Vaughn Heppner - Assassin of the Damned

“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.

“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.”