Vaughn Heppner - Assassin of the Damned

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.

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.