slow it down.
But the creature’s grating, shrieking voice called out from the throne room, much nearer than Magda had figured it would be. “Worse awaits you down there,” it shouted. Magda dared a glance over her shoulder and saw the gargoyle floating across the room on its batlike wings.
Luckily the ceiling was too low and the walls too narrow for the creature’s wings to be effective on the stairs. Magda leaped down the stone steps three and four at a time, through sheets of cobweb and over the omnipresent rats. After a small landing, the twin sets of stairs joined together and widened into a broad, gentle curve of stone, then emptied into a domed room.
The Vistani recognized the place as the room where she and Soth had first met the count. Torches still lined the walls in iron sconces. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling in gray sheets, obscuring the ancient, peeling frescos high above. Only the leering gargoyles were missing. Their stations around the dome’s rim lay empty.
Magda wondered if she should try to recover her dagger and her belongings from the dining hall but abandoned the idea almost as soon as she had thought of it. The gargoyle clomping down the stairs sounded dangerously close. She turned toward the open double doors that led to the entryway and the outside. As she took a step toward that portal, however, something red and scaly moved from the entryway’s shadows and blocked the woman’s path.
“None may leave without the master’s permission,” a small red dragon warned from the doorway, its voice sibilant.
The Vistani had never seen anything like the wyrm. It matched her height with the length of its body, and smoke rose menacingly from its nostrils as it spoke. Wings lay folded against its back. They flexed from time to time as the guardian tensed its muscles. Catlike it crouched, studying her with bright, slitted eyes. With mesmerizing slowness, the dragon’s head moved back and forth on its long, ridged neck. Magda had seen a snake charmer in a marketplace once, and the hooded serpent dancing to that old man’s flute had moved in a similar fashion. The effect was the same, too. The Vistani found herself as captivated by the wyrm as she had been by the serpent in the market.
“Worse t’await you,” came a voice from behind the Vistani, followed by a gleeful chuckle. Magda didn’t have to look to know the gargoyle had reached the bottom of the stairs. The torch dropped from her suddenly numb fingers. The cracked wood split when it hit the floor, and the torch broke apart into a dozen useless, burning fragments.
The huge spider chittered as it hopped sideways across the floor. Tufts of stiff black hair covered its body and spindly legs, and its fanged mouth moved reflexively, dribbling poison in sticky threads. It reared back on four of its eight limbs and lurched forward.
Lord Soth paid the creature little mind; the three other monstrous arachnids that had attacked him lay squashed like so many mundane fleas. The sole remaining spider had challenged him repeatedly but had not moved close enough to be a threat. All the death knight needed to do was draw his sword, and the spider would scuttle back to the corner where its web had been destroyed and now carpeted the floor as ashes.
Soth returned his full attention to the thing strapped to the torture device before him. The wererat was dead, a silver dagger in his heart, another planted firmly in his skull. As the death knight watched, the hairy, elongated snout melted to human features and the pointed ears shrank and rounded. The hunch disappeared from Pargat’s back, and the corpse rested flat on the silver bands once again. The ambassador had transformed into a ghastly man-rat just before Soth drove the silver daggers into his vital organs; in death, he returned to his mutilated human form.
“Go to whatever hell awaits you,” Soth rumbled as he stepped away from the terrifying bronze and silver device.
The death knight had tried to force the ambassador to reveal the location of the portal in Duke Gundar’s castle, but to no avail. Soth was convinced Pargat had told the truth in the end-he could not talk of the portal because of an enchantment Gundar’s son had placed upon him. To negate such a spell lay far beyond Soth’s skill with magic, so out of irritation he had killed the unfortunate ambassador.
The giant spider edged closer, but Soth turned his back on it and crossed the room. The arachnid waited for the death knight to reach the door, then it hopped forward and loomed over the dead man trapped in the torture device. “Enjoy your dinner,” Soth said as he disappeared into the darkened hallway.
A group of rats that had gathered in the hallway housing the vampire’s larder scattered when Soth passed by. The death knight crushed the vermin-spies whenever they got underfoot, and word had obviously already passed along their network to avoid the newcomer. The rats found easy escape routes from the larder hall, for the doors to all ten cells had been shattered. Upon leaving Voldra’s room, Soth had methodically smashed each door and slit the throats of the unlucky peasants who were being held captive. One man struggled against the blade; the others went to their deaths almost willingly.
Soth watched the rats flee. “The corpses and spilled blood are my gifts to you, in return for your cooperation,” he called after the last whiplike tail to slither into a room. “Keep careful track of all that I do this day and report it to your master when he awakens.”
The stairs were empty and silent as the death knight made his way to the main floor. As he walked, he considered what further damage he could wreak upon the count’s home; Strahd could not be allowed to forget what a mistake he’d made in ordering about Lord Soth of Dargaard Keep as if he were a common servant. And when he’d caused enough havoc, Soth would head for Gundar’s castle. He needed no torture-borne confidences to find the gateway back to Krynn.
“None may leave without the master’s permission.”
The words came from the room beyond the stairs, and Soth paused, waiting for the sibilant voice to speak again. Instead, a different voice-this one high and grating-announced something the death knight could not interpret. Base laughter filled the room and staircase, then something wooden struck the floor.
“Ah, more of Strahd’s minions to destroy,” the death knight said and walked from the staircase.
A crumbling archway partially obscured the chamber, but Soth saw that Magda stood at the center of the domed room, the flaring fragments of a torch at her feet, a gargoyle crouching to her left. This hideous creature, with its scarred face and razor-sharp talons, laughed again. The braying reminded Soth of the drunken brigands he had often dispatched in his days as a Knight of the Rose.
“Lord Soth!” The Vistani locked her green eyes on the death knight. When she spoke again, the words came haltingly, choked off by fear and uncertainty. “H-Help me.”
Like some stone-skinned ape, the gargoyle loped toward Magda. Its hands scraped noisily over the stone floor. “Help me,” it mocked. “Ha! Nothin’ t’help you now!” It circled the Vistani, eyeing the remains of the torch.
Magda kicked the embers at the gargoyle, and the creature scurried back a few paces. Soth saw her glance to her left, then she said, “Strahd has plans for you, Lord Soth. I know what those plans are.”
“Silence!” something hissed from the doorway, hidden from Soth by the archway.
The death knight stepped into the room, his cloak billowing behind him. What he saw in the doorway astonished him.
A dragon! It was only a small red, but the death knight well knew that any wyrm could prove a deadly opponent. He studied it closely, taking in its stance and its strength. The dragon had raised itself out of its crouch, standing stiff-legged in defiance of the newcomer. Claws as white as sun-bleached bones scraped against the stone as it pushed forward a step. Tail twitching in irritation, the wyrm probed the air with its forked tongue. That’s a good sign, Soth noted. It is uncertain how powerful a foe I may prove to be.
The death knight had dealt with red dragons on Krynn; at one time, the evil fire-breathers had been a keystone in Takhisis’s evil army. With age, such dragons gained the ability to study spells like any mage. Soth hoped the young red hadn’t lived long enough to acquire such enchantments.
“Greetings, Soth of Dargaard,” the dragon said. Though its tone was pleasant, smoke puffed in noxious clouds from the dragon’s nostrils as it spoke.
The death knight replied coldly, “I am at a disadvantage. Strahd told you who I am, but he failed to mention your name to me.”
“Names have power, Soth. Pardon me if I do not offer you mine.” The twitch in the dragon’s tail grew more insistent, and the beast slithered a step toward the Vistani. “Perhaps if you lower the blade you brandish…”
