The Temple of Yellow Skulls (21 page)

For all of his complaining, Uldane had almost finished loading the bag. The skulls made the leather bulge. “Call Dohr now,” Raid said.

Tragent raised his voice obediently. “Dohr, bring me bandages.”

Uldane looked up. “I’m good with bandages,” he said. “Do you want me to help?”

“Finish putting the skulls in the bag,” said Raid. “And make sure you tie it tight.”

The halfling scowled and put the last skull into the bag, then gathered the neck and wrapped the red thong around it. Dohr smirked as he rummaged in a pack and started toward Raid and Tragent with a roll of clean linen in his hand. Tragent bent over Raid, pretending to inspect his burns. “How do we do it?” he asked.

“We catch him off guard,” Raid said. “Just like this.”

He jabbed the knife he had drawn from his boot up into Tragent’s exposed throat. The swordsman’s mouth opened wide in shock and he grabbed for his neck, but Raid twisted the knife then ripped it free. Hot blood cascaded over his body. Shoving Tragent aside, he swept up his axes and charged at Dohr.

The half-orc’s eyes went wide and the bandages tumbled from hands already sparking with lightning. Raid didn’t give him a chance to loose it—he might have encouraged the others
to spend all of their energy fighting the elementals, but he’d held something back just for this moment. His first whirling blow swept away Dohr’s rising left hand. His second took off the sorcerer’s head.

Beside the bulging bag, Uldane stared at him, wide-eyed and frozen. No, Raid saw on a second glance, not frozen. The halfling balanced on the balls of his feet, like a rabbit ready to run when faced with a predator. His hand hovered over a knife. Raid had watched Uldane collect the blades he’d thrown at the fire elemental. Many of the knives had been irretrievably warped by the heat of the fiery creature, but Uldane still had at least half a dozen hidden about himself.

Raid lowered his axes and straightened. “I’m sorry I had to do that, Uldane. I’ve been watching them. They were plotting against us.”

“No, they weren’t.” Uldane’s jaw tightened and he kicked the bag without looking away from Raid. “With this bag, one person can carry all of the skulls. You were planning this, goblin kisser. You never intended to share the treasure.”

“It’s not a treasure that can be shared.” Raid took a step forward.

The halfling snatched the knife from his belt—and held it over the bag. This time Raid froze. Uldane raised an eyebrow and nodded. “That’s right. I know how these things work. Puncture the bag and you don’t just lose the magic, you lose anything that’s inside.”

Raid stared at him for a moment. “You want to leave? Go ahead.” He took another step, stopping with Dohr’s severed hand at his feet, and pointed an axe at the nearest set of stairs. “I have what I want. Consider your life as payment for your part in getting me here.”

Uldane looked at him carefully for a moment, then moved slowly away from the bag. With a flick of his wrist, he shifted his grip on the knife, ready to throw it.

The instant Uldane’s knife moved in his fingers, Raid dug his toe under Dohr’s hand and kicked it at him.

The knife flashed as Uldane reacted out of instinct. The throw was good. The severed hand tumbled to the ground with the blade transfixing its palm. Uldane grabbed a second knife from a hidden sheath, but Raid was already moving, dashing forward with the speed of a striking serpent to put himself between Uldane and the bag. Rage and excitement flooded him. The smell of Tragent’s blood on his body was heady. A snarl forced its way out of him as he advanced on Uldane, his axes spinning in a deadly blur of steel. The halfling backed away, but slowly, like a cornered animal. Raid wasn’t fooled. When Uldane dove at him, he was ready.

Uldane went low first, trying to get inside his guard. Raid swung an axe down in response and forced him to jump back. A feint made him jump again—there would be no parrying the heavy axes with a slim dagger. The halfling wove to the side and Raid recognized a feint in return. He shifted as if drawn in.

Instead of pressing the attack, Uldane spun and dashed up the stairs. One … two … three vaulting steps, then he kicked up and tumbled back overhead. The move was fast, flashy, and clearly intended to bring Uldane down behind Raid before his opponent could turn to face him.

Raid didn’t try to turn. He just took two swift steps backward.

He caught a glimpse of panic on Uldane’s face, then the halfling was tucking and twisting in mid-air, trying desperately to avoid the spinning death that waited to embrace him. Raid snarled and brought his axes together.

At the last instant, Uldane straightened his body and spun. One axe missed him entirely. The other caught him with the inner hook of its curved blade. The point snagged in his leathers and whipped him aside. Uldane went tumbling across the floor of the platform, his leathers and the flesh beneath torn deep but not so deep as if he’d met the edge of blade.

Raid howled and leaped after him before he could rise. One axe chopped down—and wedged into the stone floor as Uldane rolled away. The other axe came down. Uldane rolled back, bumping into the blade of the first axe.

Raid drew back his foot and kicked. Hard.

The kick lifted Uldane off the floor and sent him flying through the air over the edge of the platform. He crashed back-first into the side of a walkway—Raid heard something inside him go
crack
on the stone—bounced off like a broken doll, and fell out of view. Raid cursed and ran to the edge. If Uldane had landed on stairs or a walkway, he might be able to make an escape.

But the halfling hadn’t landed on stairs or a walkway. Down on the rounded floor of the chamber, green witchfire outlined a small body that lay unmoving. One of Uldane’s arms was twisted unnaturally underneath him. A splatter of blood marked where he had hit the curved wall and a smear showed where he had slid down. There was a matching splatter on the walkway he’d struck. As Raid watched, more blood ran freely from his head and from beneath his torso, black rivulets in the green light. Raid waited. And waited.

There was no movement, no sudden jerking as consciousness returned. Nor, he knew in his gut, would there be.

Raid turned away and wrenched his axes out of the stone. The edges would need work to restore their keen, killing
edges, but he could do that later. He stripped off the dangling chestpiece of his armor and threw it aside, then rooted through abandoned packs in search of a fresh torch. The torches they’d carried into the temple were spent, but his former companions would have no need of light now.

With one torch burning in his hand and a second thrust through his belt, Raid took up the bag. Magic rendered it no heavier than the corpse of an elf, but he could feel the skulls packed inside. He could feel the power and hear the whispers that had frightened Dohr. They didn’t frighten him. They were his destiny.

He felt the gaze of the Eye on him, warm and rewarding. He knew what it wanted. His destiny didn’t lie here in this ancient chamber. His destiny waited for him beyond the temple. Raid heaved the bag onto his shoulder—the weight sent wonderful agony through his burns—and went to meet it.

Behind him, the heart of the Temple of Yellow Skulls lay as still and silent as it had for uncounted centuries.

Until Uldane groaned softly and sat up.

T
he hardest part wasn’t lying still. That was easy. The hardest part was holding on to consciousness—if he let himself slip down into sweet oblivion, Uldane knew, he wasn’t going to climb back up. Raid was watching him. He could hear the big man breathing up on the platform. One careless movement, one moan or sigh, one breath drawn just a bit too deep, and the murderer would come down to finish what he’d started.

“If you can’t run,” one of his old mentors had taught him, “play dead like your life depends on it. It probably will.”

After an eternity, Raid moved. Uldane didn’t. There was rustling on the platform. His imagination filled in details of Raid retrieving a rope and preparing to climb down to check on him; of Raid searching Uldane’s own small pack, finding his hidden store of spare throwing knives, and deciding to put them to use; of the traitor deciding to leave the place tidy and dumping the corpses of his other victims down on top of Uldane.

Instead he heard the click of flint and steel and, a moment later, caught the hot smell of smoke from oil-soaked cloth. Raid had lit a torch.

He wanted a better look.

Stay still. Play dead. Uldane waited, feeling the blood running from his head and his side. His shoulder burned in agony. Better in pain than in the grave.

Up above, Raid just grunted as if hoisting a weight. His footsteps echoed in the chamber, heel-toe-heel-toe across the platform, toe-toe-toe up the stairs. Uldane lay still and listened as Raid made his way up to the doors and out of the chamber.

The doors, he thought. Merciful gods, the doors! If they close behind Raid.…

They didn’t. Raid’s footsteps slowly faded into the distance. There was no groan of ancient hinges, no hollow boom of stone on stone. The chamber was silent. Uldane let it stay that way until he’d counted to one hundred. Slowly. Three times.

Raid was gone. He was alive—for now. He sat up.

The pain reminded him of just how alive he was. Dark spots danced in front of the green witchlight and Uldane almost slipped back down again. He clenched his teeth together, forced himself to stay on his feet, and took stock of his injuries. Head: throbbing and bleeding like a widow’s sympathy from a gash across his scalp, but his skull felt whole. Side: bleeding as well from a jagged tear that was already clotting up and would probably leave an ugly scar. Leathers: ruined. Shoulder: He tried moving his arm and felt a new flare of agony, but there was no grinding of broken bones. Dislocated. Grimly, Uldane staggered down the last bit of the curved wall to the floor of the chamber, then over to one of the massive columns that supported the tangled stairs and walkways above. Fixing
Raid’s loathsome, burned face in his mind, he let all of his rage bubble up to the surface.

“Bastard!” he muttered. He trotted back and forth in front of the pillar, working himself up until he was shaking. “Goblin kisser. Traitor. Knuckle-dragging, wind-breaking, bottom-feeding—
aahh!”
Before he could lose his nerve, he slammed himself hard into the pillar, dislocated shoulder first.

The joint snapped back into place with a soft pop and a burst of pain that sent a wave of darkness over Uldane’s eyes. When it cleared, he found himself on his backside with tears in his eyes.

He let the tears flow. “Stupid,” he said. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” And this time he didn’t mean Raid. Why had he trusted the warrior? Why had he abandoned Shara and Albanon? Just to go off and have himself an adventure? Just to prove something? All he’d proved was that Shara was right.

Stupid. Albanon and Shara were probably hanging around Fallcrest enjoying a beautiful quiet evening—or morning or whatever time of day or night it was.

At least he still had a chance to get back to them. Uldane hiccupped once and wiped the tears from his face. No stairs came down to the floor of the chamber, but the pillar in front of him was rough enough to offer easy climbing to someone sufficiently agile. He turned to face it again and started climbing.

With a weak shoulder, an injured side, and a good amount of his blood smeared on the chamber wall, it wasn’t as easy a climb as he expected, but soon enough he was level with one of the lowest platforms. He climbed a little higher, checked his distance and angle over his shoulder, then thrust himself away from the pillar. His tumbling was awkward, his landing
painful, but when he climbed to his feet, there were stairs to carry him up to the central platform.

The bag with the skulls was gone, of course. Raid had left everything else, though, including his own pack and even half his armor. Tragent and Dohr lay where they had fallen. Uldane touched each of them on the shoulder, offering a silent prayer and an apology that he had to leave them behind. As consolation, however, he also made them a promise.

“Raid will answer for this,” he murmured. “I’ll see to it.”

The bandages that Dohr had dug out for Tragent were useless, soaked in a pool of the half-orc’s blood. Uldane found others in Tragent’s discarded pack, though, along with a couple of intriguing potion vials. For a moment he considered sampling them—a healing potion was an appealing alternative to suffering through his wounds—but he fought the temptation and replaced them. There was every chance that they were something other than healing potions. Curiosity would do him no good now. He had to focus on getting out of the temple. No more stupid things. He stripped off his leathers, washed and bandaged his scalp and side as best he could, then struggled back into his gear. Even with the tear in it, the tight armor would help hold his side together until he could reach help.

He hoped it would, anyway.

Emptying his pack of all but the bare minimum, Uldane slid it across his shoulders and climbed the stairs to the great stone doors. They made no movement as he approached or as he passed through them, as if they somehow recognized that the treasure they’d protected for so long had departed with Raid. Or maybe the power that had opened and closed them had left along with the skulls—certainly the witchlight in the outer passage was fast fading into a dull glimmer. Uldane
took out his moonlight stone and allowed its cool, dim glow to illuminate the darkness.

At least none of his wounds hampered his pace badly. And at least he didn’t need to worry about getting lost. He had a keen memory for directions, maybe the one good side-effect of a compulsive need to explore. Uldane passed through the corridors of the Temple of Yellow Skulls like a ghost, fleeting and silent. He kept his fist tightly clenched around the glowing stone, allowing only a thin moonbeam out to guide his steps. Any more light might draw creatures like the gricks that lived in the darkness and would be more than willing to make a tasty snack out of a wounded halfling on his own.

But beasts weren’t the only danger. Somewhere ahead of him was Raid. How far ahead Uldane couldn’t be certain, but he had a feeling that he might be gaining on the traitor. Raid had no reason to hasten through the temple, and if Uldane struggled with his wounds, Raid would be struggling with the bulk—if not the weight—of the bag containing the golden skulls. As he moved through the darkness, Uldane started to imagine what he might do if he caught up with the treacherous bastard. He was in no shape to stand up to Raid in a toe-to-toe fight. He’d come at Raid from the shadows. Without his armor, Raid’s back would be unprotected. A knife in the base of the spine was risky, but it would bring him down. Then another knife to his throat. Or better yet, some sound to make Raid turn around, then one knife thrown from the darkness into the hollow of his throat or the socket of his eye.…