The Screaming Skull Read online

  “Now put the girdle on and try it.”

  I donned the girdle. Gripping the bar with both hands, I brought it up to chest level. At that moment, the girdle moved—it tightened itself around me as if trying to get a better grip. A current of energy bolted up my body, surged through my shoulders, and raced down my arms to my fingertips. It was a more powerful high than any opium I would ever smoke. I felt good, and strong. Almost without trying, I bent the iron bar like a sapling in my hands.

  “Holy smoke,” I said.

  “It’s enchanted, all right,” said Ronald. “No curse on it, either, unless it afflicts you with leprosy or something that you won’t know about until it’s too late. You know who made that? Stone giants. Have you ever seen a stone giant? Spend some quality time with those fellows, and tell me you don’t discover your feminine side.”

  “So, what’s it worth?” I made no move to take off the girdle.

  “It’s worth twenty-five hundred auratae if it’s worth a pfennig. You’re lucky you’re the King’s son. Otherwise, you’d be dead before sunrise. Word gets around.”

  Though I was only a gangly sixteen, I was already tall enough to place my hand in a comradely way on Ronald’s shoulder. With minor effort, I squeezed his deltoid enough to make him squeal.

  “Christ, that hurts,” he said.

  “So, I can rely on your discretion.”

  “What am I going to do—rat out a prince?” He jerked his shoulder away from me and resumed an air of indifference. “Wear it in good health. That kind of strength will impress the chicks.”

  And so, it did. If I had known then who put the girdle there for me to find, and why, and down what hellish roads finding the thing would send me, I would have taken the 250 auratae and skipped off merrily down the lane.

  Still, the Girdle of Gargantua has always been my ace; it cemented my reputation as a modern-day Hercules. Invariably, I was the strongest sword in my adventuring party. I was the guy called upon to take out the door, to lift the sarcophagus lid, to square off against the biggest, baddest motherfucking imp chieftain blocking our road to one epic adventure or another. I enjoyed the notoriety. Let those pointy-headed magicians copy incantations until their hands cramped. Let the priests shake their beads, and the rogues climb walls or blend into shadows like the skulking rodents they were. Me? I was always in the middle of the fray, taking my medicine and then dealing it out. So what if I had a little help? We were all looking for an edge. Adventuring is a dirty, dangerous, cut-throat business, which is why most of the poor and downtrodden don’t attempt it. We used to dice over the enchanted items we recovered from our dungeon sweeps. They became so plentiful that we would turn up our noses at all but the most potent weapons of mass destruction. Rune-covered swords that burn with Hellfire? I have two dozen of them. I could step into my Trophy Hall right now and outfit myself with enough enchanted weapons and armor to stop Hitler at the Polish border. Of all the Phylaxes we collected and destroyed, none have saved my ass like the Girdle. The Horrible Heart, the Awful Orbs, the Mace of Malice, the Crown of Chaos—you can have them all with my compliments. I’ll take the Girdle every time.

  I was smart enough, too, to keep it a secret from the old man. Let Dad give me his best shot—I had something waiting for him. And I had no qualms about cheating, either. He would have done the same thing if he had found it. You think he got where he was by playing fair?

  7

  Indeed, playing fair was not my father’s strong suit. When the day of the grudge match dawned, I learned that he had stacked the field with twenty handpicked marines paid handsomely to see me carted unconscious from the field. The news left me holding the moral high ground as I strapped on my magic girdle in the Kraken’s gymnasium. As he tightened the straps around me, my steward eyed it with suspicion.

  “Never mind about that,” I said. “Just fetch my gauntlets.”

  In Tradewind City, a game of Crush the Kobold is cause for celebration. The nights before a match are filled with feasts and revelries. Across the city, tavern doors burst open, and throngs of hard-drinking citizens of the realm spill into the streets. Wags roar their allegiance to this or that player, while pouches bursting with coins change hands as often as the bookies changed the odds. That day, the odds against me closed at eight to one. I sent my man into the street to wager coin on my victory—if this thing went down the way I hoped, then I’d need some spending money.

  Instead of the stadium, Olderon had chosen the Kraken itself as the field of battle. As the appointed hour drew near, a parade wound its way from the harbor, into the city, along Pelican Way, and up the hill to the castle. The players rode on horseback—all except my father, who waited on his throne in full regalia for his guests to arrive. I rode at the head of the column on a steed borrowed from my brother, who savored the irony of loaning me the beast that would carry me to a beating from our father.

  The castle grounds were thrown open to a random lottery of citizens who got to watch the match up close. No one could say that the old man didn’t provide entertainment. “All they want are bread and circuses,” my father used to say, though he cribbed the line from the Romans. The battlements, courtyards, and grand halls of the Kraken were thus lined with 5,000 screaming hooligans who had been swilling beer for three straight days. Players made a point to avoid the crowd, as any of this lot with money on someone else might shank you in the ribs. From the lowliest deck-swabber to the King himself, we were a nation of hard-ass survivors—and we were, every last one of us, always looking for a score.

  Rocking my leather battle armor and ready to do business, I strode into the Coral Hall. As big as three soccer fields, with scarlet and pearl columns of real coral mined from the Drakespine Reef, the hall is supported by a massive vaulted ceiling that is itself the inverted hull of one of our prized quinqueremes. That day, the ravenous horde lined the balcony thirty feet over our heads and screamed for blood. The other players ranged far around me in every direction, three yards’ space around each man. Big, burly bastards they were, with noses broken in foredeck boxing bouts and hands that looked like bundles of link sausages.

  At the far end of the hall stood the Coral Throne, which is every bit as ostentatious as its name implies. Before the throne stood King Olderon, Conqueror of the Isles: scepter in one hand, the other hand gripping his small oaken shield, iron helm on his head, beard bristling with regal authority. He raised his scepter. The mob went wild.

  I couldn’t help but smile. The old man knew how to work a crowd.

  “Let it be known,” Olderon began, his baritone booming through the cavernous interior, “that this royally sanctioned game of Crush the Kobold will hereby begin upon the crowing of the cock. Let it also be known that the rules agreed upon by these just men and true are set down henceforth: leather accouterments, no metal bands or studs; small hand-shields or bucklers, no spikes; leather gauntlets, studs of which must be rounded and no more than one-eighth finger in height. No hand weapons, blades, staves, or chains permitted. Match is to the last man upright. Release the Kobold!”

  And here was a surprise—a live kobold. He came scurrying out of a side door at the end of a poleax to take his position at center court. Kobolds are a lot like imps, only smaller, fouler-smelling, and easier to slay in vast quantities. They also have a grasping love of money, which they spend like sailors in the taverns because no one will let them in unless they buy. This unfortunate bastard had no doubt been promised a chest of gold coins for this morning’s command performance. Had he any idea how bad it would go for him, he would gladly have stayed a pauper.

  The Chief Steward, stationed at a safe distance behind the throne, pulled the hood from the head of the cock he had been carrying under one arm. It stretched out its neck, shook itself awake, and let loose a defiant cockcrow. The match had begun.

  Technically, the only man open for punishment was the one who grabbed the kobold first. It was customary, however, to get in a little action at the starting crow. Lunging for
my nearest opponent, I got him in a headlock and drove my fist into his eye. From the girdle, I felt a small charge—it seemed to sense how much strength I required. The marine crumpled. Sure, it was dirty, but there were no penalties in Crush the Kobold. Even if there were, who would be foolish enough to referee? Howling like a werebeast, I dove after the sorry bugger now leaping away with the kobold tucked in his arms like a football.

  The day grew long, and still the match dragged on. You might wonder how it could, with twenty-odd players doing their best to beat each other to a bloody pulp. The trick was that any man who made it to a goal with the kobold still alive could take a fifteen-minute break. These breathers gave us time to stitch up our cuts, bandage our wounds, guzzle a few flagons of ale, or make time with the maidens in the gallery. At noon, the castle bells signaled the lunch break. The survivors gathered around long tables in the adjoining hall and tore into haunches of meat and loaves of bread like ravenous weasels. Sneaking a drink from the Health potion tucked in my boot, I dug in.

  The bells rang again. Bloody and bruised but still standing, the kobold ran for cover. From one end of the Kraken to the other, the battle raged on. We shattered pottery, destroyed furniture, trampled the carpets, and tore the tapestries into confetti. One by one, the marines came after me, and each time the girdle gave me exactly the power required to take out my opponent without breaking something that wouldn’t heal. When I had whittled the field down to five men, the remaining players kept their distance. So, I went after them. The last man tried to escape by crawling into one of the kitchen chimneys, but he fucked up by trying to shove the kobold in ahead of him. Kobolds don’t like to be crammed into tight quarters—a favorite imp pastime known as “Cram the Kobold” involves trying to shove the kobold up your opponent’s ass before he stabs you in the heart. This kobold did my job for me; in fact, I had to pull the little psycho off the guy.

  That left the old man and me.

  8

  How many of you have squared off against your own father in mortal combat? Perhaps more of you than I think. If so, you’ll agree that it’s a moral pickle. Had it really come down to him or me, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second—I wasn’t about to let him deny me the pleasure of pissing on his grave. Was he really trying to kill me, there in the moat? For months afterward, I thought so—but, as I later learned, doing so made little sense, given to how much trouble he had gone to send me on a quest of his own devising.

  That he was taking the match personally, I had no doubt. He wore his Death Face: the same expression, I am told, he wore when driving the native island tribes into extinction forty years earlier. Now, with a son of my own, I understand how a man might feel about losing a contest of wills to his offspring. Still, I hadn’t bet the old man for his kingdom. All I wanted was my freedom, a diluted version of the same desire that propelled Olderon from the slave pits of the Talon Empire to the Coral Throne. Dad never made the connection.

  Spectators of the match’s climax were not disappointed. They saw my father in the moat, trudging along the muddy edge of its southern bank with the kobold crammed under one arm, hoping to reach the base beneath the drawbridge before I found him.

  Then they saw me appear at a window in the South Tower, a good sixty feet above the moat—the same tower upon which Olderon would years later meet his grisly end. Spotting Dad, I planted a foot on the windowsill and launched myself from the window like a falcon. The old man went sprawling as he broke my fall.

  We untangled our limbs, locked hands around each other’s throats, and rolled together into the moat. Spying his chance, the kobold crawled away up the bank. Wanting to wait to unveil my strength at the most dramatic moment, I refrained from calling on the girdle to help me finish the old bastard.

  Before I knew it, however, Olderon had me submerged in the cruddy moat water. His thumbs drove into my esophagus. I saw stars, and there suddenly appeared in my panicked mind the notion that he might not let go until I stopped moving. I wanted nothing more than to beat him square, to show him that I wasn’t afraid of him—but I was afraid. Should the old man sniff so much as a molecule of that fear, he would strangle me to death in that moat before he’d admit to himself that he had a coward for a son.

  So, I took him out. Calling up the girdle’s power, I flipped him around and shoved his head into the drink. I let him flail about for a moment. Then I yanked up his head so he could hear me.

  “Yield, old man!” I cried.

  “I’ll see you in Hell first!”

  I gave him another taste of the moat. “Yield! You are finished here!”

  “You’ll have to kill me!”

  I flipped him over, so I could see his face. “I don’t want to kill you!” I bellowed. “I want my freedom!”

  We locked gazes. For a moment, I thought I saw the cold light of triumph in his eyes. Then he threw up his hands.

  “I yield!” King Olderon cried. “Prince Elberon is the victor!”

  The crowd went berserk. As the cheers rang across the common, only I could hear the words my father spoke to me.

  “Your freedom is well won, boy,” Olderon said as he twisted the water out of his beard. “You will leave the Lordship with only what you can carry on your back. You may take a good sword from the armory, and whatever armor you like. But know this: From this moment forward, I have but one son. That son shall be heir to a kingdom that you may no longer call home until his message reaches you with word of my demise.”

  Despite my victory, I burned with shame for relying on the girdle after all. By beating the old man, I had crossed a line from which his pride would never allow me to return. Why then, did I detect that hint of triumph? For a long moment, I gazed upon him with no presentiment that it would be the last time I ever laid eyes on him. Had I known, I would have left anyway.

  Thus would I come to dwell in the Free City of Redhauke, just another pauper in a city of paupers, looking for dangerous work that no one of right mind would dare attempt. Heroes are born of desperate times. After a couple of weeks of enjoying my hard-won freedom, I was as desperate as they come.

  9

  A few hours ago, Astrid came to me with news that I’m still trying to digest.

  Over the long years of our marriage, the Lady Astrid has played more roles in my life than either of us ever thought possible when we married impulsively during our long leisure cruise around the Hydra Sea in the autumn of my forty-third year. She has played my lover, confidante, therapist, harasser, haranguer, life coach, mortal enemy, goddess, rock ‘n roll warrior princess, and many more besides. She became to my son a better mother than I’ve ever been a father to him. Throughout the storm-tossed sea of our marriage, hers has been the one steady hand on the rudder, the one person in all the Woerth who cared enough to put up with my shit. She’s seen me at my worst, and she loves me anyway. She’s seen me weep like an old woman. She’s endured my apoplectic rage. I’ve given her not a single reason to stay married to me for one year, let alone twenty-five. And yet here she is, as unfathomably beautiful as she was when first I awoke to find her luscious, naked body next to mine. She’s still a great lay, too; being faithful to her has been a snap. Not that a king is not tempted. If sitting atop the brashest and most progressive young kingdom this side of the Everdeep doesn’t make you a chick magnet, nothing will. Whenever I craved forbidden fruit, I had only to think of her, back in the day: running my kingdom with a firm but gentle hand; spending long hours poring over Alderon’s lessons with him; praying to Odin for my safekeeping after I had cursed that unconscionable prick from stem to stern. And if that didn’t work, I had only to think of Cassiopeia, whom I lost.

  Now? Let’s just say that little Elberon has trouble getting up off the Barcalounger. Once, I had one of my wizards concoct a Virility potion, and I quaffed it only to suffer from an erection that lasted for four days. I could have made some epic porno films during that period, but it was difficult to sleep with my pecker as stiff as a pole-arm. If Astrid has taken a
lover, then she’s kept him out of my sight; if she has, I can’t really blame her. A woman has needs, after all. Not that those needs would stop me from cutting off the fucker’s head.

  What about love? Is there still room, in a marriage as old and entrenched as ours, for such a narcissistic, vampiric, and costly emotion? Perhaps Astrid still loves me, after her fashion. We’ve been at war for many long years, she and I. Our grievances have grown calcified and immutable: she convinced that I’ve perfected the art of tuning her out; me convinced that her goal is to wear me down to a useless little nub. Even now, Astrid believes that my melancholy is cover for my secret plan to oust her for a younger queen. So, she’s been plotting a preemptive strike. She thinks me clueless, but she forgets that I’ve survived this long by virtue of my brains, as well as my brawn. My own spies have witnessed dark meetings in her chambers, whispered conversations with low men who promise her a painless end for me in my sleep. Phoebes reports of her secretly assembled fleet, of the army, ensconced at Castle de Aur on the neighboring island of Cormorant, awaiting her command to move against the city.

  Would she ever go through with it? Probably not, but who the fuck really knows anybody else? Even after twenty-five years, I have no more idea of what goes on in that chick’s mind than I do the mind of Odin himself. This much do I know: Astrid enjoys such love from her people that if we ever become true enemies, the Lordship will be torn asunder by civil war—with me the likely loser.

  In truth, I still love her desperately, even as I sometimes fantasize about feeding her to my dogs. If true love does exist, it has the shelf life of cottage cheese. True Love implies effortless bliss. True Love requires no sacrifice. Astrid and I have worked the hard soil of our marriage season after season, through drought and flood and bitter winter, so that we might enjoy whatever harvest the gods deem fit for us. Or, to use a less hackneyed metaphor: Love is not a right, nor a gift, nor an excuse. Love is a paycheck. You work your ass off for it, and then you spend it as quickly as you can.