You dare to come this way to Darkon? Then stay, bloodsucker. Stay and die!
Azalin's magic. His damnable magic was holding me in place, forcing me to fuse with Vychen. Now I wasn't only aware of his pain and panic, it became my own.
Now I was no longer miles away and safe from such an attack, I was a part of what was going on, unable to draw away. Now did I struggle for my life. And lost.
Their sheer numbers were too much. They surrounded me, pulled me back and down. I struck the ground, overcome by an avalanche of cold, reanimated flesh. Vychen was strong, but no match for these things, which were just as powerful.
Their mouths hung open as though frozen wide with laughter, but they made no sound. I caught the thick stench of death clinging to their skin as they pawed at me. Seizing a questing arm I tore it right from the socket of one of them. There was a burst of blood, but my savage action made no change. That body and the others continued to arrest my desperate fight to get free. I was fixed to the earth by them, all my limbs held fast.
Then I saw the stake-one of the very ones my people had brought over.
I had prepared them all myself, enspelling them to make sure they'd do more than the expected injury of piercing undead flesh. They wouldn't merely rend, but sear their way through, cleaving to the body like a barbed arrow. To pull it free would cause even greater harm. And it was in the hands of a mindless corpse under the control of my worst enemy.
I will repay! Azalin's harsh voice screeched in my mind, the pain of it making me cry out.
The corpse's head lolled side to side as it shambled toward me, movements made wooden by Azalin's far away control. Its neck was broken so badly that the bones were completely parted and only the remaining skin and muscle kept it attached to the body. The thing stopped and loomed over me.
Repay!
The corpse raised the stake high. I might have screamed; I couldn't hear myself for Azalin's maddened cursing.
I glimpsed the stake arcing down, felt the tearing, burning explosion of agony in my chest. My desperate dying shriek rent the air, the last of it drowned as the blood rushed up my throat. I gagged on it. Coughing, I tried to expel my own blood from my throat. The stuff spewed over the bodies holding mine in place.
I tried to rise, make one last escape, but something else had me hard in its grip. Something I could not fight. I felt it rasp against my rib bones as I bucked against it. The stake. The damned wood had gone right through my body, pinning me to the alien earth of Darkon.
My limbs flailed out of control…
Lord Strahd!
… heels drumming as ungoverned spasms racked me…
Lord Strahd! Wake up!
…the weight of all those dead-crushing, killing…
Aldrick?
… taste of my own blood in my mouth…
Yes! Wake up! Wake up now!
As though he was one among the corpses I saw Aldrick's face anxiously peering down at me. The vision clouded, fogging over.
The dead heaped upon me, pressing…
Come back, Lord Strahd!
I saw Aldrick again. The vision of the dead… clouds…
– or the Mists-
The terrible pain did not stop, but… changed.
Pressure was still on my chest, but different from-
Hurry!
Smothering, but bearable.
Now!
Then a terrific wrenching, as though I was being turned inside out.
My lord Strahd?
And I jarringly but undeniably traded one pain for another.
The faint image of Aldrick's face took on solidity, reality as the essence that is me was ripped from Vychen and thrust back into my own body again.
I was in the barracks house, lying flat on the floor, clutching the heavy crystal ball close to my chest. Guards were standing nearby watching with fear on their faces. Gasping, I realized my link to Vychen has dissolved, blessedly dissolved.
'My lord?' Aldrick.
'It worked,' I whispered. This time with my own voice.
The first few nights were the most important and the worst because of all the waiting, the wretched uncertainty. Recovered from my ordeal, I kept constant post over my crystal as diligently as any of my border guards, waiting to see what Azalin would do.
The dark of the moon came… and went. His army camped just north of the Krezk pass for another week, then gradually began pulling out until none remained but a few of the guardian zombies who had not been caught in the fire.
I didn't want to trust this and sent in scouts to make sure. Some even managed to return. Their reports confirmed that Azalin's people were apparently gone from the border.
I wanted to see for myself, take control of another, but without the disk and the crystal to use I could not. It would take a very long time to create another. At least it was useless to Azalin without the magic potion to act as a catalyst.
Weeks passed, then months, then years. Azalin held back from making another massive attack, for his army would soon come to grief without experienced leaders. He could not even send his damned zombies across, knowing I would turn them against each other once they were on my side of the border. He would have to hold back and lick his wounds and hope a new generation of effective leaders would mature to replace the old. Not likely, I thought, for he was too jealous of his power to allow others to learn the art of warfare as I knew it.
I had hoped the aftermath of my assaults would provide me with at least several years of respite, time to prepare for the next attack, and for once my wish was granted.
I could thank my enemy for that, for his delay gave me the time to strengthen my own defenses. His temporary weakness made me strong. And until he realized that the continuing result for both of us in our ongoing war would ever be a draw, I would have to continue to watch, wait, and prepare for his next attack.
Unless… unless I got very, very clever again.
EPILOGUE
736 Barovian Calendar, Mordentshire, Mordent
When Van Richten's voice died away, Mrs. Heywood closed the book with a thump.
Lord Strahd von Zarovich. Such a terrible man, she thought-though he couldn't really be a man at all. And as for that Azalin creature, why, it couldn't possibly be the same Azalin that ruled Darkon today. It couldn't possibly…
She shook herself as if to jar the awful thought from her mind and looked at Van Richten, but his attention was obviously turned inward. He seemed utterly unaware of her presence. What was he thinking? Certainly nothing pleasant to judge by his bloodless face.
But…but…it was just a book after all.
The more she thought about it, the more she came to realize that the tale was not truly a history of anything
