Vaughn Heppner - Assassin of the Damned

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 line 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.