Dark North

Twenty-Three

Castello Malconi sat atop a pinnacle crag overlooking a deep, trackless valley; a great cleft through the Ligurian mountains filled with a rubble of fallen rocks.

There was no access to it except from the north, via a passage wide enough for a coach and horses to pass along, which snaked for several miles between walls of rugged granite. Heavy iron portcullises were located along the passage at regular intervals, with guard posts on top of them. The passage ended at the edge of a cliff, and admittance could only be gained to the castle by a drawbridge spanning a terrifying crevasse. The entire structure was surrounded by an outer rampart built from massive slabs, crenellated and reinforced every hundred yards by turreted barbicans and raised timber platforms on which arbalest and ballistae were placed. The loftiest portion of Castello Malconi was the central spire, from which streamed the family emblem — a black boar with a burning eye. From outside, Castello Malconi was faceless and sheer with no apertures or windows, scarcely even an arrow-loop. Inside, it was similarly soulless, its jumbled inner buildings forming a horseshoe around the deep inner courtyard. Cold stone was the order of the day, much of it black with age and mildew.

But there was much more to the castle than met the eye.

Back in the days of the first Caesars, when the Malconi family had constructed their stronghold as a bastion against the Germanic tribes beyond the Alps, they had mined deep into the virgin rock on which it was perched, creating subterranean barracks in which hundreds of soldiers could be billeted. A tunnel spiralled down to an extensive undercroft, where horses could be stabled and armour and weapons stored. Deeper still lay a suite of work-rooms and laboratories, wherein Malconi alchemists produced potions, poisons, gases and other mysterious, quasi-magical weapons for use against the insurgent tribesmen.

In those days, Castello Malconi had echoed to the sounds of a Roman fort: trumpet calls, hobnailed sandals crashing as squads were called to attention, the clink of hammers, the grinding of whetstones. Now it stood in silence; at night, barely a candle-flame flickered from its parapets. As ruler of these lands, Duchess Zalmyra had baronial duties and a military obligation, but these responsibilities had been rendered null and void by the same Imperial decree that had stripped her battlements of their personnel and marched them off to war in the service of Lucius Julio Bizerta.

There was only a handful of domestic servants; exclusively cripples, mutes and hunchbacks — the sort of unfortunates who could find employment nowhere else — with the one exception of Duchess Zalmyra’s monstrous personal bodyguard and valet, Urgol.

Even now, as the hot July night brought thunderclaps and gushing rain, Urgol was hard at work in the bowels of the grim fortress. Here, at the deepest point, there was a place called the ‘Pit of Souls,’ a brick well of origins unknown, though from the sulfurous smoke constantly drifting up it, it surely descended to the mouth of Hell.

The well was girded around its rim by a wooden walkway, little more than a ledge, with only a single rail to prevent one falling into it. Sconces had been carved into the encircling rock walls, green chemical fires writhing in each one, casting liquid patterns of light far down into the shaft and far above it, where cobwebs clustered as thick as dusty fabric, and spiders the size of dogs hung motionless in the shadows.

The walkway was accessible from a single arched passage, which connected with Duchess Zalmyra’s work-chambers. Beside this entrance, a steel-grilled platform jutted out several feet over the Pit of Souls. Urgol was on top of it, his furry shape clad only in a leather loincloth. He had erected timber saltires — diagonal crosses — at either end of the platform, facing each other. When firmly in place, he checked the manacles at the tops and bottoms of their crossed beams, to ensure they were screwed in tightly. Behind him, from the arched passage, echoed the voice of his mistress.

“Reged anthraloggabar… more-ud uvusona anaxus… torrodona laggo-tyburr…”

It was a language he had never understood, though he had heard it many times. Even now it sent chills down his spine. On completion of his task, he ducked down the passage. At its far end, a fiery glow marked the entrance to the duchess’s chambers, somewhere he never entered unless he was specifically bidden.

“Pegfal vus ga ravalax… stevros thralanto paiador…” the duchess incanted, her voice rising to a shriek. “More-ud uvusona anaxus!”

He turned right and passed along another gallery, to the dungeons. Most were empty, their bars rusting. But in two of them were captives. The first was a woman in her mid-twenties, once a handsome creature but now naked and brutalised, covered with welts and grime, filthied by her own soil.

Despite her piercing screams, Urgol entered the cell, took the woman under his arm and lumbered back towards the Pit of Souls. There he bound her to the first of the two saltires, her arms and legs spread-eagled. She wept and wailed piteously, jabbering that her name was Magdalena, that she was a good Christian and that she had a husband in the service of the Empire. They were simple folk, who had never done anyone wrong.

It meant nothing to Urgol. His mistress’s commands were all.

The second captive was a younger woman — little more than a girl, in truth — but of hardier stock. She too was naked and brutalised, but she fought him as he dragged her from her cell, spitting on him, calling him an “inbred freak.” She only began to weep again as he shackled her to the other cross.

The two captives faced each other, only two yards between them. They were bathed in green light and dimly aware of the yawning shaft beneath their feet. Duchess Zalmyra emerged from the passage, her tall figure clad in a simple sleeveless robe of black cotton, belted at the waist. Her hair hung in loose, tar-black ravels. In the eerie light, her pale flesh was almost luminous. Urgol stood back as she surveyed the two prisoners. Briefly, they ceased their caterwauling; their tear-swollen eyes fixed on the beautiful, severe figure who would be the agent of their doom.

Zalmyra produced a long, crooked knife, razor-sharp and glinting, and the two prisoners set up a new wailing and gibbering. Magdalena interspersed her floods of tears with stammered prayers.

Duchess Zalmyra also prayed. “Pegfal vus ga ravalax… stevros thralanto paiador!” She joined her hands, the crooked blade pointed upward. “More-ud uvusona anaxus… BABI!”

She swept out with the weapon, slicing Magdalena’s throat without a sound. The woman’s eyes goggled, and her head tilted backward as a frothing red tide cascaded down the front of her naked body, pouring through the grille and into the blackness below.

Zara bit down on her tears and she too tried to pray. She had not lived a good life, short though it was. She had pleasured many men and women, and had imbibed foul and forbidden substances. She had cut purses and taken the Lord’s name in vain, but now, if there was time, she would implore His…

The blade slit her windpipe as surely, swiftly and silently as it had Magdalena’s.

“More-ud uvusona anaxus… STYMPHALIUS!” Zalmyra cried. Her eyes closed in ecstasy as the hot blood sprayed over her.

Urgol watched from the green-tinted shadow as the sorceress hacked the two bodies open down their fronts, at last prying the ribcages apart and rending out pulsing hunks of crimson muscle. She slid the knife into her belt, and stood by the edge of the platform, a heart clutched in each hand, blood and steam jetting out of them. “Pegfal vus ga ravalax!” she called shrilly, dropping her gory offerings.

A sudden shocking silence followed, lasting an age, the echoes of her exultation fading as she gazed down the shaft. An intense cold enveloped them, and Urgol stirred uneasily.

“What ails you, my friend?” Zalmyra asked, not looking at him.

“It is nothing, mistress,” he replied in his guttural voice.

“Don’t lie to me, Urgol.”

“I told you my fear before.” Even though she had specifically asked him, it was often difficult to gauge her mood, and the truth was not always appreciated. “These women might be missed. I’ve heard that Emperor Lucius is a pious prince, and that he will seek out the perpetrators of heinous acts…”

Zalmyra smiled. Blood patterned her neck and face, and her emerald eyes shone with fanatical zeal, yet she was calm. There was no rage in her voice when she replied: “There is nothing heinous about what we have done. The strong take everything. That is the only law in times of strife.”

“The Empire is strong too…”

“The Empire has died, Urgol. This last week. Emperor Lucius is slain, and he took his empire with him.”

Urgol did not ask how she knew this. His mistress had many complex devices: scrying-stones, crystal orbs, mirrors filled with swirling mist which gave glimpses of the future. But this was troubling news to him.

Duchess Zalmyra held that she lived outside the laws of men, but it had long been a benefit to her family that they were grandees of the Roman Empire. He personally had no love of Rome. In the old days it had persecuted his people, chaining them to the oars of galleys or forcing them to fight to the death in the Great Circus. When the Christians came to prominence they had halted such cruelty, only to try and force his tribe to convert, driving those who refused into the hills, to live as wild men. But despite all this, a strong Rome was a useful ally in times of crisis.

“Not that it would have stopped me, anyway,” Zalmyra said. “We Malconis have always forged our own path. I had no need for the Emperor’s approval. And no human life which is not of our lineage is worth any more to me than its sale-price.”

An eerie, ululating howl rose from the depths of the well.

“Speaking of which,” she said, “it seems the transaction is complete.”

A chorus of inhuman squawking and shrieking carried up from the pit.

“Step back, Urgol, into the far corner,” Zalmyra instructed. “Lest you share the same hideous fate I have arranged for the Black Wolf and his cohort.”