of the stair. It was a gargoyle, similar to the one Magda had fought earlier, though this one had four arms and a double set of horns atop its slate-gray head. “Here they are!” the creature shouted. A half-dozen other gargoyles appeared on the stairs.
Lord Soth stepped toward the shadowy corner and extended his hand. “Well, Magda?”
The Vistani rushed to the death knight. She closed her eyes as she held out her left hand, for she knew Soth’s icy grip would be painful.
“A wise choice,” Soth murmured, gently closing his mailed fingers over her trembling hand. Together they disappeared into the darkness.
Shouting threats and curses, the gargoyles raked their talons through the air where the knight and the gypsy had stood but a moment before. “The master will not be pleased,” the four-armed creature wailed. “He will surely destroy us all.”
A small gargoyle the color of old rust cowered at the leader’s feet. “Perhaps we can run away,” it suggested meekly.
The four-armed creature shook its head and slumped to a sitting position. “There is nowhere in Barovia to hide. Strahd is master of this land, and he would find us before the sun rose tomorrow.”
Sadly nodding their agreement, the other gargoyles crouched statuelike in the main hall, waiting for the sun to set and their master to rise from his coffin. Their punishment would be terrible but quick.
Strahd Von Zarovich would offer the death knight and the Vistani no such mercy when he found them.
NINE
The cracked, weather-beaten sign above the tavern read Blood on the Vine, and it creaked as the wind pushed through the square. The building holding up the sign, a tavern, had seen better days. Sun-bleached wooden shutters framed smudged windows, and whitewash clung to the walls in a few places. The tavern’s closed door seemed to warn that only regulars were welcome.
Not that many people passed by the shabby place. Though it was almost noon, the village square remained subdued. A few tradesmen delivered their wares, and the scarecrow of a man who held the job of tax collector for the burgomaster shuffled from shop to shop.
“Looks like a storm. With luck, the bastard’ll be hit by lightning,” one of the patrons of the Blood on the Vine noted sourly, eyeing the tax man through a small clean spot in the window. The words sounded like thunder in the low-roofed room, for the only other noise came from the gently crackling fire in the hearth.
Taking a swallow of watery wine, he looked to his fellows for support. “I said, with luck he’ll be blasted by lightning.”
The two other men in the tavern weren’t up to the task. Arik, the barkeep, murmured something incomprehensible in a dull voice and went back to cleaning glasses that would not be used for days. Thin as he was, he might have been a brother to the scarecrow tax man, but he was as well liked as the burgomaster’s man was despised and resented. Most older villagers, both men and women, had been served by Arik or his father-who had also been named Arik. The family that owned the Blood on the Vine thought it best to keep the name of the barkeep the same, and the townsfolk found it convenient.
The other man ignored the invitation to rail against the tax collector altogether and stared intently at the pattern of rings and chips worn into the tabletop before him. His blue eyes betrayed the nagging dread that welled inside him, and his pale face held a haunted expression. Unlike the other two in the tavern, he was clean-shaven and his blond hair was neatly trimmed. The straight bangs over his wrinkled brow emphasized the plumpness of his features, making him look younger than his fifty winters.
“Hey, Terlarm,” the man at the window called. “Are you too busy praying to answer me?”
“Leave him be, Donovich,” Arik said from his place behind the bar, in front of the shelf full of glasses. “If you’d witnessed a beast of the night slaughter your friends, you’d not be so boisterous either.”
Donovich downed the last of his wine, wiped a dirty hand across his drooping mustache, and swaggered to the open cask set at one end of the taproom. “True enough, I suppose, but it was my brother the damned Vistani murdered the other night, wasn’t it?” To emphasize the point, he slapped the black arm band he wore, a symbol of grief that told all Barovians the bearer had recently lost family. “You don’t see me moping around.”
Raising his blue eyes at last, Terlarm noted, “Grief is not so easily forgotten where I come from.”
“You’ve been in Barovia long enough to have learned our ways,” Donovich snapped. Like most villagers, he had little tolerance and less patience for outsiders. He refilled his cup and took a place at the table in front of the fireplace.
Terlarm swallowed a caustic reply, then tugged at the sleeve of his tattered red robe. The boyar’s words were true enough; he’d been in Barovia for almost thirty years now. Long ago, he and four others had become lost in a bank of fog, only to emerge from the mists in the village of Barovia. Melancholy washed over the cleric as he remembered his home and the four others who had become trapped in the godsforsaken netherworld with him. “I’ll return to Palanthas some day,” he murmured, half to himself. “It’s the most beautiful city in Ansalon. Its walls have never been breached, its white towers have never-”
The door swung open suddenly, interrupting Terlarm’s morose reverie and eliciting a curse from Arik at the dust spewed into the room by the wind. When they saw the young woman framed by the doorway, they stared, slack-jawed and amazed. The Vistani’s dark curls danced in the wind, and the frayed hem of her blood-red dress swirled up, revealing scratched but shapely legs. She stepped inside, looking over her shoulder as if worried about some unseen pursuer, then closed the door.
Arik picked up a broom, which looked almost as spindly as his arms, and started to sweep up the dirt. “Your kind’s not wanted here.”
Magda swallowed hard. She knew it was dangerous for a Vistani to travel alone anywhere near the village; Barovians blamed much of their misfortune on the wandering tribes. “I wish no trouble, friend,” she said, pouring on the charm with practiced ease. “I’m looking for a villager, a priest named Terlarm. Perhaps you gentlemen know where I might find him.”
Donovich stood, knocking over a bench. The clatter startled Magda, but she maintained her pleasant facade as best she could. The burly man took a step toward the Vistani. “Do you know Boyar Grest from this village?” he asked, his voice even and deceptively calm.
Her scuffle with the obnoxious landowner who had tried to buy her virtue already seemed like ancient history. She studied the heavyset man who now stood before her. His mustache and shaggy, dark hair marked him as a local, but his beady eyes and the set of his jaw warned Magda that he might be a relative of Grest’s. And the black arm band the man wore told of a recent loss.
“Many know him,” she replied cautiously. “He is a great man and a friend to my people. But, please, I am-”
Sneering, Donovich pounded a table with his fist. “Your people killed him.” He fished into the pocket of his rough woolen pants and recovered a silver charm on a long leather cord. The teardrop pendant winked in the firelight. “When they found him, dazed and dying by the side of the road, he kept muttering about the Vistani’s promise. He said the pendant should have made him invisible to creatures of darkness.”
The red-robed priest stepped between Magda and Donovich. “Go outside,” he said to the woman. “I’m Terlarm. I’ll talk to you outside.”
A glimmer of recognition dawned on Magda. The fat cleric was the same man who they had seen at the hanging near the ruined church, and who they had encountered in the forest after the dwarf had broken free of his bonds. But before the Vistani could respond, the rugged boyar cuffed Terlarm soundly with a meaty hand. The cleric sprawled on the ground, dazed.
“Mind your own damned business,” Donovich growled without looking at Terlarm. He grabbed Magda by the throat and pushed her flat on a table. The Vistani struggled against the grip, but the boyar was very strong.
Arik went about his business. With Herr Grest dead, Donovich was the head of his family now; it wouldn’t do to thwart the vengeance of an influential landowner. Besides, he mused as he resumed cleaning the glasses, the Vistani are never very good customers anyway.
Magda kicked Donovich hard in the shin and clawed at his face with her fingernails. It may have been the
