“Katrina, my dear,” Strahd exclaimed, turning away from Leisl, “surely you don’t think that pitiful creature could ever take your place in my affections! She is a diverting amusement and a means of revenge, that is all. If it troubles you so much, then I shall just kill her.”
“Do it,” the werewolf demanded, tears of bitter jealousy filling her human eyes and trickling down her furry cheeks. She let her arm droop a little bit, relaxed her grip on the Holy Symbol ever so slightly.
“No!” Sasha cried.
Now, Jander thought.
Without warning, a sleek, golden-brown wolf leaped from the pack and seized the medallion between its teeth. Faster than he had ever changed before, the vampire transformed from wolf to mist to elven form, clutching the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. It burned, as it had before, with angry, mocking pain. The stench of charred flesh wafted up from the seared hand. Jander ignored it.
Many things happened at once.
Katrina, flooded with anger, surrendered to the change and shivered into her lupine form. As a massive gray and brown wolf, she leaped straight for Leisl. She hit the thief hard, knocking her off her feet. The Little Fox managed to reach the dagger that Jander had given her. Her left hand up to protect her throat, she stabbed at the wolf with the silver Ba’al Verzi blade. It bit deeply into Katrina’s shoulder.
The werewolf howled her pain and twisted, snapping. Her teeth sank into Leisl’s arm. The thief’s dagger clattered to the floor as she cried out once, harshly. The Little Fox had never before felt such pain. The wolf-woman she wrestled with seemed to be everywhere at once. Claws raked her face. Fur stifled her breathing. Sharp teeth again found sensitive flesh, bit, severed.
The Little Fox was going to die, and she knew it.
She refused to give in, pitting every ounce of her rapidly dwindling strength against the fearsome creature. It was not for her own life that she fought, using her teeth and nails like an animal’s, it was for Sasha’s.
Hind claws ripped brutally across her belly, and Leisl wailed as she felt the blood gush forth. Hot breath, foul with carrion, came near her throat. Her sight dimmed.
Sasha dealt with the other wolves swiftly and efficiently. He leaped for the oil lamp and with a prayer dashed it at the animals. The puddle of oil exploded with a whumph as the smoldering wick sparked to life. Light flared about him, sending the darkness scuttling for the corners like guilty rats. Two of the wolves were caught in the flames and howled as they fled. Two more were singed and also turned tail. The two remaining leaped at Sasha. The priest defended himself with the hammer he had used to slay the vampires. He killed one of the beasts with a lucky blow to the head that crushed its skull. The final wolf decided it had had enough, and Sasha was left unguarded.
Like an avenging angel the young priest sprang to Leisl’s rescue, righteous anger contorting his handsome, delicate features. Her vision fading, Leisl heard him shout something and saw him bring some glittering object down on Katya’s haunches.
The werewolf howled, a long, shrill sound that seemed to take forever to die. When it had at last faded, the creature had fled, her left haunch smoking, branded by the pure silver of one of Sasha’s holy symbols. Leisl stayed conscious long enough to see the priest’s dear face filled with concern, then her head fell back across his arm.
Jander, meanwhile, had at long last confronted his enemy. Despite the pain, he was filled with a hot, brutal pleasure. The elf lifted the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, ready to shove it into Strahd’s face.
“You fool! You can’t use that against me!”
“Can’t I? I followed Lathander, Strahd, Lathander Morninglord! And this—” he gestured with the medallion “—is a piece of the sun.”
Something like fear flickered across Strahd’s sharp features. The scowl of fury softened, became placating. “What are you trying to do, my friend?” the vampire cajoled, his voice sweet as honey. “Such an action would destroy you as well, surely. Look at your hand!”
The voice lulled and soothed, but Jander did not yield. White-hot hatred filled his breast and buoyed him. “You don’t know the whole story.” he spat. “Before we die, let me tell you about Anna.”
“Yes, yes, I remember—that poor, insane girl whose tormenter you came here to—” Strahd broke off. “Do you believe that I was the one who hurt her?”
“I know it was you. Her name wasn’t Anna. After you destroyed her mind, that was all she was capable of uttering. Only a fragment of her true name, just as she was only a fragment of her true self—Tatyana.”
Emotion flooded the count’s pale face. “No,” he whispered in pain. “You lie, elf. She fell through the mists …”
“Oh, she, fell through the mists all right,” Jander continued as he slowly began to advance on the other vampire. The pain in his hand increased, became harder to ignore. “At least, part of her did. But not all. Some part of her wanted so much to be free that she made it happen. Part of her somehow ended up in my world, her mind gone from the horrors she’d witnessed. The horrors you had inflicted upon her!”
“No! I loved her! I only wanted to—”
“You destroyed her, you bastard. By the time I found her, she was just a shell. Even so, enough of her soul shone through that I loved her.” Treacherous tears began to fill his eyes, threatening to blur his vision. Angrily he blinked them away. “I wouldn’t have cared if she had loved Sergei. He made her happy, he made her whole. You had her complete, and you destroyed her. Damn you for that!” His voice rose, filled the room as he gave vent to his hatred.
“Jander … You would die for this?” Strahd was thoroughly shocked.
The elf let his actions be his answer. The elf formed a silent prayer to Lathander, god of the morning, foe of vampires. Just this one thing, he thought. Send me to whatever pit awaits me, but allow me this one last, good act.
Jander’s hand was nothing but blackened bones, yet he managed to retain his grip on the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind as he lifted it and directed it at Strahd.
The elven vampire felt the power rise, using him as a vessel. It shuddered up his body, nearly bursting his heart, and shot through his arms to coalesce in the platinum medallion. A burst of light streamed from the crystal, the pain of the explosion wringing a cry from Jander’s gut. The beam of brilliant golden light hit Strahd full in the chest.
The vampire screamed in utter agony. He arched backward, his face contorted with horrible pain, his body taut. Jander watched him, filled with hot, savage joy. Never before had he taken pleasure in another’s suffering, but at that moment, brutal satisfaction made the agony in his hand insignificant.
Strahd’s elegant clothes began to smoke and then burst into flames where the sacred sunlight struck. The glow burned its way deeper, began to blister and blacken the white flesh. The count staggered with the pain, moaning. He lost his balance and toppled behind one of the pews.
The movement broke the stream of light for just an instant. Jander moved quickly, refocusing the holy symbol’s brilliance. The instant, however, was all the other vampire needed. Before the light fell on him a second time, the count had finished uttering a spell, and to Jander’s horror he fixed the elven vampire with a vicious grin of triumph laced with pain.
Strahd disappeared.
“No!” Jander wailed. So close. He had been so close. His legs refused to support him, and he collapsed to the floor.
JANDER OPENED HIS EYES WEAKLY. HE WAS STILL LYING in the chapel, completely drained of energy. The vampire tried to move and succeeded only in twitching his hand slightly. He grunted softly with the effort.
Instantly someone was beside him. “Welcome back,” Sasha said softly. “I thought we’d lost you there for a while.”
The elf did not reply. He had offered everything to Lathander in order to be permitted to wield the Holy Symbol, and Lathander had accepted. Jander knew he was dying.
It was a bitter, unfulfilled death. He was angry; he had been cheated. If you are to get your justice, it will
be through the sun. False Seer! He cursed. He had gambled everything, and Strahd was still out there, injured, but not completely destroyed.
He lay face down on the stone floor of the chapel. The room was not quite dark. Dawn was on its way, but not yet here. Jander felt his strength dripping into the dark heart of Ravenloft’s stones.
“What …” He did not have the strength to complete the sentence, but Sasha could see in his eyes what he wished to know.
“Strahd is gone. I think he was able to cast a spell at the last minute. Leisl, well, she was hurt badly, but I’ve been able to heal most of her serious injuries. You’ve been unconscious nearly all night. I drew a protective circle around the three of us, and I’ve been keeping watch.” He smiled a little. “Thank goodness for Leisl’s food. I’ve been eating all night and I feel much better.”
“… here all night?”
“Yes. I don’t know what’s out there, and I was afraid to try to leave until Leisl was able to walk a bit. We’d be too vulnerable.”
Jander tried to collect his scattered thoughts. A bit of strength was coming back to him, enough so that he could talk.
“I think you’re safe enough during the day. Strahd’s been hurt, even if he’s not dead.” The elf tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice and failed. “Leisl … She’s been bitten. When you’re ready to leave, go to Strahd’s study. Take whatever interests you, but there is one book in particular which you must consult. It will tell you how Leisl can be cured.”
“Cured? Jander, she’s going to be fine.”
“No, she’s not. She’s been bitten by a werewolf, and she’ll turn at the next full moon.”
Sasha went cold. The dreaded disease was highly contagious, the Little Fox was infected. Suddenly Sasha found it difficult to breathe. What would he have done if Leisl, dear, brave, stubborn Leisl, had died? His feelings for the girl surprised him—and warmed him.
“I’m going for the book,” he said, getting quickly to his feet.
Jander gasped softly, and his good hand groped for the priest. “Sasha, don’t go. Not yet. I may not last that long.”
Kneeling beside his fallen comrade again, the priest said, “No, Jander, you’re going to be fine too. If you made it through last night, I think that’s a good sign. We’ll … uh … get you some nourishment.” He broke off, uncomfortable but desperately wanting to help. He looked around and noticed that Jander was lying directly beneath a hole in one of the stained glass windows. It had been broken the previous night when one of the wolves leaped through. The day was well on its way, and the sky was pale gray.
The priest hooked his hands beneath Jander’s arms and made as if to drag the elf to safety. The vampire cried out once, sharply.
“Jander, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I was just trying to get you out of the path of sunlight.”
Jander shook his head. His thoughts were churning, and some kind of peace was coming from them. “Wait.”
Had he really failed Anna? Weak, freed from the driving need for revenge, the elf carefully pondered his “dreams.” They had been both hurtful and joyous, but suddenly he sensed a wrongness about them.
He considered everything he knew about Tatyana’s nature. She had given her jewels to a poor man. She had fallen in love, not with a dashing war hero, but a gentle priest. Even in Waterdeep, less than a fraction of a person, she had given her food to the other inmates and denied herself nourishment. Would that sort of luminous soul urge Jander on to revenge? Punish him when he hesitated with nightmares?
No. The elf realized with a sudden clarity that had Anna’s soul truly visited him in his dreams, she would have urged him to forgive Strahd for his sins. After all, she had already forgiven Jander for taking her life. Anna would be the first to offer gentleness for ill usage. That lay at the heart of her soul’s beauty.
Then where had the dreams come from? They had been too real to have sprung from his own imagination. The elf felt his grip on consciousness fading, and willed it back. He smiled to himself.
He had, finally, grasped the horrible, evil, carefully crafted beauty of it all, the beauty of the spider’s web. The land itself, or the dark powers responsible for its heinous creation, was trying to trap him. It had been trying to trap him ever since that terrible, oft-regretted killing spree back in the asylum in Waterdeep. Barovia had been giving him strength, adding fuel to his fire for revenge whenever it seemed at its lowest ebb. It had renewed the pain and longing for the light in his soul. It had fed him foul sustenance, and his hatred had thrived.
The land would never let Jander destroy Strahd. It had brought him here as a playmate for its favorite child of darkness, nothing more. Strahd had learned a great deal from Jander over the years, and the land had fed happily on the elven vampire’s despair. It was the perfect solution. He had been manipulated all along, allowed a tiny victory here, a false contentment there.
The dark powers did not want Jander destroyed. Rather they would keep him alive, lusting for revenge, eternally wallowing in the pain of his loss. They would drag Sasha down too, either by destroying him or perverting him with too great a love for hunting the undead. As for poor, tortured Tatyana, nothing Jander could ever do would win her soul’s rest. She would return, century after century, for the land’s amusement.
No, the dark powers wanted both master vampires alive. The elf already felt the new strength seeping through his body, and a deep part of him yearned for sanctuary from the merciless rays of the sun. Sasha’s concern played right into the demonic hands of the place. Jander understood now, though, and he would snatch some semblance of victory from the desolation that loomed about him. Through the sun and through children, Maruschka had prophesied. She had not been a false Seer after all.
“No,” he said with a firm gentleness to the child conceived the night he had entered Barovia. “Let me see the light.”
“You can’t! You’ll die—”
“Sasha, listen to your words!” Jander laughed tenderly as he looked up into Sasha’s anxious face. “I’m already dead. I will never be able to destroy Strahd. We would be cursed to be enemies throughout the centuries, and I would become twisted and bitter, always striving for a victory that cannot be mine.”
“You’re just going to give up?”
Jander shook his head. “No. I choose death of my own free will.” He glanced to the dawn. “Quickly. Listen to me. When I am gone, carry on our quest. For the sake of your soul and all those you love, do it for the right reasons. Destroy Strahd if you can. You will be giving him peace and you will be saving countless others from his terrible fate. Don’t destroy him because of a vendetta.”
“But—”
“Beware of the land itself. It will seek to corrupt you through your very virtues. Be sure of yourself, my friend. Now,” he said, “when this is done and the day has come, go down to the dungeons and free those poor souls. Then you and Leisl must go into hiding.”
Sasha shook his head. “There are people in the village who depend on the Morninglord.”
“He will still be there, as much as he ever has been. They will find their own paths to his light. You and Leisl represent a threat to Strahd. He’ll try to destroy you both as soon as he is well. I don’t know when that will be, but he will be healed eventually, and he will come after you. That much is a certainty.” He closed his eyes.
For a moment they stayed there together, Jander’s head pillowed in Sasha’s lap. Without wanting to, the priest found himself gently stroking the golden hair. It wasn’t fair, he thought to himself. Jander hadn’t asked for that. In his heart, the elf was as much a creature of the light, perhaps even more so, than Sasha or Leisl. He didn’t deserve to die this way, burned to a cinder by the rays of the sun.
“No!” The refusal exploded from Sasha’s lips with a vehemence that was unexpected even to him. “You are not going to die! Jander, don’t do this.” He wondered why it was so hard to see and why there was a warm wetness sliding down his face. Wonder
ingly, Jander reached up and touched the salty tears, rubbing them between his thumb and index finger.
“Do you know how long it has been since anyone wept for me?” he said softly, filled with emotion himself. Cruel and violent though that place was, it had given Jander much. That was the way to die. Not with a stake through the heart, or by drowning in the darkness, or by the fire that mockingly echoed the hell to come. To sit in the sun once again, to feel its rays, warm and loving, in the instant before the pain began—that was a good death. He recalled Lyria’s words: “It is better to die at the hand of a friend.” At last he understood. There could be no better friends than the brave, impulsive half-gypsy boy and the glorious sun itself.
“Don’t mourn my passing. It is something for which I have hungered for centuries. But stay here, with me, while I … Will you stay, Sasha?”
The priest’s voice was thick. “I’m not going to leave you.”
Jander smiled and relaxed. “Help me sit up,” he asked. Sasha did so. With weak fingers, the elf fumbled at his belt, removing the flute. With a great effort, he raised it to his lips, inhaled, and began to pipe in the morning.
He no longer cared what the sunlight might or might not do to him. He only knew that whatever it brought had to be better than the miserable existence he had endured for over five centuries. There would at last be an end to the darkness, to the undeath that fed upon life. Whatever he might be, be it ashes, or charred flesh, or something altogether unexpected and perhaps quite wonderful, he would no longer be a thing of the dark.
His music flowed like water as the sky lightened. The elf had seen through the land’s dark deceptions. He, a thing supposedly of evil, had wielded the Holy Symbol against a fellow vampire. Perhaps the Morninglord had found a way to spread his beauty into this nightmare land. Perhaps the dawn would give Jander new, true life instead of peacefully ending his undeath.
His song as bright as the morning itself, Jander gazed at the lightening horizon with eager eyes and waited for the wonder.
Vampire of the Mists Page 34