useful. I plan to take only them with me into Gundarak.”
Strahd frowned, and the look of consternation that crossed his face was sudden and severe. “I was hoping you would allow me to deal with the gypsy and the dwarf. Magda knows far more than I’m comfortable with, and the werecreature has been raiding my villages for some time, flouting my authority.”
Soth gathered his damaged armor. “They are both pawns,” he said. Turning his back on Strahd, the death knight headed for the basement and the tools that were stored there. “But they are my pawns, and I will not give them up without good cause. As an equal ally in this arrangement, I reserve that right. I’m sure you understand.”
• • •
With the screaming finally at an end, Magda found it easier to work. Sighing, she pulled the brightly colored blanket a little tighter around her shoulders, then took a firm grip on the bone sewing needle and went about mending her tattered dress. The garment, which lay draped across her lap, had been a beautiful gown when Strahd had made a gift of it to her. After many days on the road and more than one terrifying encounter, it was little better than the homespun skirt the gypsy had been wearing on the night Soth had kidnapped her.
“Did you know him?” Azrael asked around a mouthful of bread. He pointed down, toward the room Soth and Strahd occupied. “The gypsy they have down there, I mean.”
Magda squinted at the crude needle and threaded it. After making a stitch or two in the dress’s ragged hem, she looked up at the dwarf. “My tribe was very small. I knew everyone in it.”
The clump of bread clutched in one hand, Azrael foraged through the basket at his side. Small wheels of cheese, loaves of bread, a few containers of preserved fruit and hardtack, and even two bottles of wine filled the straw basket to bursting. The dwarf pushed most of this aside, coming up at last with a cold leg of lamb. “You’ll be the last one left soon… if you’re not already.”
“That matters little,” she replied icily. “Apart from the old woman who led us, there was no one in the tribe who would have mourned me had I died before them-not even my brother.” She went back to her sewing. “If I am the last, I will begin my own tribe.”
The statement was made with little emotion, as if Magda had been speaking of the last meal she’d eaten or the weather from the previous day. With equanimity she held the dress up to the light of the single candle that lit the highest room in the tower. A skylight, its window long ago caved in by snow, augmented that feeble light with a wide pool of moonlight. The radiance cast a pale glow on the few boxes that made up the room’s decor.
Satisfied with the stitchwork, Magda set about sewing the rest of the hem. After that, she would patch the few holes in the gown. It wouldn’t be the type of dress to make men follow her with their eyes, but that didn’t matter to her anymore. In her present circumstances, such concerns as romance or beauty seemed frivolous. One needn’t worry about turning heads if keeping one’s own was a matter left unresolved.
Azrael stuffed the last of the bread into his mouth. “You’re not like the other Vistani I’ve run into,” the dwarf mumbled absently. “Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. I mean, it’s obvious you’re not a spy for the count.”
“Hardly,” Magda replied, not looking up from her work.
Strahd’s treatment of the woman on the way to the tower had been cold at best, openly contemptuous at times. When Azrael had noted that they were short on supplies, the count had led them on a detour to a lonely farmhouse near the fork of the River Luna. There Magda and the dwarf were ordered to present themselves as Strahd’s agents. The peasants knew that anyone possessing the lord’s seal had to be granted whatever they requested; all the pair had to do was ask for the food, clothing, and weapons they required. When Magda balked at the notion of taking food from people who likely had little to spare, Strahd flew into a rage. Only Soth’s presence tempered the vampire’s wild anger.
At last done with the repairs, Magda turned her back on the dwarf and shrugged the dress on over her shoulders. She let the blanket drop and smoothed the red cloth over the curve of her hips. When she turned around again, the dwarf was eyeing her lustily. She reached for the cudgel that lay at her feet.
“No need for that,” the dwarf said quickly. “Sorry if you don’t like the way I was looking at you, but… well, you are quite attractive for a human.”
Magda left the weapon where it lay. After all, if Azrael threatened her, she always had her silver dagger close at hand. She’d moved it from her sack to her boot after the battle with the gibbering guardian; Vistani superstitions were clear on such matters. Only a fool ignored the prompting of such a warning.
Feeling secure, she packed her needle and thread in her burlap sack. Along with a small loaf of bread and a jug of sweet cider, the sewing items were all she’d asked of the terrified old woman who lived in the cottage they visited. Azrael had demanded all the food he could carry, as well as blankets, a new tunic, and a pack for his new belongings.
The Vistani tossed the colorful but ill-gotten blanket she’d used to cover herself back to the werecreature. “Thank you for the compliment and the use of this.”
“Why do you think the club’s so special, if you don’t mind me asking?” the dwarf asked without prelude. After Magda explained the tale of Kulchek the Wanderer, Azrael snorted. “If that was the cavern he visited, then his skull was probably stacked with the rest. The blob with all the eyes must have eaten him.”
Magda refused to rise to the bait. “Strahd said the thing returns from the dead somehow after it is killed. What makes you think Kulchek didn’t kill it before?”
“And the portal that was supposed to be there?”
The woman waved the question away with a flick of her hand. “Perhaps there was a portal there once, but the magic sustaining it fell away.”
Momentarily rebuffed, the dwarf turned to rummage through the basket of food again. “Your great hero left his special club behind, eh? Doesn’t seem likely to me. I mean, if it was magic, he’d have taken it with him.”
Planting her hands on her hips, Magda said flatly, “You saw what the cudgel did to the guardian of the portal. Perhaps I should test it out on a shape-changer.”
Azrael laughed, a growling sound that made Magda wonder if the dwarf again was transforming into his badger form. “Magic sticks’ll do you no good against things like me,” he said when the laughing fit had subsided. “Oh, maybe that cudgel’s more than just a bit of wood, but don’t rely on it.”
Warming to the subject, Azrael got to his feet and straightened the brocatelle tunic he’d taken from the peasants. The heavy, colorful yarns that made up the garment lent the dwarf the look of a court jester. “Take the lout who ran into me on the road near Barovia village the other night,” he began. “I hid in the bushes at the side of the road, waiting for an easy mark. When this boyar came riding along, I leaped out looking like a half-badger-teeth and claws and all that. Does he run? Does he draw a sword? No, he whips out this pendant and waves it at me.”
A fit of laughter seized the dwarf, and he doubled over in mirth. “ ‘Oh,’ I growls, ‘don’t do that no more. You’ll make me hurt myself laughing at you.’ ”
Magda sat in shocked silence. In a daze, she rummaged through her small sack and withdrew the pendant she had sold to Herr Grest the night Soth had attacked her tribe. She’d told the boyar that the little piece of jewelry possessed the power to shield the person wearing it from creatures of the night. It’s actual powers were much less impressive: It made the person wearing it invisible to mindless undead, creatures like zombies or living skeletons, things without free will or human intelligence.
“Hey, you’ve got one just like his,” Azrael said, pointing at the drop of silver on the end of the chain.
“It’s the same pendant,” she corrected. “I got it from that boyar’s kin. The villagers are blaming that murder on my tribe.”
The dwarf chuckled. “They won’t have many warm bodies to put on trial after Strahd gets through with your lot.”
“I won’t be one of them,” the Vistani insisted as she slipped the pendant on. “Once we cross into Gundarak, there’s no way I’m ever coming back to Barovia.” She packed the rest of her belongings into her sack. “By the way, are you wearing that motley tunic all the way to Gundar’s castle? His guards would see you coming ten leagues away.”
“The count says there’s some old armor in the basement.” The dwarf picked at a loose thread of azure yarn. “I’ll get a mail shirt and use this as padding.”
“I wouldn’t trust Strahd’s word on anything,” Magda murmured under her breath.
Azrael groaned. “But you trust Soth? At least Strahd is open about his plans. You can be sure he will do as he says.” Spreading his arms wide, the dwarf added, “Do you know what this place used to be? The fortress of a local
