Assassin of the Damned (Dark Gods)

by Vaughn Heppner

  Something happened to Erasmo in Avignon. He left the priesthood, went to the University of Paris and soon become a noted lawyer. He’d learned clerking in the Church, but he’d read dubious texts and arcane lore stored in Avignon’s catacombs. Men said the pope himself had taken him to task, and the two had spoken privately for hours. After Paris, Erasmo returned to Avignon, where he remained until his mother died. He returned to Perugia for the funeral.

  I’d become prince, and for old time’s sake, I begged him to stay here with his friends. The truth was I could use a keen lawyer. I’d become engaged in the violent struggles between the quarreling city-states of the Romagna, which was part of the Papal States. With the papacy in faraway Avignon, it gave all of us a freer hand, which we freely took.

  To my surprise, he agreed. Then an incident occurred, a small thing. The vortex of these memories remorselessly took me to it.

  ***

  I burst into the upper study, my spurs jangling. I wore a sword, mail and a scowl. Laura, my wife, had wept in my arms. She’d told me how Erasmo had secretly leered at her, how he’d obscenely wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. She’d begged me to dismiss him. When I’d told her to use her haughty airs on him—it was then she’d given me her secret fear. There was something evil in Erasmo, she said. I must rid myself of him today.

  I strode across thick carpets, Persian rugs. Erasmo had followed the newest trend of unhooking the expensive rugs from the walls and using them on the floor. It was a quaint custom. Laura was a true noble, normally sure of herself. Something had keenly upset her regarding Erasmo and I intended finding out what.

  Erasmo sat at an ornate table with an open book. There were hundreds of books around us, a treasure of inked words between thick leather covers or on ancient vellum scrolls. A robin tweeted at the ledge of an open window. Lanterns flickered from several corners.

  I halted before the table.

  Erasmo looked up. He wore thick furs and a velvet hat. A silver chain with a ruby pendant hung from his neck. He had aged poorly for so young a man, becoming heavier than his boyhood frame had suggested. There were circles under his eyes. He had keen eyes, very dark and piercing. That was strange. I thought his eyes used to be blue.

  Erasmo wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. He had a rather disgusting way of doing it. “Milord,” he said.

  “Erasmo,” I began.

  He held up a thin hand, one heavily encrusted with expensive rings. It caused me to tighten my mouth.

  “Do you recall the affair with Velluti?” Erasmo asked.

  I nodded brusquely. Velluti was a village that I’d laid claim to. Clerks in Rome had disputed my claim and now marshaled troops and arguments against it.

  Erasmo tapped the book. “Did you know that the Baglioni line goes back—” he gave me a thin-lipped smile, almost eerie “—it goes back beyond the time of Ancient Rome?”

  I knew there were some preposterous tales. They were old stories told us as children when we’d been bad.

  “Oh, this is very interesting, milord. This is an arcane book filled with ancient lore. Your line—” Erasmo shrugged. “My point, milord, is that Velluti is your old ancestral home. I’m in the process of writing a devastating argument. I can guarantee your victory against Rome and then Velluti will belong to you.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “I’ll need to make a brief visit to Avignon, however. When I return…things will go much differently, I assure you.”

  I frowned, noting something odd in the way he said that.

  “What I’ve learned these past few days,” Erasmo said, “it’s a marvel.”

  “Can you explain?”

  “Will you let me wait until I’m utterly certain, milord?”

  “…Yes, of course,” I said. I owed him.

  “Excellent!” Erasmo said. He snapped the book shut and tucked it away in his fur robes.

  -12-

  Erasmo stayed away in Avignon for two years, although he sent a letter by courier to Rome. I won the village of Velluti through it. After the two years, he returned to Perugia gaunt, with lines in his face, although his limp was hardly noticeable. He bowed and acted courtly whenever Laura entered the room.

  I commented on that.

  Laura laughed with scorn as she brushed her long blond hair in our chamber. She sat on a stool before her mirror. She was imperiously beautiful, my wife.

  “Erasmo’s eyes burn with lust whenever he looks at me,” she said. “He’s a viper. You should drag him to the gallows and—”

  “Madam,” I said. “Please. He is Erasmo della Rovere, my childhood friend. He is a Doctor of Philosophy and a noted lawyer.”

  Laura shook her head. “He hates you. Don’t you understand that?”

  “After all these years,” I said, “his foot seems better.”

  “It was an accident,” she said. “You can’t keep blaming yourself for it.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said.

  Laura lowered her brush and turned to me. “Gian, listen to me.”

  “I wanted to tell you that Erasmo and I are leaving tomorrow night.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “There is a sickness in the city. It could prove deadly. Erasmo showed me in his book that deathbane would cure it. Nothing else seems to.”

  “Where is this ‘deathbane’?” she asked.

  “In a swamp—”

  “Don’t go, Gian. Don’t trust him.”

  “I’m taking a patrol of knights along, madam. There’s nothing to worry about. Do you think I fear Erasmo?”

  “There’s a worm in him, husband. It gnaws at his heart. He plans treachery.”

  “I shall watch him,” I said.

  She stared at me. “At least keep him away from the children.”

  I nodded and decided it was futile to speak any more about this with her. It was perhaps the worst mistake of my life.

  ***

  Erasmo and I waded through that swamp. That had happened a few weeks ago, a few months maybe…before I fell into the enchanted sleep, in any case. I found the wooden altar, the stump of an ancient hangman tree. I inspected the rusty chains. As I did, I heard a rustle of cloth. I turned. With two hands, Erasmo clutched a knotty cudgel. He had a terrible grin on his sweaty face and his black eyes blazed. He swung the cudgel hard against my forehead.

  I woke up groggy, chained upon the stump of a hangman tree. Grotesque creatures like apes cavorted in the wavering torchlight. They whirled and hooted. I thought it a mad dream. But my head throbbed, and then Erasmo in a black robe stepped into view.

  “Gian Baglioni!” he cried.

  A foul taste filled my mouth, and unbidden came the olden tale of our line. There had been one before the time of the Romans and even before the time of the Greeks. He’d lain with a moon maiden. The child of their union had been human like its father, but with cunning like the semi-divine mother. Since that time, went the tale, we had become the Baglioni and had become beloved by the Moon Lady. I’d always thought it a mere story. The old gods of the Greeks, they were myths, nothing more.

  Erasmo spoke differently that night in the swamp, in the grove of hangman trees. He spoke about Old Father Night. He boasted of opened doors, of spells let into our world that had revived the Old Ones. He said the Moon Lady had once spurned Old Father Night. Now the dark god’s favor would turn to him—to Erasmo della Rovere—by sacrificing me.

  “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this night?” Erasmo boasted. “Oh, this is sweet justice, Gian. Sweetness multiplied a thousand times. Do you know what I plan?”

  Chained on the altar, I glared at him. Laura had been right. I’d been a fool. How could I have been so blind?

  “The world is about to change, Gian. You crippled me. Oh, you’ve no idea how long I’ve searched to find a means to heal my foot. You cheated me with that axe blow. Now I’m going to take everything that’s yours. And do you know how I’m going to do it?”

  I kept glaring.

 
; “I’m going to return as you. I’m going to give myself the very image of arrogant Prince Baglioni and then bed your Laura as mine. She won’t spurn me then. And I’m going to kill your children, Gian. Then I’ll sire new babes on Laura, that proud wench.”

  “You’re mad!” I shouted.

  “Look at these creatures. They were men once. I changed them with magic that you can hardly conceive of. The power I’m about to gain…the world is going to change. I shall be its greatest sorcerer, together with other farseeing men.”

  “Other raving lunatics in Avignon!” I shouted.

  “We are men of deep learning,” Erasmo said, “and men of great daring. You are a morsel to please Old Father Night. Then—”

  One of the furry creatures hooted forlornly. I glanced at it, and terror ran up my spine. I recognized it or him. He’d been one of my men-at-arms, one who had openly disliked Erasmo.

  “Men shall grovel before me,” Erasmo boasted.

  I yanked on the swamp-rusted chains. I jerked and thrashed until one snapped and then a second old chain parted.

  “Now we’ll see who laughs last!” I roared, and I began to break the last two chains.

  The manlike creatures fled hooting in terror. Erasmo backed away, picked up a spear and hurled it at me. It sank into my belly. I began to withdraw the spear, my eyes riveted onto Erasmo. He paled and fled with his creatures….

  ***

  A horrible sense of dizziness came upon me. It lifted upward until the sense of “I” moved back into the lump of clay, the lump that was my body. I felt like retching.

  “Darkling! Darkling!”

  I found myself standing before the Pool of Memories. Images faded in the dark waters. I was in the castle. Lorelei shook my elbow.

  “We must leave,” she whispered.

  “I must know what happened next,” I said. “I must look more.”

  “I hear shouts,” she said. “We must flee into the passageway.”

  I ripped my arm free of her grip. I stared into the dark waters. I remembered…I remembered….

  “We must flee,” Lorelei hissed. “The priestess has sent guards. Come now or—”

  I snapped out of my daze. Horror gripped me. I scrambled up the incline. Lorelei scrambled after me.

  “Go,” I whispered.

  We went, hurrying out the same way we had come.

  -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.”