Assassin of the Damned (Dark Gods)

by Vaughn Heppner

  “You spoke about my father. He begged me to stop. And once he realized I despised his advice, he tried to free the plague before I could drag it to our Earth. The plague was in a lead casket, a forgotten doom, I suppose. It had never been used on this wretched Earth. We had gone through Hell to find it and had slain an ancient guardian to make it ours—mine! But I didn’t need him anymore. He’d served his purpose. So I killed him, staked him in the sand as a marker and created a spell to blow off whatever drifted onto him. Do you know why I refused his cries of mercy?”

  “Come whisper it in my ear,” I said.

  “He made me accept your apology after you’d maimed me with your axe. He shouldn’t have done that, Gian.”

  I’d never reach him. So I raised myself from the floor, picked up a stone and heaved. He grunted, and staggered against the wall. I’d aimed at his head but hit his chest. Only having a single eye had marred my accuracy.

  He raised a hand and panted a chant. I groped for another stone. The cave shook as I grasped it, and the cave above me collapsed. With a horrible shushing sound, tons of sand poured down. Like a giant fist, it smashed, pinned and then buried me alive.

  Only vaguely, did I hear Erasmo or even understand. It came as if from far away.

  “Burning to death is agony. But for you, Gian, lingering in deathlessness buried alive is worse.” He might have stamped upon my tomb. “Think on that, assassin.”

  ***

  I struggled for mastery of my terrorized emotions. My flesh throbbed with searing hurt, and my worst fear had arrived. I think I screamed. Sand filled my mouth. Sand surrounded me. I could not move.

  In the blackness, in my tome, the fiery pain eventually dwindled to gray agony. I had no idea the length of time that took. I was alone, trapped beyond anyone’s help. I wanted to weep. Erasmo surely hurried to the door to Earth. He would shut it, lock it and resume being me as a Lord of Night. I’d miserably failed. The Moon Lady’s assassin, the killer in the dark, the famed Darkling—it was a moronic jest.

  I tried to thrash. It was impossible. There was no air to scream. I was as good as a corpse, and on a dead world. I should have struck first, not talked. I’d tried to be clever. Successful assassins were ruthless. I’d acted more like a knight, a prince.

  With a wrench of will, I shook out those thoughts. I had to act. Act? What could I do?

  With all my strength, I tried to heave upward. Blackness threatened my coherence. I relaxed as much as a man could with horrible burns. Was this it then?

  I tried to wriggle my fingers. One moved! Hideous excitement almost overcame me. Concentrating, it was terribly difficult, I began to dig with a slow rotation of my hands. Torments threatened my thoughts. They came as fears, pain and a mindless yammering that almost destroyed my focus. Digging was tediously slow. So would be a recounting of it. Eventually, like a grave worm, I slithered out of the sand and into the trembling cave.

  It reminded me that outside striking comets blew sand everywhere. I cackled laughter, and spat out dirt. Did I really think I could find Erasmo’s tracks? And what did it matter if I could? I might have traded my soul to the Moon Lady if she could have helped me then. I didn’t want to die on a strange Earth, a dead world waiting for its final destruction. I was an alien here. If I died, would I go to its Hell or Heaven?

  Died! I cackled more mad laughter. Then I snapped my mouth shut.

  “Crawl, Gian. Keep fighting.”

  I wanted to hoot derision at myself. Instead, I dragged my battered torso toward the cave entrance. During the journey, I discovered that my left eye had indeed burned out. I refused to touch my face after that and learn the full extent of the burns. My forearms looked hideous enough.

  The cave threatened to collapse each time a comet hit. Erasmo must have weakened it when he’d sent all the sand on me. Finally, however, I emerged into the moonlight. If it had been day, I knew I’d have been dead.

  Unfortunately, this world’s moon lacked the same recuperative powers of mine. Had there ever been a Moon Lady on this Earth? Still, there must have been something. I gained a perceptible amount of strength and greater clarity of thought.

  I used a boulder and dragged myself to my feet. I felt like a reed in a storm, and I began to lurch, dragging my gamey leg, the one shot in the thigh by a crossbow bolt.

  The climb upslope was an epic struggle. The salty desert with Erasmo’s outline tracks caused me to sink to my knees. I shuffled forward like that, tried to climb to my feet and found myself sprawled on my belly. I crawled and comets blazed overhead. Hot air shrieked and made my burns relive their agony. It was then I realized this was Hell. Erasmo had lied. Lorelei had lied. Others Earths—they’d thought me a fool. Everyone has sought to use me. I roared curses. I raved and slammed my fists in the sand. The ground trembled, and it was only by degrees that I realized a comet had done that. As hot air shrieked its mockery, I fought to my feet. I swayed, and before I fell, I lurched in the direction of the tracks.

  Time blurred and the comets seemed like demons howling at my stupidity. Somehow, I would get even.

  I stopped and blinked gritty eyeballs. The tracks had disappeared. There was just shifting sand. It was time to hurl my coin as faraway as I could. Maybe my soul would find its way back. But for me—

  A last rational part wondered if I’d passed the door. With agonizing slowness, I turned and shuffled back, following my tracks. I examined the ground like a lover memorizing a maiden’s face. The ground trembled. I swayed, and then I saw it: a faint paw print.

  Oh, you clever schemer. Erasmo must have removed the spell from his father’s corpse.

  I looked around, saw nothing new but refused to panic. I needed wits, strength and the luck of the damned, whatever that was. I pitched down my pouch of throwing stones. Then I shuffled around it in a widening circle. After the third circuit, I noticed a hump of sand. I thumped to my knees and dug, and I found Erasmo’s father.

  I waited until a comet blazed and I saw the haze of the door. I laughed. It was a crazed thing. Maybe Erasmo had set a trap in our Earth. Maybe he had locked the door. I crawled on my knees to the hazy image. What would happen if he’d locked it? Did it matter? I struggled to my feet, staggered and hurled myself through.

  -21-

  There was an awful moment of stretching, as if a judge had chained my ankles and wrists to separate teams of horses, and the horses stained to tear me in two. I writhed in agony. Then my head struck wood. That deflected me. I struck something else, staggered and pitched onto my face in dreadful blackness.

  I groaned. Erasmo had laid a trap. He was a sorcerer, a tricky card player. Here is the king of diamonds. Now it’s the queen of hearts. Here is the door to Earth. Now it’s the door to a dark prison. He had outthought me at every turn. He—

  I heard something stir. With my charred fingers, I groped for my deathblade. It was almost pathetic how hard I clung to life. Was a beast in my cell here with me?

  Hellish red light appeared. I snarled and tried to lift myself off the floor.

  “Darkling!”

  I blinked my good eye, confused. Images blurred before me.

  “By the moon, you’re burned.”

  Behind the hellish light, I spied elfin features. They eloquently spoke of horror and pity.

  I tried to speak.

  Lorelei knelt beside me, and her hand dipped toward my face, hesitated, dipped closer and then hovered. She clutched her shining ruby in her other hand.

  “You’re too big for me,” she said. “You’ll have to crawl.”

  A whispering laugh was all I could manage. I was too ghastly to touch. She was too dainty to dirty her fingers on the likes of me. I couldn’t fathom her presence here.

  I began to slither, using my burnt elbows to propel myself an inch at a time. The passage through the door had stolen most of my remaining strength. I despised my groans. I lost the ability to sense my surroundings. I crawled because it was my only meaning. I crawled because Erasmo had lured me to
a swamp and there had stabbed me in the guts. He’d left me for dead and others had sought to use that. I crawled because instead of burning me, he had buried me because he had once seen tears in my eyes. Erasmo had beaten me too many times. If I stopped, he won everything.

  But I didn’t stop. I crawled past barrels in a cellar. I crawled up stairs, through corridors.

  “That way, Gian,” someone shouted. “No. Left, left, your other left.”

  I crawled blindly and spilled down steps, and I felt cooling rays upon my face. I lay as one dead and soaked the rays. It gave me peace. It eased my hurts.

  “Darkling, you must crawl back into the shop. If you draw upon too much of the Moon Lady’s power at once, she’ll be able to trap your will.”

  I struggled up, leaning against the Alchemist Shop. Moonbeams still bathed me. I had no idea how long I’d been lying here.

  Lorelei crouched nearby, with concern upon her face. “You must heal by degrees,” she said, “just like you did in the swamp.”

  I nodded, thinking I understood. So I arose stiffly, with pain, and shuffled back into the hated building.

  ***

  Healing by degrees meant healing a little each night.

  “I counsel you to wait until you have all your strength, all your abilities, before you meet Orlando Furioso again.”

  Lorelei and I sat in the dungeon of my former palace. Rusty chains adored the walls. A rat-nest was a rack’s lone tenant. Lorelei told me she’d escaped out of the castle that grew after she’d learned the priestess of the Moon had departed. She’d then raced to Perugia.

  “By my arts, I realized the Lord of the Night had departed this place,” Lorelei said. “In his pain, Erasmo failed to cover his trail and I found the Alchemist Shop, the stairs, the cellar and the tunnel to the door. It’s been difficult, but I’ve kept it open these past weeks on the assumption—on the hope—that you were too stubborn too die.”

  Apparently, I owed her my life.

  One portion of the tale troubled me—this long passage of time. The evidence supported Lorelei, but it was still very strange. I’d entered the ruins of Perugia at the beginning of spring. Now it was summer. Yet I’d only been on the doomed Earth less than a day.

  Lorelei tried to explain. “How long does a journey take moving from this Earth to the doomed one? By your reckoning, it was a moment of time. But the actual journey took much longer. There is also the possibility that time moves differently on that Earth than ours.”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe a minute there is half a day here,” she said.

  “That seems contrary to reason,” I said.

  “What it means,” Lorelei said, with growing enthusiasm, “is that the Lord of Night has been gone for months. During those months, his grip upon his minions weakened.”

  “They must have believed he died,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Lorelei said. “And that began a subtle positioning for power. It’s as if the king had died and the sons began jockeying for nobles or hiring mercenaries. What it also meant was a weakening of Erasmo’s grip over his subjected cities. The priestess of the Moon discovered that, and she decided to strike. I think she believed you’d failed. She thus left to exhort the subjected princes to form a league and storm the Tower of the East.”

  “But Erasmo returned,” I said.

  “Badly wounded,” Lorelei said.

  “You say he’s a powerful sorcerer. Can’t he simply heal himself?”

  “Ordinarily, that’s true. But you wounded him with the deathblade.”

  A fierce grin stretched my lips. “The knife smokes when I cut people.”

  “The wounds smoke, not the knife.”

  I studied Lorelei, although with just one eye. The burns on my forearms and face had scabbed in a ghastly manner. When she spoke, Lorelei looked elsewhere. She presently played a card game called ‘Solitaire.’ Her dainty fingers flipped a card, a ten of spades.

  “How is it that you know so much about Darklings?” I asked.

  “If you live long enough, you hear just about everything.” She laid down another card.

  “Why can’t Erasmo heal from my deathblade?”

  “I didn’t say he can’t heal,” Lorelei said. “But with your blade…it’s harder to heal, even for a Lord of Night.”

  “What is the deathblade?”

  Lorelei shook her head as if to say she didn’t know.

  I scratched at a rough edge on the table. Lorelei had been at the door between worlds to keep it open for me. She’d been at the castle when I’d decided to leave, playing cards in the warrens. She’d warned me about healing too fast lest the Moon Lady absorb my will. In my years as ruler of Perugia, I’d learned to suspect too many fortunate occurrences.

  Lorelei was small, dainty, with elfin features and a quick smile. Her jester’s attire seemed to fit her well. She tucked her hair under the belled cap and her chin came to a pretty point. Yet she was an Immortal. She had survived the ages and would therefore reasonably be tougher than her appearance would warrant. What schemes took place under her jester’s cap? What occupied an Immortal’s thoughts? What would an Immortal want?

  I laid a half-healed hand over hers. She looked up, and I saw her battle the distastefulness of my touch.

  “If you’re not the Moon Lady,” I said, “you’re here to do her biding.”

  She tried to jerk her hand out from under mine. I gripped hers so she could not.

  “You’re wrong,” she said, “although I’m pleased to see that you’re becoming suspicious. For someone like you, it’s as needed as breathing.”

  I did not breathe. Did she insult me? “What is the deathblade?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s impolite for a gentleman to call a lady a liar. Yet what if the lady lies?”

  “I’m here to help you,” she said.

  “Just how does one become an Immortal?”

  “That’s much too personal to explain.”

  I tightened my grip.

  “You’re hurting me,” she said.

  “It’s an odd thing. But every sorcerer and sorceress I’ve met has tried to use me. Maybe Immortals possess greater cunning and let the pawn believe he makes his own choices. The thought…troubles me. Whether I’m the prince of Perugia or the Darkling, I refuse to be anyone’s lackey. From the first, I’ve wanted answers. I still want them.”

  I let her go.

  She stood so her chair scraped the floor and she turned away.

  “Do you know what else is interesting?” I asked. “It concerns the priestess of the Moon. Is she a fool? Having met her, I doubt it. She must have known you helped me. How otherwise could I have found the secret corridors, never mind the Pool of Memories? In any Italian city, that would have been considered treason and the culprit would have hanged. Is the priestess too queasy to commit justified bloodshed? Is the woman who buys corpses afraid of dealing death? Now consider your punishment. She locked you in a room, allowed you to practice spells. I combine that with the realization that you know much about Darklings and even more about the Moon Lady. Do you know that Erasmo offered me life if I’d join him? He wanted knowledge concerning the Moon Lady. Now that I’ve had time to think, I wonder if the Moon Lady is secretive. She must be secretive if her very own priestess doesn’t know about the hidden corridors in her castle.”

  “Knowledge is power,” Lorelei said, with her back to me. “You seek to strip me of my accumulated wisdom.”

  “Madam is clever and seeks to change the topic. I’ve merely said that I refuse to be your dupe. Yet you’re suggesting an interesting thing. Knowledge is power. The sword is power. The will to act is power.”

  “What if the sword is swung at the wrong person?” she asked.

  “I see your point,” I said. “But I still desire—”

  “What do you offer me in return for this knowledge?”

  I considered that. “What do you want?”

  Lorelei turned aro
und, although she wouldn’t look at my burns. Slowly, she sat at the table, on the edge of her chair.

  “I want to know what happened on the doomed Earth.” There was eagerness in her voice. “Tell me every word the Lord of Night spoke there. Describe it all.”

  “You seek to strip me of my unique knowledge.”

  “Quid pro quo,” she said.

  I wasn’t a lawyer, but I assumed she meant an equal trade.

  So I told her what I remembered. She sat absorbed, this dainty Immortal, idly fingering her cards as I spoke. When I finished, she began to speak about the deathblade. It was a fantastic tale. The Moon Lady had once sought out a monstrous smith named Mulciber, and in the dawn of time, he’d forged a dagger with dreadful spells. The Moon Lady paid the price and from it conceived a misshapen brat. In later times, the brat designed the castle that grew. The deathblade had the power to give lycanthropes and other hard-to-kill creatures wounds. The blade’s bite corrupted the flesh of normal folk, its poisoned metal needing only the slightest touch to be lethal. Lycanthropes healed from other kinds of cuts, although silver blades could also mortally wound them.

  “What are the lycanthropes?”

  “Creatures from another place,” she said.

  “A place like the dead Earth?”

  “You’ve paid for some knowledge,” she said, “not all my accumulated wisdom.”

  “What I would like to know is who you are and why you’re helping me.”

  She became thoughtful until she dared peer into my good eye. It was artfully done. Then she concentrated upon her cards.

  “I was born a mortal, just as you were. But that was in the days when the Old Ones walked in power, before the curse put them to sleep. I was born in the lands now called Greece, near Athens. It was a handful of stone dwellings then.” Lorelei shook her head. “It will be light soon and you’ll sink into deathlike oblivion. So I’ll shorten the tale to this. I sought out the Moon Lady and became one of her maenads. I remember your ancestor. He was a reckless man, handsome and bold. He, too, sought out the Moon Lady, and he won her love. He was also vain, and refused to pay the price for her embrace.”