true turning when its wheel is precisely half in one direction and half in another. I launched from my study, consumed by rage and stepped through my bedchamber windows to the courtyard overlook, wrapped in my thickest cloak against the cruel mountain air. The night was still, holding its breath for the next movement in the turn of the year's wheel.
The shoulders of Mount Ghakis were also cloaked, but they were white, not black. There might be a fresh snowfall before morning, further obscuring the road to the castle. It was part of the castle's defenses, helping unwelcome visitors to maintain their distance.
The most formidable of the castle's defenses was the thick ring of poisonous fog surrounding not only its base, but also the underlying village of Barovia as well. No person drawing air could tolerate it for very long upon entering its choking grip, which remained in place, day or night, a significant discouragement to anyone. No one could get through without my express permission and invitation or the antidote-something I fashioned soon after its appearance. Should the unlikely happen and they enter, they would find themselves at the mercies of my various guardians throughout the castle. I could trust them to keep invaders occupied until nightfall when I would have a chance to assess the situation myself.
I turned from the fog drifting around the outside base of the curtain wall and spread my cloaked arms wide, assuming the shape of a bat and taking to the cold heavy air to make a wide circle of the castle. Below me lurked the ring of fog a dozen feet or more high around the base, making the castle seem to float in the clouds. Veering from it, I struck out over the wide pale valley. The snowfall there was smooth, boasting no human trails except for the Old Svalich Road, which was also unmarred by human tread. A dark, thick ribbon marked the River Ivlis. Ice ran along its banks, but not in the center where the flow was still strong.
I had a restless feeling I needed to be someplace, but no clear idea on just where that place might be. I am not often given to such, but this time it kept growing stronger, especially the closer I got to the river. I shifted to the left, toward the lead gray plain that was the Tser Pool, frozen like the river at the edges but not in the middle. The flow of water from the Tser Falls above was too great to allow it.
Still flying, I crossed the river just below the pool- free flowing water is an anathema to me only if I am in direct contact with it-and worked my way along over a dense patch of forest until it was broken up by a narrow road that branched off from the Svalich. Just as it approached the pool, it ceased to be a road at all and devolved into a barely visible trail roughly paralleling the pool. On the right, a bluff of land rose sharply up from the valley floor, the beginnings of this spur of Mount Ghakis. On the left, a wide clearing bordered the pool.
I coasted low and came to land in the field, timing my transformation so my booted feet sank first into the untouched snow as I stretched to fill out my man's form again.
Silence enveloped me as I wrapped my cloak about my body. I knew the deep silence of my crypt, and the lack of sound within my own mind when completely concentrating on some task. This was the windless silence of a winter forest, as though the trees themselves held their breath. No bird stirred in the still air; even the lap of water from the pool was hushed as if it feared to disturb the dead, lifeless air of the night.
The compulsion that drew me seemed strongest here. I looked about very carefully, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Trees, snow, water… and mist. It was very fine at first, but gathering strength even as I watched, growing thicker until a white roiling wall blocked off all sign of the trail.
Midnight, or nearly so.
Then the silence finally broke. I heard the jingling of a bridle, the muffled clop of a horse's hooves in the snow. It came from the direction of the Mists. Rooted in place by this, I eagerly watched to see what would happen. Was I to finally witness one of the invaders entering my land? Might I be able to dart through their portal while it was still open?
Louder came the hoof beats, cantering. Was the rider mad? He must have been so to be going so fast in that white murk. Louder. Faster. A full gallop. Unconscious of the gesture, I reached for my sword. It was not there, of course. I hadn't felt the need to wear one for decades, but old habits linger long.
He was nearly upon me. I stepped out of his way, to the right toward the woods, and barely in time. A dapple gray horse burst out of the Mists, breath smoking, hooves throwing up clods of snow, the rider hooting and shouting like a lunatic as he guided the animal in a great circle about the clearing before reining in. He stopped only a few yards away, facing me. His horse, catching my scent, reared and whinnied in frightened protest, but he snapped a command in a language I did not know and his mount settled again, clearly unhappy with its ears flat to its head, but under control.
The rider, a young man with the face of a cocky devil, regarded me a moment with eyes as black and hard as cut onyx, then nodded.
'Hail, Strahd, Lord of Barovia!' he called.
I was quite thoroughly dumbfounded, but had the self-control not to show it. 'Hail, Vistana,' I called in return, for that was what he was, a sight I had not beheld in many, many years.
The gypsies-or Vistani as they are called-used to camp here when I first took up my reign. They had vanished with the war that had brought me to Barovia, then slowly began to return when things were at peace. I was never too comfortable about them, since it was their custom to give allegiance to no one but their own tribe. They wandered free, using my roads without paying tax for their upkeep, a source of minor irritation for me. As a soldier, I well understood the occasional appeal of an itinerant life, but could not grasp how anyone would voluntarily embrace its rigors.
The Vistani had no reason to love me because of a past incident when I'd imprisoned one of their own for thievery and spying. Before I had a chance to teach the skulker a proper lesson he had somehow escaped from my dungeon. Strange in itself, but I soon discovered he and all his people had disappeared completely from Barovia. Vanished into the Mists, so the peasants had told me. That had been long ago, even by my reckoning of time.
'I am Bartolome, Lord Strahd,' he said, sketching a bow from his saddle as his horse danced uneasily in place.
Still fairly stunned by his appearance and the fact he knew me, I merely gave a brief, regal nod by way of acknowledgment.
'On behalf of my tribe, I beg permission from you that we may camp here as we have of old.'
I looked up and noted that it was now true midnight. I had been drawn to this spot and at this time and now knew the reason. 'Permission is granted, Bartolome. Bring your people in. Strahd von Zarovich welcomes them.'
'Hai!' he shouted, and kicked his horse, charging headlong back into the Mists.
From deep in the white haze I heard the approach of the creaking wheels of their vardos, the small, brightly painted wagons with arched roofs that served as homes for the Vistani. Did the great wheel of the year make such a sound in its endless turnings?
Unexpectedly a flock of tiny gray and white birds shot clear first, cheeping and piping excitedly away as though it were nesting season. They darted past, swooped and swirled into the trees, disappearing, leaving behind only their song. I knew them to be vista-chiri and had not seen them in Barovia since the Vistani last traveled my roads.
Ringing bits, the clop of hooves, unidentifiable rattlings, and voices, many, many voices, women calling, the high-pitched cries of children, the gruff rumbles of the men, all drifted toward me, growing louder as they came near.
The first of the vardos emerged, two strong-looking horses cutting a path through the snow. Bartolome rode next to them and kept them calm as they passed me.
Then one after another they came, a great train of a dozen wagons, the largest grouping of Vistani I'd ever seen in a single gathering before. The vardos differed in color, and many had symbols painted on them. As I studied further, I noticed that some symbols decorated a few vardos while the symbols upon other wagons were completely different. A joining of two or more caravans perhaps? I could not as yet see any harm in allowing them entry, though I didn't wholly trust them. Many were thieves and charlatans yet, in general, they were considerably better company than previous intruders. Furthermore, from Bartolome's words I assumed that they were intentionally entering my realm rather than stumbling in unknowingly as had previous visitors.
As the final vardo rumbled through, the Mists completely dissipated. On the ground, the trail left by their wheels began in the middle of pristine snow, coming out of nowhere. Whatever power they used to get here I wanted to know about.
The last of them plodded along to its place in the circle they made. Those which I took to be of differing
