Knight of the Black Rose

FIFTEEN

A dull blue light shone around Lord Soth. As the death knight watched, the sourceless light spread to a thin strip of ground, revealing a pathway that extended a dozen yards or so. Around this path lay darkness more profound than any he had ever seen.

Azrael appeared suddenly. He, too, was bathed in blue radiance. Crouching at the death knight’s side, he muttered, “Black as Strahd’s heart in here.” He sniffed the air, testing for the scent of any hidden foe. The action only caused his charred nose to ache.

“Stay close,” the death knight said. He started along the path, taking one slow, careful step after another. The werecreature pulled the tunic up to cover his wounded shoulder, then loped along after him. After they’d gone a few steps, an elaborate wrought iron gate appeared at the path’s end.

“None shall pass unless they pay my toll,” came a voice from the darkness. The words were thick with the promise of danger for those who disobeyed them.

Soth took another step toward the gate, and a figure slid from the darkness to block the way. The keeper of the gate seemed to be made entirely of shadow, though in silhouette she resembled a very tall woman or, perhaps, an elfmaid. Her arms and legs were long and slender, and she moved with practiced grace. Although the details of her features were hidden, the light from the gate revealed her profile when she moved. Long, flowing hair framed a face with high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and full, pouting lips. She held her chin up, lending her stance an air of casual disdain.

The keeper had one exotic feature that was clear even though she was cloaked in darkness. A pair of twisting, branched horns rose from her head, much like a deer’s, but more elegantly curved. The points on these horns looked as sharp as Azrael’s claws.

“Go no farther,” she warned, pointing at Soth.

The death knight traced an arcane pattern in the air, but when he spoke the word to trigger the spell, nothing happened.

“This is my realm, and your sorcery will not work here,” the keeper explained. She extended a hand into the darkness beyond the path, then withdrew it. After a moment, a huge dog slunk into the light. Like the keeper, the hound was composed of shadow. It had the imposing form and flat skull of the mastiffs Soth had seen in some knights’ castles on Krynn. Yet its stomach was shrunken from starvation; its skin barely hid its rib cage.

The keeper moved toward Soth and Azrael, the shadow mastiff at her side. “The toll for passing along my road is high, but all must pay it.”

At that Soth drew his sword and lashed out at the keeper. The blade passed harmlessly through her, but the attack set the mastiff barking. The death knight sliced through the shadow woman again, and again the steel did her no harm.

Azrael backed up a few paces and looked frantically for the gate from which they had entered the shadow realm. “Mighty lord, perhaps we should go back.”

“Never!” Soth shouted. “What is your price, keeper?”

The keeper bowed her head slightly. “You are a wise man. Even if you wished to, you could not leave before you paid my price. That is the rule of this place.” She took another step toward Soth. The mastiff licked its chops noisily. “The cost of passing through my domain is your soul.”

Laughing, the death knight sheathed his sword. “I forfeited my soul long ago, keeper,” he said, then undid the straps holding his helmet in place and removed it. Patches of long blond hair hung from his scalp, dangling in places almost to his shoulders. His skin was parched, drawn tight against the bones beneath. Of his features, little could be seen; a shadow hid his nose and mouth. As he spoke, though, his white teeth flashed now and then from between his cracked lips. The darkness was greatest around his eyes, which were no longer human, but glowing orbs of orange light.

The death knight donned his helmet again and refastened the straps. “To gain my soul, you would have to travel to the home of my world’s gods, to the domain of Chemosh, Lord of the Undead. Even then, you would likely find him unwilling to part with that prize.”

After bowing her head, the keeper stood to one side of the narrow path. “You may pass,” she said, gesturing Soth forward with one hand. The death knight moved down the path. When Azrael tried to follow, however, the keeper once again blocked the way. The mastiff began to bark anew.

“You are a strange creature, indeed,” the shadow woman said to the wounded werebadger, “but a heart still beats in your chest. You must pay your toll.”

“Will it hurt? Losing my soul, I mean?”

“I do not know. No one has ever paid the toll and lived to tell me about it,” she explained impatiently. As she reached toward the dwarf with a long-fingered hand, she added, “Now, cease your prattle. It has been many years since anyone has passed along the path, and my hound and I have need of sustenance.”

The death knight was standing behind the keeper, but it was clear he was not going to lift a hand to help Azrael. He was on his own. As the shadow woman’s fingers drew closer to his chest, the werebadger stepped sideways, to the very edge of the lighted path.

“There is nothing to either side of the path,” the keeper noted. She reached down and stroked the mastiff's broad skull. “If you leave the light, you will be lost in the darkness until I bring you out.”

Azrael cursed and sprang forward, directly at the woman and the mastiff. Like Soth’s blade, the werebadger’s assault did the keeper no harm, but his powerfully muscled legs drove him into the heart of the shadow creature.

The next thing Azrael knew, he was engulfed in darkness, falling at an incredible speed toward some unseen doom. He screamed, but no sound came from his mouth. He flailed his arms and legs but could feel no movement other than the inexorable pull of gravity. In fact, he could no longer feel pain from his blasted shoulder. Perhaps, he realized with a shock, I’m dead.

He felt the touch of long, slender fingers against his shoulder, and his descent slowed. Next, a burst of blue light cut into his right eye like a needle; his left was still blind from the lightning bolt. A scream-his own, he noted with odd detachment-filled his ears, and the pain from his wounds throbbed to life. When his vision returned, Azrael found himself sprawled on the path. The keeper stood over him, her mastiff at her side. The dog had its mouth open, and ropes of dark saliva dripped from its jaws.

Azrael glanced down at his body. To his surprise, he had reverted back to his dwarven form. “W-What happened?” he gasped.

“You got a taste of what lies to either side of the path,” the guardian said. “No more stalling, now. Give me your soul.”

She thrust her fingers into the dwarf's chest. They felt like daggers of ice to Azrael, but the more he struggled against them, the more the coldness spread inside him. “It must be here!” the keeper cried. She buried her arm up to the elbow in his chest. At her side, the mastiff howled its hunger.

At last the shadow woman stood back. “I have never seen this,” she said sadly. “You are living, yet you have no soul.” The shadow mastiff slunk into the darkness to wait for another soul to fill its shriveled guts.

Shivering and gasping from her icy touch, Azrael stared at the keeper. “Im-m-m-agine that,” he stuttered. He slapped his arms around his chest to bring the feeling back, then stopped. The keeper’s touch had been painfully cold, but the numbness it had left behind was preferable to his burns.

Azrael staggered to his feet and looked up the path to the wrought iron gate. Soth was gone. “How long ago did he leave?” the dwarf wailed, rushing past the keeper. The death knight’s disregard for him did not surprise Azrael. In fact, he expected callous treatment from such powerful beings. But he had not endured the long journey to be abandoned without a fight; Soth was obviously destined for great things, and Azrael wanted to be part of them.

She shrugged. “When you disappeared, he left without a word. Perhaps he thought you dead. You weren’t gone very long, though, so he still might be near the other side of the portal.”

The dwarf ran to the gate, but before he pushed it open, he glanced back to the shadow woman. “Where does this lead?” he asked.

The keeper stood on the verge of the darkness beyond the path, her slender form stooped in disappointment, her horned head dipped in sorrow. “I do not know.” she whispered. “No one has ever returned to tell me, and I cannot leave this realm to find out for myself.”

Azrael shoved the gate wide. It creaked open on stiff hinges, and a rush of warm air blew past the dwarf. As swiftly as the darkness had engulfed him earlier, he found himself in a deserted alley, standing in front of a toppled rain barrel. He looked in wonder into the barrel’s mouth; he could see a faint image of the wrought iron gate in the water pooled inside. With the portal hidden this well, little wonder few people knew of its existence.

The water also reflected Azrael’s features back at him, so that for the first time he saw the lightning bolt’s effects. The sideburn and mustache were gone from the left side of his face, his left eye was closed tightly, and his shoulder was still hunched and twisted. His arm felt a little stronger, but the burns on his chest, side, and face hurt terribly. The loss of his hair bothered him more than the pain. By tomorrow, he would feel a lot better; his preternatural healing abilities were common to lycanthropes, from what he’d heard. For some reason, though, his hair took a long time to grow back.

When Azrael looked down at the sorry state of his brocatelle tunic-in tatters from the lightning bolt and stained with Medraut’s blood-he wished his clothing would mend itself as quickly as his body. He would simply have to steal something as soon as he found Lord Soth.

The narrow alley in which the dwarf found himself ran between two buildings, a bakery and a butcher shop. The aromas of freshly baked bread and recently slaughtered animals made the werebadger’s stomach growl. He pushed thoughts of food aside-as best he could, at least-and studied his surroundings.

The walls framing the alley tilted together as they rose higher, and the windows on the third stories practically opened onto one another. Above that, the buildings’ roofs met, allowing only a trickle of sunlight through. In one direction, the alley led to a dead end. In the other, it opened onto a busy marketplace. Below each window, puddles dotted the unpaved ground, stinking with garbage and the contents of chamber pots. It was, in short, like the alleys in most sizable towns-dark and dirty.

“Gods of light preserve us!” someone shouted from the marketplace.

A woman’s scream rang out, long and shrill, followed by exclamations of fright. They’ve spotted me, Azrael decided, but when he looked toward the marketplace, he saw the commotion was caused by something else.

He hurried to the alley’s mouth and scanned the frightened mob. Two hundred people crowded the square, though many of them rushed toward the wide thoroughfares leading away from the marketplace. Others pushed into the shops bordering the square. Tents collapsed as men and women jostled their supports. Carts were overturned, and baskets of food were spilled, their contents flowing across the dusty cobblestone square. Fletchers and bakers and peddlers of all sorts of goods fled from the figure in ancient, blackened armor who stood in the market’s center.

A wide grin crossed Azrael’s face. The keeper of the portal had been correct: Lord Soth hadn’t gone far.

The death knight lashed out at people indiscriminately. His sword carved a bloody furrow in one man’s back, then he caved in another’s skull with his mailed fist. A dozen or more corpses lay at his feet.

“Is this how he treats the people of Krynn?” the dwarf whispered. He looked at the crowd, but the reason for the death knight’s fury did not present itself immediately. No one seemed to be challenging Soth, though one of the corpses did wear the garish uniform of a guardsman.

The sight of that uniform made Azrael’s heart skip a beat. The blue jacket with gold buttons and epaulets; the black pants and high leather boots; the short, flat-topped hat with the black raven spreading its wings across its front-this soldier’s garb was familiar to him. It belonged to the watch in the town of Vallaki. And if they were in Vallaki…

The dwarf shuddered. The reason for Soth’s ravings crystallized in his mind.

The portal had returned them to the duchy of Barovia.

The Old Svalich Road remained strangely clear for the two days it took Soth and Azrael to march east from Vallaki to Castle Ravenloft. They both knew Strahd would hear about the slaughter the death knight had perpetrated in the quiet fishing town. Yet no one challenged their progress, even though the switchbacks and blind turns that allowed the road to climb the foothills of Mount Ghakis made it a perfect location for an ambush.

Of course, the wolves followed their every move from a distance, disappearing into the forest if Azrael tried to catch up with them. The death knight cared little about the beasts, though he knew they were conveying information back to the count. The dwarf found them a challenge, and he sometimes passed an hour stalking the wolves. While he was skilled as a hunter, they were beyond his abilities.

“Strahd will be expecting us, of course,” Azrael said as he trudged along the road. “Do you have a surprise for him, mighty lord? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, of course.” When Soth didn’t reply, he shrugged and scanned the bushes for any sign of the wolves. The death knight had grown ominously silent since their return to Barovia. It was all Azrael could do to get him to speak four times in a day.

“I’m sure you do have a surprise for him,” the dwarf said, more to himself than to his companion. He sighed, then scratched furiously at the peeling skin on his neck. A few thin ribbons came off under his fingernails, revealing new pink skin.

Few signs of the damage wrought by the lightning bolt remained on Azrael’s body or face. The charred skin had been shed, and his shoulder had righted itself. His left eyelid drooped a little, but his sight seemed to have returned completely. The same was true of his sense of smell. Only his lip and jaw, as smooth and hairless as his pate, stood as reminders of the attack.

Azrael had stripped one of Soth’s victims in the marketplace, replacing his bloodstained tunic and breeches with a new shirt and pants. Both were too large, but he used a razor he found in a man’s pack to cut them to size. He’d also grabbed a mace from the fallen watchman, knowing as he did that the count would likely send skeletons or zombies after them. Such blunt weapons were effective for smashing their reanimated bones to dust. Now, with each short-legged step Azrael took, the mace tapped his thigh reassuringly.

They spotted the castle and the village of Barovia just before sundown, a fact Azrael took as a bad omen. “Uh, shouldn’t we wait here until the sun rises again and Strahd is forced back to his coffin?” the dwarf asked tentatively.

“No,” the death knight replied. “We will have to fight our way to the keep whether the sun or the moon shines down upon us. The sooner we begin this war, the sooner I will have Strahd’s head adorning the gate of Castle Ravenloft.”

The ring of poisonous fog that Strahd could raise around the village was nowhere to be seen, and the town itself appeared deserted from Soth’s vantage; nothing moved in the streets, and the shops and marketplace were closed, even though there was still enough daylight to conduct business. That did not mean the count had failed to prepare a defense for his home, however.

A small army crowded before the rickety bridge, which Soth knew was the only way into the keep. “He has pressed the villagers into defending his home,” Soth noted as he and Azrael started down the road.

“Human soldiers?” the dwarf scoffed. “This won’t be much of a challenge.”

But when the death knight and the werebadger reached the clearing, they saw that zombies made up the bulk of the army of two hundred, with a few skeletons and battle-scarred and fearless mortal mercenaries filling out the ranks. Gargoyles flapped over the crowd, goading the soldiers into position with whips of barbed steel. One of these officers left the ranks as Soth approached.

“My master sends his greetings, Lord Soth,” it shouted as it flew toward the death knight. The gargoyle’s slate-gray wings took on a red tint in the light of the setting sun. Its face was long, with a chin that jutted out like a sharpened dagger. Its body was so rounded that it appeared almost soft. Soth knew better; such creatures always had skin as hard as stone.

Landing gently before Soth, the gargoyle kneeled and bowed his head. “My master has heard of your return to the duchy, noble lord, but he knows not the reason for your anger.”

The death knight faced the messenger. “I have nothing to say to you, lackey. My words are for Strahd alone.”

Standing, the gargoyle nodded. “Know this, then, Lord Soth. My master has sealed the keep with his sorcery. You cannot enter by walking through the shadows.” He gestured at the assembled army. “You can gain entrance only by passing across the bridge, and we are charged to prevent this.”

“Then the doom of these troops is sealed,” Soth replied.

After bowing again, the gargoyle flapped back over the army. He crossed over the bridge and entered the keep’s courtyard to inform the count of the death knight’s words. The commanders shouted final orders, and the army shuffled forward.

Azrael cupped the mace in his hand. He wished he’d remembered to take the mail shirt from Gundar’s castle, but he brushed that thought aside. Weapons of steel or iron could do him tittle harm; he regenerated too quickly from the wounds they caused for them to present any serious threat. Only weapons created by magic or blades wrought from silver were a real danger, and it didn’t look like the zombies and skeletons carried such precious arms.

“One-hundred-to-one,” the dwarf said, grinning up at the death knight. “Just enough to make it interesting.”

Soth turned. “I won out over greater odds when I was a mortal knight on Krynn,” he replied. “And I did not possess the powers I have now.”

The army had closed to a dozen yards. The zombies were unarmed, though Soth remembered how difficult they had been to defeat when he faced them on his first night in Barovia. The skeletons and the few humans wielded a variety of weapons-swords, axes, even flails and pole arms. Yet he did not draw his own blade, not yet at least.

With a quick movement of his hand and a softly spoken command, Soth called a swarm of flaming stones into existence. The meteors were the size of the death knight’s fist, and when they hit the front rank, they burned holes through whatever they struck-flesh, armor, or bone.

A skeleton, its skull shattered, dropped to one knee. The zombies behind it trampled it beneath their stumbling advance. Rag-clad dead men caught fire, and their attempts to put out the magical flames simply spread the fire to their hands and arms. They fell, too, though their fellows dodged the flaming corpses. In all of this, the undead soldiers made no sound. The battle was far from silent, though. The human sell-swords screamed as they died and the gargoyles continued to shout their commands.

Soldiers shambled forward to replace the thirty destroyed by the sorcerous attack, and the death knight drew his sword, its blade dark in the growing twilight.

The first soldier to get within striking distance fell to Azrael’s mace. The dwarf howled his victory as the skeleton dropped to the ground, its spine crushed, its rib cage split apart. It was soon joined by a human; Soth had almost severed his head from his neck. But the cry of victory died on Azrael’s lips when he saw a glint of silver. A mercenary, scars zigzagging his cheeks, stepped toward the dwarf. In one hand he held a silver long sword, in the other a dagger glowing with a faint aura of magic.

“After he prayed to Paladine, Soth received a quest,” Caradoc reported. “He was to go to the city of Istar and stop the kingpriest from demanding the power to eradicate all evil on Krynn.”

Strahd Von Zarovich steepled his fingers. “Go on,” he purred. This was the third time the ghost had repeated the tale of Soth’s curse for the vampire lord, and he had finally discovered a useful theme in the story.

“That very night, the knights who were besieging Dargaard Keep fell under some sort of spell, a magical sleep that allowed Soth to sneak past them undetected,” Caradoc continued. “He rode for days toward Istar, but the thirteen elven women who had revealed his dalliance with Isolde to the Knights’ Council stopped him on the road. They intimated Isolde had been unfaithful to him, that the son she was carrying was not his child at all, but the bastard of one of his ‘loyal’ retainers.”

The vampire smiled. “And Lord Soth turned away from his sacred quest to confront his wife.” He stood and paced the study, his agitation playing across his features. “He was a man of strong passions, eh, Caradoc?”

“He told me Paladine had granted him a very clear vision of what would happen if he failed to stop the kingpriest,” the ghost explained. “He said he knew the gods would punish the kingpriest’s pride by hurling a mountain at Istar. In his vision he felt the fire engulf the city, heard the screams of the dying.”

Strahd took a seat at a writing desk at the room’s edge. “But he returned to Dargaard to accuse his wife of infidelity.”

The ghost nodded awkwardly, his head resting on his shoulder. “And when he died that day, his curse encompassed everyone who had served him faithfully. His knights became mindless skeletons, and I…” He raised his hands and looked down at his transparent form. “Soth’s passions brought him low in the end, but I should not have been doomed with him.”

The vampire lord considered the ghost’s words for a moment. As he did, something the blind mystic had written on the day Soth and Caradoc had been drawn into Barovia came to his mind: Boarhound and boar, master and servant; do not hope to break the pattern. Honor it instead.

The obscure warning became clear to him at last.

Taking a quill pen and a piece of parchment from the desk, Strahd scribbled a hasty note. “I want you to memorize this message and deliver it to Lord Soth.”

Frightened, the ghost tried to stammer a plea, but the words simply wouldn’t pass his lips. Seeing his servant’s distress, the count held up one gloved hand. “I will extend the magical wards that make the castle safe from his sorcery to the gatehouses bracketing the bridge. As long as you go no farther than those towers, you will be safe from him.”

Caradoc started to object, but the count laid the paper upon the desk. “I would like the death knight to hear these words from your lips before the moon rises. You have my word that you will be safe. Do you doubt that I will uphold that promise?”

“Of course not, master. I–I will do anything you ask of me,” Caradoc said, bowing his head as the vampire left the room.

The gargoyle to whom Strahd had assigned the dangerous task of greeting Soth at the clearing was waiting for the count in the hallway. “The battle is going badly, master,” it reported. “The death knight and the werebeast have slain almost half the soldiers you raised, though they have taken few wounds themselves.”

Closing the door to the study, Strahd nodded. “The battle is not going badly, Iagus. It is proceeding just as I expected. If the army falls to under fifty, I will raise new troops from the graveyard on the outskirts of the village. Soth has no chance of crossing the bridge.”

Strahd started down the hallway. Over his shoulder he said, “In a few moments, Caradoc will leave to deliver a message to Lord Soth. Follow him and report to me everything that happens.” He hurried away to a room high in one of the towers.

It was a small cell with no windows and only a single door reinforced with iron. The door opened at a word from the vampire lord. A pair of torches bracketing the jamb flared to life of their own accord as he entered the room. Unlike much of the rest of Castle Ravenloft, no dust covered the shelves lining the walls and floor, no cracks snaked up the stone blocks. Even the torches burned without smoke. The wall behind their flames was free of soot.

Tapestries decorated with elaborate designs of interlocking rings and geometric patterns hung upon three walls. The ceiling, too, was covered with a mesmerizing fresco of swirling lines and colors. Two pieces of furniture stood in the cell: a three-legged stool and a large table with a clear glass top.

The count positioned the stool before one of the tapestries and sat down. As he did so, two of the table’s legs elongated so that the glass faced him. Gundar does hate it so when I contact him this way, the vampire noted to himself, then forced a grave mask over his mirth. He closed his eyes and pictured the unkempt ruler of Gundarak in his mind.

“You have some nerve contacting me now, you bastard!” Gundar shouted. Strahd opened his eyes and looked into the glass. There the duke stood, red-faced and snarling.

The lord of Barovia knew he appeared as nothing more than a ghostly, disembodied head to Gundar, a head surrounded by the mesmerizing patterns of the tapestry behind him. Anyone who stared at those patterns for too long found themselves hypnotized.

Gundar had dealt with Strahd enough times to know better. He focused his eyes on the count, not the tapestry, as he said, “You’ll pay for Medraut’s death, Strahd.”

“The creatures who killed your son are not my servants, I assure you. The werebadger is a renegade, a murderer, and the death knight is far too powerful to serve either you or me.” The count did his best to look concerned. “In fact, they are besieging my castle right now. The portal took them from your hall to an alley in the village of Vallaki. The death knight blames me for this.”

Tugging at his curling black beard, Gundar narrowed his eyes. “You admit they found out about the portal from you?”

“Of course,” the count replied, “though I only dealt with the death knight. The other is his lackey.” He leaned forward. “But let us be honest here, eh, Gundar? I had hoped the death knight would create a little havoc in your keep. If he killed your son, so much the better, but I knew he was not powerful enough to harm you-not seriously anyway.”

The duke uttered a string of foul curses, and Strahd held up one hand. “If the death knight had come to you first,” he noted coldly, “you would have turned him against me. It’s rather like murdering the envoys we send to each other.”

“This isn’t the same as murdering ambassadors,” the duke bellowed. “That monstrous werebeast tore poor Medraut’s throat out. Someone must pay my blood-price for this,” he warned. “I want restitution.”

Strahd laughed. “The werebeast should ask you for payment, Duke. You were terrified of that little brat. If you could have, you would have killed him yourself years ago.”

Slowly Gundar turned his back to Strahd, and silence fell upon both men. When the duke faced the ghostly image again, a look of worry, almost of fear, hung upon his features. “The death knight fought me to a standstill,” he said gravely. “Here, in my own castle!”

“That is why I am contacting you,” Strahd explained. “This death knight-Lord Soth, is his name-has proven himself to be a threat to both Barovia and Gundarak. As I said, he is fighting against my minions as we speak, trying to batter his way into my home.” The count smiled, revealing his fangs. “I can rid us of him, but I will need your help.”

Again Gundar paused, then he asked, “What do you need me to do?”

Soth and Azrael fought back-to-back. The corpses and bones piled around them served to slow down the assault, and they added to that grim barricade with almost every stroke of Soth’s blade, every swing of Azrael’s mace. Both had taken blows from the attackers, but the death knight’s armor saved him from all but the most powerful strike and the dwarf's amazing powers of regeneration helped him shrug off most wounds. Only the scarred mercenary had scored palpable hits against the werebadger time and again; his silver sword and ensorcelled dagger dug deeply into Azrael’s shoulder and leg. The dwarf had not been able to strike back at the human, for he attacked whenever Azrael was caught up in a struggle with a zombie or skeleton. Then he faded back into the press.

The zombies proved to be the most difficult foe, as Soth had expected. Their limbs continued to fight even after being sliced from their torsos. Azrael now clutched a burning branch in one hand, and set the creatures on fire whenever a chance presented itself. Flames seemed to be the best way to stop the shambling undead, for their ragged clothing and desiccated flesh caught fire quite readily.

Azrael had just set another zombie on fire when the half-dozen gargoyles that flapped overhead shouted a retreat. “Back to the bridge,” they cried, snapping their wire whips against the zombies’ backs.

Soth did not allow the soldiers to break off without paying a price. He cut two mercenaries down as they fled and bashed in a skeleton’s rictus grin with the pommel of his sword. As the remainder of Strahd’s army backed toward the bridge, Soth studied the battlefield, waiting for some new and more deadly opponent.

“Greetings, Lord Soth,” came a voice from one of the crumbling gatehouses slouching to either side of the bridge. “I bear a message from my master, Count Strahd Von Zarovich.”

The familiar voice startled Soth, and his sword slipped from his fingers when he saw Caradoc standing atop the gatehouse. The ghost’s head still lolled upon his shoulder as he hovered uncertainly, half hidden behind a crenelation. “The count sends his regrets that he cannot deliver the message himself, but has asked me to inform you that he will come to parley with you when the moon reaches it zenith.”

“Caradoc,” the death knight whispered, unable to believe his eyes. “You traitorous cur!” He staggered a step forward and pointed. A bolt of light flashed from his hand and sped toward the ghost, but before it reached the tower, it struck an invisible wall, a powerful shield against magic that Strahd had erected around the castle. The beam dissipated in a dazzling burst of reds and golds.

It took Caradoc a moment to find his voice. Strahd had kept his word; the death knight could not reach him. “My master’s message to you is this: ‘I regret you have not left Barovia, but your treatment of my subjects in Vallaki and your attack on my home cannot be pardoned. If you break off your hostilities now, I may find mercy for you.’ ”

Azrael kicked one of the corpses littering the field. “Mercy? He’s the one cowering inside his castle, and he’s offering us mercy?”

“His message for you is different, dwarf,” Caradoc replied. “I am to say that you are doomed.”

His fists held before him, Soth rushed forward a few steps. The army pressed together to hold him back, but he stopped before he reached the front rank. “You cannot hide from me forever, Caradoc,” he shouted. His rage burned within him, as hot as the fires that had robbed him of his life.

The ghost leaned out over the crenelations. “You will never defeat Strahd.” He laughed and gestured toward his broken neck. “This is the best you could do against me, and I’m the least of his servants.”

So caught up in the joy of taunting the death knight was Caradoc that he did not notice the soft shimmer in the air above Soth’s head.

“I robbed you of Kitiara,” the ghost shouted, “and you expect to outwit Strahd? The medallion was hidden in my skeleton in the tower at Dargaard. You practically stepped on it when you scattered my bones. It’s still there, but you’ll never reach it. She is out of your grasp forever.”

A huge fist appeared above Soth, glowing with a fierce red luminescence. The death knight raised his gauntleted hand over his head, and the radiant fist he had formed rose higher. When it was level with the top of the gatehouse, Soth pounded the air before him; the fist mirrored that action and slammed into the invisible shield.

“You… will… never… escape!” the death knight shouted. The fist struck the barrier with each word, sending peals of thunder rolling through the clear night sky. Lines of blue light snaked across the air like cracks in plaster, and the gatehouse quaked to its foundation.

Caradoc needed no more prompting. He fled back to the keep, Soth’s shouts and the ominous rumble of magical thunder filling his ears. Relief washed over him when he saw Strahd framed by the castle’s entryway.

“You seem to have angered him,” the count said smoothly. “That’s quite unfortunate.”

Caradoc’s relief turned to fear when he saw the cold glint in the vampire’s eyes, the calculating way in which Strahd was studying him. “Master, I-”

Strahd shook his head, silencing the plea before it left the ghost’s mouth. “I’m afraid you are no longer welcome at Castle Ravenloft, Caradoc,” the vampire lord said. “I want you to leave immediately.”