The majority of the adventure takes place in the waterless wastes
of the ominously-named Desert of Skulls. The book begins with the wizard Yaztromo
(who first appeared in The Forest of Doom)
hiring the hero to thwart the plans of the sorcerer Malbordus, the so-called ‘Storm
Child’. The evil sorcerer’s power is reaching its zenith, and all he needs to lead
his army of conquest across Allansia are five Dragon artefacts which lie hidden
within the lost city of Vatos.
Vatos was named after a small beach resort in Corfu where Livingstone had holidayed more than once, hence it being used as the name of a lost city swallowed by sand. As well as its desert setting, the book is particularly memorable for its introduction of the lethal Messenger of Death.
“I was dealing with Ian,” Achilleos recalled in 2014, “and he
called me and said, ‘I’m going to leave it to you to design me the creature for
this new book I’m writing. I’m going to tell you the scene and you come up with
the creature, because you probably don’t need guidance on this from someone like
me.’ And I said, ‘That sounds great, yeah. Then you can describe it from my painting.’
“It was a guardian of this gate, and it was a desert scene –
a city half buried under sand – so I designed this creature that lies in wait, buried
under the sand... It was something I’d seen in a wildlife programme, these desert
snakes that hide in the sand and just have their eyes out and then they pounce on
you. So I imagined the same creature sort of lying in wait for someone to try and
pass the gate. I drew that and he was delighted with it. In fact, he bought the
original from me.”
You can find out more about Chris Achilleos' contributions to the Fighting Fantasy series in Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy, by Sir Ian Livingstone and FF author and historian Jonathan Green.
You'll just have to wait and see...
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