The Temple of Yellow Skulls (42 page)

Shara rose to a crouch, braced the crossbow on top of the fallen column, loosed the bolt, and dropped down again. A snarl from another one of the four-armed demons was proof that she had hit. Uldane couldn’t help smiling as he handed swapped crossbows with her. “Perfect record!” he whispered.

“Just move,” she said tersely.

Uldane had their next cover chosen. As the monsters came charging for the fallen column, he led Shara behind a long stretch of heaped rubble to a section of wall split by a narrow crack. “Good?”

“As long as we keep leading them away, anything is good,” she said. She peered through the crack, then ducked back. “Where’s Raid?”

“I haven’t seen him. Do you think he stayed in the courtyard? He looked too angry to stay.”

“We need to find him.” Shara looked up at the wall. “Can you climb this? Keep your head down but see if you can spot him.”

Uldane nodded. He scanned the wall for hand and foot-holds—the ancient stone offered plenty of both—picked his route and started up.

He was just above the level of Shara’s head when the warrior’s hand grabbed his belt. “Uldane!”

There was urgency in her voice. He glanced down and found her looking out into the ruins on their side of the wall. He twisted his neck around to follow her gaze.

Three spiders bigger than he was perched on the rubble not ten paces away. There was a distinct red tint to their clustered eyes. Raid had found new friends.

He started to climb down. The biggest of the spiders let out a low, threatening hiss. He froze.

“What are the demons doing?” asked Shara.

Uldane leaned over—slowly—until he could peer through the crack in the wall. The hulking creatures were spreading out around the hiding place they’d just abandoned. He held back a curse. If they had to fight the spiders, the demons would hear and close in from the other side. Raid, wherever he was, had
them trapped. “The demons are looking for us again. What are we going to do?”

Shara pressed her lips together. “I can take the spiders,” she said. “You hide. Keep drawing the demons away from the court—”

A scream cut her off. Two screams, rising from the direction of the courtyard. And as horrible as it had been listening to the terror and agony of Vestapalk’s prisoners as the Voidharrow had infected them, somehow this was worse. The spiders shrank back, seeming startled by the sounds as well.

Uldane glanced out through the crack in the wall. The demons were all staring in the direction of the screams—and beyond them, he finally spotted Raid.

Heading back to the courtyard.

He drew a breath and dropped away from the wall. “New plan,” he said. “Raid’s on the move.”

Shara gave a grim smile. The crossbow rose and she squeezed the trigger. The bolt buried itself in the head of one of the spiders and the creature leaped back, squealing and twitching. The other spiders froze for an instant, long enough for her to drop the bow and draw her greatsword. “Back to the courtyard?”

Uldane nodded. “Back to the courtyard.”

The spiders hissed again and came at them. Shara whirled and shoved Uldane along before her. “Go!”

The screams caught Raid off guard. There was something strange about them, something that ran across his nerves. The screaming of Vestapalk’s prisoners as they become his exarchs had been sweet. This was different.

Shara and Uldane, even the priest, vanished from his mind. Panic filled him. He lengthened his stride and raced for the courtyard.

The two brutes that Raid had left behind watched Albanon as if he might leap to the attack at any moment. Albanon stared back at them, breathing slow and hard against the building burn of the Voidharrow in his body.

He tried to focus past the pain. Was there anything he could do to fight the changes that the Voidharrow wreaked upon his body? Probably not, but by the moon of the Feywild, he could fight it in his mind and soul. Memories of happier days seemed increasingly distant, but he dragged them up with grim determination. Memories of Moorin and his apprenticeship in the Shining Tower. Memories of Splendid teasing him, usually in good humor. Memories of his first adventures with Shara and Uldane. Memories of his other friends, Falon and Darrum. Erak and Roghar. Tempest. Memories of Kri and of the cleric’s tales of the Order of Vigilance.

His friends were close. All he had to do was fight the Voidharrow—and the pain—a little longer. He tried to imagine what Shara and the others were doing.

He certainly didn’t imagine the small form that came plummeting from the sky to whirl around the two guards.

“You!” shrieked Splendid. “Lummoxes! Muscle-bound clods! Think you can catch me?”

One of the demons swatted at her. She darted nimbly between waving arms to perch on its crystal shoulder plates. The brute snorted and tried to grab for her but its arms couldn’t quite reach. The pseudodragon ducked, then lashed out with
her stinger. The demon roared and spun in pain. Splendid launched herself back into the air. “Do I have your attention now? Come and get me!”

She swirled once in the air above the courtyard, skimming low enough that Albanon was certain he saw a look of horror and sorrow in her eyes when she looked at him—then she was speeding off into the ruins with Raid’s guards snorting and snarling as they chased her.

“Pseudodragons are remarkable creatures,” said an accented voice from behind Albanon. “Loyal beyond death. It takes a lot to get them to change that loyalty.”

Albanon tried to twist his head around. “Kri!”

“Don’t move or I might cut you.” Something pulled at his bonds—a knife, Albanon thought—and they began to loosen. “We have to hurry. There isn’t much time.”

The cleric sounded grim.

“For Shara and Uldane?” Albanon asked.

“No,” said Kri. “For you.”

The last bonds parted and Albanon almost fell. His legs felt numb. He hadn’t realized how much the post had been supporting him. He felt Kri try to catch him, but he shrugged the old cleric off. “Don’t! The Voidharrow—”

The words came out pinched and harsh, grating along Albanon’s throat. He barely recognized his own voice—but what there was of it stuck in his throat as he caught sight of the hand with which he tried to hold Kri back. The fingers had all but fused together. He no longer had a hand, just a crystal-tipped … spike.

Terror rose in him. He felt the pain. He’d fought the Voidharrow. But he hadn’t been able to see the changes that the Voidharrow had wrought in him before. Until now. He
raised his other hand. It was almost a spike as well. His legs, his feet—he tried to tear at his robes to see. The demon that Vestapalk had planted in him rose like a fever. His breathing became harsh.

Kri grabbed his arms. “Albanon, calm down! I need to try and stop the Voidharrow.”

Calm. Albanon took another breath and fought back against the demon. It seemed like he had been fighting so long that it was second nature, but how long had it really been since Vestapalk had brushed the Voidharrow across his forehead? The sun was still barely a hand span above the horizon. He spun, staring at the other captives in the courtyard.

He couldn’t call them captives anymore. If they still lived, demons stared back at him. They stood quiet, like sleepers newly woken, spent in the aftermath of their transformation. Dead or alive, the familiar forms of orcs, goblins, humans, ogre, dragonborn, all of them, were now alien … things. Albanon looked to the demon that had been Tiktag and a wedge-shaped head with a single glowing eye looked back at him.

A whisper came from the tiny mouth below that eye.

“Fight.…
”

Albanon twisted around to Quarhaun.

It was no longer like staring in a mirror, that was certain. The drow looked like a black skeleton twined about with veins of crystal. Like the brutes, he now bore a second pair of arms, though his were spindly and rose from gaping sores on his chest. His original arms dangled almost to his knees. His mouth had changed, become a tooth-filled circle like a lamprey’s. But his eyes … they were tinged with red now, but they were still the wide, round eyes of a drow.

And they stared at him with desperation.

Albanon turned back to Kri. “Both of us,” he said. “Help me and him.” He nodded to Quarhaun.

Kri blinked. “A drow? But—”

Albanon lunged at him. “
Do it!”

The old cleric gasped and looked down. Albanon followed his gaze—and flinched. The crystalline point of his fused fingers dimpled the golden chainmail over his belly. Albanon staggered back. Kri touched his stomach as if in wonder that he hadn’t been stabbed, then nodded. “I’ll try.” He grabbed Albanon and dragged him over closer to Quarhaun. “Do you remember in Andok Sur? When I cleansed you after the kobold wounded you? This will be worse.”

Keeping a hand on each of them, he tipped his face back, closed his eyes, and murmured the words of a prayer.

Searing white light seemed to burst inside Albanon. It burned him, not in the way that the Voidharrow had burned, but as if the sun had suddenly risen inside of him. The light shone into every part of him, into the secret corners of his mind and the darkest recesses of his soul. It stripped him bare, scouring the impurities from him. Burning away the Voidharrow.

A scream rose from his throat, but it was
his
voice. Pain pierced him, but it was clean pain, untainted.

But just like the transformation of the Voidharrow, it seemed to go on … and on … and on. His throat became raw. His eyes felt like they would steam in their sockets. His body seemed to tear itself apart.

When it ended, he would have staggered, but every muscle in his body was locked and rigid. His head was back. His back was arched. His fists were clenched.

His fists.

Albanon forced open his eyelids and stared down at two hands with long, graceful fingers and thumbs. He looked up and saw Quarhaun, once again his dark reflection, clinging to the post for support. “By the gods!” Albanon gasped. “Kri, you—Kri!”

The cleric knelt on the ground, trembling with weakness. Albanon squatted down and wrapped his arm across the old man’s back, drawing him up. Kri’s breath hissed between his teeth. “That took more than I thought.” He jerked his head. “Get us out of here—”

A howl of fury and disbelief interrupted him.
“No!”

A
lbanon turned so quickly that Kri almost slipped from his arms. Raid glared at them from across the courtyard. “This isn’t possible!” the demon roared. An arm came up, pointing an axe at them. “I will not be denied. This time … this time you
will
die!”

Quarhaun scowled and stepped forward. “He talks too much,” he said in Elven. His eyes narrowed and his hand stabbed out, throwing a crackling blast of dark energy at Raid.

The demon twisted to the side with incredible speed. The bolt went sizzling past him. Quarhaun’s eyes opened wide in surprise and he flung another bolt. Raid spun away from that one, too.

A murmur passed through those prisoners that still lived as if the fight was finally rousing them from their stupor. Albanon’s gut clenched. Half a dozen prisoners appeared to have survived the plague. Could the Voidharrow really have made them all exarchs as powerful as Raid? If even a few of
them were, he and his friends were in trouble. He shook Kri. “We need to leave
now.”