by James Lowder
Soth was satisfied with the man he saw reflected in the silvered glass. Though the Order had stripped him of his rank and official title, they could not take away his nobility. He was still more worthy of respect than all the hypocrites who had condemned him. Isolde knew that. So did his loyal retainers. Given the chance, he would prove his worth to the rest of Solamnia, too.
Self-satisfied, he resumed his march to the keep’s upper floors. The interior stairs wound in a circle, tighter and narrower as they reached up. Soth was not even winded by the climb. In fact, he barely noticed as the number of steps passed one hundred, then two hundred. The knight’s mind was on other matters, more weighty than purely physical discomfort.
As Soth pushed open the trapdoor marking the stairs’ end, a brisk wind tugged at his mustache and ruffled his golden hair. Ignoring the chill that surely signaled the coming of winter, the knight stepped onto the keep’s highest vantage. From a thin walkway bordered by a low and ornate wrought iron railing, he surveyed his domain.
The main structure of Dargaard was a large, circular castle-more a tower, really-hewn from the mountain that eternally protected it on all but one side. The castle narrowed as it climbed high into the air and tapered to a blunted peak. Stairs circled the exterior of the keep, flowing into landings at strategically important heights, all the way to the top. It was there, at the very pinnacle of Dargaard, that Soth now stood.
The knight watched as servants rolled cartloads of weapons onto the four main terraces that jutted from the keep just above the fourth story, crossing the courtyard high above the straw-and-wood cottages of the castle’s craftsmen. From the terraces, Soth’s knights moved the arrows and spears, torches and barrels of pitch across latticework bridges to the hexagonal outer wall. From there the defensive weapons were being transferred to the twin gatehouses standing sentinel to either side of the massive iron portcullis and iron-strapped wooden doors that barred entry to Dargaard. Beyond this single entrance to the keep lay a wide drawbridge that, when extended, spanned the thousand-foot-deep chasm gaping for miles in either direction.
The bridge, however, was being noisily withdrawn. Soth could picture the cavernous room below the gatehouses, where five or six sweat-soaked men grunted and cursed as they turned the giant wheels that reeled the bridge back into the side of the mountain. Greasy black smoke from the men’s torches would be swirling around the low ceiling, staining everything dark. Long shadows, like creatures wrought only of darkness, would be playing upon the walls as the men heaved against the wheels. It was like a small window into the Abyss in his mind, though Soth knew the hells must be far worse than that.
The reason for all these defensive precautions lay on the other side of the chasm, patiently huddled around a dozen campfires: a party of knights, fellows of Lord Soth’s order, were arrayed before Dargaard, ready to take up the siege they had so graciously delayed for the wedding celebration. Ballistae and catapults stood at the ready, threatening to toss their missiles at the keep’s rose-colored stone. Armored knights, their bright cloaks flapping in the wind, stood close to campfires to fight off the cold.
Soth himself had been part of such sieges. He knew the men would be tired, sick of their bland trail rations and the hard ground that served as their bed each night. Yet they wouldn’t lift the siege, though they had too few catapults to batter down the walls and winter was coming on fast. Knights of Solamnia never gave up easily.
The whole situation reminded Soth of an old ram he’d seen in the mountains. It must have been blind with age, for it mistook a chunk of rock for a rival. The ram smashed itself bloody and senseless against the stone. Wolves tore it to shreds that night as it lay dazed.
And here is the head of the ram now, Soth thought scornfully, for he could see the leader of the siege, Sir Ratelif, as he broke from one of the group of knights.
Sir Ratelif walked to the edge of the chasm, then waited for the grinding squeal of the retreating bridge to cease. When all that remained of the noise was the echo from the gaping split in the earth, the armor-clad man held his hands out, palms up. To Soth, the gesture looked like pleading, and his scorn for the knight grew.
“Soth of Dargaard Keep, you have been found guilty of crimes against your family and the honor of the Order. In the name of Paladine, Kiri-Jolith, and Habbakuk, surrender yourself to the lawful army arrayed against you,” Sir Ratelif cried, repeating a ritual declamation used by the Knights of Solamnia for centuries.
Soth raised a defiant fist. “This keep can withstand your siege for months,” he shouted. “And winter is not so far off that you can stay there forever.”
Sir Ratelif ignored the nobleman’s reply and continued with the ritual, repeating phrases he had said once a day to the besieged Lord Soth for the last two weeks. “Your crimes are many, so I will name only the most grievous offenses. Know first that you stand guilty of breaking your marriage vows by dallying with the elfmaid Isolde of Silvanost while still married to Lady Gadria of Kalaman. Know next that you are guilty of lying to the elfmaid, of misrepresenting your intentions, of getting her with a bastard child.” The knight pursed his lips, as if trying to expel some awful taste from his mouth. “Know finally that you stand suspect of plotting and achieving the murder of your lawful wife, Gadria.”
His jaw clenched, his hands held in tight fists, Soth turned away from the army. From below, Ratelif’s voice rang out once more: “You stand atop a tower wrought in the likeness of the red rose, Lord Soth. Never has there been a greater stain upon that blessed symbol of our Order.”
The words bit into the nobleman’s heart. He had chosen the sight for Dargaard Keep because of the abundance of rose quartz in the mountains near at hand, had drawn plans to the keep himself so that its tapering tower would resemble nothing so much as that incomparable flower. That a fellow knight would denigrate his monument to the Order…
Lord Soth gazed up at the two moons visible to him in Krynn’s sky. Solinari, only a sliver in the night, cast its silver-white light over the ground wanly. It was Lunitari’s red glow that colored the world, bathing the night in blood. There was a third moon, Nuitari, but that black orb could be seen only by those corrupted by evil.
By the white moon, symbol of good magic, the Knight of the Rose uttered a vow. “I will make them see, by the light of Solinari, how wrong they are, how foolishly they try to expel me from their ranks. My honor is my life,” Soth whispered, “and I will have my life back once again.”
A sharp snap, like a bowstring breaking, made the remembered image waver in the death knight’s mind. His eyes focused on the drab cave and the bleak landscape beyond. The early morning sun flared through breaks in the swirling clouds. The rain had stopped. Silence shrouded the copses of hardy trees and stolid outcropping of granite, then the noise came again-a quick, sharp cracking sound.
Soth got to his feet, his injured sword arm dangling at his side. The noise came a third time. It’s the traps, the death knight realized. Something has stumbled across the traps. “Wake up, Magda.”
The Vistani came awake instantly and snatched up her silver dagger. Without a word, she followed the death knight out of the cave and into the dawn.
Cautiously they approached the first trap, a simple snare Soth had rigged near the largest copse of firs. A wolf, its throat torn open, its mangy fur matted with its own blood, lay sprawled over the trap. The scenes at the other two snares were the same. The bodies of the wolves that had been following them lay butchered over the deliberately disturbed traps.
The death knight examined the third beast’s wounds; the ragged, gaping tears in its throat had been made, not by a blade, but by another animal’s teeth and claws. Yet no mindless beast could have purposefully set off the traps so.
“Lord Soth,” Magda called, kneeling on the other side of the dead wolf.
She pointed to a muddy patch near the snare. A set of small boot prints trailed through the muddy ground up to the wolf’s corpse. Next came an area of watery muck where a
ny prints had been obliterated. “The footprints lead up to the wolf, but I can’t find any leading away from it,” the woman said, puzzled.
Soth searched the ground, then pointed something out to the Vistani. Another set of prints did indeed lead away from the slaughtered wolf, but ones not made by boots. After leaving the body, the creature had walked away from the area on two legs, but legs that ended in paws with long, curled claws.
TEN
“I never believe anything told to me by bards or historians,” Lord Soth said. “For every sentence of truth they proffer, they demand you accept a dozen lies.” He marched off down the rain-washed road, his boots leaving no prints in the muddy ground.
Magda sighed with exasperation and hurried after the death knight. The boots she’d taken from one of the dead men at the tavern were soaked with water and covered in muck. “The tales told by Vistani storytellers are different,” she said when she reached the knight’s side. “Not every word is true, of course, but often they hold more truth than fiction. There might be some fact that could aid us in defeating the guardian and passing through the portal.”
Without even bothering to look at his companion, the death knight said, “Where I come from, I am the subject of many tales. I have been told, too, that historians often chronicle my life in great detail.” He shook his head. “Never have I revealed my soul to a storyteller or a scribe, and long dead are any who shared of the adventures I lived when the heart still beat within my chest. How, then, can anyone claim to know my story?”
“There are ways for stories to pass from father to son,” Magda noted, her voice full of resolve. “And if you were once a mortal man, you likely shared a tale or two with friends or fellow knights. You-”
The death knight stopped. “Yes, I once shared stories of my knightly adventures with my fellows,” he rumbled. “In fact, my order required knights seeking advancement not only to achieve a feat of great heroism, but to relate that worthy deed before his peers.” Laughing bitterly, he added, “If one story out of ten told by warriors seeking higher rank in the Knights of Solamnia were true, Krynn would have been a paradise beyond compare from their great works.”
Magda was quiet for a time, seemingly cowed by the death knight’s cynicism. At last, though, she gathered her courage and asked, “Was there no truth in the tales you told?”
It was Soth who now fell silent. The exchanges between the death knight and the young woman had been marked by such sparring since early the previous day. The discovery of the wolves’ carcasses had put them both on edge. A full day and a night had dragged past since they had discovered the corpses in the death knight’s snares, and neither he nor Magda had seen any further sign of the foe or benefactor who had slain the beasts.
As Soth and Magda walked on, the late morning sun appeared from behind a thundercloud, covering the landscape with a blanket of bright sunshine. A few mammoth, gray-hued knots still rolled across the sky, threatening to plunge the day into the half-darkness of a storm. In the gnarled trees lining the path, a few small birds took up their songs, though the throaty cawing of crows was a more frequent sound along the trail.
The rutted, muddy road wound deeper and deeper into the foothills of Mount Ghakis. The snowcapped mountain loomed always on the left, and far, far to the right the River Luna sparkled silver and blue on its way through the thick, tangled forest. Few traveled the lonesome byway Magda had chosen for their trek, and Soth was glad for that. Only a single group of Vistani, though no kin of Madame Girani’s, had appeared on the road. At the sight of them, Magda had hurried into the trees more swiftly than Soth. After the caravans had passed, she told the death knight that Strahd’s intention to slaughter those in her tribe would be known by all the gypsies in Barovia by now. She had as much to fear from the Vistani as from any of the vampire lord’s more horrific minions.
A mile, then twice that distance, passed as the morning dragged into afternoon. While he walked, the death knight flexed his hand to exercise his wounded wrist. The bones had knit some, and flesh was beginning to fill in the gash from the dragon’s bite.
“Tell your tale,” Soth noted softly.
“What?” Magda said. “You want me to tell the story now?”
“There might be a kernel of truth in it. That fragment could help us overcome the guardian, if indeed there is such a creature.” The words were spoken as fact, without apology, without conceding that Magda had been correct. “Tell your tale,” Soth repeated.
The young woman cleared her throat, and anyone studying her carefully would have seen that she stood a little straighter, walked with more of a spring in her step. It was not that the death knight had been swayed by something she’d said, though the weight of that victory was not lost on her. It was the ancient Vistani tale itself that lent her pride. “Kulchek was a wanderer,” Magda began, “a subtle thief and great lover who held the reins of his destiny tightly in his own hands.
“He traveled through Barovia in the days before he bested the giant and won the hand of the giant’s daughter, before he passed through the corridor of blades to steal the goldsmith’s wares, even before he killed the nine boyars who tried to enslave him.” The young woman smiled warmly. “He is a great hero of my people, you see, my lord? Madame Girani shared Kulchek’s bloodline. So I do, too.”
“What does this have to do with the portal?” Soth asked irritably.
“It has been a long time since you heard a bard tell a story,” she noted, unoffended by her audience’s impatience. “If you don’t understand Kulchek, you won’t get anything out of his trip through the gate.”
The Vistani took Soth’s silence for an acceptance of that fact, so she started off again on her circuitous tale.
“As I said, Kulchek traveled through Barovia in the days before his famous feats. It was his curse, you see, that he could never sleep in the same spot twice. In lands he favored, he moved his bed each night, until there was nowhere new for him to rest. Then he had to move on. In that fashion, he lived in many lands and wandered through many countries.
“At his side was Sabak, the faithful hound whose feet left burning prints in solid stone when he was on the prowl. In his hand Kulchek carried Gard, the cudgel he had fashioned from the tree at the peak of the highest of all mountains. Because the tree grew so near the gods themselves, its wood could not be cut by any blade but one. That blade, the dagger Novgor, Kulchek secreted in his boot.”
By now Magda had fallen into the pattern of the tale as it had been taught to her by the storytellers who went from tribe to tribe amongst the Vistani. That the tale had been meant to be repeated to travelers on the road quickly became apparent to Soth, for its language possessed a rhythm that mirrored a slow but steady walking pace. Occasionally the woman would add a personal comment or ask a rhetorical question, breaking the rhythm. In his time the death knight had heard enough bardic stories to know this was meant to keep the sound of the tale from becoming repetitious or plodding. Practiced bards knew well that easily bored audiences seldom lavished rewards on storytellers who didn’t hold their interest.
The tale Magda told was simple, though she filled most of the afternoon with its telling. After Kulchek had slept one night in every spot in Barovia, he tried to move on. At first he could find no escape from the duchy; mists surrounded the borders and brought him back to the dark domain whenever he tried to leave. For twenty nights he did not sleep. Neither could he stop to rest, for if he dozed off, terrible winged creatures would come to tear him to bloody shreds. Such were the terms of his curse.
Late on the thirtieth day, when Kulchek was certain he could keep sleep at bay no longer, his faithful Sabak spotted a large, horned rat. The flesh-eating rodent was of a type Kulchek had seen before in his wandering, albeit in a land far from Barovia. The natives of that faraway place claimed the rat lived only there and nowhere else. Since he believed that claim, the wanderer set his dog after the creature. If it lived locally, it would head for its lair; if it had traveled from
its home somehow, it might lead him to whatever gateway had brought it to Barovia.
Exhausted from lack of sleep, Kulchek could not keep pace with the hound, but the burning prints Sabak left in the stone as he chased his quarry were clear enough markers in the growing twilight. From high on the slopes of Mount Ghakis they followed the rat, down to the River Luna. At the place where the river forks, the horned rodent shot down a hole and disappeared. Sabak bayed in frustration as his quarry escaped. The Vistani, Magda took time to note, still claim the mournful sound could be heard at the river’s fork, just at sunset.
Kulchek finally reached the spot where the creature had disappeared into the earth. In his anger, he struck the ground with Gard, his cudgel, shattering stones and knocking huge welts into the soil. Then, from deep inside the ground, voices came to the wanderer’s ears, the voices of one hundred men or more, laughing and shouting in merriment. Realizing the rat’s burrow must lead to the scene of this underground revelry-and perhaps a portal, as well-Kulchek used Gard to clear a huge swath of dirt from the area. There, a dozen feet below the ground, lay a pair of huge iron doors. They were parted slightly, but a massive lock and chain of ancient, rusted metal kept them from opening farther than a rat’s width.
Such obstacles meant little to a thief of Kulchek’s skill. Using the never-dulled, needle-pointed dagger, Novgor, the wanderer opened the lock as quickly as if he’d held the key. The hallway crawling from the gates deep into the earth was dark and damp. Carefully Kulchek crept toward the voices, Sabak at his heels. After treading mile upon mile of corridor, he came to a massive chamber, lit by more torches than he’d seen in his entire life. The light from the flames was almost blinding.