Assassin of the Damned

— 13-

“Where is it?” Lorelei ran her small hands along the wall. She glanced down the spacious corridor. Armor clattered from that direction. Booted feet echoed.

“He’s here,” a woman shouted. It sounded like the priestess, but it was hard to be sure. I’d only heard her when she’d been calm. “Hurry!” she cried. “Capture him.”

The clank of armor intensified. Soldiers shouted. They climbed stairs.

Lorelei snarled a curse and pulled a necklace from a pouch. The ruby on the end began to glow. She aimed the ruby at the wall and somehow focused its hellish light. Faint lines appeared-the outline of a door. Lorelei pressed a point on the wall. Something clicked. The door swung toward us.

“In, in,” Lorelei hissed, and she jumped through.

I followed.

She shouldered me aside and drew the door shut with a snick. Her oval face was pale and perspiration dotted her upper lip. She panted from our run.

I did not pant. I did not breathe. I’d died in the swamp. I had…my brow creased with thought.

“Go,” Lorelei said. She held up the chain and used the glowing ruby like a lantern.

“Hurry!” the priestess shouted from the other side of the wall. Soldiers clanked past, no doubt racing for the Pool of Memories. A flimsy wall was all that protected Lorelei and I from capture.

Trembling, Lorelei headed in the opposite direction. I followed in a daze, less concerned about capture than about what I’d just learned.

A woman in a silver tunic-likely the priestess who now chased us-had whispered in my ear as I’d lain dying. She’d chanted:

‘Darkling, dear.

‘Moon-servant,

‘Die now.

‘Change,

‘And come to Castle Loathing.’

I turned on Lorelei and caught her watching me. We stood in an intersection of passageways. One direction lacked dusty webs, our way earlier. I saw our footprints in the dust. The other directions seemed hoary with age.

“None of this makes sense,” I whispered.

Lorelei lifted an eyebrow. Even in my distress, I recognized that she fought for calm. From the direction we’d fled came thumps. It sounded as if soldiers banged halberds against the wall.

Despite that danger, I waved my hand vaguely. “This newly risen castle with its ancient corridors, a gravedigger paid outrageous sums for corpses, elongated men who race like hounds, and me. I make the least sense. I took a spear in the gut, later a crossbow bolt through the chest. The dead don’t walk and talk. I died, or I think I did.”

“If you wish to tell me what you remember,” Lorelei said, “you may. But I’ll not ask you about it.”

“Saving your last question?” I asked bitterly.

Instead of answering, she slipped the necklace over her head and adjusted the ruby just so.

The weight of my revelations was too much to bear alone. I told her what I’d learned.

“Ah,” she said. “Interesting.”

“Why is it interesting?”

She tapped her cheek, seemed about to speak, hesitated and then spoke smoothly. “I think the priestess cocooned your last spark of life in the coin. A spell of the Moon Lady gave the spark strength.”

I didn’t think that was what Lorelei thought interesting. Still, the idea of my life cocooned in the coin interested me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Why, that the spark remained in the coin while you….”

“Died?” I asked.

“Metaphysics has always bored me,” she said with a shrug.

I took out my coin. Was its glow my last spark of life? If that was true, I dared not lose it. I slapped my chest. If the coin contained my life…then I was alive.

I laughed grimly. “What exactly is a Darkling?” I asked.

“You are.”

I shook my head. “I’m the prince of Perugia. For years, I’ve fended off my neighbors and kept the papal tax collectors at bay. Plagues that devour millions and men with snouts…those are impossibilities.”

“The world you knew is gone,” Lorelei said.

Erasmo had hinted at that. As prince, when I’d breathed, no one went about in wagons collecting the dead as Ofelia had. There had been no riders with snouts. There had been mercenaries and bandits, though. But men transformed into dog-like creatures-

“This must be a nightmare,” I said. “I’m dreaming all this.”

“You’re hearing me but you don’t understand. Doors have opened. Because of this, the Old Ones have awakened with greater power than before. There.…” Lorelei shook her head, jingled her bells. “You’re a Darkling that has momentarily escaped the Moon Lady’s grasp. I find that unique and therefore interesting. Here’s my third question. What are you going to do?”

Moon Ladies, mystic doors-whatever that meant-magic castles that grew, they were too strange. Erasmo della Rovere had tried to sacrifice me to Old Father Night. Erasmo had threatened to rape Laura and slaughter my children.

“I’m going to hunt Erasmo della Rovere,” I said.

“Slay a Lord of Night?” Lorelei asked.

“Is that what he calls himself?”

“It’s what the world calls him and the others.”

I stared at Lorelei. “How can Erasmo have gained these powers? How can castles grow? It’s madness.”

Lorelei seemed indecisive for all of three seconds. “The Old Ones is a good term. In ancient times, men still faintly remembered the bad days that had gone on before. They gave the Old Ones names like Zeus and Artemis. The real Old Ones were worse then the Greek stories of the gods, but time had faded humanity’s collective memory. Before ancient history began, the Old Ones fell asleep. They-Listen, Darkling. Sorcerers and witches have thought through the ages to tap the essence of the Old Ones. But there are darker secrets in this world. There are doors-”

“Erasmo spoke about doors,” I said.

“I think Erasmo and his friends opened one of those doors. They brought something through.” She clutched my forearm. “The Lords of Night are drunk on death. That’s the secret to their power. That’s how they rouse those who should have been left asleep. The chaos, the raw power, released from the Great Mortality-”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s what people are calling the mass dying from plague.”

I asked, “The black growths on armpits and groins?”

“It’s a nasty disease,” Lorelei agreed. “The hideous ways of death and the sheer volume has torn rationality from our world. It has empowered the Lords of Night, made them stronger than kings, more important than-”

Lorelei cringed as axes thudded into a wall. It was a distant sound, but it likely meant the priestess had discovered our secret corridor.

“The arrogant Lords of Night are like all sorcerers and witches,” she said in a rush. “They think to use the Old Ones, to tap their mystical energies like a plowman harnesses oxen to furrow a field. Then they think to pen the oxen, keep them domesticated until they need them again. But the scale of death is simply too great. Their actions have roused the Old Ones. This castle is proof of it.”

“We’d better get out of here,” I said.

Her fingers dug into my forearm. “The Lords of Night are drunk on their undreamed of power. It’s godlike, certainly. But maybe you can help stop it. That knife you picked up is a deathblade. Some of the loosened things are immune to ordinary steel. But they’re not immune to your knife.”

“Let’s go,” I said. “They’re almost in.”

“The Moon is your ally and daylight will be dangerous to you. Remember, you’re the Darkling, the prince of Shadows. You must-”

“I must return to Perugia and stop Erasmo,” I said.

Lorelei looked at me with pity. “You’re no longer the ruler there. You-” She glanced down the passageway. “They’re in. We have to run. Come.”

***

We hurried through the warrens under the castle. That meant we strode through tunnels with mica glittering in Lorelei’s lamplight. It was cold down here and damp. I felt the weight of the Earth over me. It made me hunch my shoulders. This tunnel might collapse as the hole in the cave had when I was nine. Would I linger on now, buried under tons of stone? Would I survive because I needed no air, no food nor water? My footsteps dragged. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go any deeper.

Maybe Lorelei noticed. She stopped and thrust an unlit torch at me. After a moment, I took it.

“I’ll brazen it out with the priestess,” Lorelei said. “But I have to get back to my room now.”

I scowled at my unlit torch. Had we bypassed the beast?

“Darkling,” she said.

I angrily waved the stick of tarred wood. “I can’t go down there.”

“The way is safe,” she said.

“It might collapse.”

“This tunnel has remained for over two thousand years,” she said.

“You can’t know that.”

“But that’s just it,” Lorelei said. “I can.”

I scowled.

She stepped back in alarm.

My shoulders drooped. “Sorry,” I muttered. “I won’t strike you. It’s just-”

“Darkling, do you remember I spoke about a third way?”

I nodded.

“I’m the third way. There are several of us. We’re…we call ourselves the Immortals. We’re not, I suppose. We can all too readily die. But we’ve lived an awfully long time. I’ll try to help you if I can, but part of the way we’ve managed to survive the millennia is by knowing which side to keep on good terms with.”

“Why tell me this?” I asked.

“You’re unique, and the hour is dreadful. Now go. The tunnel will hold, I promise.”

I glanced into the depths. It was damp and cold, and so dark. I quailed at the thought of marching down there.

“Why does the Moon Lady need a Darkling?” I muttered.

“Surely that must be obvious,” she said.

Something boomed above. It might have been a boulder rolled out of the way.

“The Lords of Night will be hunting for you,” Lorelei said. “Because of Magi Filippo’s pendant, they may even know who you are. Trust no one. Be especially careful near Perugia.”

I stared into the depths, hated the idea of going deeper.

Lorelei made a last jingle with her bells. “Let me see your torch.”

I slowly held it up. She touched her lamplight to it. The tarry end whooshed into smelly flame.

“Goodbye,” she said, “and good luck.”

I muttered something. She retreated and soon stepped around a curve. My shoulders hunched. I glanced at the torch. The flame would last so long and no longer. I slid my foot forward, shuffled the other. I needed speed. According to Lorelei, the way was long. I had to gain a march on the priestess and slip past any guards the Lords of Night might have placed on patrol around the castle.

The tunnel narrowed ahead, and it kept going down. My grip tightened and I blinked repeatedly. The time in the hole in the cave, buried under dirt…there had been another incident. I shuddered as I recalled it. The memory brought me to a halt.

It had been in my father’s day. He’d hired out Perugian men-at-arms as mercenaries to a count of Rome. The count had besieged Todi. The men of Todi were hardy soldiers and from upon the walls had jeered the Roman. In his fury, the count had ordered mining operations. He’d put me in charge and ordered us to dig out the rebels.

The count had been a fool. Todi’s soil was rocky. My soldiers had wielded picks and sent a laborious shaft into the earth. I recalled the sweating, the hard work, the foul air that had drifted with tiny particles of rock and dust. It had caught in our lungs. We’d all spat dirt for days. I had gone down with the men because I’d been the commander. The count had sent us wormy wood, which we’d used to shore up the tunnel. The point of the memory was two-fold. The men of Todi had heard our laborious picking. They’d picked a counter-shaft. And in burning torchlight, they’d come upon us.

The screams, the desperate swings, the tight confines, the shove and push, it had been horrible. I’d taken a gash in the arm and lunged at a black-faced miner. I’d shoved a dagger through his ribs. We won that fight. But the next day, the wormy, rotten wood had collapsed ahead of me. The Earth had shaken like a quake, and dust and rocky particles had vomited into my face with a blast of air. I’d joined my men, and we’d dug like dogs to free those trapped ahead, bloodying our fingers.

The collapse had cost me eleven Perugians. And it had stoked my boyhood fear of caves into terror. I’d raged at the count for giving me wormy wood. But what I’d really done was goad him into a towering fury so he’d ordered me home. My father had railed and later, the count of Rome became my worst enemy. Yet none of that had mattered, because I’d escaped the horrid tunnels at Todi. Nothing could have gotten me to go down them again.

My torch crackled. I stood deep in this tunnel under the evil castle of the Moon. My feet had become rooted. Lorelei had left some time ago. For all I knew, the priestess’ guards hurried down here. Maybe the priestess would release the beast.

I glanced over my shoulder in dread. I hated this place.

Erasmo had tricked me into wading into the swamp. Later, he’d told me he would take my guise and my wife. Was his sorcery that powerful? According to Lorelei, the world had changed by what he’d done. I bared my teeth. And I thought of Erasmo lying atop Laura.

“You foul cur,” I whispered. I slid my foot forward. This was worse than waking up with grass through my chainmail. This was worse than being-

“I’m alive!” I hissed. “Now move, Gian.”

What would I do if my torch went out while I was deep under the Earth? I groaned, and I increased my step. It was the best I could manage as I strode deeper into darkness.