to Soth’s side. “Mighty lord, I could hear what was being said. This is a trap. Strahd is hoping you get caught in the Misty Border.”
“Of course,” Soth replied. “Where else would Caradoc have heard about the portal or the Misty Border?” He turned to the count. “I assume you have cut a deal with Gundar to keep the way clear for us from Castle Hunadora to the border?”
A smile on his lips, Strahd bowed. “Just so, Lord Soth. You are most perceptive.”
Azrael was stunned. Instead of a bloody battle, the conflict between the death knight and the vampire had become a chillingly polite exchange of words.
“Go to the portal in Vallaki,” the count said to the dwarf. “You will find the ghost’s trail there. I’m certain you will be able to track him.”
Without another word, Soth headed back up the road, along the circuitous route he had taken from the fishing village. Azrael hurried after him. The dwarf stole a look at Strahd over his shoulder just before he rounded a bend and trees blocked his view of the castle; the count stood bathed in moonlight, his arms folded over his chest.
“Do not worry, Azrael,” Soth said coldly as they hurried through the night. “We will deal with the ghost now since he may elude us if we delay too long. Strahd has no such road for escape; he is trapped in Barovia forever, and even if it takes a thousand years, I will make him pay.”
In the clearing before Castle Ravenloft, Strahd’s own thoughts mirrored the death knight’s. He knew Caradoc had provided him with a way to turn aside Soth’s anger, but only for a little while. Sooner or later, the death knight would return to seek his revenge.
As he crossed the bridge to the keep, Strahd noted with some satisfaction that he had discovered much about Soth from the story of his doom. The fallen knight was a being of great passion, with a damning concern for loyalty. He had abandoned a gods-given quest to punish a wife he feared unfaithful; why shouldn’t he forego an escape from the netherworld to destroy a faithless servant?
Yes, Strahd decided as he passed into the crumbling halls of Castle Ravenloft, a man’s form may change, but his heart remains the same forever-whether it beats in his chest or not.
The sun hung poised on the horizon, a huge red disc against a darkening sky. It was a guidepost by which Caradoc found his way southeast from Castle Hunadora toward the Misty Border. Strahd had told him that the border offered the only chance he had to escape Lord Soth. The ghost didn’t trust the count, but he had no choice in this matter. If Strahd was lying, he was doomed. If not, he just might avoid the death knight’s wrath.
Caradoc didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that Soth and Azrael were close behind him. He’d passed through the portal to Gundar’s keep, then through the tent village outside Hunadora, but the death knight had stayed on his trail. For days-he’d lost track of how many-he had plunged through endless miles of mountainous forest. No matter how fast he moved, the death knight and the werecreature kept pace with him. And in the last few hours, they’d come close to capturing him several times.
Something snarled to the ghost’s left, and he glanced into the ravine that had been parallel to his path since noon. Things were moving in the caves that dotted the gorge, things that watched him with four pairs of small, bright eyes.
“If you want some solid food,” he shouted into the ravine, “there is a dwarf and a dead man following me.”
The creatures blinked, then disappeared into their various dens. It was worth a try, the ghost told himself.
“Your desperation is pitiful,” said a hollow voice from behind Caradoc. The ghost spun around to see Soth emerge from the shadow of a boulder a hundred yards back. His unblinking orange eyes flickered ominously in the growing twilight. “Stop now, and I will destroy you quickly.”
The death knight stepped into the boulder’s shadow again and vanished, but Caradoc didn’t wait to see where he would come out. Swiftly he dropped into the ground, sliding easily into the hard-packed earth. He had evaded the death knight this way many times in the last few hours. It was only useful as an emergency escape measure, though. Caradoc could see nothing beneath the ground, so he lost his way each time he hid there.
After a while, the ghost surfaced. Cautiously he poked his head up and surveyed the area from inside a fallen tree. Cursing and prodding the ground with his sword, the death knight was hunting for Caradoc in the spot where he had disappeared into the earth. The ghost smiled with relief; he had lost his pursuer again, at least for a little white.
“There you are, you coward,” a voice said, and a mace passed harmlessly through the ghost’s head. He looked up to see Azrael standing over him, ready to strike again.
Attacks with mundane weapons had no effect upon the ghost’s noncorporeal form, but Caradoc knew that he could harm a mortal creature, even an unnatural one like Azrael. Before the dwarf could shout an alarm to Lord Soth, the ghost shot from the ground. He rushed past Azrael, raking his ethereal hands through the dwarf's face as he went. The pain was so great that it made Azrael collapse to his knees, gasping and unable to cry out. The ghost’s touch had left the chill of the grave upon him. His face and skull ached as if he’d been stabbed with ten barbed daggers, and the newly grown stubble of his sideburns and mustache turned as white as newly failed snow.
The dwarf's agony bought Caradoc some much-needed time. Without the werecreature’s tracking ability, the death knight could not follow the ghost’s trail as quickly. Moreover, clouds were beginning to roll in. With luck, they would blanket the moon. Without that orb’s light, there would be no shadows Soth could use for travel. He would be slowed to his walking pace.
The sun sank in the west, and the velvet darkness of night replaced the muted colors of twilight. A cavern in the gorge belched forth a thousand bats. The little rodents fell screeching through the air, hunting for their sustenance. Caradoc envied the creatures their freedom as they darted overhead through the cloud-choked sky.
Without the sun or moon to guide him, the ghost found himself slowing his pace, too. Even if he had been able to see the constellations through the clouds, he wasn’t familiar enough with Gundarak’s stars to navigate by them. Fear tugged at his mind, filling his thoughts with wild imaginings. Each tree seemed capable of hiding Soth or Azrael. Each sound in the darkness-the distant yowl of a night-hunting cat, the hiss of leaves rustling in the cool air, the babbling of the river that ran at the ravine’s bottom-seemed to warn Caradoc of the doom awaiting him at the death knight’s hands.
And so it went through the long night. Caradoc kept the ravine to his left as he hurried on. At first he traveled close to the edge of the gorge, but a gnarled branch thrust up from the slope looked so much like a hand reaching up to grab him that he chose to move farther into the woods. Perhaps the branch was a warning, he told himself, suddenly convinced that the land itself was pointing out ways in which Soth could lay an ambush.
Like the clouds blotting out the moonlight, Caradoc’s fear choked off his senses and muddled his thinking. So many things in the night terrified the ghost that his mind began to turn on itself, blocking out the sudden noises of animals on the prowl or wind through the trees. Soon only the void that awaited undead creatures who were destroyed yawned horribly in his mind. The sights and smells of the forest around him paled before this apocalyptic sight.
Caradoc didn’t notice when the first bands of pale blue and gold appeared on the eastern horizon, the harbingers of the dawn. Nor did he notice the thin fog that clung to the ground beneath his feet as he raced blindly through a copse of pine. Even if he had seen the fog, he probably would not have realized that he had finally reached the outskirts of the Misty Border. As the sun pushed its way into the sky and shadows began to fall around the trees, Caradoc knew only one thing: he had to keep running, because the death knight was behind him.
He was wrong.
From the shadow of a gnarled pine in front of the ghost, a gauntleted hand appeared. The ice-cold fingers reached for Caradoc’s throat but only caught him by the hair. “I have you at last,” Soth rumbled.
The death knight stepped fully from the shadows and lifted Caradoc from the ground by the hair. The pain and the shock snapped the ghost from his numbness, but there was little he could do. Viciously Soth slapped him across the face with the back of his hand, then twice more. “The sun will set again before I am done with you,” the death knight said.
“Mighty lord!” Azrael shouted, rushing through the trees. “The mists are rising!”
The dwarf was correct. In the growing light of the new day, swirls of white fog curled around the tree trunks
