The Temple of Yellow Skulls (2 page)

In the shadow of empires, the past echoes in the legends of heroes. Civilizations rise and crumble, leaving few places that have not been touched by their grandeur. Ruin, time, and nature claim what the higher races leave behind, while chaos and darkness fill the void. Each new realm must make its mark anew on the world rather than build on the progress of its predecessors.

Numerous civilized races populate this wondrous and riotous world of Dungeons & Dragons. In the early days, the mightiest among them ruled. Empires based on the power of giants, dragons, and even devils rose, warred, and eventually fell, leaving ruin and a changed world in their wake. Later, kingdoms carved by mortals appeared like the glimmer of stars, only to be swallowed as if by clouds on a black night.

Where civilization failed, traces remain. Ruins dot the world, hidden by an ever-encroaching wilderness that shelters unnamed horrors. Lost knowledge lingers in these places. Ancient magic set in motion by forgotten hands still flows in them. Cities and towns still stand, where inhabitants live, work, and seek shelter from the dangers of the wider world. New communities spring up where the bold have seized territory from rough country, but few common folk ever wander far afield. Trade and travel are the purview of the ambitious, the brave, and the desperate. They are wizards and warriors who carry on traditions that date to ancient times. Still others innovate, or simply learn to fight as necessity dictates, forging a unique path.

Truly special individuals are rare. An extraordinary few master their arts in ways beyond what is required for mere survival or protection. For good or ill, such people rise up to take on more than any mundane person dares. Some even become legends.

These are the stories of those select few …

V
estapalk burned.

He burned with rage. He burned with fever, and fever led him into dreams. Deep within his burning mind, he knew he dreamed, but the tighter he tried to grasp that knowledge, the deeper he slid into delirium. His thoughts condensed and faded like wisps of his venomous breath.

Except for two memories that rose in him again and again.

One was of the faces of the lesser creatures that had dared—
dared
—to stand against mighty Vestapalk. An eladrin wizard and a tiefling warlock. A member of the debased race that claimed to be “dragonborn.” An undead thing that to dragon senses stank of ash and decay. A rat of a halfling.

The face that stood out most clearly in his fevered dreams, though, was the human female who had somehow slipped between his claws time and again. The human female whose sword had torn into Vestapalk’s belly, unleashing a pain like nothing he had ever known.

Vestapalk will kill you all, he promised the visions. Vestapalk will drown you in his poison. Vestapalk will feast on your flesh. Vestapalk will savor the stinging flavor of your tainted meat!

The other memory burned deeper, burned with the savage heat of betrayal. He had been promised power. He had been promised transformation. The signs and omens had been clear. The Herald walked the land with the promise of a new age and the ascendancy of Vestapalk.

The future written in the blood and guts of beasts had guided him to the place of ancient tombs to make the meeting that would raise him above this world. But the Herald had not come. Vestapalk had found only his own end. Death circled like a cowardly scavenger of carrion, waiting for him to falter.

Vestapalk would not suffer its approach easily. In his dream, he raised his head to the shadows of the crevasse that might yet become his grave and roared, “
Vestapalk will not be forsaken!”

And in the darkness, the Elemental Eye opened.

The first time the Eye had looked on Vestapalk, he had been young, barely grown into maturity, his green scales still soft. Another dragon had claimed territory that Vestapalk desired. Vestapalk had triumphed, of course, but among the spilled organs of his enemy, he had seen the first hints of a future that was greater than a mere stretch of forest and hills. It had frightened him—before the Eye, even mighty Vestapalk could admit fear—but it had lured him as well. In the years since, he had followed those signs, catching glimpses of the Eye now and again in his dreams, each time thrilled and terrified by the power that it promised.

With the end near, there was no place for fear. Vestapalk howled his rage at the Eye, its dark pupil eternally consuming the fire and lightning, the crackling frost and the thundering earth,
that swirled around it. “Where is the Herald?” he screamed. “Where is the new age?” He slashed his talons at the unblinking Elemental Eye, but came no closer to it than a worm might come to the moon. “Where is Vestapalk’s transformation?”

For the first time, the Eye answered him. “It has already begun.”

The voice of the Eye was as ponderous as thunder trapped in a cavern and as fine as the sharp edge of broken glass. It was hollow; it was full of the howls of a thousand lunatics. The voice fell on the dragon like a weight, pressing down Vestapalk between one breath and the next, leaving him no room to roar or scream or even mewl like a hatchling. Yet there was no anger in the Eye’s answer to his challenge, only a display of such vast might that Vestapalk knew instantly that whatever power he had ever hoped to gain paled beside it.

But the power was contained. Imprisoned. And so incredibly distant that Vestapalk could have flown for his entire life, could have soared among the silver clouds of the Astral Sea for the lifetime of a hundred dragons, and never reached it. The long gaze of the Eye was its only touch upon the world, and for now that gaze rested on Vestapalk.

If he could have preened, he would have. He, Vestapalk, was favored beyond all the creatures of this realm—

The weight of the Eye lifted from him. Disdain entered its voice. “There are others.”

Knowledge crept over Vestapalk, as if each word spoken by the Eye carried more information than a lesser voice could convey. The Eye had spoken to others in the past and might speak to others yet in the future. Its gaze swept the world. Vestapalk felt a fleeting awareness of beings, perhaps not so favored as him but still working as the Eye willed, whether
they knew it or not. The Herald—a presence on the edge of Vestapalk’s awareness, closer than he might have guessed but like him brought low—was one. And another, too, drawing nearer. One that Vestapalk would meet.

“No,” said the Eye. “One that Vestapalk
must
meet. The One Who Gathers.”

The dragon felt himself swept up in the Eye’s gaze. The tiny section of the world that lesser creatures called the Nentir Vale whirled beneath him until he was looking down on a place of ancient ruins. For a moment, the Eye simply held him there—then it turned away, its great voice fading to an echo.

Vestapalk fell back into himself with the will of the Eye ringing through him. The vision of the ruins had been little more than a glimpse, but it was clearer than any the Eye had granted him before. Certainty thundered upon Vestapalk. He knew in his bones where he would find those ruins—and what he would find there. Among those ruins, the Gatherer would come to him. Among those ruins, the will of the Eye would be brought forth and a new age born.

Among those ruins, Vestapalk would come into the power that was destined to be his! Roaring with triumph and desire, the dragon spread his wings and launched himself into the air.

Or tried to. However clear his vision might have been, however strong his will, his body remained broken. Vestapalk shrieked as one of his legs collapsed beneath him and the muscles anchoring a wing tore apart. The dragon tried again, though, fighting to rise toward his vision.

He couldn’t. The rocky floor of the crevasse slammed into him. Pain seared his wounds. For the first time, the fever that consumed him eclipsed his rage. He felt a warm trickle as venom and perhaps blood dripped and pooled beneath his jaw.

But underneath the rage and the pain, something stirred—and spoke, not from across a vast distance but seemingly from within him, as if his fever had acquired a voice.

Vestapalk carries the seed. Vestapalk carries the Voidharrow
.

“Who are you?” Vestapalk wasn’t certain if he growled the words aloud or merely thought them. Either way, there was no answer, only the burning that was slowly, inevitably consuming him.

Changing him.

New fire woke in the dragon’s belly. The Herald had not come, but the Herald’s purpose had been fulfilled. A transformation had been promised to Vestapalk. Perhaps it had not come as he had expected—but as the Eye had said, it had begun.

The new age had not yet been born, but soon it would be.

The seething anger that had burned in Vestapalk’s throat slid forward, emerging as a dry rasp of laughter.

“M-master?”

A thin hissing voice rose, tentative but concerned, and also, Vestapalk realized, entirely outside of his own mind. He opened an eye and fixed it on the cringing, reptilian form of a kobold wyrmpriest. His wyrmpriest, or so Tiktag had declared himself. Vestapalk’s laugh faded into a long, shuddering breath.

Tiktag stepped forward. “I will watch over you, master. I will care for you. You will be strong again!”

Vestapalk tried to snarl, to prove his strength, but it came out as a wracking cough. He settled back onto the rocky ground. The lord of the new age—watched over by a kobold. The transformation could not come quickly enough. Vestapalk’s eye sagged shut. Fever-sharp dreams of the world that would be his closed over him, whispering one last word into his mind.

Voidharrow
.

U
ldane hopped up into a chair and leaned over the table. “Have a look at what I found,” he said. The halfling held out a dagger, a fine weapon long enough that it verged on being a short sword. The steel blade had acquired a fine sheen from long and careful honing, but faint and elegant curves of Elven script inlaid into the metal were still visible close to the hilt. The pommel was elf-work, too, an intricate knot of carved ivory long since yellowed from age and handling.

The sight of it made a mist of ale spew from Albanon’s mouth. As other patrons of the Blue Moon Alehouse looked around at the sound—seldom heard in one of Fallcrest’s better drinking establishments—he threw one of his robe’s broad sleeves over the dagger. “Went down the wrong way,” he said by way of excuse, mopping at his mouth with the other sleeve. When they turned away again, he bent his head closer to Uldane’s. “Tell me you really just ‘found’ this,” he whispered.

“Of course I did.”

“And nobody else had it when you found it?” Albanon asked pointedly.

“Well, I suppose you could say that. It’s not like he was using it, though.” Uldane turned in his seat and pointed across the room. Albanon choked and snatched at his hand, but Uldane just twitched it out of the way. “Easy there,” he said. “Nobody likes a grabby eladrin.”

“I know who it belongs to.” Albanon looked around, allowing the long silver hair that he normally tucked back behind his pointed ears to fall forward over his eyes. Through its screen, he found a heavyset man with wolf-gray hair, a coarse face, and a so-far-unnoticed empty sheath on the belt that was looped over the back of his chair. “That’s Kossley Varn, one of the richest farmers around Fallcrest. He’s
rich
, influential, and
not
someone we want to have mad at us.” Trying to keep the dagger hidden, Albanon slid it back to Uldane. “You have to put it back.”

“But I just took it!” The halfling stared at him with big, pleading eyes. “At least tell me what the writing on it says. You can read Elven, right? If it’s on a dagger, it must be something good.”

Albanon had never figured out the vulnerability humans and other races had to the wide-eyed expressions of children and halflings—eladrin eyes were solid orbs of color without whites, irises, or betraying pupils—but faced with Uldane, he could almost understand it. He hardened his heart. “It says ‘Put me back!’ ”

Uldane made a sulking noise of disappointment and slid out of his chair, dagger tucked along the inside of his arm. He paused to look back up at Albanon. “I don’t see why you’re afraid of a farmer,” he said a little too loudly. “After all, you killed a dragon.”

He turned away and marched off into the crowd, leaving Albanon to face the stares of the townsfolk and farmers crowding the alehouse. “He’s … exaggerating,” the eladrin said. “You know halflings.”

Most of the audience turned away—revealing a number of halflings, traders from boats that plied the Nentir River. Albanon winced, but they just turned away, too. Whispers and furtive glances gave away traders, townsfolk, and farmers alike, however. They hadn’t lost interest in him, not by the length of an arrow’s flight on a windy day. He grimaced, picked up his tankard, and tried to lose himself in his ale.

If only they really were just curious at the idea that he’d killed a dragon. Or if only they actually believed it. Albanon had an unpleasant certainty that it was just one more suspicion for the people of Fallcrest to hold against him. Bad enough that he was one of the very few eladrin in Fallcrest or the surrounding area. Even after living in the town for seven years he still felt out of place. Bad enough that as a wizard, even one barely out of his apprenticeship, the dangerous spells at his command set him apart. Bad enough that he’d taken up with adventurers like Uldane. People liked hearing stories of wild exploits and they were eager enough for the help of adventurers when there were dangers to face, but to have them idle around the town was something else. As he’d overheard the baker telling her husband when she thought Albanon had been unable to hear, “Well, they’re just not normal
folk
, are they?”

All of that was bad enough without the additional suspicion that he’d murdered his master, Moorin of the Glowing Tower. Torn the old wizard apart and left pieces of him scattered around the chamber at the top of his tower, if some of the rumors his sharp ears had caught were to be believed.

The rumors were right about the manner of Moorin’s death—the town’s guards had loose lips—but Albanon certainly hadn’t been the one to do it. His master’s murder had, however, led him directly into the company of the band of adventurers he was now proud to call his friends. The tiefling, Tempest, and the dragonborn, Roghar, had joined him in the pursuit of the true killer, a weird crimson and silver blob of a creature that called itself Nu Alin and was capable of possessing the bodies of others. When Nu Alin had seized control of Tempest, Albanon and Roghar’s efforts to rescue her had brought them to Uldane and his companions, Shara, a warrior, and Erak, an undead servant of the god of death and fate, as well as the young cleric, Falon, and the old dwarf, Darrum.