James Lowder: Knight of the Black Rose

Azrael stood in the middle of the ancient rutted road, shaking his head. “What happened? You disappeared into the fog, and next thing I know, I’m standing here.” He gestured to the sky. “The whole day’s gone, too! Are we in Krynn, then? Is this Dargaard Keep?”

“No,” Soth replied wearily. “This is not Dargaard Keep. We are home, but not on Krynn.”

The death knight walked slowly into the castle. No sooner had he entered the keep itself than the banshees began to wail the song of his damnation. The wicked tale was longer now, and everyone in Barovia, Gundarak, and the other duchies that made up the netherworld heard it clearly. Soth walked in their nightmares that evening and for many nights to come.

The years passed slowly for Lord Soth. He named his new castle Nedragaard-ancient Solamnic for “not Dargaard”-because it was very much like his keep on Krynn, but dissimilar enough that he never passed a day without finding some small discrepancy. Most were minor-intact doors where ruined ones should have hung, walkways that were a few paces short of their original length-but for a creature who needed no sleep, who had paced through every hallway, every room in his home on Krynn for three and a half centuries, each inconsistency clashed painfully with his memories.

There were other, more striking differences, too. Thirteen skeletal warriors walked the halls of Nedragaard Keep, the thirteen loyal retainers who had served Soth on Krynn, yet they did not man the posts they’d held when they died. They roamed the keep freely, watching for trespassers that never came.

The banshees had come to Nedragaard, but somehow their memories had been warped. They no longer told Soth’s tale in exactly the same way each night, but instead forgot verses or added events that had never occurred. This infuriated the death knight. No matter how much he chastised them or how many times he flew into a violent rage at their imperfect telling, the banshees never sang his history the same way twice.

The past had been the only consolation left to the death knight; the pain caused by memories was the only thing that could goad his sleeping senses and emotions into a semblance of humanity. Now the past was thrust violently into Soth’s consciousness with each step he took through the flawed halls of his home, each fractured verse from the banshees’ lips; the constant pain caused by those memories and the longing he felt for the things he had lost no longer stirred his senses, but deadened them.

So it was that Lord Soth sat, numb to the cold wind that blew into the throne room, past the sagging main doors. He did not hear the tread of iron-soled boots across the stone floor or the keening of the banshees. And it wasn’t until Azrael was kneeling before the death knight’s worm-eaten throne that Soth noticed he had entered the hall.

“What do you have to report, seneschal?” Soth asked, his voice hollow, devoid of emotions.

The dwarf stood. He was clad in breeches dirty from a long trek and chain mail stained by rain and sweat. A silk doublet hung in shreds over his mail shirt. The black rose on its front presented a stark contrast to the dwarf’s bone-white mustache and muttonchop sideburns. “I am sorry, mighty lord,” he began tentatively. “I can find no sign of the Vistani camp.”

Soth sighed. In the past few months, rumors had come to him of a small band of Vistani traveling through his domain. Their leader was a woman who claimed to possess an artifact of some power-the cudgel of the hero, Kulchek the Wanderer. The gypsies earned their bread by telling tales to the domain’s scattered tribes of elves. Most of these concerned Soth, or a doomed silver-clad knight who seemed very much like the lord of Nedragaard Keep. Soth did not doubt that Magda had somehow survived to form this band; the story the Vistani told of the brave knight who had rescued their leader from the wyrm guarding Castle Ravenloft was proof enough for him.

“And the other?” Soth prompted. He tightened his grip on the ancient throne, and the wood cracked beneath his grip.

“The dark-haired woman with the crooked smile roams the hills as well,” Azrael reported. “The elves say she calls herself Kitiara. She claims that she was your doom, that you followed her voice into the mist that brought you here.”

Soth pounded the throne with a mailed fist. “I want you to have anyone spreading that rumor killed!” he shouted. “I forged my own doom. I am the cause of my damnation.”

The death knight had repeated those words quite often in the last few years, but he knew they were a lie. There were things of darkness that had power far greater than his. He was lord of Nedragaard Keep and master of a duchy even larger than Barovia. But the elves called Soth’s domain Sithicus, an Elvish term that meant “land of specters.” Although he would never admit it, Soth knew the name was a fitting one for his kingdom of shadows.