The Screaming Skull Page 4

  My depression is therefore seasoned with guilt for brooding on my throne like some spoiled child these past two days. Wilberd, my counselors, and my people—they can all go fuck themselves. I don’t give a gnome’s ass what they think. Astrid, however, deserves better. If only I could give it to her.

  When she came with her news, I could barely look her in the eye.

  “I still don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  “I have news,” Astrid said. Her back was stiff. If I made the first move and embraced her, would her defenses collapse? Perhaps—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Have you eaten?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “If you don’t eat, I’ll have Phoebes force some stew into you.”

  You may have noticed certain etymological inconsistencies in the names you’ve heard: Astrid, Cassiopeia, Phoebes. I’m not making them up; Woerth is a chamber pot of competing cultures and religions from dozens of different universes. We have our Greeks, our Romans, our Norse, our Indians, our Celts, our Chinese, our Egyptians, our Aztecs—and those are just the cultures you recognize. Early in Woerth’s history, the Free Kingdoms were continually laid waste from one religious or ethnic conflict or another. Romans slaughtered Celts, Muslims slaughtered Jews, Christians slaughtered Muslims, elves slaughtered dwarfs, and everybody slaughtered the gnomes. After centuries of it, the religious conflict became tedious. There was held a Council of the Wise, at which it was decided that, as all religions were most likely bullshit anyway, there was no reason to hold any particular faith higher than any other. Besides, we humans are most likely descended from ape-like ancestors—at least that’s what our time-traveling wizards tell us, and boy, don’t the elves get a kick out of pointing out that whenever they have a chance. Odin, Zeus, Saturn, Jehovah—when you get down to it, what the hell’s the difference? I pray to Odin, sure. Sometimes, I even believe in him. But gods are like assholes: everybody has one.

  “So, what’s your news?” I asked my wife.

  “Lithaine has returned to Woerth.”

  Astrid might have her plots, but she would never dissemble about Lithaine. She had heard the stories, and she was as terrified of that fucking lunatic as I was.

  “When?” I asked, stiffening on my throne.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” she said. “Word came in from a merchant vessel from the Were Coast. Rumors of a White Demon that has assumed the form of an elf lord. Tales of a Chaos army from Helene burning villages to the ground. The last reports had him heading for the Daggerlands. It sounds like Lithaine. We knew if he ever got out, he’d come after you.”

  “Let him try.”

  “Should we call off the party?”

  Now, there was the question: the party. I dreaded it. There I sat, grievously certain of my own mortality, paralyzed with horror watching my youth spiral down into the Abyss like a turd flushed down the privy. Was I supposed to celebrate? Whoever invented birthday parties was a sick, perverted misanthrope. To put the cap on the kobold, my former adventuring partner, whom we betrayed by using him as a cork to seal the breach between Hell and Woerth, had returned to exact his revenge. Was I number one on his list of paybacks? You bet your ass I was. Best to call off the party and prepare for war.

  “Let me think about it,” I said to Astrid.

  So I did, for a few hours. I called for my pipe and smoked it. Here’s what Astrid didn’t know: over the past two days, I haven’t merely been brooding; I’ve also been formulating.

  Over the years, whenever my soul hurt, my mind sought out Jo Ki-Rin, the keeper of answers—but he had gone silent. Just yesterday, I had searched for him via the Astral Telescope but could find no rumor of him. Did he even exist, I wonder, or had I just imagined him? Yesterday, as I sat ruminating over my pipe after a long, wearying night gazing through the Telescope, I heard that familiar, faint, plaintive call of the pipes, and I heard the Ki-Rin’s voice come unbidden to my mind. The past came flooding back, and I was struck dumb with understanding. From deep within my amygdala came a single name.

  Xingo.

  That was all it took. The entire plan sprang fully formed in my mind, a dark golem of my own making. It was a plan of either perfect good or perfect evil. The moment I conceived of it, I knew it was my destiny. What was it that Redulfo had said, so long ago? Success only becomes probable when you have no other choice.

  Calling for a torch, I headed for the dungeons. It was the first time my ass left the throne since Wilberd dropped a dime on me. Down the stairs, past the guards, down more stairs, through the gates, and down into the dank stone corridors where no light shone. Xingo’s cell crouched at the end of a long row of cells—mostly empty, but for the few still holding traitors and spies, the names of whom I had long since forgotten. The gaoler handed me the key on a rusted metal ring. I turned key in lock and swung open the cell door. Torchlight fell on the emaciated frame of the gnome, hanging from manacles bolted to the stone. He stank of piss and shit. When the torchlight hit him, his dangling hairy feet twitched.

  “A year have you languished in my dungeon, shitbird,” I said. “How’d you like to earn your freedom?”

  Xingo lifted his head. His beard made him look more dwarf than gnome. His little rat-eyes gleamed in the shadows of his brows.

  “Suck my asshole, fuckface,” croaked the gnome.

  “Enough small talk,” I said. “I have a mission for you. Should you choose to accept it, I’ll release you from those shackles right now.”

  A low groan came from the gnome—not of pain nor sorrow, but of anger. He was furious at his own weakness. He’d no choice but to accept my offer, and it sickened him. His despair notably improved my mood.

  “What do I have to do?” Xingo asked.

  What indeed? I could tell you my plan, but I think not—not yet, anyway. Every tale needs a modicum of suspense, lest it becomes mere dry recitation. Suffice it to say that it has a decent enough chance of failure that I’m in suspense myself—not least because I am forced to entrust it to the squirrelly little piss-bucket who has been trying to kill me for the better part of forty years. Despite his year of degradation, the gnome seemed to grasp the plan quickly enough.

  “I’m in,” Xingo said.

  Calling for the guards, I remanded Xingo into their custody with instructions to clean him up and give him a meal. Then I returned to the Coral Hall, sat the throne, and called for my wife.

  “No need to call off the party,” I said. “In fact, send a ship back to the Were Coast with a message for Lithaine, if it is him. Tell him that Lord Elberon of the Isles would be delighted if he would attend my Birthday Jubilee as my honored guest.”

  Astrid gave a half-smile and turned to go.

  “And fetch my scribe,” I called after her. If that pointy-eared magic boy wants a fight, I’m ready to give him one.

  10

  As the Remembrance potion takes hold, I recall my first meeting with Lithaine, now forty-five years gone, with terrifying clarity. I was newly arrived in Redhauke: that great, teeming, free city hugging the shores of Lake Everdeep, where would-be adventurers from across the free lands flock to seek their fortunes. In its 500-year history, Redhauke has undergone many permutations, both before and after I first arrived there as a cocksure ex-prince. Marauding armies have conquered it. Fire has leveled it. Evil arch-mages have cursed it. The city has seen plagues, riots, gang wars, political corruption, and garbage strikes; once, the entire city was teleported into another universe and its inhabitants enslaved by a race of sentient, spacefaring squid. One wonders why anyone in their right mind would step foot in the place. I can answer in one word: action. It’s the action that brings them in.

  Redhauke, you see, is like New York City, Casablanca, ancient Rome, Alexandria, the Barbary Coast, and Deadwood, all squashed into one gigantic freak show occupying a parcel of land no larger than downtown Las Vegas. In Redhauke, the word action is both instantly grasped and yet still undefinable; it describes a pervasive current, if you will, of
money, power, sex, and drugs that can find a man wealthy beyond comprehension or staring at a steaming pile of his own intestines right before the lights go out. You’re limited only by your own reserves of strength, cunning, and imagination.

  You can play it straight if you want. You can apprentice yourself to one of the great guildhalls and become an artisan of wide renown. You can become a merchant baron, with a fleet of ships and acres of warehouse space at your disposal. Innkeepers, shopkeepers, barbers, apothecaries, artists, and musicians—all are welcome. Those of a military bent can muster with the Redhauke Guard, at once a formidable army and a police force with which you don’t want to fuck. The faithful find their homes on the Godsway; more religions have been borne here than at any spot in the Multiverse, and the Apocalypse has come and gone so many times that nobody even notices anymore. Nerds and geeks can enroll in the School of Thaumaturgy, the greatest college of magic in the Free Kingdoms. If crime is your bag, then hie thee to the Thieves Guild, which presides over a smorgasbord of illicit trade in gaming, drugs, spices, slaves, and women. Over the infinite variety of commerce and crime in Redhauke, there rules the omnipresent threat of death—the chance that someone smarter or luckier than you will stick a figurative, or a literal, knife in your back. Redhauke is a city of addicts hooked on the naked adrenaline rush that only the action can deliver.

  I would have to wait, however, for my first fix. When I arrived at the outskirts of the city, having just undertaken an arduous journey from my former island home some 400 leagues southeast, I discovered that I came at a troubled time.

  There were wars, rumors of wars, and damned lies about wars to the North. Thousands of refugees were streaming southward along the western shore of the Everdeep—hungry, desperate peasants from such obscure kingdoms as the Duchy of Kent and the Folstaff Barony. Their squalid homes had been burnt to the ground, their women violated, their men lined up and shot with arrows or hung and then dumped into mass graves. While there were rumors of Plague Knights, no one really knew exactly who was waging war on whom or why. It didn’t matter much, really. Through hardship and horrors, thousands of starving refugees had made their way to Redhauke, where they camped in vast, makeshift shantytowns around the Outer Walls. I hadn’t known what to expect when I arrived, but I sure as hell hadn’t expected this.

  Soon, I had to face facts: I was a refugee myself. My winnings from the Crush the Kobold match had vanished with alarming rapidity, most of it spent on the boat ride across the Hydra Sea, the rest spent losing at skullbones to the merchants with whom I had hitched a ride up the Were Coast. Any hope I had of waltzing into the city and landing a plumb swordsman’s job drowned in a sea of stinking, sweating peasants hoping to find food, work, and shelter before winter arrived. I was as expendable as anyone else.

  Redhauke was a free city but not an open one. Even when there weren’t ten thousand supplicants outside the walls, only those with legitimate business, such as traders and the merchant caravans of great cartels, could count on free passage. The rest of us had to take a number and wait. Some of those lost souls in Doomtown, as the locals had taken to calling it, had been waiting so long that their stomachs bloated with hunger. Crime was rampant, justice swift; be caught thieving, and the Guard would give you five minutes to plead your case before forcing your head onto the chopping block. The best for which a refugee could hope was short work hauling wood or bailing hay on the outlying farms for a loaf of bread or a quick shag with a farmer’s daughter. Life outside the city walls was reduced to its essentials: one meal a day and a dry place to sleep made you rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

  And so, I found myself sharing the courtyard of an abandoned onion farm with a dozen other cutthroats from the North. They had a well that needed protecting, while I had a sword and knew how to use it. We dug wild onions out of the earth for food and withered the trees with our non-stop farting. I slept on a reed mat in the one-room farmhouse next to a barbarian who picked his teeth with one horny toenail. After a week of such luxury, I was ready to crawl on my knees back to Olderon and beg him to take me back.

  11

  Once a month, refugees could enter a lottery to win an appointment with a clerk, who would take your application for immigration into the city. On a good week, fifty immigrants were admitted; on a bad week, none. There were more bad weeks than good ones. Only those supplicants with employable skills were considered. I had an admirable set of skills to offer: I could fight with sword and staff, I could mend armor and blade, could pilot any seagoing vessel, and could make rope blindfolded.

  The problem was, so could everyone else. Six weeks passed as high summer turned to the first blush of Fall, and I still couldn’t get an appointment. At last, I scored one, and I waited anxiously in a winding line of refugees outside a clerk’s tent before finally having a chance to tell my tale.

  “From where do you hale?” the clerk asked as he scribbled notes on his tablet.

  “From the Tradewind Isles,” I answered. “The greatest kingdom south of the Hydra Sea.”

  The clerk snorted. “That provincial backwater? They’re barely out of the Stone Age and rife with cannibalism, from what I’ve heard. You’re lucky to have escaped.”

  I resisted the urge to snap his neck. “So, my application is in order?”

  “Your skills are adequate, though we’ve no shortage of brawny men in Redhauke,” he said. “Perhaps if you paid the application fee in advance…”

  He regarded me from beneath a raised brow. No need to wonder where this was headed. Fortunately, I had come prepared. Olderon had given me leave to take what personal effects I could carry; since he didn’t preclude it, I took his offer to include my own store of the Crown jewels. Specifically, I had taken my fleet ring—an impressive bauble with intertwining gold anchor chains wrapped around a tiny platinum sea drake. It was the only item I dared pinch that Dad wouldn’t immediately miss.

  I held it up by its chain so the sunlight reflected off its enticing contours. The clerk’s reaction was much as I had expected.

  “Let’s get to the Devil’s business,” I said. “This ring isn’t stolen, though you’ll have to take my word on that. It’s worth one hundred and fifty auratae if it’s worth a copper. Give my application full consideration, and we’ll take it to a broker of your choosing, sell it, and split the profits.”

  Sometimes you can hear the bells ringing in the head of a man who learns that his ship has come in. The clerk asked where he could meet me that evening, and I told him.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, closing his book and leaping from his stool.

  That evening, the clerk and two guards found me at the onion farm and laid a mace upside my head when I wasn’t looking. So much for my fleet ring. It was a hard lesson, but I learned it—always assume the worst about people, and they’ll never disappoint you.

  Hours later, I awoke with blood caked in my hair, a headache the size of Mount Doom, and the urge to vomit every few minutes. I took a quick personal inventory: no prospects, and nothing to my name but a sword and thirty copper pennies. Concussion notwithstanding, I decided that a good drunk was in order. That was Doomtown’s one saving grace: you might not find food, but you could always find drink. I needed a fire, a flagon, and some company.

  All three requirements lay just a few camps to the west, where I settled in with a mixed bag of swarthy men, a few dwarfs, and a loudmouth half-imp who couldn’t hold his liquor. Normally, no one at the fire would have suffered any contact with the imp-spawn; on the social ladder, his type was considered one step below sewer rats. With a strict prohibition against brawls or duels within sight of the city walls, however, we had little choice but to give him a spot at the fire. Fortunately, he was already in the bag. He snored loudly while the campfire talk turned to the latest rumors around Doomtown—particularly the rumor that refugee children were being kidnapped. The stories were all hearsay. The dwarfs claimed to have seen masked and hooded men stealing through the camps one night, snatc
hing up children in sacks and spiriting them away. If children were disappearing, I was more inclined to blame dysentery than kidnappers, but what did I know?

  After several hours of such talk lubricated with countless flagons of ale, I found myself staring at the embers of the waning fire. Only the hardcores were left—the dwarfs showing off their tattoos to a buxom gnome wench, a minstrel plucking out some forgettable tune on a lyre, and the half-imp. I was lost in thought, attuned to that elemental, symbiotic connection between camper and campfire present since the dawn of time. I scarcely noticed the cloaked figure that stepped up just outside the ring of firelight.

  “You,” said the newcomer, in a voice soft but of deadly intent. “Imp-spawn. Stand up.”

  Raising his head, the half-imp revealed a dull gaze addled with drink. “Oy?” he asked.

  “You heard me,” said the stranger.

  The half-imp lurched to his feet as if constructing himself out of spare parts. Locating a passable center of balance, he glared at the stranger across the campfire.

  “You want to have a go with Arty?” he asked, snorting with derision. “I’ve had bigger shits than you after breakfast. Elves—good only for slavery. I’ll have you cleaning my dirty bits with yer tongue before the next bell.”

  The stranger pulled back the hood of his cloak to reveal the pale, angular face and pointed ears of an elf. And a young one at that—he couldn’t have been a day over forty. His hair was the color of new wheat, pulled back in a simple ponytail. Filled with fell purpose, he leveled his gaze upon his prey.

  “You?” said Arty. “Back to your tree-house, magic boy.”

  “Draw your weapon,” the elf said.