Assassin of the Damned (Dark Gods)

by Vaughn Heppner

“Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm,” she said.

  I patted the top of her head. “Yes,” I said, “I’m making a dreadful mistake. I’m sure there’re a dozen more lies you would like to tell me. And I know you’ll repay me horribly for these indignities.”

  She shook her head. “Hmmm, hmmm.”

  “You’re very earnest, and convincing. Here, lift your head so I can untie your gag.”

  Relief showed in her eyes. She lifted her head.

  As she did so, I went to the edge of her tent. I heard a commotion outside, shouting. It sounded like Ofelia argued with a guard. Before anyone entered the tent, I rolled outside.

  I strolled to the inner palisade with my loot of ancient tools. I climbed it and motioned to several crossbowmen. They hurried to me. I clouted each with a small bag filled with sand and laid them down on the rampart. A gong rang then, an alarm. Guards began to shout.

  “He’s on the wall!” Ofelia cried. “I see him.”

  I had time to watch crossbowmen aim. Then I dropped over the palisade and began to stroll through the main camp.

  -29-

  Loud rumbles shook the Tower of the East. It sounded like an angry storm cloud. Strange lights flickered above the fortress. Did this mean that Erasmo had finally begun his Grand Conjuration?

  The previous night, I’d examined my new Darkling tools. Each presently rested in a sealskin bag, wedged among cloth so they wouldn’t clink and give me away. There were sounds of battle from the distant causeway, while in the surrounding jungle altered men and a lycanthrope searched for someone, likely me.

  I’d climbed a giant jungle tree. It was a massive old thing. It must have grown for hundreds of years. It made me wonder how Erasmo had put the jungle around Venice, or the ruins of dead Venice. There simply wasn’t enough time for the trees to have naturally grown this large. I climbed like a shadow, and I pondered the problem. I think the answer was that Erasmo had transported the entire jungle. The warm water, the crocodiles…those came from a hot clime. They were unnatural for ruined Venice.

  The towering trees grew close together. Many of their branches intertwined with neighbors. I stowed my cloak in the bag. I tied the bag to my Darkling belt, the one I had acquired last night. I crouched on a high branch like a monkey and tried to ignore the odd happenings above the Tower of the East. I sprang. The branch dipped under my weight. I should have thought of that. I couldn’t afford mistakes. My fingers brushed the targeted branch. They slid off because my jump had been too short. I fell, and I grabbed for a different branch. My hold took. The branch bent under my weight. It snapped. But that gave me time. I grabbed a heavier branch. It, too, bent, but it held. I scrambled toward the new trunk.

  I collected my wits and tried another leap. Slowly, I leapt from tree to tree. The last tree grew beside the salty sea. I climbed out on a branch that hung over the water. There would be no tracks showing anyone I’d waded out there.

  I removed the Darkling belt, my boots, most of my clothes and put them in the watertight bag. The Tower of the East no longer rumbled. That was almost worse, the lull before the lightning storm. Grim menace radiated from it. I held up my hand. I felt heat, a dry and awful thing, radiating from the tower.

  I studied the gargantuan fortress. Erasmo must have conjured it from another place, for no one could have built something so huge. Yet what kind of Earth made castles like that?

  “Quite stalling, Gian.”

  I nodded, and I jumped. With a splash, I plunged into the water. As I sank, I listened for sea monsters. In moments, my feet hit mud. Dirt billowed upward. Even this close to shore, the water was murky. The tower was that way. I’d memorized the direction. I began to walk.

  The mud became grass. The grass grew into wavy fronds, the fronds into thirty-foot strands that slowly waved back and forth. I used my hands to shove aside seaweeds. There were strange sounds, groans, distant clicks and rumbles. Visibility lessened. The pressure increased as the slope went down, down, down. I kept walking. Then I spied a dark shape. It was huge. I stopped. It glided past. A terrible moan sounded close by. It was an eerie noise. I kept perfectly still. Even when I felt the presence behind me, I kept statute-like. The feeling grew acute. It moaned again. It sounded as if it made the noise in my ear. My back itched. I yearned to turn around. I kept still instead.

  The water stirred. Something huge moved behind me. The feeling lessened. It moaned again. It sounded farther away. That was a sea monster. Erasmo must have conjured them. More time passed and the awful feeling dwindled to a painful memory.

  I kept my lonely station and I waited. Finally, I could no longer stand it. The tower had rumbled and heat had poured from it. I had little time left. I had to hurry. So I resumed my trek.

  Part of the reason I had not turned around to look at the sea monster was so I wouldn’t lose my sense of where the tower stood. I moved in slow motion and entered another kelp forest.

  Walking underwater was strange. The liquid resistance slowed every action. It would likely prove impossible to hack or slash effectively with a knife underwater. Even a sword or axe would likely prove futile. A spear would be better. I hoped I didn’t need to fight underwater. I certainly wanted to avoid any sea monsters.

  The strange excursion finally ended. I trudged upslope and saw the rock before I climbed it and broke the surface. The Tower of the East loomed above, and it was hotter than before. I felt waves of heat pouring off the massive structure.

  The rumbles had resumed. They were long and rolling things. It made the walls shiver. It made those walls that rose forever look unsteady. The obsidian seemed all of one piece, as if giants had laboriously chiseled it from a mountain. Now I feared the rumbles would increase and shake it apart.

  I felt small beside it. I climbed onto the lip of stone, the several yards of rock that extended beyond the wall. I felt the vibration in my feet.

  I opened my sack and removed my boots and garments. I buckled on my Darkling belt. I stood beside the titanic wall. I was a fly, a speck, and as such, I hoped to enter.

  Once dressed, I took out the silver case. It contained hooked rods. I assembled them into a skeletal crossbow. As I did, I heard crackling sounds like a giant fire, a monstrous forest blaze. I looked up. It was still dark beside the tower. But now a headier sense of doom filled me, and the heat increased. It felt at that moment as if the Earth wound down, as if these were its final hours.

  I wanted to weep. Francesca was in there. Maybe Laura and Astorre were as well. I knew beyond doubt that either Erasmo readied himself for the Grand Conjuration or that it was already in progress. It made my actions seem futile. I was likely too late. He knew I was coming and he had begun before I could stop him.

  “You don’t know that,” I snarled. “Move! Act while you still can.”

  I cocked my crossbow. I chose one of the three bolts and attached my silken line to the end.

  I’d reasoned out what the spindle and rotating arm did. The line was too fine for me to climb it like an ordinary rope. Fortunately, the silken rope had fantastic strength. It easily bore my weight. I’d tested it last night. The spindle and rotating arm were ingenious. Once I hooked the bolt to the battlement, I would tie the other end of the silk line to the spindle. Then I would rotate the arm and haul myself up.

  I raised the stock to my shoulder, ignored the strange flickers of light, sighted and squeezed the trigger. The steel bow snapped and up flashed the bolt. It trailed the fine silken line behind. It zoomed courageously, climbed, climbed, and then slowed and reached its final height.

  The bolt tumbled down.

  With a sick sense of doom, I rewound the line and cocked the crossbow again. I held the stock perfectly still. I muttered to my bolt. I told it I had to get within, and I fired. As it sped upward, I wondered if the Moon Lady might see to it that my bolt made it to the towering battlement. No. She did not. The bolt failed like before and fell back to my waiting hand. I couldn’t fire my bolt high enough. A third try would be meaningless. I rewound the l
ine and stowed it in the bag.

  An eerie voice spoke then. It spoke from the grand heights. The walls shivered and grated ominously. Chips of obsidian slid off and splashed into the water. A clap of thunder sounded, and then all was still. The walls stopped shaking.

  It left me shaking. With trembling hands, I unhooked the sections that made up my skeletal crossbow and stowed it in its carrying bag. Like a peddler chased by hounds, I began to race around the base of the wall. I studied the tower as I ran. Soon, I noticed a strong urine stench.

  A hundred feet above me was a grate of sound. I yelped, because something moved. I thought it was the end. Instead, human waste gushed out. The foul mess hit the water. Fish darted up. I strode away, disgusted. After several dozen strides, however, I stopped and looked back.

  Fish had come up. Catfish, crabs and other sea creatures fed off the refuge. I snapped my fingers. That meant…meant…there had to be a reason why enemy galleys never approached the Tower of the East. Yes, of course. I wondered why I hadn’t seen it earlier. Because of caves, I told myself.

  I no longer had time to be squeamish. The end of the world as I knew it was near. I may already have been too late. Yet I had to try. I had to keep moving. I was the Darkling, the Moon Lady’s reluctant champion.

  I studied the water and the tower as I hurried. Something about the water changed shortly. This part of the tower faced the open sea. That would make sense. If you kept sea monsters to attack ships, to guard your castle, you kept them near where the enemy would appear.

  I removed my boots, my clothes and climbed down the rock and into the water. I found a cave. It always came down to caves. Grass and seaweeds grew everywhere in abundance, but not around the cave entrance. The cave went into the rock, the rock the tower stood on.

  I climbed out of the water, ripped opened my bag and assembled my skeletal crossbow. Then I took out a howler. They were small and metallic, with springs and latches. I’d discovered their use last night. I twisted the spring and flicked the switch. Then I set down both the crossbow and howler and stowed my boots and clothes in the bag. I tied the bag tight. I made sure everything was ready. Then I readied the crossbow and set the howler in the groove. I judged angles, muttered to myself and flicked the switch, aimed, shot. The howler tumbled end over end. I winced as I watched. I had shot it too high. If it went off while in the air—

  It plopped into the water. A half-second later, I heard something. Would sea monsters hear that? Would they care? I grabbed the bag and watched the water. It had to work, or were the sea monsters all away. I could have just—a vast shape shot out of the cave. It was like an eel, but longer than a galley. It had rows of teeth. Another followed behind. They swam wickedly fast. They seemed angry. A third and fourth monster shot out after them. I waited. Was there a fifth?

  I slipped into the water and climbed down the rock. I aimed toward the cave mouth, soon hung above it. The murky water hid the sea monsters. I hoped it hid me from them. Despite my urgency, I waited. No more monsters shot out. I let go of the rock and floated down before the entrance. Once I touched bottom, I trudged as fast as I could.

  -30-

  The tunnel twisted forever. It was darker here, smelly and foul. I shoved my feet against rock and angled my head forward. What if the eels returned before—I shook my head, told myself not to think about it. Even so, I imagined the eels, the sea monsters, zooming back. They would swarm like crocodiles. Those teeth would chomp and I would be many grisly chunks of flesh.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Did the water stir? My hand tightened around the sealskin bag. I churned my legs and still moved too slowly. I rounded another bend. A terrible moan echoed behind me then. I knew that was the sea monster’s call. They had returned. They headed for the cave and they might already be in it. I’d hoped that once out they might explore.

  Another moan sounded and a third. I already surged through the water as fast as I could. The light increased. If I still had a heart, it would have pounded. It would have hammered blood through my body. Everything lay in the bag, including my knife. I might have scooped up a rock. It would be as effective as my deathblade here—useless. There had been four sea monsters. Had all four returned?

  Two, three or four, the number made no difference. They were longer than a galley. Their teeth were like a hundred deathblades all stabbing at once. Maybe I should have kept another howler and dropped it when the first eel appeared. I could rummage in my bag for it.

  A shriek echoed behind me. I looked up. Water shimmered above, light. Wild hope flared. I might make it yet. I surged to the rock. It was craggy but slimy. I thrust the end of the bag into my mouth and clenched it with my teeth. I began to climb.

  I heard them! The water carried the terrible sound of their swimming. My hand slipped off a slimy rock. I hugged the wall. I desperately tried to stay on. If I lost my grip and sank, it would be over. Erasmo would win. I kept climbing, and a second later, my head broke the surface. The pit was a pool sixty feet in diameter. The rocky wall went up another thirty feet. A guardrail rose above that. The light came from a central basin, it roared as flames danced. I might have heard other sounds. Water was still in my ears so I wasn’t sure.

  I surged up out of the cold water. I climbed much too slowly. The thought hit that I could climb faster without the bag. I clung to the rock with one hand, grabbed the bag with the other and flung it wildly. If I missed, if it didn’t clear the railing, it would plunge back into the pool. Then I would enter the fortress of my enemy stark naked, without any of my Darkling tools. The bag sailed. I climbed. I couldn’t afford to watch. I heard a thump and took that as success. A splash would have signaled failure.

  I dared increase my rate of assent. The rock was cold, slick with moisture. In other places it was sharp. I cut my hands and feet.

  Then water sluiced off something huge. It bellowed rage. It made the air rank with a stench. I twisted my head and looked down into the face of a sea monster. The mouth could have swallowed an elephant. The frilled gills made it seem obscene. It was green and slimy. Another head poked up, and a third. The three eel-like monsters glared at me. Then the first shot up like a striking snake.

  I desperately shifted sideways. The monstrous head smashed the rock where I’d just been. Chunks rained off. One rock struck my neck.

  The next few seconds were the most horrible since my return. One after another the monsters struck. They smashed the rock with jarring force. My hold shook. My body trembled. I acted like a lizard. I shifted one way, the other, down and up. The monsters bellowed louder and louder. They had sounded angry at first. Now they were furious, close to berserk. The roars deafened me. It must have woken the entire tower.

  Then the most glorious thing happened. My hands locked onto the metal of the railing. I hoisted higher, scrambled up over the rail and onto the wet floor. My bag lay several feet distant. I was in the Tower of the East, and for this second undiscovered. The bellows of the sea monsters still crashed around me. I grabbed my bag and dashed to a hidden niche.

  It was a big room made out of rock. The light came from above the railing. A fire burned in a giant basin. Double doors stood sixty feet away.

  I stood in dancing shadows in a curve in the wall and put on dark clothes, my cloak, boots, belt and deathblade. I wanted to laugh, to join the sea monsters in their bellows.

  The doors creaked then. I heard squeals, rusty wheels. I peered around my niche. An octo-man entered backward. He pulled something. Ah, it was a sled with small wheels. Bloody slabs of beef lay on it.

  “What’s all the shouting for?” he asked. “I fed you six hours ago. Go into the bay if you’re so upset.” He pulled the slab to the edge of the railing.

  I poised on the balls of my feet.

  He picked up a long pole with a hook on the end. He stabbed that into the first side of beef and grunted as he hefted it off the slab. He carried it and hurled the beef over the railing. Then he dropped the pole and put the tip of his tentacles on the metal.
He watched, and he screamed.

  I grasped his ankles and heaved him up and over. He sailed into the watery pit, and the sea creatures gobbled him up. After that, I hurried for the door.

  ***

  The sky sickened me. It blazed with titanic flames. It made the tower hot like a desert. The vast flames cycled through colors: yellow, orange, red and purple. They flickered like lewd dancers, erotic one moment like sinuous women, and then they leered like perverted sadists the next. The sky was not one continuous flame or band of fire. Each licking flame was its own individual, a gargantuan thing.

  Behind them was darkness, the night. I found no source for these flames. It made the air hazy. It felt as if I had stepped into the antechamber of Hell.

  I was on the roof of a three-storey building. The inner tower was like a city with many low brick houses. They squatted close together, seemed to huddle in misery. I’d seen altered men in all their various forms. None of them looked up at the flames. They hurried with heads down and those that had them with shoulders hunched.

  Why hadn’t I seen the flames from the outside? I’d felt the heat. What had caused the rumbles? This was more of Erasmo’s evil sorcery. Just as bad, I felt from time to time as if some of the flames glanced at me. It made me feel conspicuous, as if I had done something wrong. I remembered the living flame on the doomed Earth. Was he the family dwarf?

  Luckily for me, the flames weren’t the sun. As bright as they were, they didn’t leech my strength.

  I desperately needed information. I needed to find my daughter, my wife and son. But first, I needed to find Erasmo. An assassin had one stroke. His skills demanded that he place it exactly right the first time. He would likely never get a second chance. I’d failed the first stroke against Erasmo in the otherworldly cave, and had almost died. I should have died there on that dead Earth. Now I had that rarest of things among assassins, a second chance. If I failed again, I would likely fail forever. And my family would remain his prisoner forever. I needed information to guide my single stroke into exactly the right chest.