'I did not ask you, seneschal,' Soth interrupted.
The banshees sniggered at the rebuke. There were only four now. The rest had disappeared.
'He has returned,' said one.
'Returned to his duty,' added the second, hovering close by Azrael's side.
'Returned to his torment,' a third hissed.
The hideous quartet chorused, 'Returned to us.'
Soth ignored the unquiet spirits, if he heard them at all. He had focused on Gesmas. 'What did you try to steal?' he prompted.
'Your story.'
'Who is your master?'
'Malocchio Aderre.'
Slowly Soth raised one hand. A thick lace of cobwebs fell away from the gauntlet it had draped for bo long. Fingers that had not moved in years gestured stiffly for the prisoner to approach the throne.
Gesmas rose, reclaimed the saddlebags, then gathered up the pages Azrael had scattered. The combination of the pain from his ribs and his fear of Lord Soth swelled into waves of dizziness that washed over the spy every few halting steps. When he came upon a section of floor that appeared translucent, insubstantial, he mistook it for an hallucination born of his lightheadedness. But Azrael grabbed his arm and steered him around it. Gesmas looked questioningly at the dwarf, whose only reply was the same oily smirk he'd worn since arriving at the keep.
As he continued across the hall, Gesmas noted more bits of his surroundings that did not appear entirely corporeal. A large piece of the stone stairs to the right was missing-not crumbled or fallen, simply not there. Other small sections of floor fluctuated between opacity and translucence. Poised over the center of the circular room, the ponderous iron chandelier fluttered like a mirage. The ceiling where the massive metal rings should have been anchored gaped black and vacant. The chains reached up to nothing.
Gesmas gave up trying to understand the strangeness around him. He took in the details of his odd surroundings with an uncharacteristic indifference. It was almost as if he were watching the events unfold from a distance, like one of the inconstant phantoms floating over the hall. That detachment, and little else, made it possible for Gesmas to approach Soth's throne, to stand so close to the death knight that he could discern the original decoration on his fire-blackened armor.
An intricate pattern of roses and kingfishers laced the blasted metal. Dust, soot, and age had obscured some of the blooms, annihilated some of the finer detail on the birds' wings. Still, the design retained enough of its old beauty to suggest the knight so feared, so fearsome, had once known peace and honor.
'Tell me my story,' Soth said to the prisoner. 'Tell me who I am and how I came to this place.'
Gesmas climbed the three broad steps one at a time and set the saddlebags down on the dais. Fragments of broken glass littered the stone, winking like earthbound stars. Only now did the spy note the six iron ovals gaping on the walls behind the throne. Malocchio Aderre himself had warned him about the mirrors once cradled in those framer, enchanted glass that allowed Soth to venture into his own memories and follow his life down the myriad paths it might have followed. Obviously, the lord of Sithicus no longer needed such things to sustain his reveries.
As he retrieved the first pages from the saddlebags, Gesmas wondered vaguely if Soth's daydreams were any more bizarre than the stories he'd collected. He doubted it.
'I learned this tale from the elves of Hroth,' Gesmas said. He squinted at his own scribbled notes and began to read: ' The thing known as Soth first appeared some thirty-two years ago, in the land of Barovia. As such a powerful being could not have escaped the notice of the bards that wander these haunted realms, he could not have existed before that time. Strahd von Zarovich, lord of Barovia, must have created Soth, conjured him with dark sorcery. This would explain why Soth is never seen but when he is fully armored. In truth, the metal skin is empty, cursed mail that turned against the sorcerer who first brought it to life.' '
'Untrue,' the banshees hissed. 'Untrue!' There was no conviction in their exclamations, though. Lake Soth, they seemed uncertain of the truth.
For a moment Soth considered the claims. 'I recall this Strahd von Zarovich,' he said, 'and know that my way to this cursed realm passed through his demesne. As to the rest, it is easy enough to prove or disprove…'
Soth slipped his gauntlet forward, exposing the slightest sliver of his wrist. Gesmas did not get a clear look, though the little he saw of the strangely corroded flesh told him that the lord of Nedragaard could be no living thing.
'Ah,' said Soth. 'There can be no question that I am more than just a hollow metal skin. What other tales do my people tell of me?'
For several hours Gesmas related all that he had learned. Most of the stories were obviously false, easily disproved in Soth's grim presence. The banshees both supported and refuted the very same claims. Sometimes the phantoms contradicted each other, sometimes even themselves. Azrael remained silent, though Gesmas could not help but notice the dwarf squirming uncomfortably whenever his master displayed any interest in the tales.
A few similar reports drew the most attentive responses from Soth. These stories claimed the lord of Nedragaard Keep had come from a land far from Barovia or Sithicus, a place called Krynn. In that kingdom of light and hope Soth had perpetrated some terrible crime-the slaughter of his brother and sister, the assassination of a saintly cleric, even the destruction of the gods themselves. The tales could not agree upon which acts were true, which merely fiction, but all seemed to conclude that Soth's infamous deeds had cursed him with an eternity of unlife.
From time to time as Gesmas spoke, banshees would vanish and appear, their sum as changeable as their ghostly frames. During the stories of Soth's supposed past in Krynn, however, the banshees always numbered thirteen.
His voice little more than a hoarse whisper, Gesmas came to the last of the tales he had collected. It told of Soth's passion for an elf maid named Isolde, a passion so intense that it inspired the once-noble knight to betray both his marriage vows and the chivalric order to which he had dedicated his life. Disaster and disgrace followed, with the murder of Soth's wife and expulsion from the knighthood he so loved. As was so often the case in tales of unbridled appetite, the ending proved tragic.
' 'Lord Soth confronted fair Isolde in the main hall,' ' Gesmas read wearily. ' That he would come to accuse her of infidelity should have been little surprise, for surely no man can trust once he himself has broken sacred vows. At the same moment as he gave voice to his jealous fury, a tremor rocked the castle and the triple-ringed chandelier crashed to the floor. Fire swept the hall, trapping-' '
A thunderous clatter rang out. Gesmas gasped and dropped the tattered parchment. He turned to find that the chandelier had fallen. It lay twisted upon the cold stone flags. Above the debris hovered thirteen silent banshees. Thirteen skeletal warriors stood at attention around the fallen iron rings. Their grinning faces seemed to flicker crimson, illumined by some blaze all out of proportion with the few guttering candles scattered about.
Trapping Isolde and the infant she clutched in her milk-white hands,' said a sepulchral voice. Slowly Soth rose to his feet. The cobwebs fell from him like a rotted winding sheet. The lord of Sithicus was not reading the spy's report, but speaking an uncorrupted memory.
The gods, ever merciful, left the once-famed knight a chance to prove his heart held something more than hatred,' Soth continued. 'From the flames, the elf maid begged for him to save then-son. But his anger and his pride would not allow him to act. He turned away and let them perish.'
As Soth completed his recitation, the banshees began a song yet again. Only now their terrible voices sang as one:
'And in the climate of dreams
When you recall her, when the world of the dream expands, wavers in light. when you stand at the edge of blessedness and sun,
Then we shall make you remember, shall make you live again through the long denial of body.'
Azrael grabbed Gesmas roughly by the arm. 'Who gave you this tale?'
The banshees' song, which continued to catalogue Soth's crimes, made it hard for Gesmas to think. 'I-I can't remember.' He fell to one knee, his twisted leg jutting painfully to one side. Frantically he rifled through the fallen pages in search of the one that held the final tale. 'There were so many stories…'
