The Temple of Yellow Skulls (39 page)

A hand grabbed him in midair and whirled him around, slamming him into the ground with bone crunching force and sending his black blade spinning away. The second drow warrior drew a shortsword, knelt on his chest, and held the blade above his head.

Not even drow moved that fast. Raid felt a strange sensation, a sort of unexpected familiarity. The drow was far more than she seemed—and indeed when she looked up at Vestapalk, thin veins of red crystal shone around the corners of her eyes. The words that came out of her mouth sounded strained, as someone or something else spoke through her mouth. “Nu Alin greets you, Master of the Voidharrow.”

Vestapalk looked down on her, then his jaws curved into an amused smile of recognition. “Our meeting has been slow in coming, my Herald.”

The drow inclined her head. “The inevitable can be delayed, but not prevented, Master.” The shortsword slipped down a little farther. “How would you like this one killed?”

Vestapalk’s head dipped down to inspect her wheezing captive. His eyes narrowed. “I would not,” he said. His voice rose. “Raid! Take this one prisoner. He struck well. I judge him to be exceptional.”

Raid shouted acknowledgment across the pit, but Vestapalk’s attention had already moved on to Tiktag, cowering in the dirt. “Wyrmpriest,” the dragon rumbled, “I know you had nothing to do with this. You warned me about the drow”—Tiktag sagged visibly with relief—“and you will be rewarded. This time I will not listen to your excuses. You will be blessed.”

The kobold twisted bolt upright. “Master, no. I don’t—”

Vestapalk’s eyes narrowed. “I do not offer my talons a choice when I use them.”

Tiktag shuddered—and to Raid’s surprise, suddenly jumped to his feet and ran for the shadows. Vestapalk hissed slightly. One of the soldiers lunged and grabbed the wyrmpriest, easily lifting him off the ground. Tiktag wailed once in fear, then relaxed in wracking, terrified sobs. Vestapalk turned away from him to inspect the drow priest.

The liquid fire had guttered out, leaving Lolth’s servant charred and twitching on the ground. She managed to lift her head and look up at Vestapalk. The dragon’s expression tightened.

“You attacked Vestapalk,” he said, “but only because you follow commands, nothing more. You were a pawn for another and that is the most exceptional thing about you. Carry a message to your spider god for Vestapalk: Tell her what you saw and how you fared. Tell her to be afraid.”

The priest cried out and tried to struggle away, but Vestapalk put one forefoot on her head and shifted his weight.

Her skull made a wet crack as the dragon crushed it. The sound was almost lost, though, in the cry of anguish from the shadows where the first drow warrior had disappeared.
“Ivri!
”

Raid’s head snapped up and he gestured for the nearest brutes. “Find her!”

“No,” said Vestapalk. He lifted his foot and scraped the mess of the drow priest’s life from the bottom of it. “She is gone. They are all gone.”

Raid felt a flush of anger at having his order contradicted. “They could be back.”

“Yes,” Vestapalk agreed, “they could.” The dragon walked to the edge of the pit and, leaning over the drow he called his herald, looked down at his frightened prisoners. “Vestapalk has lingered here long enough. These few will do after all. If they do not survive, you will gather more elsewhere.” He glanced up at Raid. “Prepare them. Vestapalk will have his exarchs.”

The flush of anger became a burn. “But what about Shara, Uldane, the priest—they have defied us!”

“Vestapalk will not delay triumph for revenge,” the dragon growled. “Not again.” He glared at Raid. “Prepare those who will be my exarchs. Their time comes at dawn.”

A
lbanon heard everything. Not all of it made sense. Most of it terrified him. There were screams and noises that his imagination turned into horrible things—which in reality were perhaps just as horrible as he imagined them. When he’d heard Nu Alin greet his master, he almost vomited inside his hood. Nu Alin. Moorin’s murderer. Here.

And perhaps the worst thing was that Tiktag had been captured, too. Unless Kri, Shara, and Uldane intended to perform some incredible, fantastic, last-minute rescue, they were never going to find out what he’d learned. An eternity seemed to pass in darkness with nothing but the sounds of demons and the other prisoners moving around him, until eventually he could make out the lightening of the sky through his hood.

Dawn came. Rescue didn’t.

But his captors did. Albanon heard the heavy, shuffling tread of their feet as they entered the pit and began taking the other prisoners away. Some prisoners struggled. He heard snarls of Goblin and curses in Dwarven. The ogre put up a
fight. Its bellows and howls set off a flurry of responses from the remaining prisoners.

The demons—brutes, soldiers, warriors in Vestapalk’s horde, whatever Tiktag had called them—answered with growls and the thump of fists against flesh. The ogre’s bellows turned into cries of pain. The other prisoners fell silent, but the rain of blows continued, a savage beating that might not have stopped at all if not for a shout from above.

“Don’t kill them!” snapped Raid’s voice. “Vestapalk needs them alive. Just get them up here.”

The beating ceased, replaced by groans and scraping as the ogre was dragged away. Another prisoner started to sob. They were the next taken. Albanon leaned back against the wall of the pit, fear knotting in his stomach. When the brutes came for him, would he fight or weep? He tried to summon up the fiery defiance that had swelled in him after the ambush on the road.

It remained just out of reach. Hands bound, mouth gagged, eyes blinded by the hood, he knew no magic that would help him.

The eladrin clenched his jaw, biting into the gag. Would Moorin have let such a thing stop him? He’d died fighting Nu Alin. Would Kri? He’d been willing to sacrifice himself to Raid to give Albanon and the others a chance to escape the demon’s ambush.

If the wizard he had called his master and the cleric he’d come to see as his mentor could give so much, so could he. He might never have the chance to take the oath of the Order of Vigilance, but at least he could conduct himself as if he had. He might not have his magic, but he still had his body and his wits. Kri—and Moorin—would be proud of him in the end.

Big hands grabbed him and dragged him to his feet. Heavy claws sank into his flesh. Albanon forced himself to breathe, to accept the demon’s grasp as it shoved him across the pit. An idea formed in his mind. The ogre’s mistake had been in lashing out. Down in the pit, it had been surrounded. But if it had waited until the brutes had led it out of the pit.…

His feet found the steep angle of the ramp. Albanon took a deep breath and started to climb. How long was the ramp? He tried to guess when they were a third of the way up. Half the way up.

Three-quarters of the way.

Albanon lurched forward, tearing himself out of the brute’s grasp and at the same time kicking back at where he hoped the creature’s legs were. Incredibly, he connected. His boot crunched into something that felt like a shin. The thing gave a yelping snarl as it hopped back—a snarl that turned into a full, frustrated yelp as it fell on the steep ramp, pulled backward by the weight of the crystal armor across its shoulders. Albanon didn’t hesitate for a moment. He raced up the ramp, yanking at the hood with his bound hands. If he could just get it off, he’d at least be able to—

Something hooked his legs out from under him. The gag soaked up a gasp as Albanon tumbled briefly through the air and smashed head first into solid stone. Bright blotches swam around his vision; a thin ringing filled his skull along with biting pain. He groaned, and this time he did vomit thin bile into the hood.

Hands that were more delicate than the brute’s but strangely no less strong pulled him to his feet. The fouled hood came off. Albanon stared into the face of a female drow.

A female drow with silver-red cracks pulsing around her eyes. Albanon had seen those cracks around Tempest’s eyes once. Fear churned his stomach a second time.

One of Nu Alin’s hands shot out and clamped around his throat, choking off air and bile alike. Albanon convulsed in agony as his lungs heaved and sucked down the vomit. The drow’s eyebrows just rose like thin, white spider legs. Nu Alin smiled. “The wizard’s apprentice. I thought I recognized your presence. I owe you for your attempts to trick me when we met before.”

The drow’s arm barely seemed to twitch, but suddenly Albanon was flying again. This time his shoulder took the impact of his landing. He ended up on his back, staring up at the rose-tinted sky of morning—until Nu Alin strode over, grabbed a handful of his robes, and hauled him half-upright. A hand ripped Albanon’s gag off violently. The drow’s face bent over his and she opened her mouth.

In place of a tongue, a thick tentacle of red crystal curled out. Albanon’s head spun so badly he could barely think, but his gaze was drawn to the writhing appendage as it drooped toward his own gaping mouth. He tried to close his lips. The drow’s other hand grabbed his jaw and forced it wide.

An inarticulate scream rose out of Albanon’s chest. He struggled, but Nu Alin’s strength held him easily. The demon’s fluid form oozed further out of the drow’s mouth. It brushed his cheek, scraping across the skin and into his mouth—then it was gone, sucked back into the drow. Nu Alin chuckled and straightened.

“No,” he said in the drow’s voice. “That won’t be your end. My master has something much more painful planned for you.”

Nu Alin hauled him to his feet and dragged him through the ruins. Albanon was dimly aware that with his mouth free
and his vision clear, he finally had the opportunity to cast a spell. His mind still reeled with pain and the shock of the demon’s torment, though. He tried to gather his will and felt the magic slip through his thoughts.

Focus
, he told himself.
Focus! You can’t die like this!

They emerged into the courtyard where Raid had first presented him to Vestapalk. Brute demons clustered around the edges of the open space, jostling each other like children at a market fair. Vestapalk crouched in the center of the courtyard, liquid eyes closed but head weaving back and forth as if the dragon was listening to voices only he could hear.

Between dragon and demons were the prisoners from the pit. Thick wooden posts and ancient stone pillars had been dragged into the courtyard and forced down between the age-worn paving stones. To each was bound one of the prisoners: humans, orcs, goblin, lizardman, ogre, halfling, dwarf, another drow.…

One post remained empty. Nu Alin pushed Albanon to it.

“Not there, Herald,” said Vestapalk without opening his eyes. “That place belongs to a special servant.” The dragon’s mouth crooked. “Put him with the drow. Brothers shouldn’t be separated.”

Nu Alin turned without comment and hustled Albanon toward the post where a drow male was bound, presumably a survivor of the previous night’s attack. The drow’s white eyes narrowed at their approach. “Eklabet!” he called in Elven with a wheedling tone. “Eklabet, I don’t know what’s come over you but if you can hear me—”

“She can hear you,” said Nu Alin in the same language. “She just can’t do anything about it.” He gestured and a brute lumbered forward to hold the drow while Nu Alin swiftly
tied Albanon beside him. Nu Alin stepped back and grinned. “Like reflections in a mirror,” he said, then turned and moved to Vestapalk’s side.

Albanon stared at the drow. It was indeed almost like looking in some magical mirror that rendered white to black and black to white: the drow’s dark skin to his pale, white eyes to his blue, bone-white hair to silver. The drow scowled back at him and said, still in Elven, “You wear a wizard’s robes, eladrin, but I’m guessing that if you can’t save yourself, you’re no good to me.” He rested his head against the wood of the pillar. “Quarhaun.”

It took a moment for understanding to penetrate Albanon’s battered mind. The drow was offering his name. “Albanon,” he said in return.

“Is it too much to hope that a band of eladrin feyknights are waiting for just the right moment to rescue you?”

Albanon thought of Shara, Uldane, and Kri. They weren’t exactly knights, but they were his only hope. But no. He knew Kri. They wouldn’t be coming for him. They wouldn’t risk it. He put them out of his mind. “We’re on our own.”

The drow’s face curled into a sneer. “We?” he said. “The only thing ‘we’re’ likely to do together is die.”

Albanon couldn’t hold back a shudder. “We’d be lucky to die.”

Quarhaun twisted around to look at him, eyes wide, but just then Raid strode into the courtyard—and Albanon knew immediately who the final post was meant for. Tiktag scuttled along in front of Raid, shepherded by the demon. The kobold’s scaled face was tight with terror. He met Albanon’s gaze and almost immediately looked away. Albanon could understand his anger. If he hadn’t tried to enlist Tiktag in his escape, the kobold might not be among Vestapalk’s prisoners.

Then again Tiktag had threatened to blind him and had almost killed Uldane. That took some of the edge off his sympathy.

“What do you mean by ‘we’ll be lucky to die?’ “Quarhaun demanded.

Albanon felt a half-mad grin twist across his face. How bad must things be, he thought, if I’m counting a kobold and a drow as the closest I have to allies? He turned to face Quarhaun. “Vestapalk is going to turn us into demons.”

The drow blinked.

“Demons?” said Vestapalk’s weird double voice. The dragon’s eyes were open and staring at them. “Demons,” he repeated, rolling the word on his tongue as if savoring it. “Beings of the Abyss, perhaps, but so much more than demons.”

“Your exarchs, then.” Albanon surprised himself at the angry challenge. “A demon is still a demon.”

“You might be Vestapalk’s exarchs—if you survive.” The dragon rose. Two strides brought him looming over Albanon and Quarhaun. “Nu Alin has told Vestapalk how the Voidharrow first entered the world. Some of these things Vestapalk already knew because the Voidharrow sings in his veins and the Elemental Eye whispers in his ear. Some of them he did not know. Some the Eye did not wish him to know and tried to keep from him.” He lowered his head to look into Albanon’s eyes. “You are the heir to those who tried to prevent the coming of the Voidharrow and then sought to guard it. They never understood what they faced. The gods would not speak of the Voidharrow, would they?”