Assassin of the Damned (Dark Gods) Page 4

  “Explain,” I said.

  She nodded and with one of her grubby hands, she wiped away her smile. “I’m sorry I fled, signor. But how would it have helped if I’d stayed? You said some of them escaped. They might have kidnapped me. This way I’m still free to pay you the thousand florins.”

  “Fifteen hundred,” I said.

  “You earned every coin of it, signor. That was a knightly leap. I turned back to watch. I should have halted the mules, I know. But by the time I turned to control them, the mules had their heads. They were terrified. It was all I could do to keep the wagon intact. These cursed potholes are everywhere. I would have escaped but for them. When the wheel came off, I pitched off the wagon. But I was a juggler before this and remembered my tumbles.”

  “Bravo,” I said.

  “I hope you’re not bitter.”

  “What? That you’re a treacherous ingrate?”

  “I explained that, signor,” she said, sounding wounded.

  I nodded. “Good night to you, madam. I wish you luck.” I began to stride past. I’d had enough of her.

  She watched, surprised. “Wait, signor.”

  I saluted the uneasy mules as I passed. Then I strode along the road, headed for the castle.

  “You owe me!” Ofelia shouted.

  I paused, looked back. “…Do you have rope?”

  “Rope?” she asked.

  I looked at the trees. “Ten feet should be enough to hang you.”

  “What?”

  “I owe you for Ox’s attempted murder of me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Consider, signor, you’ll never get your fifteen hundred florins if I’m not with you.”

  “You never offered in good faith.”

  “It was my powder that allowed you to attack successfully.”

  “Magi Filippo hunted you,” I said. “I was never in danger.”

  She shook her head. “He hunted anyone who neared the castle. He would have come for you. You saw his hounds, the luckless men twisted by sorcery. You must have seen the others. They hate us.”

  “Us?”

  “Those who are still human,” Ofelia said. “Those they capture are hideously treated. You would have been no exception.”

  I pondered that. I liked the idea of sorcery twisting them better than the idea they were escapees from Hell. Besides, Dante’s Inferno had made it clear that none escaped from the infernal abyss. Priests and bishops taught the same thing.

  Ofelia approached with the lantern. Hooded cunning creased her face despite her efforts to hide it. “Where is Filippo’s chain?”

  She was observant, this little grave robber. “It’s on his corpse,” I said.

  “No. You should have taken it. Please tell me you took it.”

  “The gold is cursed,” I said.

  She laughed as if I were a cretin. “The gold is fine. It’s the pendant that is cursed, and that’s why you should have taken it. You’re in danger now.”

  “Less than before, I’d warrant.”

  “You can mock if you like,” she said. “But that shows your ignorance.”

  I refused to let her goad me. “I bid you goodbye.” I bowed, began to turn away.

  “The medallion showed the Cloaked Man, one of the manifestations of Old Father Night. The riders that escaped will return to the battle site. They’ll take the medallion. They’ll wrap Filippo’s corpse in a shroud and take it to his master.”

  “Why should that trouble me?” I asked.

  “Filippo’s master is the Lord of Night. By sorcerous means the medallion will show him Filippo’s death. It will show him you. The Lord of Night will want revenge.”

  Ah. I saw the depth of her cunning then. It was something that would have been worthy of that viper Bernabo Visconti of Milan or Pope Clement VI in Avignon. She’d obviously wanted me to murder Filippo so she could escape the coming retribution from his master the Lord of Night.

  “When the Lord of Night arrives with his minions,” I said, “I’ll tell him you hired me to murder Filippo. This lord will come and seek you then as the author of Filippo’s death.”

  “No,” Ofelia said. “You’re too strange to pass over. The Lord of Night or his avenging minion will take you. You need protection, signor. You need a patron.”

  “And how has your patron helped you?” I asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Ofelia asked, surprised. “She sent you.”

  The silver coin suddenly felt heavy in my belt.

  “Four riders are still out there,” Ofelia said, indicating the woods, “four riders and the hounds.”

  “Let them come.”

  “If you leave,” Ofelia said, “they might capture me.”

  I shrugged.

  “They’ll question me concerning you. I’ll be forced to talk. I think there are things about you, you want kept secret.”

  I lacked the knowledge to know if she was right or not. Prudence dictated I see this little grave robber to the Moon Lady’s castle or I should kill her now to silence her lying tongue.

  She gave me another of her insincere smiles.

  I was not a Visconti viper or a scheming pope. I had no desire to stamp a rat, or at least not stamp this rat with its scrabbling thirst for life. I would not kill Ofelia.

  “Do you not believe me, signor?” she asked.

  Ofelia had used her magic powder to help me slay Filippo. The man and his creatures might have attacked me. That was true. She had given me a good sword and she yet owed me florins, a goodly sum of them.

  “You may join me,” I said.

  “What about my wagon?”

  “I’m in a hurry,” I said. “Leave it.”

  Ofelia worried her lower lip. “You don’t understand, signor. It was hard work collecting the dead. They’re worth money.”

  Her collection of the dead suddenly sickened me. The many webs of witchery around me were enraging. I longed to slash them with a sword or burn them out with fire. I told her, “Your life is worth more than a wagon of corpses.”

  “You’re strong,” Ofelia said, “supernaturally so. Why not lift the edge of the wagon so I can put the wheel back on?”

  “You dare to mock me?” I shouted.

  She cringed before my anger. Then hounds howled in the distance. We both turned toward the sound. The hounds kept silent after that, so we couldn’t tell if they retreated or advanced.

  With her sweaty features, Ofelia looked up at me with hope and with her grave-digging avarice. “Try to lift it,” she pleaded. “Try it once. If it works—I’ll double my offer.”

  Three thousand florins—the idea was madness. Yet there was something in her voice…she knew more than she said. I didn’t want to believe that I was supernaturally strong. Yet something strange had happened to me. I strode to the wagon. “Get the wheel ready,” I said hoarsely.

  Ofelia scrambled to it.

  I squatted and wondered why I played along with her madness. Then I grabbed the corner of the wagon and made sure I had a solid grip. I gritted my teeth and strained. Slowly, my thighs straightened. By the stars, the corpses in the wagon were heavy.

  Ofelia rolled the wheel near. “Just a little higher!” she shouted.

  I actually lifted higher.

  She shoved the wheel back onto the axle. I let go of the wagon, and it settled with a ponderous creak. Ofelia produced a hammer, wedges of wood and banged away.

  I stood to the side and examined my hands. I’d just stumbled onto a terrifying discovery. It had occurred while I’d let go of the wagon. I should have breathed hard after such a strenuous effort. I should have gasped. Sweat should have poured off me. I did not sweat. I did not breathe hard. In fact, I didn’t breathe at all. I waited, and my chest remained level. I searched for my heartbeat, but there wasn’t one. Before, I’d been too busy or preoccupied to notice my lack of breath.

  Was I truly dead?

  No! I stood. I talked. I thought and acted. The corpses in the wagon did none of those things. They lay iner
t. They were dead. What was I then?

  Ofelia must have sensed my mood, or perhaps my feat of strength had terrified her. She quietly climbed onto the buckboard. I followed her example. She flicked the reins, and the mules resumed their steady clop. We were off to the castle of the Moon Lady.

  -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.