James Lowder - Knight of the Black Rose

“We start our dealings anew?”

“Just so,” Strahd said, taking his seat again. “I know you seek a portal, a way out of these dark domains. I happen to know where one exists, as well as what rites need be performed to open the gate.”

The death knight nodded. “Since this portal happens to stand in your foe’s domain, it may be necessary for me to force him to see the urgency of my quest.”

“We understand each other perfectly, Lord Soth.” The vampire casually reached down and tossed a piece of wood onto the fire, though the blaze warmed neither of the beings who sat before it. “A fair exchange between allies. I give you the location of the portal. You do not restrain yourself from harming anyone who prevents you from reaching that gateway.”

The conversation soon turned to Duke Gundar and the bloody history of the portal that lay within his home at Castle Hunadora. Like Strahd, the duke was a vampire, but he ruled his land through brute force, not through the subtle tactics of fear favored by the count. Barovians lived in dread of their mysterious lord-or, to be more precise, the boyar class of landholders who did Strahd’s bidding, collected his taxes, and enforced his laws. The poor souls who dwelt in Gundarak feared not only the duke’s army, composed largely of thugs and murderers, but the lord himself. Although they did not realize Gundar was a vampire, the people of Gundarak knew of his rampages across the countryside. His forays at the head of a mob of plundering soldiers had fueled many citizens’ nightmares.

Those who lived under the long shadow of Castle Ravenloft worked hard to pay their taxes, all in the hope that they might never know what the ancient stone walls held; the men and women of Gundarak knew that, no matter what they did, they might end up a corpse suspended from Hunadora’s blood-soaked battlements.

The story of Hunadora’s portal was likewise colored by violence. Hundreds of years past, the duke’s young son had quarreled with his sister in the castle’s main hall. Even then, the boy was a foul-tempered reflection of his father, and the argument ended with him bashing open his sister’s skull. No sooner had the girl’s blood wet the stone floor than a doorway of shimmering darkness appeared in the room’s center. Gundar and his son both tried to pass through the gate, but a wall of crackling energy held them back.

For more than a decade they preserved the girl’s corpse, using dark sorceries to make it bleed steadily. In this way they kept the portal open, but their experiments yielded the duke only disappointments. While any not of the duke’s bloodline could enter the portal without hindrance, neither he nor his son could pass through. At last Duke Gundar tossed his daughter to the crows and let the gate close.

“The experiments with the gate left their mark on Gundar’s brat son, too,” the count said, stretching his legs as the tale came to an end. “Medraut is forever trapped in a child’s body. The scholars the duke consulted claimed it had something to do with the energies the portal emitted.”

“Yet the child-monster can be killed?”

“As far as anyone knows, yes. It is said that his blood-or his father’s-will open the portal again when spilled in Hunadora’s main hall.”

For a time only the sound of the crackling fire could be heard in the keep. Soth pondered what the count had told him as the vampire lord sat contentedly by the fireside, seeming to doze. Finally the death knight stood. “I will leave in the morning, Count.”

“Splendid,” Strahd exclaimed. The speed with which he stood told Soth the count had been far from asleep. “I have two final gifts to offer you. The first is advice.”

The vampire lord moved to the room’s single window and motioned for Soth to join him. “Once, long ago, Barovia was the only duchy in this netherworld,” Strahd began. The death knight reached his side and glanced into the night. “The duchy was surrounded by a border of mist-the same mist that brought you here, Soth. As time went on, the mist carried strangers to my land. It was inevitable that, one day, someone would attempt to find his way back. A few travelers who entered the Misty Border were never seen again. Others simply left the mists in the duchy, reappearing far from where they’d entered.”

Pointing to the south, the count continued. “That was true until a ghost of great power and great evil breached the Misty Border. When he walked into the mists, a new duchy formed, a land called Forlorn. The dark spirit, whose name has never been told, rules Forlorn… just as other powerful beings rule the domains that formed when they entered the Misty Border.”

“You believe a new land would form if I entered this border?” Soth asked.

Nodding, Strahd turned away from the window. “Perhaps. And you would be trapped in that domain forever, just as I am a prisoner within the borders of Barovia.” He poked the fire and watched the sparks rise up the chimney. “A stretch of the Misty Border edges Gundarak to the southeast of Castle Hunadora. Keep to the routes I will provide you, and you will be safe. Stray too far from my map and…”

The death knight needed no further explanation. “What is the other gift?”

The count looked into the fire. “Troops worthy of accompanying you through Gundar’s lands.”

“I have no need of men,” Soth replied. “My thanks, but Azrael and Magda have proven to be somewhat useful. I plan to take only them with me into Gundarak.”

Strahd frowned, and the look of consternation that crossed his face was sudden and severe. “I was hoping you would allow me to deal with the gypsy and the dwarf. Magda knows far more than I’m comfortable with, and the werecreature has been raiding my villages for some time, flouting my authority.”

Soth gathered his damaged armor. “They are both pawns,” he said. Turning his back on Strahd, the death knight headed for the basement and the tools that were stored there. “But they are my pawns, and I will not give them up without good cause. As an equal ally in this arrangement, I reserve that right. I’m sure you understand.”

• • •

With the screaming finally at an end, Magda found it easier to work. Sighing, she pulled the brightly colored blanket a little tighter around her shoulders, then took a firm grip on the bone sewing needle and went about mending her tattered dress. The garment, which lay draped across her lap, had been a beautiful gown when Strahd had made a gift of it to her. After many days on the road and more than one terrifying encounter, it was little better than the homespun skirt the gypsy had been wearing on the night Soth had kidnapped her.

“Did you know him?” Azrael asked around a mouthful of bread. He pointed down, toward the room Soth and Strahd occupied. “The gypsy they have down there, I mean.”

Magda squinted at the crude needle and threaded it. After making a stitch or two in the dress’s ragged hem, she looked up at the dwarf. “My tribe was very small. I knew everyone in it.”

The clump of bread clutched in one hand, Azrael foraged through the basket at his side. Small wheels of cheese, loaves of bread, a few containers of preserved fruit and hardtack, and even two bottles of wine filled the straw basket to bursting. The dwarf pushed most of this aside, coming up at last with a cold leg of lamb. “You’ll be the last one left soon… if you’re not already.”

“That matters little,” she replied icily. “Apart from the old woman who led us, there was no one in the tribe who would have mourned me had I died before them-not even my brother.” She went back to her sewing. “If I am the last, I will begin my own tribe.”

The statement was made with little emotion, as if Magda had been speaking of the last meal she’d eaten or the weather from the previous day. With equanimity she held the dress up to the light of the single candle that lit the highest room in the tower. A skylight, its window long ago caved in by snow, augmented that feeble light with a wide pool of moonlight. The radiance cast a pale glow on the few boxes that made up the room’s decor.