close by. They battered the thing savagely, stopping only when Soth held up a restraining hand.
The Vistani opened her mouth to speak, but a rush of unbearably hot air and the sudden roar of a massive fire superseded her questions. The wall opposite the room’s single door had disappeared, and the gap where it had stood opened onto a vast sea of blue and gold flames. The three walked wordlessly to the edge of the stone floor and looked out. The heat forced Magda and Azrael to shield their faces with their hands; even Soth felt the inferno’s warmth on his dead flesh.
The sea of fire lay hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet down, though pillars of twisting flame leaped into the black sky. The pillars spiraled higher and higher, finally diminishing into wisps of color and light. A whirlpool spun madly below the companions, a blot of red in the expanse of blue and gold. In the maelstrom’s center yawned a circle as black as anything in the lowest depth of the Abyss.
“Th-this is the portal you’re looking for?” Azrael gasped. “It don’t look quite… safe to me.”
“No,” Soth said, almost in a sigh. “This is no portal.”
Magda shook her head. “But the tales. Kulchek found a portal ringed in blue and gold flame. This must be it. The bones. The torches.” She paused, then lifted the cudgel. “Even this. It’s all too close to the tale to ignore.”
“Then after you, by all means,” Azrael growled, motioning to the brink with an open palm.
“Yes,” came a smooth voice from the doorway on the other side of the room. “By all means, Magda, jump.”
Strahd Von Zarovich stood framed by the door-jamb. His hands, clad in stylish kidskin gloves, lay folded over his chest in the fashion of corpses about to be put to rest. He wore the same finely cut clothes he’d worn the night Soth and Magda had arrived at Castle Ravenloft-the tight black jacket over a white shirt, black pants, dark leather boots, and a flowing cloak of ebony silk lined with a similar fabric colored red. A casual, almost amused look hung on Strahd’s gaunt face, and his thin mouth was turned up in a mocking half-smile.
The Vistani looked into the count’s dark eyes and saw sparks of anger, hints of the emotion the vampire lord’s mask imperfectly concealed. Magda also saw her fate in those eyes-a slow death at Strahd’s hands, a death that led to eternal life as one of the count’s slaves.
She spun around and leaped from the precipice.
The air itself seemed to push down on her the moment she moved over the sea of fire. A horrible, abrupt sensation of vertigo made her head swim. Her eyes found the maelstrom spinning below, and she knew in that instant that Soth had been right. This was no portal.
In the same instant, the low collar of her dress bit into her chest. A pained gasp escaped Magda’s lips, then she found herself thrust back into the room. She landed in a heap near the pile of bones at the room’s center, the front of her dress torn slightly from straining against her weight. She dropped the cudgel, then marveled that she’d managed to hold on to it. Finally she looked to Soth.
The death knight stood on the very brink of the flaming abyss, watching her with his glowing, unreadable eyes. His left hand was still extended a little before him, the hand with which he’d plucked her from certain death. Azrael stood at the death knight’s side. The werecreature crouched in a defensive stance, and his earth-brown eyes darted from Magda to Soth to Strahd.
“Too bad,” the count said languidly, stepping into the room. “I would have enjoyed hearing her screams. Anyone clumsy enough to fall into the inferno catches fire long before they hit the flames.” Gesturing at the open wall, the vampire continued. “The guardian you fought was here when I uncovered this place, too. When I killed it-”
“You killed it?” Azrael asked.
Strahd spared the werebadger a withering glance. “Yes, and if we stay here long enough, we will see it rise up yet again,” he said. “When the guardian is slain, the wall opens. Perhaps it was a portal at one time, but not now. A few of my servants offered to… test this particular rumor some time ago. They came to a most painful end.” He extended a slim hand to the woman.
When Magda shrank away from the offered hand, the count shrugged and turned his back on her. “Of course, I could have told you this was a ruse, Lord Soth, had you asked me.” He faced the death knight again. This time the facade of amusement slipped away fully, revealing the anger seething underneath. “But, then, you spurned the hand of friendship I offered, as did this gypsy whore who follows you like a cur.”
Lord Soth walked slowly to Magda’s side. “Get up,” he demanded coldly. Using the cudgel as a brace, she stood, though she never took her eyes from the vampire lord. Azrael, too, crept to the death knight, his extended claws scraping the ground as he loped forward.
“Servitude does not breed friendship, Count,” Soth said. “You treated me like a lackey, an errand boy or hired murderer.”
“And you are no man’s lackey, eh, Soth? You believe you control your own fate?” the vampire lord asked. He smiled, a genuine smile of cruel amusement. “You will learn we are all lackeys of the dark powers that rule this place, chess pieces to be moved about and set against each other.”
Soth curled his hands into fists. “Have you come to set yourself against me?”
“Us,” Azrael said to the vampire lord. Magda held the ancient wooden club before her, an obvious statement of her agreement.
Strahd laughed. “Of course not,” he replied. Bowing slightly and fanning his cape with one hand, he added, “I am here, Lord Soth, to call a truce to our little conflict and to offer myself to you as an ally.”
“Fine,” the death knight said. “Let us leave this place then. We’ll find somewhere more suitable for… allies to discuss their plans.”
Strahd bowed again, this time more fully. He headed for the door, saying, “I have an outpost nearby, a ruined tower. It will be perfect for just such a discussion.”
Soth retrieved his sword and sheathed it, then followed the vampire toward the tunnel. Azrael quickly fell in beside the death knight and the Vistani.
Before he left the chamber, Lord Soth turned to the werecreature. “If you ever try to speak for me or amend my words again, I’ll cut the tongue from your mouth before you can utter a cry of protest.”
Azrael knew it would be foolish to answer, so he simply nodded and fell a few steps behind the death knight. In silence the trio made its way back through the tunnel, to the fork of the River Luna. The weight of dashed hopes hung on their shoulders like cloaks sodden with foul water.
TWELVE
The young man’s screams reverberated through the crumbling tower of Strahd’s outpost on the outskirts of Barovia. The cries for pity became pleas for a quick death, growing more shrill with each passing moment. They filled the tower’s chimneys like gusts of air and entered the midnight sky as little more than haunting moans. The few peasants who dwelt near the abandoned keep had heard far worse coming from the place, so they weren’t unnerved. They were Barovians, after all, and such night-terrors were part of their lot in life. Those who heard the screaming merely checked the braces on their shutters and tried their best to fall asleep, thanking their gods that it wasn’t them in the tower.
The unfortunate prisoner in the ruined keep prayed to his gods, too, but they did not-or could not-grant him a quick death. It was understood throughout the land, and perhaps even the heavens, that Strahd Von Zarovich seldom trafficked in merciful ends.
The vampire lord stood in a large hall on the tower’s ground floor, his back to the fire burning cheerily in the hearth. He held one hand on the forehead of the captive, the other on Lord Soth’s wounded arm. The young man was a gypsy, a Vistani of Madame Girani’s tribe and a cousin of Magda’s. He tried again and again to shake the bone-white fingers from his brow, but each jerk of his head was weaker, less violent. With his arms tied painfully behind him and his torso and legs lashed to a heavy chair, the young man stood no chance of preventing the count from completing his enchantment.
For his part, Soth stood calmly, feeling the warm flow of the gypsy’s life force seeping into his wrist. His hand flexed and his fingers spread of their own accord, as if the energy Strahd was draining from the Vistani was gifting his limb with an independent will. The death knight knew, however, that the necromantic spell the vampire lord cast did nothing but siphon the life from the mortal prisoner and transfer it to him. Soon the wounds he’d gained from
