,” I said. “A devil’s gotta eat.”

  “I believe you,” she said, regarding me with naked appraisal. “So, it was you who nearly leveled the city with a stampede. You’d best not mention it to Saggon—that event cost the Guild a lot of money.”

  “If Saggon wants that skull,” I said, “why not just give it to him? He’ll stop digging, and he won’t need to keep replacing his slaves.”

  “I thought of that, of course,” Melinda said. “Now that the devil’s awake, I reckon he’ll want to keep feeding, regardless of whether Saggon keeps digging. Besides, whatever that skull is, I don’t think it’s Saggon who wants it. He wants only to eat and fuck and count his money. Someone else is paying him to find it—and that means it’s dangerous. I need to find out what it is.”

  “And the leaches, back on Lamplight street? What the hell was all that about? How did you find me in the first place? You didn’t know me from a peasant.”

  “The skull’s case. It’s drawn to the skull like a magnet. Since I’ve had the thing, it’s screamed like that twice. Both times, it summoned creatures of Chaos to attack me. So far, it’s stayed quiet down here.”

  For a long moment, we sat in silence, lost in the burnt-umber iridescence of the brandy in our goblets, absorbing the news we had just shared. I stole a look at Melinda the Blade, studied the swell of her breasts, the languid curve of her hips, the fiery copper sheen of her hair. The rubescent glow from the firestones revealed that my initial reaction was wrong: She was beautiful, after all. Her achievements marked her as cunning and ruthless. Behind her wide, apple-cheeked face and emerald eyes, there flowed more than cunning; there flowed honesty, determination, and no small measure of hope.

  “I want to kiss you,” I said. “But first, I want you to know that I’m with you. I’ll help you take down Saggon. Fuck that fat fucking fuck.”

  “I accept your offer because I need a friend,” Melinda said. Her green eyes found mine. “I’m fresh out.”

  23

  Saggon had been looking for the Skull all along, of course, and only much later would we learn which piece-of-shit retired illusionist put him up to it. With a little digging, Melinda learned that the Over-Boss had promised the Chaos Dwarfs ten barges full of gold if they found it for him. The dwarfs asked around, and a few months later they told him that the Skull was buried right beneath his feet.

  Why was he looking for it, Melinda wondered? What power did it hold? And why did the devil throw it away so casually? To question a devil’s motives is to invite madness. Most likely, he did it to sow discord. On the other hand, some Fallen can divine the future, so maybe Malacoda foresaw that giving it to her would get it into my hands, offering the best chance to resurrect Koschei. Fallen angels are the worst fucking pain in the ass.

  You might also be wondering if I got laid, that first night in Melinda’s apartment. Let’s just say we had a meeting of the minds. So desperate was she to end Saggon’s abominable trade that she would have taken any chance—and I was the only tool at hand. No one had ever needed me before. I loved her a little, right away.

  That morning, I awoke with Melinda’s arm draped around my neck. I squeezed the sand out of my eyes and found myself staring at the Skull. Somehow, it had teleported out of its casket and now rested on her nightstand as if it had always been there. Before I could wake her, it started to scream.

  24

  “If this is what I think it is,” Jaspin said, ruminating over the skull with a scrying glass, “then you fellows are in for a spot of trouble.”

  Three weeks had passed since Melinda took f
rom me the one thing I longed to have stolen. When I slipped into her that first time, it took me a second to believe it was really happening. Then, instinct took over. Afterward, we lay entwined together, sticky in all the right places. I felt like the first man ever to walk the Woerth. My cock felt like it was carved from granite. That I should concern myself with Melinda’s reciprocal pleasure never occurred to me.

  After several more nights of that action, I was to Melinda as a fish is to the dappled sunlight gleaming through the water’s surface. As joined to her as I became, however, I became joined equally to the Skull. Wherever I went, the fucking thing showed up.

  To see it twice was ominous. To see it a third time made it my doom, and I bent every thought to ridding myself of it. I locked it in a closet; the next morning, I woke to find it resting on my nightstand. I threw it down a well; within an hour, I walked into Jaspin’s place to find it sitting on the bar. I rode back to the Stonesong Bridge and tossed it over the side; by the time I returned to Redhauke, it was resting comfortably in my saddlebag. Each time it appeared, I was attacked by an increasingly heinous array of monsters. Sometimes they were recognizable—say, a dozen cave trolls. And sometimes not—as in a homicidal Blood Cloud, a creature every bit as disturbing as you can imagine. Each time, I’d run screaming into an alley or an abandoned building lest the ornithopters find me again. After two weeks of this horror, my fate became clear. One night, Amabored took me out for a beer.

  “Look, dude,” Amabored said, “You’re a brother and all. But come on. Maybe you should, you know—”

  “Get lost?”

  “I knew you’d understand.”

  And so, I was sent once again into exile. Packing my few belongings, I slunk out of Lady Hagg’s, moved into Melinda’s subterranean apartments, and didn’t move out again until I was forced to flee the city. Two weeks of courtship, and Melinda and I became, essentially, man and wife.

  I was losing my mind, sure, but Melinda was happy to have me. We fucked like rabbits, which took my mind off my troubles. We found that if we kept the skull always where I could see it, tucked away safely in its case, then it didn’t scream—as much. I perceived in the thing a pulsing malevolence. Its black gaze sought me always. For long hours, I stared into the gaping hollows of its eye sockets, searching for some ember of life. I talked to it.