The Temple of Yellow Skulls (10 page)

He produced a scrap of paper and handed it to her. Shara glanced at it—and Albanon saw her face turn deep red and her smile twist into a grimace. She crumpled the paper in her fist, then, almost as an afterthought, flicked it at Albanon. He caught the paper and spread it out.

Albanon looked up. “I didn’t know anything about this!”

Shara was breathing heavily through her nose, nostrils flaring with each breath. Her hands twitched into fists. “The little weasel,” she said. “Of all the …” She closed her eyes, took one last deep breath, and tension—most it, at least—went out of her body.

“He can take care of himself,” she said with an unnatural calm. “If he wants to go off on his own, that’s his choice.”

“It’s possible you were wrong about Raid after all,” said Albanon cautiously.

She shot him a sharp glance, then looked back at Teldorthan. “You were right. I didn’t need to see this when I was angry.”

The dwarf gave a short laugh. “I like you, Shara, but I’m not stupid.” He turned and went back into the smithy, bellowing as he walked. “Back to work, you eavesdropping rascals! Only idle hammers make no noise!”

Uldane led his pony off the flat-bottomed ferry and on to the dock, then looked back across the river to Fallcrest. It seemed to Raid that he looked almost wistful. He urged his own mount—a great black stallion he’d broken with his own will and sweat—over to the halfling. “Your friends will be fine without you,” he said.

Uldane blinked and smiled. “That was a lucky guess at what I was thinking.”

“Hardly a guess. You can lie without giving anything away, but when you’re not paying attention your face is an open book.” Raid leaned across his saddle horn, the thick, scarred leather of his armor creaking with the movement. “I don’t see you missing this sad little outpost of a town, but I think your friends would be another matter.

“I’ve adventured with Shara for so long that it feels strange to be going anywhere without her,” Uldane confessed. He looked back to Fallcrest once again. “Maybe we could find her and convince her to come along—”

Pressure flashed behind Raid’s eyes, but he just shook his head. “We’re on the road now, Uldane. I don’t want to turn back and lose the day.”

“And I don’t want to divide the loot any further!” shouted Dohr. The half-orc and Tragent were already on the road beyond the ferry dock, their horses prancing and eager. “Let’s go.”

Raid reached out and patted Uldane’s shoulder. “She’ll be fine without you for a few days, won’t she? Is she going anywhere?” The halfling shook his head and Raid added, “Think of it this way: You’ll have stories to tell that she won’t have experienced herself.”

Uldane’s eyes lit up. “That’s true. And maybe some interesting treasure to show her, too!”

“I imagine we’ll find things no one has seen before,” Raid said solemnly, “or at least not for a very long time. Are you ready to go now?”

“You bet.” Uldane clicked his tongue to his mount and the pony trotted off the dock. Dohr whooped and slapped the reins against his horse. The horse broke into a gallop. Uldane laughed and urged his horse to greater speed as well.

Then, as if the beginning of their journey to the Temple of Yellow Skulls was some kind of race, Uldane, Dohr, and Tragent were all thundering down the road, hooting and calling to each other. Raid smiled and looked back at Fallcrest himself.

In his mind, it was already a smoking ruin through which he strode, feared and adored, under the gaze of the Chained God’s Eye.

He nudged his horse. The beast obeyed instantly, charging after the others. Raid leaned low over its neck, low enough that he could see its eye rolling in terror of him. “Faster,” he said and the rhythm of its hoof beats increased. The pleasure of its
obedience washed through him, and by the time he caught up to—and passed—his hirelings, Raid was smiling again.

The Blue Moon was busy with townsfolk taking their midday meal and tankard, but Albanon found a table for himself, Shara, and Kri in a relatively quiet corner. The cleric looked around them with narrowed eyes. “We should go back to the tower. What we have to discuss shouldn’t be heard in public.”

Shara grunted. “Swinging a hammer all morning works up an appetite. I need something to eat. Just keep your voice down.”

Kri’s eyebrows rose at the response. Albanon’s stomach clenched at the thought of what the old man might do, but Shara just locked eyes with him and, after a moment, the harsh set of Kri’s mouth softened and he nodded. “Respect my wish for discretion and we can stay.”

“Good.” Shara signaled the serving maid.

Albanon looked from Kri to Shara and back again. “What just happened?”

Kri glanced at him, face already hardening once more. “She has spirit. I approve.”

“I fought you before I knew you were an old man. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“You wouldn’t have fought me if you’d seen that I was old?”

Albanon’s mouth opened and closed as he looked for an answer that wouldn’t make him sound like a coward. Shara leaned forward, chin on her hands. “I want to hear the story behind this.”

“Oh, you’ll like it,” said Splendid from around Kri’s neck. “Go on, apprentice—tell her.”

“Maybe Kri would rather—” Albanon began, but the old cleric just lifted an eyebrow and cocked his head back at him. Albanon grimaced and launched into the story of what had happened when he’d returned to the tower. He tried to keep it as short as possible, but Splendid would have none of it. Her interjections, Kri’s dry comments, and Shara’s laughter stretched the tale out until the serving maid appeared with platters of cold meat, cheese, bread, and pickled vegetables.

The moment that the food was on the table and the serving maid was out of earshot, however, Kri reclaimed the story. As Splendid crept down off his shoulder to inspect the food, he lowered his voice and hustled the narrative on to the point where they’d realized that the vial containing the Voidharrow could have been stolen by the death knight. “Albanon thinks that because you fought alongside the death knight, you may have been in a position to see if he had the vial,” he said. “Think. It was about half a hand span long and gold on both ends. The last time I saw it, there was a light chain attached at one end. Maybe the death knight wore it around his neck.”

Shara took a bit of bread and cheese and chewed without saying anything. Albanon couldn’t quite place the expression on her face. A little bit angry. A little bit thoughtful. A little bit … afraid? He sat forward. “Shara, what do you know?”

She swallowed, her mouth twitching. “You have to imagine that final battle with Vestapalk,” she said. “Our pursuit of Nu Alin and then the stolen dead glass amulet had led us to an ancient underground necropolis. When we confronted Vestapalk, he had the death knight in his grip, ready to crush him, with the rest of us helpless to avoid a blast of his poisonous breath. The whole cavern was shaking from whatever ritual the death knight’s lich master was performing with the amulet. There must
have been an even lower cavern beneath us, though, because in all the shaking the ground under Vestapalk collapsed. Of course, he had wings, so it was no danger for him, but that moment as he tried to get airborne, it left him vulnerable. The death knight had already wounded him but I had the opportunity to deal the death blow. I took it.”

Albanon remembered the moment well: Shara standing on the edge of the crumbling ground, then gathering herself and leaping for Vestapalk’s exposed belly. Her sword had flashed in the dim light of the necropolis as she whipped it around in a mighty strike. Vestapalk had tried to block the blow with the death knight’s body, but he’d failed. Shara’s sword had skimmed just past the unwilling shield and ripped a long, deep gash in the dragon’s belly. Vestapalk had gone down in a spray of blood, wings collapsing, body plummeting into the newly opened chasm. Shara would have plunged after him except that the death knight, leaping from the falling dragon’s loosened grasp, had caught her in his leap and carried them both to solid ground.

“You killed Vestapalk,” the eladrin said. “You saved the death knight, then he saved you.”

“Yes and no,” said Shara. “Yes, the death knight and I saved each other. But I don’t think it was just my blow that killed Vestapalk. When Vestapalk tried to use the death knight as a shield, I only just missed hitting him. It was so close that I sliced through his belt pouch.”

She held her hands perpendicular to each other, and slid the fingers of the right past the palm of the left—then paused and looked at Kri and Albanon. “I saw your vial. It was in his pouch. The chain caught on my sword and pulled it free.”

“It fell?” Kri asked, his voice thin.

Shara hesitated, then shook her head. “My blow broke it against Vestapalk’s scales.”

Kri had looked aged and frail when Albanon had first uttered Nu Alin’s name. Word that the vial had been shattered left him seeming as pale and brittle as a sheet of overworked parchment. His entire body sagged. The color drained from him. Silence fell over their table, made all the more shocking by the happy noise around them.

Without another word, Kri rose.

Shara seized his wrist. “I don’t think I killed Vestapalk. I might have inflicted the wound, but it was whatever was in that vial—the Voidharrow, if that’s what it was called—that finished him off. I only caught a glimpse of it, but it didn’t just splash into his wound—it ran into it like water running down a funnel. It pushed its way into him. That’s when he screamed. That’s when he fell out of the air.”

Kri looked at her for a moment, then wrenched his wrist from her grasp and walked out of the alehouse. Albanon stared at Shara. “How come you didn’t tell any of us about this before?”

“I wasn’t sure what I saw. I didn’t know that vial came from Moorin’s tower. The stuff in it killed Vestapalk—that’s all that matters.”

A chill passed over Albanon. “I don’t think it is. Splendid, watch the table.” He went after the cleric. Splendid muttered in confusion behind him while Shara called to the serving maid and assured her that they would be back to pay for their meal.

He found Kri outside, face raised to the sky. His eyes were closed and one hand gripped the holy symbol of Ioun that he wore around his neck. Albanon paused, uncertain of whether he should interrupt the cleric while he was praying. Shara emerged from the Blue Moon a moment later and stopped beside him.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Albanon.

“We go back to the spot where you last saw this Vestapalk.” Kri let go of his holy symbol and looked at them. His eyes were hard and determined. “I need to see his body.”

“Why?” asked Shara. “He’s dead.”

Kri’s mouth tightened. “Is he? Did you see his corpse?”

“He must be,” said Albanon. “I saw him fall. I saw the
way
he fell.”

“And Shara saw the Voidharrow flow into his body,” Kri said.

“I saw it kill him,” Shara pointed out. “No one screams like Vestapalk did unless he’s dying.”

Kri opened his mouth to speak, looked around, and seemed to think better of it. He drew both Albanon and Shara off the street and into the shadow of the Blue Moon’s walls. “There are things more painful than death,” he said somberly. He looked at Albanon. “I told you that the creature, Nu Alin, was once a man named Albric. The Voidharrow made him what he is.”

The chill returned to Albanon. “Vestapalk could have been turned into something like Nu Alin?”

“Only Ioun sees all. The rest of us must discover the truth for ourselves. This necropolis where you confronted Vestapalk—where is it? How far away?”

“It’s in the Old Hills north of Thunderspire Mountain, about four days journey east of Fallcrest,” said Shara. The warrior looked shaken. “Vestapalk could still be alive?”