It was autumn again, time to begin pruning in preparation for winter’s sleep. Jander knelt beside the white rose bush that grew near the chapel door and examined it carefully. One last flower bloomed, appearing unearthly in the luster of the moon’s glow. Gently the elf leaned forward to smell its clean, sweet fragrance and feel the soft petals, as soft as Anna’s cheek, against his face. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, smiling sadly.
When he pulled away, he opened his eyes and gazed at the rose. His smile fled. The flower, which seconds before had been in full, proud bloom, had withered and died. Its petals fluttered mournfully to the ground in a silent reproach.
Stunned and horrified, Jander backed away from the rosebush. A clump of night-blooming violets were clustered near his foot. Slowly, apprehensively, he extended a golden finger and touched the purple blossoms. They wilted as he watched, and the brown of death began to seep through the green leaves. That time, he felt the tiny death of the plant like a knife in the belly.
What had happened to him? Without warning, his nurturing touch had become fatal to these flowers. The vampire clenched his hands and brought them up to his chest, as if to ensure that no other innocent plant would fall prey to his evil. Jander leaned on the stone wall, grateful for the cool, rough sensation of unfeeling dead stone beneath his golden, killing hands.
Sickened, he gazed over a low wall at the moon-whitened mist slowly moving around the cliff face. There were occasional gaps through which the vampire could glimpse the jagged edges of rocks. For a moment, Jander debated leaping into the mists. He dismissed the idea almost at once. Such an action would do nothing to mitigate his pain. He could not die.
The elf found himself keenly missing the colors of the daytime. Night’s palette, while beautiful, was limited. Indigo and inky black of sky and earth, pearl-white of moonshine, dark green of forests and fields—these were the only hues he could see. What had happened to sky blue? To pink, and lavender, and all the delicate daytime pigments? They were gone beyond his viewing.
The vampire closed his eyes tightly, willing himself to remember the tints of the day. “Anna,” he said to himself, “Please come back. I miss you so much.”
He didn’t know what he hoped to happen, if his longing could bring back the painful, joyous dreams in which he and his beloved shared glorious dawns and sun-saturated afternoons. Jander concentrated, forming an image of Anna in his mind. Tall, beautiful, with that mane of curly auburn tumbling down her back, brown eyes full of unspoken laughter … Anna.
Jander opened his eyes and gasped.
Standing in front of him was just such a woman. For an instant his mind shrieked Anna’s name, but then the thought fled as he looked more closely at the girl. Dark eyes and auburn curls she had indeed, but her slight frame was much too small for her to be Anna. The eyes were the right hue, but the expression in them was all wrong. Her full lips curved in a sardonic smile as she gazed at him.
“Ah, Jander,” Strahd purred, stepping into the elf’s field of vision, “allow me to present my new friend, Miss Katrina Yakovlena Pulchenka. Trina, this is Jander Sunstar, a visitor from a far distant realm.”
For an instant Jander thought that the young woman on Strahd’s arm was merely another newly created vampiress, but she was emitting a curious scent that was certainly alive. As Strahd put a proprietary hand on Trina’s shoulder, he literally towered over her. She was dressed in the customary clothing of the village folk, but it was obviously not made for her. Her slight figure got rather lost in it.
Yet there was nothing vulnerable in either her expression or attitude. Her eyes were bright and took everything in swiftly. She seemed to have no fear at all; a remarkable trait in Barovia.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Jander,” she said in a voice that was pleasant but too laden with self-satisfaction to be appealing. “Strahd has told me much about you.” She patted the hand Strahd had placed on her shoulder. “Is it all right if I …?”
Strahd nodded, and Jander caught a glimpse of a savage smile as Trina suddenly arched her back as if gripped by a deep inner pain. Astonishingly the contortions wrought no cry from her, and the elf watched with a horrified fascination as her face lengthened into a wolf’s muzzle, and her limbs stretched and flexed into long, lupine legs. Her fingers and toes contracted, going stubby as the nails sharpened into claws. Powerful muscles swelled, bursting through the confining clothes. Before a full minute had passed, a brindled gray and brown wolf stood where Trina had been. Its tongue lolled as its eyes narrowed and its ears relaxed.
“Trina lives in the village, where she is courted by a rather ardent young suitor. She has little time to herself and consequently prefers to be in wolf form when she visits the castle,” Strahd explained. The wolf glanced from one to the other and wriggled out of the clothing. She padded to the elf and sniffed him curiously, her black nostrils flaring.
“She is the first mortal female to voluntarily enter Castle Ravenloft in well over a hundred years,” Strahd commented. “I cannot take her blood. The wolf taint spoils it for my palate.”
“Then why bother?”
Strahd waggled a cautionary figure. “Be careful, Jander. She can understand every word you say!” To affirm this, Trina barked sharply. “I enjoy her company, more so than the slaves. She is almost as ruthless as I. That is hard to become in ten years!” He laughed without humor. “The ideas of good and evil intrigue her, but she is as the wolf of the forest—totally unburdened by scruples. She makes an excellent spy and a merry bedfellow.” He turned his attention back to the wolf. “Come, my dear. I have been your guest before. It is time for me to return the favor.”
Jander watched them go—the tall, elegant vampire and the calculating, amoral werewolf—silhouetted against the torchlight as they returned to the castle. He shook his head at the sight. What will Strahd’s slaves think of Trina, he wondered, and how will the werewolf react to them?
Hunger stirred inside him, but the vampire ignored it. He was so weary of the place. His trips to Vallaki and into the village provided little comfort, and the projects he had worked on over the last few years seemed paltry efforts. He sat down on the cool stone by the overlook and leaned his head against the wall.
“You have forgotten me,” came the sweet, dear voice that Jander both hungered for and dreaded.
The elf was afraid to open his eyes, afraid that he was awake and his mind was playing tricks on him. “Dear gods, Anna, never. You know that,” he whispered. He heard a rustle of clothing and caught the sweet perfume of her skin as she seated herself beside him. The vampire still kept his eyes closed.
“Look at me, beloved.” Her voice was soft, gentle, the sound of wind in the trees on a warm summer’s afternoon. “No. I can’t.”
“Are you afraid to see what your forgetfulness has done to me?” Jander emitted a soft, pained cry at the blow. Turning toward her he slowly, reluctantly, opened his silver eyes.
And cried out again, this time in horror.
Anna looked worse than she had in the asylum. Her lustrous hair was dirty and tangled. Filth smeared her face, and her clothing stank of rot. Hardest of all for the vampire to bear was that her eyes held an expression of lucid, sane agony.
“Anna,” he whispered, guilt racing through him, “have I done this to you?”
“I cannot rest until you have avenged me,” she said softly, tears welling up in her pain-filled eyes. “You are my only hope. Why have you not sought my company these ten years past?”
“Because,” he murmured, wanting to avert his gaze but powerless to do so, “it hurts too much.”
Her hand caressed his cheek. “Did you think I was not in pain, my love? It hurt me too, living as a madwoman. Jander, where did they go? I had a mind, thoughts, dreams—where did they go when I became insane? What happened to them?”
Jander pulled away. “I don’t know how to help you!” he cried, as angry at his impotence as at her. He rose, paced, and turned his back on her. “No one seems to know you
. No one can even give me any clues!”
“You must find the clues, and with them, find my destroyer,” she said sweetly. “The knowledge you need is closer than you think.” He swung around, questions on his lips, and discovered that she had vanished.
The elf blinked, caught off-balance by the sudden occurrence. The sky was turning gray with the approaching morning. For a moment Jander wanted nothing more than to stay where he was and gaze at the east while the sun rose in all its splendor and beauty and pain. That would end everything … but solve nothing.
The weight of resolution pressing down upon him, Jander closed his eyes briefly and turned to the castle.
TRINA WAS BORED.
Jander could tell she was bored by the frequent sighs and fidgeting he heard behind him, but he continued to concentrate on his work.
Standing on a ladder, he used a finely-honed chisel to scrape away the decades of dirt that had filled the carved letters below the fresco. Instead of being completely illegible, the inscription read: THE GOBLYN KING FLEES BE ORE TH OW R O H O Y S M OF RA EN . With the patience that only the dead have, he began to work on the F of “BEFORE.”
The fresco itself was in a sorry state, but Jander could still make out a strong figure standing atop a hill, arms outstretched, before a horde of cowering creatures. He assumed the fresco depicted Strahd vanquishing creatures that had once threatened Barovia.
“Gods, Jander, how can you stand this?” Trina, in her human form, peered up at him. Her pert little nose wrinkled with disgust.
“Little wolfling,” he replied, a hint of a smile in his voice, “I would rather do this than track innocents for sport.”
Strahd would have taken offense; Katrina simply noted, “That’s what we’re supposed to do. I’m a werecreature.”
“Not all werecreatures are evil,” Jander pointed out absently, narrowing his silver eyes as the F began to take shape beneath his delicate touch. “At least, not where I come from.”
She laughed, clapping her small hands in delight at his joke. “That’s funny!”
“It’s true.”
“No! Really?”
“We have wereowls, and werebears, and even weredolphins on Toril. And some of those are righteous, loving creatures who abide the law and strive to uphold it. A weredolphin befriended me once. It saved my life.”
“What’s a weredolphin?”
Jander paused, surprised, then shrugged. Barovia appeared to be landlocked, so of course Trina had never seen the ocean. He pitied her for that, and a sudden longing welled up inside him for the beautiful shores of Evermeet. “A dolphin is an animal sort of like a large fish. They’re warm-blooded, however, and their young are born live, not hatched from eggs. Weredolphins change from dolphin to human.”
Trina was amazed. “What strange animals they sound like. Was the weredolphin in your debt?”
“No. He just saw I was in trouble and came to help.”
Trina frowned. “How silly,” she mused. “You might have been feigning, trying to trap him and sell him.”
Jander stopped what he was doing long enough to glare down at her. “Not everyone’s mind works like yours,” he snapped.
“Good thing too,” she purred. Jander resumed his work, beginning on another letter. “Tell me how you traveled here.”
“The mists brought me. Not unusual.”
“That’s what happens to everybody. Doesn’t anybody ever come here through magic?”
Jander occasionally enjoyed the werewolf’s prattle, but she had ventured onto his least favorite topic, and his patience was wearing thin. “Trina, I don’t know anything about magic. Why don’t you ask Strahd?”
She didn’t answer at once, and when she did reply her voice was sulky. “I’m not talking to him. He spent last night with Irina. Again.” Trina kicked the stone step angrily, then rattled off a string of curses that would do a sailor justice.
Oh, yes, Jander remembered Irina now. Strahd’s newest “acquisition,” still human at the present moment, but not for long. “Then why are you here?” he asked Trina.
She shrugged her small shoulders. “I don’t know.” Her voice suddenly dropped, became husky. “Maybe I came to see you.”
Jander looked at her. She had stepped up on the ladder, one small, bare foot still on the floor, and was smiling up at him. The werewolf’s eyes were intense and her mouth red and inviting. Feeling very sorry for her, the elf maneuvered himself so that he could see her more completely.
“Trina, you’re a very attractive girl, but I’m not interested. Besides, if you think I’m going to even think about getting involved with one of Strahd’s ladies—”
“One of them!” She glowered at him. “I am not just one of Strahd’s ladies!” The elf didn’t answer. Below him, Trina continued to fume.
“I’m sick of being told that. Why can’t he be satisfied with just me? Why does he want those stupid slaves who have absolutely no minds of their own? He says he likes that I am my own person!”
“I believe he does,” Jander replied.
“Then why—”
“Trina, Strahd likes your independence. He also likes feeling in control of things. Let him have his slaves. They’re nothing to him but … sport.” He didn’t say that he privately thought that Trina, too, was little more than sport to the lord of Barovia.
“I don’t like it,” she muttered, sitting down on the stone stairway and resting her chin in her hands. Her pretty face reflected her inner misery. For all her casual violence, Trina could look like a lonely child at times.
Jander climbed down the ladder, carefully put his tools away in the protective pouch he had designed, and sat next to her on the stairs. The werewolf didn’t look at him, and when the elf gently turned her face to his she kept her eyes lowered. Huge tears glistened on her lashes. He put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders.
“I only put up with the way he treats me because of the magic,” she said in a thick voice. “He’s teaching me, you know. I’ve learned a lot already. I’m going to wait until I’ve learned enough to make him want only me.”
“That’s all magic is to people, isn’t it?” Jander exclaimed, his pity transforming into anger. “Magic! ‘I can be rich, I can make someone fall in love with me, I can rule the world.’ Gods!”
“You hate magic?” Trina shook her head, puzzled. “Magic can do so much. That fresco you’ve been working on forever, for instance. All you need to do is ask Strahd to say one little spell and it’d be fixed in a second.”
“I enjoy working on the fresco. Its beauty is coming back to life right under my hands. Magic takes away the pleasure of doing that. Besides,” his voice grew hard, “Strahd doesn’t have any use for something that doesn’t immediately benefit him.”
“That’s not true!”
“Oh, yes it is. If you’re looking for someone to love you, what’s the matter with that young fellow you’re allegedly having a romance with in the village?”
“Him? Don’t be ridiculous! I only agreed to see him because Strahd thought it would be a good idea if I were involved with someone in town. People would be less suspicious of me.”
“So you do whatever Strahd tells you to. You’re no better than those slaves of his. In fact, you’re worse, because you choose to obey him.”
Trina opened her mouth to retort, then froze as the truth of Jander’s words sank in. “No,” she whispered, “I’m not his plaything. I’m not. He loves me.”
She looked so young and miserable, so much like a simple human girl in the throes of her first adolescent romance, that Jander was moved. He held her affectionately, feeling the tension in her small body. Her slim shoulders shook as she sobbed, her small hands clinging to his blue tunic. There was no way her affair with the lord of the land could end happily.
“Well, what a pretty scene we have here, to be sure,” came Strahd’s voice. Jander and Trina sprung apart like two children caught doing something wrong.
“Strahd—” Jander began. The l
ook on the count’s face quelled the words before he could speak them. Strahd’s eyes were red points of light, and his aquiline face was livid with rage. He raised his hands menacingly, and his lips twisted into a sneer that could only be described as pure hatred.
For a moment the elf was convinced that he had pushed Strahd too far, that the other vampire had lost patience and was about to destroy him. The red glow faded, and Strahd’s gaze again became cool and slightly distant. He lowered his hands, and Jander closed his eyes in relief.
“Jander Sunstar, my old friend,” Strahd said in a voice that was soft but threatening, “you may not approve of magic. You must, however, remember to respect its power … and the power of those who use it.”
The count turned his attention to the werewolf. In her fear, Trina had begun to transform. She had flattened herself against the wall of the curving stairwell and was whimpering softly. Completely human eyes gazed fearfully out of a wolfish face, and long furry claws pressed on the stone.
Strahd smiled charmingly. His eyes kind, he held out a strong, sharp-nailed hand to the frightened creature. “Trina, my dear!” he coaxed. “Do not be afraid. It is already forgiven and forgotten. There, that’s my Trina!” he approved as the woman, thoroughly wolf now, came to him and pranced happily about his feet. The vampire reached and petted her affectionately. “Perhaps I have been neglecting you, my dear.”
The count and the werewolf began to ascend the stairs. Halfway up, Strahd paused and turned slowly to look at the elf. Jander met that dark gaze evenly.
“My old friend,” the count said in an icy tone that belied the warmth of the words, “we have not sat and talked in far too long. I shall come for you tomorrow, after sunset, and we shall feed and converse as we used to, hmmm?” He turned, not pausing for a reply, and continued his ascent.
Jander stared after him, his mind a riot of emotions. He debated resuming work on the fresco, but dismissed the thought. He was far too shaken to be able to concentrate. He wished that Trina had left the dark subject of magic alone. Much of the pain in Jander’s long years of existence had been caused by magic. Even on magical Toril, the practitioners of the arcane arts could help him little with his curse of undeath.
Vampire of the Mists Page 19