I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin

Chapter Two

  Winter Solstice Night, 469 Barovian Calendar, Barovia All others mark the death of the year in midsummer, when the longest day passes and the slow slide of ever-shortening days ends in midwinter when they celebrate the return of the light. Not so for me. The death of the year occurs when the longest night is done, giving me less and less time to walk in its protecting shadows.

  Not that a shortage of time was a burden - eternity was before me, it seemed, but broken up into such brief increments between the sun's setting and rising that I greatly resented having to stop my studies to retreat to my crypt every few hours. Those studies consumed me completely, like the fever that had taken Tatyana nearly a quarter-century ago.

  Because of it no book in my library was unread, and many I pored over again and again for weeks at a time, particularly the ones on magic. I catalogued their various ideas, trying to index everything into a recognizable pattern that could be exploited to help me escape my prison.

  One portion of the pattern had to do with the occasional trespassers who entered the country at irregular intervals. As the newcomers were universally a bad lot, I used to kill them as I found them, but I'd since learned the wisdom of taking them alive so that I might closely question my prisoners on their lives beyond the Mists, trying to build a picture of the lands and peoples there. This was oftentimes easier said than done. Occasionally such trespassers spoke a similar tongue to my own - often startlingly similar - and communication was relatively easy. Other times trespassers had languages so unintelligible that I was forced to cast an appropriate spell in order to communicate even the most basic questions. By these interrogations I learned of many wonders, adding each piece of information to my index, though some of it was contradictory.

  Two prisoners had arrived separately at different times, but - and this had not happened before - they were apparently from the same country. They each claimed it to be the same year as time was reckoned there, but each acknowledged a completely different liege lord ruling the place. By this I could deduce that there might be far more worlds out there than I had ever imagined, perhaps piled on top of one another in some manner that left them unaware of their nearly identical neighbors. It was intriguing to think on, though I was not quite ready to believe it yet, not until I obtained more proof than the word of two argumentative murderers, but perhaps there were multiple worlds beyond my borders. I wanted to reach those worlds, break through the Mists to the other side. Perhaps if these other worlds did indeed exist, then it was not inconceivable that in one of those worlds my dear Tatyana yet lived. The Barovia I knew had come about because of my own violent acts, the imprisoning Mists rising high and spreading far from its center at Castle Ravenloft. How then was I to reverse it and escape? Commit something unutterably altruistic and self-sacrificing and hope for the best?

  I doubted it would be that simple.

  Magical books were far too few, though, and none, save one, appeared to have any information in regard to my plight. The exception was the book Alek Gwilym, my long dead second-in-command, brought me that final year before everything changed. He had never approved of my studies in the Art, probably a wise foresight of his since it had later indirectly led to his death at my hands.

  In that book I'd finally found what I had been searching so long for: A Spell For Obtaining the Heart's Desire. Ideal - except I wasn't far enough along in my studies to be able to read it. That had come to me when Death, summoned by my anger, frustration, and despair, made its visitation and offer, and we sealed our hellish pact. I'd gotten everything I'd wanted, but each desire had its own terrible price.

  Age ceased to be a problem for me - though I often had to feed off gutter leavings and luckless peasants to stay alive. Sergei ceased to be my rival - after I had murdered him with the blade of a Ba'al Verzi assassin. And Tatyana became mine - for a few moments of bliss until she. . . It is indeed true that one should be very careful with one's wishes, as they are likely to manifest themselves in a most unpleasant manner.

  Since then I hadn't opened that particular book.

  Common sense told me it was now no different from any of the other magic books in my possession; it had only been used as a tool to lure me into this velvet-barred cage. I was a prisoner with nothing left to offer Death. Possibly I did have one thing of value to bargain with: myself, my life, or the emptiness that was my life. I was reluctant to ask, lest I end up in a worse situation than the one I presently endured.

  Was I afraid? I would be a fool not to be.

  But this night, the longest in the turning of the year, when powers are afoot and endings and beginnings are all one, with trembling fingers, I carefully opened the book that had started it all. And as before, I flung it across the room with a roar of frustration.

  It was unreadable. Useless. Every single page in it had gone black.

  Somewhere behind me I heard that damned thing laughing as it had on the night of our bargain. I did not bother to turn, knowing there would be nothing to see.

  There never was. Death was very good at hiding its face from me.

  Midnight drew closer, not the midnight which was marked by any clock, but the true midpoint of the year, the 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 caravans camped next to one another, though all mingled freely and shared in the work. I posted myself just within it and watched as they made their preparations for settling in. Older children and youths scattered to pick up fallen wood from the forest and the men somehow managed to get the damp stuff to burn. The women brought forth their cooking pots and for the next hour domestic necessities prevailed as food was prepared and the livestock fed and bedded down.

  Despite Bartolome asking permission I knew that his question in regard to their staying had been a formality only. With or without my consent they would have camped here regardless. A few of them shot me dark, uneasy looks that I endured without offense. Let them study and know the rarely seen face of the lord of Barovia; let them all learn my features and beware.

  The evening meal done, the men threw more wood on the fires until the flames leapt high. Someone put bow to fiddle and tried a few experimental notes to make sure it was in tune, then struck off with a song I thought I recognized. I have no small amount of musical talent myself, though I had no reason to make music for many decades and was decidedly rusty. The song was almost familiar, but in places the notes were quite different and the rhythm became a constantly changing thing with no apparent pattern to it.

  A drum was brought in to aid the fiddle, then more stringed instruments of strange design. Several of the young women stood to dance to the music, long full skirts gilded by the firelight. Their tambourines, streaming bright ribbons, kept time as they were shaken high in the air or slapped against a hand or a rounded hip. But this was no simple dance to entertain; I was conscious that spell work was afoot.

  You could see it if you knew where to look. Specks of power swirled around the dancers like cinders rising high from the fires. It was of a quite different kind of magic than I was used to; they seemed to rely less on exotic ingredients and verbal commands than to draw what they
needed from themselves and the land about them. Perhaps that was why they needed to move from place to place so often, giving their campsite a chance to lie fallow and replenish itself while they were gone.

  I wondered what purpose they had planned for their spell, but nothing obvious revealed itself. Bartolome moved among them, smiling, a word here and there to each, sometimes stopping to listen with serious attention to some child barely old enough to speak. Undistracted, I watched the dance, straining all my senses to fathom out the nature of the magic involved, and its ultimate purpose, but with indifferent success.

  "Sometimes no purpose is desired; the weaving of it is all that there is," a woman said behind me.

  I managed not to start and whirl in surprise. Given what I have become, it is nearly impossible for anyone to draw so close to me without my being aware of it, so I was quite unprepared. She must have used some kind of spell to make her way over the unbroken snow in such utter silence. That or I was focused on the dancing to the point of folly.

  "You've nothing to fear from us, Lord Strahd," she said as I turned.

  "I am delighted to hear it," I responded dryly.

  "I hope we may think the same of you. "

  "One is always allowed to hope. "

  She was not very tall, and that was as much of her as I could discern - which was not normal for me. I should have been able to see details of her face and dress, but all were obscured by her cloak and the shadows trapped in its folds.

  Whatever spellwork she employed was subtle; I had no sense of it, even this close.

  "My name is Eva," she said, her voice dry with the hoarseness of great age.

  A strong instinct within told me to be polite with this one, so I acknowledged her with a slight bow from the waist. I did not bother to introduce myself, as she most likely knew as well as had Bartolome.

  "We must talk, Lord Strahd. Come to my vardo when the dance is done. "

  "Why not now?"

  She gestured at the circle of people, and I turned to regard them. "See how they draw out the power?" Indeed, that had been the object of my intense study.

  "Allow them to finish. "

  When I turned back to inform her that I was not in the habit of waiting upon others, it was with no small reaction of unsettlement I saw that she was no longer standing there.

  I had enough knowledge of Vistani ways to understand that their magic, though different from mine, was no less potent in its force and effect. I would be well advised to go slowly and with great caution until I learned more of what this Eva wanted. She would want something, no doubt of it.

  ***

  From Azalin's private commentary notebooks, contd.

  543 Barovian Calendar, Barovia

  Here at least Von Zarovich does not miss the importance of the entry of this Vistani tribe at the exact moment of the winter solstice. The indications are that the Vistani are aware and able to take advantage of the vast shiftings of energy that occur at such times twice yearly. It is clear that they used these forces to make their entry. Von Zarovich had some forewarning of their coming, though, and he has not fully explained that point to my satisfaction. Perhaps it is true he did not understand why he was drawn to that particular spot at that point in time, but to trust his word on this would be foolish. Though for the most part he cleaves to a private code of honor, he lies on occasion, when it suits him to do so, but I can see no advantage for him to lie here about so minor a point. It may then not be so minor as he pretends.

  The Vistani, unlike other types of humans, are somehow able to pierce the Mists in a manner that even I have yet to fathom. Von Zarovich has forbidden me from experimenting on them, which severely hampers my researches. He expects results, yet foolishly denies me the tools required, otherwise I might be able to determine what it is about them, either as individuals or as a people, that enables them to transcend the limitations imposed upon all others. This limitation he has imposed has to do with his honor, or so he informs me, but I have another theory to account for it, which I will relate in my final conclusion at the end of this observation.

  What I have been able to find out is that Vistani are inherently magical, some possessing more talent than others, while some have no talent at all. The females of the tribes seem to be more powerful than the males and are granted great respect for this. For example, females often exhibit talents in the ways of precognition, but rarely do they pursue the development of their gift in any established and disciplined schooling. It is haphazard at best, and loosely based on a type of apprenticeship training. The pattern repeats for all other talents mental and magical they possess, leaving them at the mercy of outside forces rather than in control of them. This is a major weakness in their culture, which is fortunate. Should they ever organize themselves, they might prove to be a formidable force.

  Von Zarovich often complains about their parasitic nature, yet he does nothing about it. He appears to be in awe of them, probably because of their inherent talent for spellwork. This is something that might also be exploited in a minor way. I say minor, for it is unlikely the Vistani as a whole could be corrupted and turned against him. They have little interest in material wealth beyond the needs of the moment. They owe no allegiance to any lord, have no real value for gold except as an adornment, and they are free of any desire for a permanent home (that I am aware of) and the responsibilities involved to maintain it.

  Wandering from place to place, never stopping more than a night or two in any one spot, makes them difficult to bribe.

  One exploitable weakness that they do possess is a strong sense of familial devotion to one another, but as indicated by Von Zarovich, the taking of hostages may not be a viable ploy. The one prisoner whom he had managed to confine later escaped and apparently inspired all the rest of the tribes to vacate Barovia as well, rather than initiate vengeance for their insult.

  Certainly if a single Vistana is able to free himself from the dungeons of Castle Ravenloft without Von Zarovich being any wiser until after the fact, then any one of their tribes would be powerful enough to invade the place and dispose of their common threat altogether. This may be why Strahd is reluctant to treat them the same as any of his other subjects: he fears them.