The Temple of Yellow Skulls (17 page)

Kri was silent for a moment before he said quietly, “If we’re lucky, yes.”

The sound of the stone stopped. Even Splendid, stretched out close to the heat of the flames, lifted her head to look at Kri. “If we’re lucky?” Shara asked.

Albanon’s jaw clenched so tight his teeth hurt. “You need to tell us everything, Kri.”

“Ioun teaches that we can tell only what we know; all I know comes from the histories of my order, and those are thin.” The cleric tossed his stick into the fire and sat back. “In a time when the Empire of Nerath was still at the height of its glory, two groups of heroes found their quests coming together—much as the search for Moorin’s killer and the search for revenge on Vestapalk brought you two together. Both groups sought a
mad man, one for what he had done, the other for what he would do. When their quests led them from this world into the silver wastes of the Astral Sea, the groups joined forces to hunt down the mad man and his followers. That mad man’s name was Albric—Albric the Accursed, as he is remembered in the histories.”

“Nu Alin,” said Albanon. “You said that was his name before he became … what he is.”

Kri nodded. “In the Astral Sea drift the domains of the gods, as well as the remains of shattered domains destroyed or devastated during the Dawn War between the gods and the Primordials. Albric and his followers traveled to one of these empty realms and there attempted to break open the prison of one of the great evils locked away during those ancient times. The heroes arrived and interrupted their plans, but not before something had slipped through: a quantity of red, crystalline liquid. And that was when the heroes witnessed the power of what they would come to know as the Voidharrow.”

“Albric and his followers were in the throes of the plague when the heroes caught them—still partly mortal beings, already changing into something else. I can’t do justice to the words of the histories, but they became grotesques. As the heroes fought them, they transformed into creatures of tremendous power. Albric became the bodiless creature we know as Nu Alin. The others who were exposed to the Voidharrow changed in different ways. The heroes managed to defeat them all, though not without cost to themselves. One of their number was lost through a portal opened by Albric as part of his scheme. Another was possessed by Nu Alin but gave his life so that the monster might be contained. In the end, however, the heroes were left in possession of the last of the Voidharrow carefully collected
into three crystal vials—but with no knowledge of what it truly was. No sage they consulted had ever seen or heard of such a substance. The servants of the gods, called on through the most powerful of rituals, were silent. The Voidharrow was a mystery save for what they had witnessed themselves. They didn’t even know what to call it. The surviving heroes knew it was dangerous and so they became the Order of Vigilance, sworn to protect the mysterious substance and keep it from any who might attempt to misuse it. For generations, the Order kept the vials safe while we searched for clues to what it was, where it came from, or even what sort of demons Albric and his followers were transformed into. Curiosity overcame the fear that nagged at Albanon. “Did you find any?”

“If we had, do you think we would be sitting here today?”

“Ah.” Albanon felt his face turn warm with embarrassment. “Right.”

“If it was so dangerous, why didn’t they just destroy it?” asked Shara.

Kri bent his head toward her. “A more sensible question. They tried—and discovered that when the gods themselves have nothing to say, wise mortals should remain silent as well. Do you know the red ebarri plant? The leaves are irritating on their own, but burn them and the smoke will sicken anyone who breathes it and the ashes are a deadly poison.” His expression grew taut. “When it seemed that all possibilities for investigation had been exhausted, a member of the Order named Dravit Nance proposed attempting to destroy a quantity of the Voidharrow. After much debate, his proposal was approved. Dravit took one of the vials into the wilderness, removed a portion of its contents, and attempted a ritual that he believed would safely incinerate the Voidharrow.”

“It didn’t,” Shara guessed.

“It didn’t. Nor was Dravit so isolated as he thought. His ritual only vaporized the Voidharrow and it drifted on the wind—right into a small settlement.” Kri touched his holy symbol. “In trying to destroy the Voidharrow, Dravit unleashed it. He tried to summon the Order for help, but it was too late. All the Order could do was keep the village quarantined and watch as the disease spread from person to person. We gained valuable insight into the effects of what we had so carefully guarded—its name at the very least, babbled by the villagers in their suffering—but at the price of more than three dozen innocent lives. And Dravit’s. He died a demon, infected in the final cleansing of the village. The Order ruled that it was safer to preserve the Voidharrow than make any further attempt to destroy it. The two remaining vials were separated. One went into the distant east with its keeper. The other, passed from guardian to guardian, ended up with Moorin.”

The cleric sighed. “And now Vestapalk has been exposed to the Voidharrow. A dragon. There’s no indication in the histories of the Order of how the Voidharrow might affect a creature of such power. That Sistree considered exposure to the plague a blessing is a bad sign. It suggests that he knew something was happening and that Vestapalk
deliberately
infected the kobolds.” Kri steepled his fingers before his face and rested his forehead on his fingertips. “The histories of the Order say that the disease passed easily from person to person through wounds, but there’s no indication that infection was intentional. Vestapalk is acting differently from those infected with the Voidharrow in the past.”

“Could he be trying to carry on what Nu Alin started, releasing that imprisoned evil?” Albanon asked. The words
were hardly out of his mouth before another thought occurred to him. “Nu Alin! We drove him off, but we weren’t able to kill him. If he’s still alive, maybe he’s the one Vestapalk went to find. Maybe he’s the Gatherer.”

Kri’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps,” he said, “but keep an open mind. The Gatherer could be someone else. A third being. As for your first question, I don’t know. It’s possible, as anything is possible. There have been some among the Order who suggested that Albric’s intention in the Astral Sea was never to free the imprisoned evil. He only wanted to obtain the Voidharrow. If that’s true, he succeeded long ago.”

“What do we do now then?”

The cleric looked into the fire, silent for a moment before he said, “Our mission hasn’t changed; it’s just become more urgent. We do what we came here to do. We find Vestapalk and learn what changes the Voidharrow has wrought in him.” He looked up at Shara. “I assume you don’t have a problem with that.”

“Whatever Vestapalk is doesn’t change what he’s done.” Shara swung her sword over her shoulder and guided it into its sheath. “I’m with you.”

Kri nodded and looked to Albanon.

The eladrin felt his mouth go dry, but he nodded and asked “Where do we start?”

“We return to Fallcrest and Moorin’s tower,” said Kri. “Vestapalk could have gone anywhere, but we have to begin somewhere. Fallcrest is as good a place as any.”

“We can find Uldane,” Shara said. “He’ll want to join us—and I want him at my side.” She stood up and stretched. “And if we have to travel anywhere else, I want four people to split the night watch instead of three. I’ll take the third watch. Who’ll take the first?”

Kri took it. As Shara and Albanon banked the fire for the night and settled into their bed rolls, the cleric moved a little way off to better see in the night. Before he gave himself over to a restful trance, Albanon watched Kri for a time. Watched the old man look to the heavens, one hand rubbing the holy symbol around his neck, and wondered what it was like to spend a lifetime preparing for something terrible and then have it come to pass.

With a tremble, Albanon hoped that he’d have the chance to live so long.

R
aid eased his head over the edge of the stone railing that separated the gallery from the larger hall below. A massive statue depicting a powerful man with the head of a tiger and backward-facing hands—a rakshasa—dominated the hall. The carved stone shone with the soft, red light of some ancient magic. Under that ruddy glow, slim figures worked at shifting the remains of one collapsed wall. The light made skin black as night seem even darker, rendered white eyes gleaming red, and turned white hair into blood-colored manes above gracefully pointed ears.

“Drow,” murmured Raid.

“I told you so,” said Uldane. The halfling’s tone was careless but his voice was no louder than Raid’s. He had to stand on his toes to look over the railing. “You know, I’ve always wondered why people call them dark elves—with eyes and hair like that, they look much more like eladrin.”

“They’re both originally creatures of the Feywild,” Raid said without thinking, then immediately clenched his teeth
and grimaced. Just five days of travel and he’d grown far too accustomed to the halfling’s fleeting attention span and endless babble. He forced his eyes back to the drow below. “They’re not supposed to be here.”

“No, I suppose not, but I’ve always heard that after they were exiled to the Underdark from the Feywild—”

Raid fixed him with a cold glare. Uldane blinked. “Oh, you mean they’re not supposed to be here in the Temple of Yellow Skulls.”

He didn’t dignify that with a response.

There had been no difficulty reaching the temple from Fallcrest. The King’s Road had taken them west from the town until Raid had found the landmarks he sought and led his companions off the road into the wilderness. Above ground, the Temple of Yellow Skulls didn’t look like much. Uncounted centuries had reduced it to overgrown rubble that moaned with the wind. Its true secrets lay beneath the surface, protected from the elements. The upper passages had become animal dens and the haunt of treasure seekers, but as they’d made their way deeper into the structure, wonders of the ancient architecture presented themselves. Wall carvings of uncanny beauty and dark subjects. Columns that bulged in flawless, if inhuman, proportions. Objects of subtle magic that were, like the statue, too large to have been carted off by previous visitors. Whenever Uldane scouted ahead, Raid was left with a nagging suspicion that he might not come back—not because he’d fallen victim to some hidden danger but simply because of his own boundless curiosity.

This time the halfling’s scouting had paid off. In the years that had passed since he’d first received a vision of the Elemental Eye, the Chained God had come to Raid in waking dreams
numerous times, granting him guidance and inspiration when he needed it most. Key to that guidance were visions of the subterranean passages of the Temple of Yellow Skulls. In his mind’s eye, Raid had passed through these halls a dozen times. He knew the way to the golden treasure. He knew the dangers. There should have been nothing unexpected standing in his way.

The drow had not been a part of his dreams.

And yet here they were. Anger at their presence, their interference with his plans, boiled up inside him. Raid held back his anger and let it tickle the edges of his mind while he studied the drow. There were about a dozen of them, some shifting rubble, a couple consulting scrolls, others standing watchfully with hands on their weapons. “It must be an exploration party,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“There are no slave takers. When drow hunt slaves they come ready for it. And a border patrol wouldn’t be stopping to dig up a fallen wall.” He looked back to the drow. They were a mixed group, some looking wildly excited, some looking utterly bored. Some were heavily armed, others not. He spotted a female with a whip riding on her hip and the spiders that the drow considered holy decorating her armor. A priest of Lolth, he was certain. A least one of the male drow carried a greatsword of such eerily black metal and weird jagged design that it made his skin crawl with suspicion. Such blades were often favored by warlocks.

“I’ll bet there are caves below these passages that lead all the way to the Underdark,” said Uldane. “Maybe the drow have heard about the golden skulls, too. Are we close to them?”

Raid nodded to a narrow passage that lay just at the edge of the dim light shed by the statue. “We need to go that way.”

Uldane winced and slid back down below the wall. He looked up at Raid. “I might be able to sneak through and you can be really quiet when you want to be, but I think the two of us would have a hard time getting across that hall. Tragent and Dohr definitely wouldn’t make it, and that’s a lot of drow for the four of us to fight.”

The lust to make the attempt knotted inside Raid’s chest. His hand crept toward one of his axes. He forced it to remain still and dropped below the wall as well. It pained him to admit it, but the halfling was right. “Let’s get back to Tragent and Dohr. We’ll have to find another way.”

They crept out of the gallery and into the dark passages beyond. Once there was no chance of being spotted from the hall, Uldane took out a stone that shone like moonlight and let its cool glow illuminate their way. The light of the torches that lit the chamber where they’d left Dohr and Tragent was a welcome brilliance.

“Well?” asked Tragent.

“Drow,” said Raid. “Too many. We’ll go around.”

The swordsman’s face tightened. “You’re certain there’s a way?”

“We’ll find one.”

“You’re confident for someone who’s never been here before,” Dohr said. “You walk these passages like you know them.”

“We’re not the first ones to come here, Dohr,” said Uldane blithely. “There must be maps and journals if you know where to look. In fact, I know an old man in Winterhaven who just lives to collect stories from adventurers—”

“Uldane,” Raid said, cutting him off. Then he looked to Dohr and met the half-orc’s gaze directly. “You doubt me?”

Tragent answered for his companion. “These drow are the first problem we’ve encountered. It’s been too easy.”