disagreement over the approach of solving the problem of escape.
So he continued with the line he'd been exploring prior to the interruption and again made lengthy and involved preparations. His next experiment at the following summer equinox failed miserably.
As did the next. And the next.
CHAPTER NINE
575 Barovian Calendar
One winter night I awoke to a decided feeling of unease and knew another great change had taken place. I was unsure what it was at first. It was similar to the feeling I got whenever anyone crossed from Forlorn into Barovia, but it seemed much… larger. I immediately rose and made use of the crystal to see what was amiss.
A few thousand nights of practice had lessened the difficulty I'd initially experienced viewing into this other land, so the concentration required wasn't nearly as severe. I started with the northwest corner of Forlorn closest to the Tristenoira castle and worked my way southeast. It took about an hour to go over the twenty miles of snow- covered ground. None of it showed the least evidence of tracks, goblyn or otherwise.
That left the rest of the land. I had an insistent and growing feeling that whatever had happened was big enough to be noticed from a distance. Sweeping my viewpoint to the topmost peak of Mount Sawtooth, I used it as a base to see most of the southern portions of Barovia. Nothing unusual presented itself, so I shifted to Mount Baratak in the north.
Success. I couldn't take it in right away, thinking that some stray snow cloud blocked my sight of the Mists. But going lower and closer revealed that the Mists in this spot had drawn back an indefinite distance. Another new land was seamlessly connected to Barovia, stretching out along the northwestern border. Through the crystal I could move faster than the fiercest winter gale. I descended into this new land to investigate.
I struck a barrier, invisible but palpable, in resistance a duplicate to what I met whenever crossing into Forlorn. It was another border. Another country.
The land stretched on without sign of the Mists ahead, so I continued forward, taking in the sight of more forests with a few isolated dwellings. Small farms and shepherds dominated. No soldiery.
Lamordia. The name whispered itself right into my mind, an announcement from I knew not where.
I continued eastward, skimming the border of my own land. I moved quickly, not bothering with details for the moment, desiring rather to discover the extent of my new neighbor. Much to my surprise, I passed through yet another invisible barrier.
This new land was considerably larger in size than Forlorn, the chief feature being a mountain so vast and high and sprawling as to dwarf proud Balinok. Indeed, the thing looked to take up an area as large as Barovia itself.
Dipping lower, I brushed over the tree tops to the line of the border, and it was indeed a line. The Barovian forests, where they butted against it, stopped abruptly, along with the snow, though the lay of the land continued unaltered. A hill remained a hill, but trees grew thick on one side, while long grasses and low shrubs covered the other. Much of their growth was pressed in a permanent bend in the direction of the wind, which must have been very strong to be so obvious at this height to me. No trees were in evidence anywhere in this desolation, though the vegetation looked formidable enough to offer concealment for any number of nasty surprises.
I moved closer and followed the edge from one side to the other, about thirty miles of it, and saw no sign of habitation. It looked to be as deserted as Forlorn, but until proven otherwise, I would assume there were hidden dangers here as well. At either end of our borders the imprisoning Mists rose high.
A faint movement on the Barovian side caught my notice, and I focused and swept down upon it. Azalin. With a small pack train.
I wondered how he had found out. Perhaps he'd set up some sort of magical warning against just such an occurrence.
Forced to travel overland, he had to have begun early this morning, which gave me an estimate of when the new land had appeared for he was nearly to the border. He must have taken an ice sled from Vallaki and let the prevailing winds carry him swiftly along the length of Lake Zarovich. Though sometimes dangerous, that would have cut quite a few miles and hours from his trip. Winter travel in Barovia is neither easy nor safe. He would then have to skirt two out-flung spurs of Baratak by toiling through nearly trackless forest. A journey of twenty miles would take nearly the whole day. Even now he was only just making his way along a winding path that would lead to a saddle ridge linking one portion of Baratak to another. Half of it lay in Barovia and half sloped down into the new land.
I put my crystal safely away and made some spell preparations against whatever unknown loomed ahead, then performed the very useful travel casting. By the time Azalin toiled up the summit of the saddle, I was already there and waiting, wrapped snug in my cloak while the night winds tossed drifts of snow around me. He could not feel the cold himself, of course, but the snow was a nuisance to him and his tired animals.
He made no comment about my sudden appearance in his path, but annoyance was in every line of his posture. How much easier it would be for him to use this particular traveling spell, only he was unable to do so. I was always cordial, pretending not to notice his limitation, something that always irked him. One would think after all this time that he'd have accepted the fact and be over the aggravation. I ever kept the advantage by not gifting him with copper wands charged with it, indeed; I acted as though the idea had not even occurred to me.
He dismounted and tied the reins to a tree, then toiled up the last yards to stand a few paces distant, looking down the opposing slope.
'Have you tried crossing into it?' he asked after taking a good look around.
'Yes. I cannot.'
'The same as Forlorn,' he stated.
'When did you notice this new presence?'
'At dawn. I began riding then.'
'Does it look familiar to you?'
'No.'
'Any ideas why and how it came to be here?'
He made a throwing away motion with one gloved hand, as if to dismiss me and my questions, his gaze still riveted ahead. Unless I read him wrong, he looked hungry. The sating of appetite would be far more complicated for him than for me. His greedy lust was for knowledge, something not always easily obtained. This plane of existence in this pocket of reality was ever stingy with its secrets.
Our mutual silence lengthened. After all these years we did not have that much to say to each other. We already long knew what things upon which we agreed; the rest usually devolved into pointless bickering about which we were both quite bored. He finally turned back to his horses, going to the pack animal and tugging at the ties of something large and bulky strapped to its back. The cloth-shrouded bundle dropped heavily to the snow in a familiar way. Shroud was an excellent description, for it did cover a body.
Azalin threw back the rough fabric, revealing the ragged form of a man dead for about a month. I dimly recognized the face as belonging to a drunken thief who'd tried to break into a house in Vallaki one night during the last new moon. Unfortunately for him, I'd caught him in mid-invasion and administered my justice accordingly. He'd been very drunk, else he wouldn't have been so foolish as to be out after sunset. So soaked was his blood with cheap wine it had given me a pleasant period of lightheadedness that I hadn't felt in many decades; that was the only reason I recalled his features out of so many thousands of others.
Azalin must have stopped at the Vallaki burial grounds along his way to make a disintemment.
I watched him proceed with the raising ritual. It's a complicated process, but he had honed it to a fine art with much practice and was very quick about it. Not long after, the thing began to ponderously twitch with a parody of life. It sat up with a groan as month old air rushed out its gaping mouth. Considering the appearance of the corpse, I was glad that breathing was no longer a necessity for me.
The dead thief woodenly rose, shedding clumps of snow and earth and trudged toward the border, with Azalin in its wake. He stopped at the edge, but his zombie continued on under his direction, breaking past the last drift of Barovian snow and plodding through the long, wind-blown grasses.
'Wherever this land's origin, it must not have been winter there,' I observed.
