James Lowder - Knight of the Black Rose

A silence covered the room as both the count and the death knight considered the rewards the venture against Duke Gundar offered. For his part, Lord Soth wondered if this might truly be his road back to Krynn, back to Kitiara. With Caradoc dead, he would need to search for the tanar’ri lord who held the general’s soul, but that did not matter. Nothing would prevent him from recapturing her life force and resurrecting her as his immortal consort.

The vampire’s mind curled around evil plans, too. For many, many years, Strahd and Gundar had exchanged unpleasantries. The count made it a policy to murder every ambassador sent by the duke, and the duke returned the insult in kind. It had become a perverse sort of challenge to the dark lords to offer up an envoy who would not die too easily; of course, they sent men on these journeys with whom they were fatally displeased. That coy game was growing stale to the count.

The cries of the prisoners and the sound of Voldra’s fingers rubbing along the glass underscored his thoughts. For a time, the mystic continued to create his pattern with steady, mechanical movements. Suddenly his hands slid with urgency over the orb. He fumbled for the pen and began to scrawl a note. Like before, Voldra’s thin frame shook as the answer forced its way through him to the blank page.

“His answer is much longer this time,” Strahd noted. The vampire and the death knight hovered over the old man, waiting for him to complete his scribbling. When Voldra at last sank to the tabletop, drained of energy, the count lifted the parchment.

“ ‘Success will cost you everything,’ ” the vampire read. He squinted at the page, unable to decipher a few words. “There are a few unreadable scribbles, then it continues: ‘End at the beginning, and…’ ”

Strahd again turned the paper so the light from the candelabra illuminated the scrawled message. The paper cast a huge shadow against the far wall, but the vampire-like all his kind-did not. “I fear a second reading with no rest wore Voldra out. Most of this is impossible to read.” He glanced at Soth and added, “The only other thing I can make out is the last line: ‘The general with the crooked smile is lost to you forever.’ ”

The death knight stiffened and, without preamble, snatched the page from Strahd’s hands. He read what he could of the message, and, as the count had foretold, it ended with a clearly legible conclusion. The general with the crooked smile, he fumed. That was Kitiara!

“You said he could divine something about the duke’s castle, about the location of the portal?” Soth rumbled as he tore the paper in two.

Strahd leaned against the table with feline grace and steepled his slender, gloved fingers. “Voldra answers whatever question is most pressing to the people close at hand. I take it, then, you know this general?”

With a lightning quickness, the death knight snatched the crystal ball from the table. He raised it over his head and dashed it against the filthy stone floor. A brilliant flash lit the room, and a thunderclap shook the table, rattling the door on its iron hinges. When the twisting, noxious cloud of multicolored haze dissipated, Soth and Strahd stood face to face.

“You fool!” Strahd shouted. “That crystal cannot be replaced!” He gestured to the old man. Voldra’s beard and hair had been burned away, and much of his right side was blackened from the explosion. “Without the crystal, he’s of little use to me.”

Soth folded his arms across his chest. “I do not approve of others plumbing my thoughts,” he said flatly. “I killed the Vistani witch for that offense. The old man is no different. If you say he’s unable to scry without the crystal, then he’s of less use to me. I would enjoy killing him.”

“Your enjoyment means nothing,” the vampire hissed. He dropped to one knee beside Voldra and curled his long fingers around the old man’s neck. A wheezing breath escaped the mystic’s lips, then the count twisted Voldra’s head savagely, breaking his neck. Strahd never took his eyes from Soth.

When the lord of Castle Ravenloft stood again, his face was flushed with fury. “I am the master of this domain, Soth, and I hold the key to your escape. If you want to return to Krynn, if you wish to see your crook-smiled general again, you should remember who your betters are.”

Soth’s gauntleted hand struck the tabtetop, and the worm-eaten wood shattered into hundreds of fragments. The candelabra clattered to the floor, the candles extinguished. “On Krynn I am a favored servant of the dark goddess, Takhisis,” he said, taking a step toward Strahd in the darkness. “There she is my master. In Barovia, I recognize no one as my superior.”

The death knight swung hard at the count’s head. Before Soth’s gauntlet rose halfway to its target, the vampire caught his wrist. Strahd held Soth fast, and the two dead men locked gazes. From the corridor, the prisoners’ voices howled at the disturbance.

Soth’s left hand began to move in a quick, rhythmic pattern. “Do not even think to use a spell against me,” Strahd hissed, tightening his grip on the death knight’s wrist. The armor buckled slightly at the pressure. “I have studied magic for many mortal lifetimes, and I know spells that will cause you great suffering.”

After a moment, when the tension had gone out of Soth’s arm, the vampire released him. Strahd pulled his cloak around himself again, and the angry color faded from his cheeks. “There have been other travelers from Krynn in these halls,” the count murmured, a trace of amusement in his voice. “In fact, Voldra and four others arrived in Barovia twenty-five-no, thirty years ago. They came from a city named Palanthas.”

Soth stood numbly, listening to the count. He had been human the last time he’d been equally matched by a foe, and that awareness chilled him to his soulless core.

“Voldra called himself a ‘Mage of the Red Robes’,” Strahd continued, his eyes glittering in the darkness, “and he said he was a servant of the great god Gilean, Patriarch of Neutrality. This Gilean must be a rival to Takhisis, eh?” The vampire’s cloak flowed behind him as he swooped down on the mystic’s corpse. “Gilean did not send his hosts to punish me when I ripped out Voldra’s tongue. His bearers will not come to Castle Ravenloft to carry the dead man’s body-or his soul-away to his eternal reward.”

Strahd stood, then uncovered the candelabra and candles in the debris. At a word the stubby pillars of yellow wax burst into flame. “The gods of Krynn mean nothing here, death knight. You will serve me, or you will never escape this place.”

In the silence that followed, the cries of the prisoners could be heard again, distinctly.

“Why have you forsaken me, Gods of Light?” a woman shouted hoarsely.

“Only one of us needs to escape,” a man called in a low, gravelly voice. “Let’s work together.”

The vampire stifled a sudden yawn. “I will take your silence as a sign of your consent. A wise choice.”

Shaking off his shock at the vampire’s power, the death knight kicked Voldra’s corpse absently. “What did you do with the other four from Palanthas? Are they in your larder, too?”

Strahd tilted his head. “Voldra was the only one of any use to me. The others I let wander in the duchy as they wished.” He rubbed his chin pensively. “One of them is still alive, a fat cleric named Terlarm. He lives in the village.”

The master of Castle Ravenloft glided to the door. “I am afraid we will have to continue our chat this evening, Lord Soth. It is getting close to sunrise, and I’m afraid I am a bit fatigued by our… discussion.” He turned his back on the death knight and disappeared into the hallway.