This had to be the duke’s son, Medraut. He gazed into a glass-and-steel structure as wide and tall as a door. Level after level of doll-sized furniture and weapons rested between two thick plates of crystal, sprinkled with small holes; the use for these holes quickly became apparent. The boy lit pieces of paper with a nearby candle and stuffed them into the three lowest levels.
“You can’t hide forever, little worms,” Medraut said in a coarse voice. He rapped the glass with his little fingers. “Come out, come out. It’s time to play.”
As smoke filled the levels, things began to twitch about. Soth couldn’t make them out at first, but as the figures scrambled up ladders to escape the smoke, he realized what was happening. Tiny humans! The captives shouted and cursed and shook their fists at the child, but that only made him laugh.
“The game for today is snakes and ladders,” he said, taking a box from a table nearby. “Haderak, you survived this last time, so you needn’t listen to the rules. The rest of you must pay close attention.” Medraut slid a glove onto his hand and grabbed a handful of writhing snakes from the box. Standing atop the chair, he opened a small glass door. One by one, he dropped the snakes into the bizarre doll house. “Each time one of you gets eaten by a snake, I take a ladder away.” Squinting at one figure, he added, “And you have to move forward, not backward, Costigan, you rotten cheater.”
The last snake safely in the maze, he closed the door and settled down to watch. “If you manage to kill one of the snakes, like brave old Haderak, I’ll put a ladder back.” Folding his hands on his lap, he shrugged. “All right, then, off you go.”
The figures scrambled for the tiny spears and swords that stood in racks on a few of the floors. Others hurried away from the snakes they knew would be crawling toward them. The smoke from the burning paper now filled the four lowest levels. “You can run, but you can’t hide!” Medraut taunted, blocking the entrance to the lowest level with a glass slide.
Soth turned away, only to find Azrael shrugging out of his mail shirt. The death knight knew that the dwarf had to take off the mail before he transformed or the metal mesh would strangle him. Still, he cursed the werecreature’s poor planning. The metal clinked and jingled. Luckily Medraut was too engrossed in his game to notice the sounds.
The death knight gestured for Azrael to follow him, then he took one final glance into the room and pushed through the opening. Medraut spun about on his stool the instant Soth entered the room. Although he was the size of a ten-year-old, no one could mistake the duke’s son for a normal boy. His face was pocked from disease, and his teeth were mostly rotten. Running sores covered his bare, grimy legs. Above all, his eyes held a dangerous, maniacal glint.
“Another assassin from Daddy,” Medraut said, leering like an old lecher. “Oh, how fun.”
With lightning-quick hands, Soth formed a spell, but the duke’s son was faster. Before the incantation could leave the death knight’s lips, Medraut summoned his own sorcery. Soth’s mind went blank. A tiny white whirlpool formed in the center of his consciousness, engulfing the words that would call forth the spell he had prepared. Then the vortex grew.
“Why is it you always interrupt my play time?” pouted the boy, jumping from the stool. He reached into his pocket and putted out the materials he needed for another spell-a lodestone and a pinch of dust. “After I turn your arms to ash, I may shrink you down and put you in the maze with the others. Would you like that, Sir Assassin?”
Soth fought against the vortex with all his thoughts, filling it with anger and hatred. A memory of Kitiara, clad in a diaphanous gown, swam into view, and Soth bent his will to closing the whirlpool. His mind thus occupied, he heard Medraut’s words only vaguely, through a fog. The same was true of the echoing yowl that rang from the sewers hard upon the boy’s threat.
With a shriek, Azrael leaped from the hole. He was in half-badger form, his lips curled back from his white teeth in a frightening snarl. Instead of lashing out at Medraut with his claws, though, he struck the boy in the face with his chain mail shirt. The blow sent Medraut reeling backward, into the glass-and-steel maze. It wobbled, then fell over, slamming into a table full of scales and weights. Glass shattered and metal clattered on the stone floor.
Medraut struggled but for a moment with the heavy chain mesh shirt tangled around his head. That was enough time for Soth to overcome the spell. The vortex in the death knight’s mind closed, without having done any real harm to his dark thoughts. As the boy tossed the shirt aside, Azrael’s claws raked across his back. Hard on that blow, Soth cast his first spell. A gust of wind lifted the boy and blew him up toward the ceiling. Then, like a huge hand, it tossed him against a table of beakers and glass tubing. Shards of glass flew everywhere as the snakes and shrunken people darted for cover.
The boy came up smiling, trickles of blood running down his face from a dozen tiny cuts. “You are much better than the louts Daddy usually sends. This is almost fun.” A wand appeared in his open hand, and he pointed it at Azrael.
The werebadger thought to dive out of the way, but the lightning bolt that erupted from the boy’s wand struck him before his muscles translated that impulse into action. He saw the flash an instant before he felt the blow, but by then it was too late. By the time the roar of the attack deafened his ears, he’d been knocked through three tables. The stench of charred flesh and burning fur told Azrael that he was on fire.
The boy giggled and pointed the wand at Soth. Without warning, a man appeared between Medraut and the death knight. He wore a soldier’s uniform-high leather boots, black pants, and a tight red jacket trimmed in white. A silver saber hung at his side, but Soth could tell immediately that the weapon was for show. The man’s hands were coarse and callused, the hands of a butcher not a swordsman.
“Why, Daddy,” Medraut cooed, “you’ve come to watch me finish off your assassins.”
The duke might have been a handsome man once, but now he looked as much a beast as Azrael. His dark hair hung wildly around his head; his beard curled untrimmed around his chin and mouth. Eyebrows thick and matted ran together over his craggy nose, giving his features a perpetually angry cast. Fangs, white and long, protruded over a red tongue and lips. He was a vampire, too, but as unlike Strahd Von Zarovich as noon is to midnight.
“This is no agent of mine,” the duke shouted, lunging at Soth. The death knight swatted away the vampire’s grasping hands and locked his own mailed fingers around Gundar’s throat.
“The master of Barovia sends his regards,” Soth said, tightening his grip.
Medraut waved his hand, and the wand disappeared. “Well, well. An agent of the count.” Righting his stool, the boy climbed atop it to watch the battle. “Daddy, I believe the nice man must be here for you.”
With a curse, Gundar transformed to swirling mist in Soth’s hands. The mist, in turn, slithered down to the floor and hid amidst the broken tables and scattered equipment. “Oh, bother,” Medraut sighed as the death knight faced him once again.
A ball of fire streaked from Soth’s hand! but a shield of blue light flashed into being in front of Medraut. The fireball struck the magical barrier and exploded, splashing liquid flame in a wide arc around the boy. A few of the tables began to burn and one mortar filled with yellow powder sizzled ominously.
Soth took a step forward, ready to bash in the monstrous child’s skull if magic would not serve him, but a blow to his back sent him reeling. From where he lay against a toppled stack of spellbooks, the death knight saw Duke Gundar. The vampire lord crouched like a wolf, bloody spittle flecking his lips, a mad gleam shining in his eyes.
“Oh, Daddy, you’ve saved me,” Medraut murmured, then fell into a fit of coarse laughter.
The boy’s mirth continued as Soth and Gundar came together again. The two dead men locked inhumanly strong hands. Medraut was so caught up in the spectacle that he didn’t notice the stealthy movement behind him. And when the smell of burned flesh reached his nose, it was too late.
Azrael, the left side of his body blackened and blistering, leaped onto Medraut’s back. The boy tried to call a spell to mind, anything that would put some distance between him and the half-dwarf, half-badger thing, but the werecreature did not give him a chance. Held together by Azrael’s claws, the two of them toppled to the floor. Medraut’s scream was like that of a child waking from a bad dream; this nightmare was not banished so easily, however.
Gleefully Azrael tore out the boy’s throat with his teeth, and the scream was drowned by a gurgling flow of blood.
At the sight of his son’s grisly demise, fright played across Gundar’s features. Then, oddly enough, the fear
