Vaughn Heppner - Assassin of the Damned

“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.”

“Let’s go,” I said. “They’re almost in.”

“The Moon is your ally and daylight will be dangerous to you. Remember, you’re the Darkling, the prince of Shadows. You must-”

“I must return to Perugia and stop Erasmo,” I said.

Lorelei looked at me with pity. “You’re no longer the ruler there. You-” She glanced down the passageway. “They’re in. We have to run. Come.”

***

We hurried through the warrens under the castle. That meant we strode through tunnels with mica glittering in Lorelei’s lamplight. It was cold down here and damp. I felt the weight of the Earth over me. It made me hunch my shoulders. This tunnel might collapse as the hole in the cave had when I was nine. Would I linger on now, buried under tons of stone? Would I survive because I needed no air, no food nor water? My footsteps dragged. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go any deeper.

Maybe Lorelei noticed. She stopped and thrust an unlit torch at me. After a moment, I took it.

“I’ll brazen it out with the priestess,” Lorelei said. “But I have to get back to my room now.”

I scowled at my unlit torch. Had we bypassed the beast?

“Darkling,” she said.

I angrily waved the stick of tarred wood. “I can’t go down there.”

“The way is safe,” she said.

“It might collapse.”

“This tunnel has remained for over two thousand years,” she said.

“You can’t know that.”

“But that’s just it,” Lorelei said. “I can.”

I scowled.

She stepped back in alarm.

My shoulders drooped. “Sorry,” I muttered. “I won’t strike you. It’s just-”

“Darkling, do you remember I spoke about a third way?”

I nodded.

“I’m the third way. There are several of us. We’re…we call ourselves the Immortals. We’re not, I suppose. We can all too readily die. But we’ve lived an awfully long time. I’ll try to help you if I can, but part of the way we’ve managed to survive the millennia is by knowing which side to keep on good terms with.”

“Why tell me this?” I asked.

“You’re unique, and the hour is dreadful. Now go. The tunnel will hold, I promise.”

I glanced into the depths. It was damp and cold, and so dark. I quailed at the thought of marching down there.

“Why does the Moon Lady need a Darkling?” I muttered.

“Surely that must be obvious,” she said.

Something boomed above. It might have been a boulder rolled out of the way.

“The Lords of Night will be hunting for you,” Lorelei said. “Because of Magi Filippo’s pendant, they may even know who you are. Trust no one. Be especially careful near Perugia.”

I stared into the depths, hated the idea of going deeper.

Lorelei made a last jingle with her bells. “Let me see your torch.”

I slowly held it up. She touched her lamplight to it. The tarry end whooshed into smelly flame.

“Goodbye,” she said, “and good luck.”

I muttered something. She retreated and soon stepped around a curve. My shoulders hunched. I glanced at the torch. The flame would last so long and no longer. I slid my foot forward, shuffled the other. I needed speed. According to Lorelei, the way was long. I had to gain a march on the priestess and slip past any guards the Lords of Night might have placed on patrol around the castle.

The tunnel narrowed ahead, and it kept going down. My grip tightened and I blinked repeatedly. The time in the hole in the cave, buried under dirt…there had been another incident. I shuddered as I recalled it. The memory brought me to a halt.

It had been in my father’s day. He’d hired out Perugian men-at-arms as mercenaries to a count of Rome. The count had besieged Todi. The men of Todi were hardy soldiers and from upon the walls had jeered the Roman. In his fury, the count had ordered mining operations. He’d put me in charge and ordered us to dig out the rebels.

The count had been a fool. Todi’s soil was rocky. My soldiers had wielded picks and sent a laborious shaft into the earth. I recalled the sweating, the hard work, the foul air that had drifted with tiny particles of rock and dust. It had caught in our lungs. We’d all spat dirt for days. I had gone down with the men because I’d been the commander. The count had sent us wormy wood, which we’d used to shore up the tunnel. The point of the memory was two-fold. The men of Todi had heard our laborious picking. They’d picked a counter-shaft. And in burning torchlight, they’d come upon us.

The screams, the desperate swings, the tight confines, the shove and push, it had been horrible. I’d taken a gash in the arm and lunged at a black-faced miner. I’d shoved a dagger through his ribs. We won that fight. But the next day, the wormy, rotten wood had collapsed ahead of me. The Earth had shaken like a quake, and dust and rocky particles had vomited into my face with a blast of air. I’d joined my men, and we’d dug like dogs to free those trapped ahead, bloodying our fingers.

The collapse had cost me eleven Perugians. And it had stoked my boyhood fear of caves into terror. I’d raged at the count for giving me wormy wood. But what I’d really done was goad him into a towering fury so he’d ordered me home. My father had railed and later, the count of Rome became my worst enemy. Yet none of that had mattered, because I’d escaped the horrid tunnels at Todi. Nothing could have gotten me to go down them again.

My torch crackled. I stood deep in this tunnel under the evil castle of the Moon. My feet had become rooted. Lorelei had left some time ago. For all I knew, the priestess’ guards hurried down here. Maybe the priestess would release the beast.

I glanced over my shoulder in dread. I hated this place.

Erasmo had tricked me into wading into the swamp. Later, he’d told me he would take my guise and my wife. Was his sorcery that powerful? According to Lorelei, the world had changed by what he’d done. I bared my teeth. And I thought of Erasmo lying atop Laura.

“You foul cur,” I whispered. I slid my foot forward. This was worse than waking up with grass through my chainmail. This was worse than being-

“I’m alive!” I hissed. “Now move, Gian.”

What would I do if my torch went out while I was deep under the Earth? I groaned, and I increased my step. It was the best I could manage as I strode deeper into darkness.

I cringed as a drip hissed into my sputtering torch. I jerked the torch from side to side, fanned the flame into greater life, but was careful not to strike the walls. The tunnel was narrow. Sometimes I’d twisted through passages. Too often, I had to crouch and once I’d crawled. I’d also splashed through more than one puddle. Water clung to the cramped ceiling like evil beads. They were wily, these drops, and only dripped when I glanced elsewhere.

Black spots now danced before my eyes. It wasn’t a lack of air, for I didn’t breathe. I could feel the weight of millions of tons of rock and dirt ready to crush me into oblivion as a man crushes a flea between his fingers. It terrified me. Every time I squeezed through a particularly tight spot, I dreaded wedging myself.

The torch sputtered again. I closed my eyes and retraced in my thoughts the various choices I’d made. Had I correctly followed Lorelei’s instructions? She hadn’t said anything about these tight passages. Might I have taken a wrong turn?