changed to a look of relief. Without a word, the duke again transformed to mist and slipped from Soth’s grasp.
The death knight scanned the room with his unblinking eyes, but the duke was nowhere to be seen. “We have what we came for, Gundar!” he proclaimed. “Let us take the boy to your great hall and open the portal that lies there. If you try to stop us, you will share Medraut’s fate.”
Darkness enveloped the room, and Soth braced for an attack. None came. Instead, a section of a musty, crowded bookcase swung open, revealing a torchlit stairway. “Well,” Azrael said, “that’s a clear enough answer.”
“Can you carry the child yourself?” Soth asked. He heard the werecreature grunt as he lifted the corpse.
“We’d better hurry, mighty one,” Azrael noted, taking a careful step toward the doorway, broken glass crunching underfoot. “Or he won’t have any blood left. It’ll have all run down my tunic.”
When they reached the hallway, the death knight noticed the effect of the lightning bolt upon Azrael. The fur on his left arm and the left side of his chest and face was gone, the skin underneath burned and cracked. His snout had split open; his left eye was closed. Azrael’s arm and shoulder seemed to have suffered the most serious damage. His square, muscular shoulder was bent and twisted, and his arm hung limp at his side. His tunic was covered in blood, but that was from Medraut’s wounds, not his.
“I’ll be better in a couple of days,” was Azrael’s reply when he saw the death knight’s gaze upon him. “Don’t worry, mighty lord, I won’t slow you down.” As if to prove his point, he adjusted the corpse’s weight on his good shoulder and trudged forward. A snarl of pain curled the werecreature’s lip with each step.
They followed the tower staircase until they came to an open door. From there, a wide corridor ran straight into the castle’s main building. Tattered banners, shields embossed with strange heraldic devices, and broken weapons lined this corridor, trophies taken from vanquished foes or symbols of ancient family victories. The hallway ended in a set of double doors. Detailed carvings depicting the castle’s construction filled the doors’ six huge panels.
Like the rest of the castle, the sumptuous main hall was devoid of people. The room was long, with an arched ceiling similar to those in some of the larger ancient temples Soth had seen on Krynn. Thousand-candled chandeliers hung in four places. On a sunny day, their light would be augmented by the stained glass windows that lined one side of the room; the growing darkness outside offered no light and obscured whatever scenes the windows might have held. The wall opposite the windows was lined with statues, all of them capturing Duke Gundar in some dramatic pose. Some were wrought in alabaster, others in jet, but they all showed the master of Gundarak as a heroic warrior.
Azrael shifted the corpse on his shoulder and glanced about nervously. “This has to be a trap.”
Soth shook his head. “Most leaders who display statues celebrating their own heroism are cowards at base. The duke wants us to leave without doing any more damage.”
The death knight walked to the center of the room. The story Strahd had told him made it easy to find the location; a large bloodstain, brown from age, marked the spot where Gundar’s daughter had lain for years, her blood keeping the gateway open. There he took the corpse from Azrael and dropped it to the ground. As Medraut’s blood flowed over the mark left at one time by his sister, a dark circle appeared in the air directly over the corpse. No light seemed to penetrate the blackness of the portal, and Soth could see nothing inside it.
“I come for you, my Kitiara,” Soth whispered.
Without hesitation, the death knight stepped into the circle of darkness. Azrael gasped at his master’s temerity, then gritted his teeth and followed him.
FIFTEEN
A dull blue light shone around Lord Soth. As the death knight watched, the sourceless light spread to a thin strip of ground, revealing a pathway that extended a dozen yards or so. Around this path lay darkness more profound than any he had ever seen.
Azrael appeared suddenly. He, too, was bathed in blue radiance. Crouching at the death knight’s side, he muttered, “Black as Strahd’s heart in here.” He sniffed the air, testing for the scent of any hidden foe. The action only caused his charred nose to ache.
“Stay close,” the death knight said. He started along the path, taking one slow, careful step after another. The werecreature pulled the tunic up to cover his wounded shoulder, then loped along after him. After they’d gone a few steps, an elaborate wrought iron gate appeared at the path’s end.
“None shall pass unless they pay my toll,” came a voice from the darkness. The words were thick with the promise of danger for those who disobeyed them.
Soth took another step toward the gate, and a figure slid from the darkness to block the way. The keeper of the gate seemed to be made entirely of shadow, though in silhouette she resembled a very tall woman or, perhaps, an elfmaid. Her arms and legs were long and slender, and she moved with practiced grace. Although the details of her features were hidden, the light from the gate revealed her profile when she moved. Long, flowing hair framed a face with high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and full, pouting lips. She held her chin up, lending her stance an air of casual disdain.
The keeper had one exotic feature that was clear even though she was cloaked in darkness. A pair of twisting, branched horns rose from her head, much like a deer’s, but more elegantly curved. The points on these horns looked as sharp as Azrael’s claws.
“Go no farther,” she warned, pointing at Soth.
The death knight traced an arcane pattern in the air, but when he spoke the word to trigger the spell, nothing happened.
“This is my realm, and your sorcery will not work here,” the keeper explained. She extended a hand into the darkness beyond the path, then withdrew it. After a moment, a huge dog slunk into the light. Like the keeper, the hound was composed of shadow. It had the imposing form and flat skull of the mastiffs Soth had seen in some knights’ castles on Krynn. Yet its stomach was shrunken from starvation; its skin barely hid its rib cage.
The keeper moved toward Soth and Azrael, the shadow mastiff at her side. “The toll for passing along my road is high, but all must pay it.”
At that Soth drew his sword and lashed out at the keeper. The blade passed harmlessly through her, but the attack set the mastiff barking. The death knight sliced through the shadow woman again, and again the steel did her no harm.
Azrael backed up a few paces and looked frantically for the gate from which they had entered the shadow realm. “Mighty lord, perhaps we should go back.”
“Never!” Soth shouted. “What is your price, keeper?”
The keeper bowed her head slightly. “You are a wise man. Even if you wished to, you could not leave before you paid my price. That is the rule of this place.” She took another step toward Soth. The mastiff licked its chops noisily. “The cost of passing through my domain is your soul.”
Laughing, the death knight sheathed his sword. “I forfeited my soul long ago, keeper,” he said, then undid the straps holding his helmet in place and removed it. Patches of long blond hair hung from his scalp, dangling in places almost to his shoulders. His skin was parched, drawn tight against the bones beneath. Of his features, little could be seen; a shadow hid his nose and mouth. As he spoke, though, his white teeth flashed now and then from between his cracked lips. The darkness was greatest around his eyes, which were no longer human, but glowing orbs of orange light.
The death knight donned his helmet again and refastened the straps. “To gain my soul, you would have to travel to the home of my world’s gods, to the domain of Chemosh, Lord of the Undead. Even then, you would likely find him unwilling to part with that prize.”
After bowing her head, the keeper stood to one side of the narrow path. “You may pass,” she said, gesturing Soth forward with one hand. The death knight moved down the path. When Azrael tried to follow, however, the keeper once again blocked the way. The mastiff began to bark anew.
“You are a strange creature, indeed,” the shadow woman said to the wounded werebadger, “but a heart still beats in your chest. You must pay your toll.”
“Will it hurt? Losing my soul, I mean?”
