'Your time would be better served trying to complete your experiments. Sooner or later you will have to get lucky.'
'Oh, I will experiment-on you, Von Zarovich.'
'If you kill me, Barovia will cease to exist.'
'You flatter yourself.'
'Yet you have believed that, else you'd have tried to kill me before.'
'There are more lands here now than Barovia, so I care not what happens to your pitiful little patch of mud.'
'Those other lands-including yours-are all attached to Barovia. It is at the center of all. If it ceases to be-'
'It will have no effect upon them.'
'You don't know that. But we both know as each of these lands appeared they formed themselves to match Barovia's topography where they touched, not the other way around. They are like lichen upon a stone; take the stone away-'
'Spare me the logic, Von Zarovich. Your argument is an insult to my intelligence; you have no evidence upon which to base it.'
'It is more substantial than anything you could ever offer in refute.'
'You cannot prove a negative.'
'Try testing this one and you may continue on just long enough to regret it,' I said. 'If you kill me, you destroy everything, including your precious Darkon.' I had no idea if this was true, extrapolating my link with Barovia to include the other lands that had come to this plane, but there was no harm in making the attempt. 'You will ultimately destroy yourself.'
His laughter, something I'd rarely ever heard, scrabbled through my mind like bones rolling over a stone floor. 'But I won't really kill you, Von Zarovich. You are going to be my slave, as I was yours.'
If Azalin thought himself a slave while in Barovia, then he had wildly overlooked the true meaning of the word.
I could point out to him that he had ever been my guest and mention the time and trouble to which I'd gone to see that he received all he wanted for his comfort and work, but I knew he wouldn't listen. Once he had decided on something, he persisted with it-no matter how erroneous his judgment. But then, his arrogance was boundless. When it came to his faults, his pride was quite my favorite; it made him so easy to manipulate.
The prospect of being his slave did trouble me, though, as there was the chance he could achieve such a goal. And I doubted that I would enjoy the same privileged life he had been granted in Barovia. There was one weak point to his threat, however.
'I should be interested in seeing how you could possibly manage to bring me across the border,' I murmured.
He snorted. 'There may be no need to bother. If it proves immediately impractical, I should be more than content to watch your sufferings from afar.'
'Not for very long, I'm sure. It will eventually grate at you that you cannot personally see to whatever inconvenience you wish to heap upon me. Then perhaps you'll realize you still very much need me for the advanced spell work you must do to truly escape.'
'Pah! I shall train others for such menial tasks.'
'You wouldn't be able to trust them. Once they'd reached so high a degree of training, they would be too much of a threat to you.'
'I can command loyalty if need be; you aren't the only one who can inspire it.'
'Sycophants always make the worst assistants.'
'They will obey me or die.'
'Oh, I'm sure that threat will do much to calm them to the point of being able to work without making mistakes. Can you not see how you need someone like me, someone who is not afraid of you-'
'Liar. Even you fear me.'
'Now who is flattering himself?' I said lightly, but allowed venom into my voice as I continued. 'Do not mistake disgust for fear, Firan Zal'honan. I say again: you still need me to carry out the spell work you are unable to learn… lich.'
That struck a nerve. A terrible, almighty sensitive one. Just as I had intended. His face worked, and his gloved hands formed into fists, and had I actually been in the room with him he would have probably leapt upon me then and there. Though it was imagination only, I thought I felt the force of his loathing for me roll out from him in palpable waves.
He straightened to a regal pose and spread his arms wide. His figure shimmered and the illusion he maintained ceased to exist. I saw him in reality for the first time in many decades, and the passage of time had done nothing to improve his looks, quite the contrary.
'Then look upon my true form. Von Zarovich!' he thundered, his voice smashing into my brain like a hammer. I couldn't help shuddering from the physical discomfort and hoped that nothing of my reaction was reaching him lest he take it as a show of weakness. 'Look upon me and despair!'
I waited until the paroxysm passed so that my inner voice would be strong again, then put another note of boredom into it. 'Except for the gaudy robes-which I also suspect to be illusion-you're still no more than a dressed- up version of one of your own zombies… slightly more cognizant, of course. I'll give you that much, but hardly worth inspiring me to despair.'
The last thing I heard was his ear-splitting shriek of fury.
The next thing I knew was coming back to my senses in an unpleasantly familiar way: lying flat on hard stone, every muscle in my body stiff and bruised, and my head in a state best left out of the damage enumeration altogether, since when it came to pain it was beyond anything so trivial as the rest of the list.
I wisely chose not to move for a considerable period until I was certain that my brain was not actually seeping from my ears like wax melting off a candle. That fact ascertained-I felt the area carefully just to be sure-I most cautiously rose to take stock of things.
Happily, I had not been blasted back to my aerie, sparing me another flight home. Whatever he'd done had merely thrown me across the room to slam into an all-too-solid wall-with predictable results upon my person. The agony behind my eyes, though, had more to do with my mental contact with him than anything else. I had pressed him too far-not wise, but quite instructive. He now knew that I had discovered his true name. Though I still had not unearthed the proper method to use it against him, he didn't know that.
My chief concern was for the crystal ball, which fortunately appeared to be unharmed by the lash of magic that had funneled through it. That was of great relief. When I felt strong enough I sat before it once more and focused my mind on the view from Mount Krezk, looking northeast to the pass between it and Mount Baratak. If Azalin sent an army across it would be at this point. He had some small experience as a military commander and though not nearly a match for my own, even he would see this area as the natural doorway into Barovia from Darkon.
All appeared to be clear and quiet in the midnight darkness, at least on my side of the invisible boundary. Not so for the other. I perceived something in motion on the land, but whatever was moving was too far away for me to discern it. Swooping low, I covered the miles in but an instant to let myself seem to stand on the edge of the border. Here I paused, pressing myself forward only gradually, testing for traps or triggers, for any kind of barrier Azalin might have set up to prevent me from crossing. When nothing sprang up for me, I continued on swiftly over the sparse grass.
Rising high to see better, I halted my progress. No need to go farther; I looked down at Azalin's army and felt a thrill of cold fear flutter through me.
Below me was another of Darkon's burial grounds, a village of the dead, but none there now lay at peace. The earth fairly roiled with activity as the bodies lying beneath it struggled and clawed and scrabbled and finally tore free of its embrace. A dozen, a hundred, two hundred and more were busily defying the natural order of things by standing in ragged lines all facing toward Barovia. Once assembled, they began to stalk, stump, or shamble toward the border, neither fast nor slow, but steadily and untiring.
They were not armed, except for those who had been warriors in life and had been buried with their weapons, their only clothing either decayed finery or tattered shrouds over their bones. The most potent weapon, though, was their own fearful appearance. Who has not at least once shivered at suddenly beholding a grinning skull? One might get accustomed to the sight, but this… to see such a dire gathering, so many of them, all upright and marching
