Assassin of the Damned

— 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.

The low buildings huddled in misery. Towers rose in places, six of them. Roads linked each, and the roads made a familiar pattern. I remembered the pattern Orlando had made in Perugia. Erasmo had used the pattern to journey from here to there. The gargantuan Tower of the East stood in the center of the other towers. All roads or lines led to it.

High in the main tower light blazed from a window. Now that I studied them more closely, it seemed as if the giant flames in the sky bowed down toward the window. The moment I recognized that, one flame shifted unnaturally. Its tip dipped low, and for a moment, I imagined it had eyes. Our eyes met, and the flame licked back-in shock perhaps.

Those weren’t flames, but demons, or some other supernatural beings. They were here…I don’t know why. I had two suspicions. One, they might help Erasmo blow the trumpet. Two, maybe in some manner they helped him heal from my cut.

I lowered my eyes. Maybe it was sacrilegious to look up at them.

Ah. There was the sign. That’s what I wanted. A door opened in one of the lesser towers. I had questions. I doubted altered men could tell me. Now a sorcerer, one of Erasmo’s magician henchmen, could likely give me useful answers. A sorcerer darted into that tower.

I dropped from my perch and landed like a cat. Then I used shadows and kept up my hood. Few altered men were aboard. Many were likely outside the castle fighting. I hoped Signor Orlando was out there, and both the lycanthropes, too.

The giant flames crackled. They poured heat. Whenever I stepped out of shadows, I felt the scrutiny of the sky. I should have known the Tower of the East would be a door into some strange evil. This was Erasmo’s place of power.

I hurried from shadows and toward the foot of a tower. I stepped onto one of the main roads. A shock struck me, a current of power.

I leaped off the road. The feeling stopped. What was that? I needed answers. I needed them fast. I resolutely stepped onto the road. The shock flowed through me again. It made my teeth ache. I strode to the door and hammered on it with my fist. I banged impatiently. I kept at it. The current numbed my feet. It was making my eyelids heavy.

The door swung open. A beefy altered man glowered. He was the biggest I’d seen. He wore a cloak, a cap, but his features were inhuman. He had a snout like a wolf and a black tongue. I shoved him aside as I stepped in. I slammed the door behind me. The current stopped.

I stood in an atrium. There were busts everywhere and they were all of me. These had the spade-shaped beard and Erasmo’s evil stare. Tapestries hung in places. They showed hellish scenes of leering succubae and other abominations. In some of them Erasmo strode as a conqueror. In others, he was a vile celebrant. When I say Erasmo, they were all images of me.

What was his fascination with me? I’d hated it before. Now I resented it. It was a personal affront. If he was going to be a Lord of Hell, he should do it with his own features. He shouldn’t smear my name and likeness throughout all eternity.

“Who are you?” the altered man growled.

I stabbed him, dragged him to a closet and shoved him in. Then I yanked down a tapestry, sopped some of the blood and threw that after him.

There were more rooms. They were empty. Finally, I found stars. I bounded up. They went in a spiral and kept going what seemed forever.

I ran and grew enraged that Erasmo looked like me. He’d stolen my former life. He’d taken my wife and children. They had to be here somewhere.

After a long climb, a door waited above. It looked heavy. Part of me wished to throw my shoulder against it and batter it down. The wiser part, the cunning part, slowed, stopped and soon tested it. It was open. I pushed ever so slowly.

***

The room was huge. It contained rugs, cushioned chairs and an open hearth in the center. Black coals and ashes smoldered there now. There were cabinets with wine and decanters. There were tables with spiced chicken, apples, pears, ham, meat pies and cakes. Plates lay on tables. Greasy bones lay on those, hunks of bread and half-filled glasses. There had been a feast, a party maybe.

A lone occupant rose from the head of one of the tables. He set a gnawed bone on the silken tablecloth. He was hairy, eight feet tall and had clawed hands. It was the chief of the lycanthropes in human form. A long blue cloak hung at his back. It was fastened near his hulking shoulder with a sapphire flower of exotic design. His green eyes were hot and poisonous, and greedy for pain. He tilted his face, and he sniffed.

“You’ve been with the sea creatures,” he said.

“I was in Perugia. Do you remember?”

He shrugged.

“You feared me then,” I said. “Your brothers of the fang said I was a dead thing.”

“We feared you before you ran from us. We fear nothing that runs away.”

“I won’t run now. Go ahead and call your brother.”

He sniffed again, more carefully. A slow smile stretched his lips. “You made a mistake coming here,” he said. “You lack silver weapons.”

I kicked the door shut and dropped the bar. “Do you remember the smile I gave your brother when I cut under his chin?”

He picked up a sword, a whippy, flexible thing over five feet long. It looked sharp, deadly. I’d never seen a sword like that. It had a jeweled pommel.

“This is how we duel in my world,” he said. “Tonight, I gain rank in the civilized manner.”

“You?” I asked. “Civilized? Is that a jest?”

He slashed the sword. The tip whipped back and forth with deadly swishes. He hurled his chair from him and stepped away from the table.

“Erasmo della Rovere has style,” he said. “He is a superior being. He ordered a proper sword forged for a true warrior. With it, I will cut out your heart and give him half. The other half I’ll gnaw. I will thereby gain your strength.”

“You’ll need it.”

“I will hew your head with a swipe. I will pack your head in salt and take it with me when I return home. There I will let the pups piss on your face and I will tell them the story about how I slew the killer-in-the-dark.”

I spread my hands and moved toward him. “I have no five-foot sword,” I said. “How civilized is that?”

He flicked the sword, and the tip swished several feet either way. “It is alive,” he said. “Notice the movement, the backsnap. In our world, such a sword is called a tschai. I tell you this so you may understand the honor I do you.”

I frowned. I didn’t want his honor. I wanted to kill Erasmo, save my family. The lycanthrope stood in the way.

“You crossed to the fiery world after us,” he said. “That was brave. I salute you.”

He made an exaggerated flourish. It would have been comical in another place. His green eyes glittered. The teeth in his smile were long and canine-like. The blue cloak, the exotic sapphire flower, what did he try to prove?

“You have been clever,” he said.

I dipped my head. Maybe in his own way he was a knight.

“Now you may die,” he said. “Now I will gain your soul, killer-in-the-dark. You are mine.”

His muscles tensed. He slid his feet toward me, passed the hearth and stalked between the cushioned chairs. He had reach with that long sword, whatever he had called it. He had reach with those long arms. He would be fast. The chief of the lycanthropes was greater than any mere altered man. He was a giant. He ignored normal weapon cuts. I did not have time to duel, to complete his ceremony. I had to stop the end of the world.

He howled, leaped, and thrust his twitchy sword.

I threw my deathblade. It sank to the hilt in his throat. The point stuck out of his neck. He gurgled. He blinked once, and he took a step closer. Then the five-foot blade crashed to the floor. He followed it.

I hurried, and I hacked off his head and threw it across the room. I did not do it as an act of savagery. I did not do it for revenge. I did it because I feared his recuperative powers. He was a lycanthrope, a strange creature of myth. The decapitation honored him-in a way. I think he might have understood.

I raced for the stairs on the other end of the room, and I continued to climb.