The Temple of Yellow Skulls by Don Bassingthwaite

Author:Don Bassingthwaite [Bassingthwaite, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-7869-5898-6
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2011-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

When Raid drew the skull from the bag, sound came with it. The dry whispers that had filled the underground chamber rose to spill through the courtyard. The sound should have been lost in the open air, but if anything it seemed more intense. There was madness in it, and hatred. The power of the skulls flowed out of the bag like anger flowed from a blind warrior waving his sword in the middle of battle—ready to strike at anything that came within reach.

Uldane wanted to clap his hands over his ears to block it out, but he felt frozen with shock and horror. The dragon who had killed his friends and the man who had almost killed him were working together? Had Raid been working with Vestapalk the whole time? No, he couldn’t have been. When Vestapalk had pounced on Raid, Uldane had felt certain for a moment that he was about to bite off Raid’s head. That wasn’t the greeting of allies.

But dragon and hunter had just stared at each other, then Vestapalk had let Raid go.

And Raid was offering the dragon one of the temple’s golden skulls. Uldane saw Vestapalk’s eyes flicker. His neck stretched out and his nostrils flared as he sniffed at the skull. The rage of the whispers grew.

Vestapalk smiled. His body relaxed, wings folding in against his sides. Raid raised the skull from the bag a little higher. A note of fear and uncertainty seemed to enter the whispers.

The dragon’s mouth narrowed into a thin gap and his chest expanded as he drew a long, slow breath.

One of the whispers broke and rose into a terrified, muffled scream. Uldane stared as a shimmering radiance—faint at first, then stronger—streamed from the skull into Vestapalk’s mouth. The screaming climbed higher and higher.

Vestapalk’s eyelids drooped and he released his breath with a little sigh. He sagged back like a fat man after a meal. The scream ended suddenly. The whispering voices fell silent. Some of the luster had faded from the skull in Raid’s hand. Uldane thought that he could even hear a faint whimper coming from it. For a moment it was the only sound in the courtyard.

Until Vestapalk hissed and stiffened. He shuddered, then suddenly roared and collapsed to the ground, thrashing as if fighting some internal battle.

The rakshasa prince, Raid had said, stripped the demons of their vital essences, binding the mighty beings to an eternity of servitude. And Vestapalk had drawn some of that essence into himself.

Uldane stared at the writhing dragon. And at Raid, who had leaped cleared of Vestapalk’s thrashing and stood with his back to Uldane’s perch. The halfling was abruptly aware of the weight of the almost-forgotten knife in his hand. Raid was still too far to kill with a single cast, but not so far that a throw couldn’t cripple. He could take Raid down while he was distracted, finish him, then maybe take on Vestapalk while he fought whatever he’d consumed. If he could stay on

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