Assassin of the Damned

— 8-

I lurched on the swaying buckboard and forced myself to breath. Air went into my lungs and out. Oh. Of course, how could I have spoken before unless air passed my throat? I quit breathing and felt no worse for the lack of air.

Since I’d awoken with grass sprouting through my armor, I’d neither hungered nor thirsted. A knight fought hard, ate heartily and drank much. Surely, wading through slime, battling foes and hefting heavy wagons should have built an appetite and a raging thirst. I had neither. I needed neither. I was damned. Was I dead? No. The dead, the corpses, lay in the back of the wagon. I swayed up here on the buckboard. I had fought and killed. I had also taken a crossbow bolt through the torso and dripped sluggish black drops. If I did not breathe, eat or drink, how could I do these things? What gave me strength?

I snarled silently. Erasmo would pay with his life. I would hound him to death!

What gave me the strength to move, to talk and think? If I did those things, then I was alive. Alive and damned, I told myself. I needed all my memories in order to better understand Erasmo. If those memories lay in an evil castle, then I would storm that castle and regain them.

“Do you have a whip?” I snarled.

Ofelia’s head jerked up.

“Your mules are lazy. We need a whip.”

“If we go any faster,” she said, “the wheel might come off.”

I debated running ahead and pounding on the castle gate. We approached a steep road. The castle towered on a crag of this stony hill. The castle was dark. It seemed like a strange growth, a lump of tall fungus with thistles for spires.

“It looks deserted,” I said.

“The castle always looks that way from the outside,” Ofelia said nervously.

Lights should have shined from it, if even from a watch fire in the courtyard. I twisted back. There was light here and there in the countryside. It must have come from hamlets or cottages or even from night travelers. One patch of shimmering light came from a pond that reflected the stars. Fortunately, the eerie howls had ceased some time ago.

“It seems too deserted for Tuscany,” I said.

“The castle?” Ofelia asked.

“No. The countryside.”

“Oh. The Great Mortality did that.”

“Tell me about it.”

Ofelia shrugged moodily. “People say it began in Perugia.”

“What?” I grabbed her arm.

She shrank back. “Please, signor, I mean no harm. It’s the truth.”

I released Ofelia. “Tell me more.”

She watched me cautiously and slid farther away on the buckboard. “It’s a terrible disease,” she said in a small voice. “Horrible lumps grow under the armpits and groin, and often the skin turns black as charcoal. The plague has slain peasants and princes alike. Entire villages have perished. No town or city is immune. They say millions have died from it.”

Millions? That was too incredible to believe. At the recent battle of Crecy, English bowmen had slaughtered nearly thirteen thousand French knights and men-at-arms. It was a battle and slaughter beyond compare. Yet thirteen thousand was as nothing when measured against a million. And Ofelia had said millions.

“It’s impossible you haven’t heard about the Great Mortality,” she said.

If millions had died, she was right. How long had I lain in the swamp? The question was beginning to terrify me.

The mules breathed heavily as they clopped up the steep road. Our speed lessened and the wagon-creaks became ponderous.

I wondered why Ofelia lied. Millions dying from plague would be a hellish nightmare. And yet, a nightmare had vomited mannish hounds and riders with pubescent snouts. That Ofelia carted these dead to a dark castle smacked of nightmare. To what sinister usage did a priestess of the Moon put these corpses?

I studied the nearing castle. Bare rocks jutted around it. The other hills, at least the ones we’d traveled, had been lush with grass, weeds, vines, brush and trees. What should make this hill so different? The answer was obviously the castle. I envisioned servants pouring oil on the hillside and smoke-chugging fire scouring all greenery. Over time, rains would wash away the dirt until only grim rock remained. The boulder-strewn hill seemed dead. The approaching castle seemed empty-or haunted.

“It’s different in the moonlight,” Ofelia said. “It glows with an unearthly light then. Unfortunately, then it’s dangerous to set foot on the hill. My mules won’t. No one dares go near the castle at such times.”

She shook the reins to encourage her panting beasts.

The castle’s structure seemed…alien to Tuscany. A mad artist might have rendered such a thing in a painting to imply a nightmare struggling for reality. I would not have wanted to see it glow with the moon’s light. It troubled me that this castle possibly held my memories. That implied I belonged to the same nightmare that had spawned it.

“Who built the castle?” I asked.

Ofelia glanced at me sidelong and shrugged in an evasive manner.

“What have you heard?” I asked, trying to keep the alarm out of my voice.

Ofelia muttered to herself and clucked her tongue for the mules to pull harder.

The road steepened and the evil castle loomed above. I felt watching eyes. Yet I could spy no one on the battlements, and the structure lacked windows. The walls were like lava, not hewn stone held by mortar. That seemed unnatural, as if the earth had vomited it up.

“Who built it?” I demanded. “Or is ‘built’ the wrong word?”

Ofelia looked at me with alarm.

“Who raised it?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked in a high tone.

I wrenched the reins out her hands and made ready to halt the mules.

“No!” she cried. “Keep moving. If we stop here, we’ll never make it up the steep road.”

“Who raised the castle?” I asked.

Ofelia licked her lips. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“I’ll decide that. Talk.”

“Give me the reins,” she pleaded. “You’re making the mules nervous.”

I tossed her the reins.

Ofelia urged the mules on. The mules pulled and their heads bobbed up and down. Ofelia glanced at me.

I scowled, impatient.

She began to talk, slowly at first: “It happened after the first outbreak of plague. It was a Demon Moon, they say. …A lady appeared on the hill that night. This hill. She wore silks like a Saracen, sheer so men could see her thighs and her milky breasts. She was beautiful. A knight who had practiced a forbidden spell took his squire and page and rode up the hill for a midnight rendezvous. Only the page survived the meeting, and he babbled a mad story. The knight shouted his delight upon seeing the lady. She spread her arms and called to him. He rushed to her. They kissed, and he fell in a swoon. Next, she beckoned the lusty squire and he too fell after their embrace. When she crooked a bejeweled finger at the page, he fled. He was not yet of age and thus resisted her bewitching charms.”

“What does that have to do with the castle?” I asked.

“That’s just it,” Ofelia said. “The hill was bare that night. But after the death of knight and squire, the first foundations arose.”

“You said they swooned, not died.”

A foolish shepherd heard strange sounds the next night and crept up the hill from bush to bush.”

“Look around you,” I said. “Where do you see a bush?”

“As the castle grew,” Ofelia said, “the vegetation sickened and died. People began to call it the castle’s blight.”

“What do you mean ‘grew’?”

“Look at the walls and you’ll know what I mean,” she said.

I’d already noted them. “You said the shepherd was foolish. How so?”

“He heard the knight sob for mercy on an ebon altar. There were beautiful things dancing around the bound knight. Each cut him and sipped his blood. The shepherd fled and babbled a tale of sorcery and living rock that entombed the damned. The shepherd lived in terror of the moon afterward. He sold his flock to buy candles. He burned them all night in his locked hut. He sold everything he had for more and more candles. Finally, he ran out of goods or coin and shivered before a knight’s fire in a castle’s common room. They say he begged them to keep the fire stoked all night. But who ever heard of that. In the morning, the shepherd was gone, although the cloak he’d slept on remained in the corner where he’d curled up with the hounds.”

“What do people say happened?” I asked.

“It’s what the shepherd said about the candles.” Ofelia grinned, maybe noting my unease. “He burned them because in the dark he saw the lady’s smiling face. Her features were of unearthly beauty. He said she summoned him to appear before her in the castle.”

“That castle?” I asked.

“It grows,” Ofelia said, “and the blight widens with each addition.”

“And yet you bring them more corpses,” I said.

Ofelia nodded slowly. “The priestess pays in honest silver. For the first time in my life, I’m rich.”

I eyed the nearing structure. The sense of being watched intensified, and I felt hunger. I felt as if the castle was a living thing like a wolf or lion starved for meat. Did Ofelia feed it with her corpses?

I glanced back at the dead, looked from face to face. Each was male.

“What about me?” I asked.

Ofelia tightened her dirty-fingered hold of the reins.

I turned from her and withdrew my coin. It glowed more fiercely than before and the silver was warm. I inspected the Moon Lady’s profile. She was achingly beautiful and I felt her siren call.

“Will you sacrifice me?” I asked aloud.

“What?” Ofelia asked.

No, a voice spoke within my mind. You’re already mine. Come, my Darkling, come to me.

With growing unease, I looked up at the battlements. This was an edifice of sorcery. It was alien to Tuscany and brought blight upon the land. Yet my lost memories lay in there, I was certain of that now.

I laughed harshly at Ofelia. “You little wretch, you’re taking me to my death. A knight, squire and page, they were men. All the corpses you’ve taken have been men. You’re safe because you’re a woman. You have no intention of paying me three thousand florins.”

Ofelia shook her head, although she kept hunched with the reins wrapped around her fists. She refused to look at me.

“You’re still enraged at Ox’s death,” I said. “And what did you say before? You always have a plan. Well, madam, you’re in for a surprise. Three thousand florins are what you owe. Before we part, you’ll pay me in full.”

“Of course,” she whispered. “It’s what I promised.”

The road leveled out and led to a tall black gate. Ofelia drew rein before it and I jumped down. The wood seemed like petrified rock and hardly thumped as I knocked. Yet the door opened, although there was no one I could see who had moved it. I climbed back onto the wagon. To my gratification, Ofelia looked at me with wondering eyes.

Once past the gate, the mules clopped upon stone and the wagon’s creaks seemed oddly muted. A moonlike glow bathed our way; the glow came from the lava-like walls. Ofelia kept glancing at me, and her face was one of confusion.

“That is far enough.”

The mules snorted in surprise. Ofelia made a squeal of sound and yanked the reins, although that was unnecessary. The mules had already stopped.

A woman in a shimmering robe stood before us. Shadows hid her face and she kept her hands hidden in the folds of her sleeves. Her sandaled feet, her toes, stuck out from under the hem of her long robe. The toes seemed like molten silver.

“Priestess,” Ofelia whispered. “I–I have-”

“Yes,” the priestess said. “I see what you’ve brought. Lay them on the boards.”

Ofelia turned to me, although I noticed she couldn’t meet my eyes.

“Ox unloaded them before,” I said. I jumped down and began depositing the dead onto wooden boards. We were in a courtyard and there were shadowed arches all around. When the last corpse bumped its head on the wood, the priestess approached Ofelia. A silver-colored hand passed up two heavy sacks. The small gravedigger grunted with effort and thumped each sack at her feet on the buckboard. Each clinked with coins.

The priestess backed away and I approached Ofelia.

“Three thousand florins,” I said.

With a savage smile, Ofelia glanced at the priestess. “He’s his own man,” she said. “I do not claim him.”

The priestess nodded.

“Consider the unloading as gratis,” I told Ofelia.

Ofelia waited. She seemed expectant, but slowly her smile lost its breadth. Soon, she frowned.

I laughed. Ox had likely been immune from enchantment because he had been Ofelia’s servant. That’s why Ofelia had just said that I was on my own. Clearly, she expected my demise, and that would free her from having to pay her debt. She was a clever if bloodthirsty little gravedigger.

Ofelia’s mouth hardened. She yanked open a sack and began counting coins. When she opened the second sack, she shook with rage. She shot the priestess an accusatory look.

“Why should I come back if there are no profits?” Ofelia spat.

“How you spend your money is your own affair,” the priestess said.

“He’s a man!” Ofelia shouted.

“He’s the Darkling,” the priestess said in her calm manner. “He is beloved of the Moon Lady.”

The words made me shiver. I did not like them.

“You’re one of them?” Ofelia whispered in horror.

“Keep counting,” I said.

Ofelia paled, and she counted faster. When she’d finished, she tied her single depleted sack and turned her wagon around. She hunched in fear, shook the reins and took her creaking, squealing vehicle away. She never glanced back or waved goodbye.