by James Lowder
After a time, the tunnel opened into a broad hallway. Here the rubble of shattered wood and crumbled stone had been swept away. The walls and floor became smooth and level. The simple sconces were now elaborate statuary of hounds and harts and more exotic creatures, all hewn from salt. Carvings covered the entire ceiling-scudding clouds and high-flying hawks intended to lend the illusion of open sky. In torchlight, the effect was overwhelming; a quirk in the composition of the salt dome here made the rock glow blue.
Azrael scarcely glanced around him as he stomped down the hallway toward the arched portal at its far end. He hadn’t yet found the time to renovate the statues and the ceiling. Too much of the place’s original intent lingered; its identity as an island of beauty within the bleakness of Veidrava made the dwarf distinctly uncomfortable.
Not so with the chamber that lay beyond. Azrael felt at home there.
As the dwarf entered the room, braziers sparked to life. The feeble flames they contained were not his doing, but the remnant of some ancient magic that had long outlived its maker. Even the dim light cast by the magical fires was enough to make Azrael’s eyes smart after so long in the lightless tunnel.
The vast, vaulted room had once been a chapel. An observant visitor might still recognize the detritus of its sanctified past. In the room’s center stood a scarred and stained block that once served as an altar. Like everything else in the chapel, it had been carved from salt. Half-melted forms that had once been benches were arrayed everywhere in neat little rows; the rounded masses seemed like supplicants bent before the blighted sacrificial table. Repulsive human forms, the vestiges of statues, lined both walls. The once-beatific heroes of the faith were reduced to grotesqueries that even the most debased human god would banish from its temple.
The wavering light sent shadows slithering up the walls and shooting across the floor. The sinuous shapes appeared to follow Azrael, to trail him across the room in ways no earthly shadow could. They seemed detached somehow from the objects that had formed them.
“I don’t have time for you now,” the dwarf said. The silent chapel offered a response, a susurrus that someone unfamiliar with the cursed place might have mistaken for a cold breeze. Azrael, however, knew this place and its denizens quite well.
“Soon enough you’ll all be free of here,” he announced. “By year’s end, you’ll all have your own forms.”
He exited the chapel through a rough-hewn tunnel opposite from where he’d entered. In his wake, the shadows danced obscenely across the forsaken altar and the deformed statues. Even after the magical fires dimmed and sputtered out, shapes darker than the chapel’s lightless murk moved through the darkness and schemed in voices few sane men had ever heard.
Beyond the chapel, a narrow tunnel wound deeper and deeper into the earth. Something large had burrowed here, with claws that cut through salt and stone like garden soil. The work impressed even Azrael, and he was pleased to make use of the tunnel system and the network of chambers it connected.
The chambers made ideal storage for the seneschal’s hoard. Boxes, chests, bags, even a few small coffins intended for child victims of the plague were lodged in the hollows, each crammed full of gold and silver. It had taken Azrael two decades to pilfer this loot from the peasants and skim it from the mine’s profits. But he did not cast a loving eye over the gold as he strolled along the tunnel; the dwarf had long prided himself on a disinterest in precious metals atypical for his kind. No, he valued the currencies only for what they would buy-and these coins were earmarked for a purchase few could imagine.
Azrael knew the sight of all that money, more than enough for his purposes, should have made him happy. He knew, too, that the Vistani would soon be out of his way-the only one that mattered, anyway. He had made Ambrose squirm, Nabon suffer, and he was on his way to his favorite spot in all of Sithicus, a site that usually filled his heart with glee. All that wasn’t enough to make him forget that Soth had risen from his throne.
“Damn him,” the dwarf muttered. A scowl stole across his features as soon as he realized what he’d said. The grim expression quickly became a smile. “Heh. Too late.”
A weird purple glow at the end of the tunnel let Azrael know that he had reached his final destination. The air grew thick with the smell of brine, more overpowering here than in the rest of the mine. A chill dampness suffused the air. It wrapped itself around the dwarf like wet cerements.
Azrael emerged from the tunnel on the shore of a vast underground lake. High overhead, stalactites glowed with a violet light. The radiance was born of a moss that clung to the rock. The sickly plant seemed to thrive nowhere else in the mine, making it useless as a light source. Azrael had found it brewed down to a serviceable poison, though, one that caused a hysteria in its victims that was quite amusing to watch.
The water was black and still, a dark sheet of glass stretching to the horizon. Azrael cupped a hand and dipped it into the lake. The water looked black even in his palm. It had a strange feel to it, too. The liquid was heavier and more solid than water should be. Still, he did not hesitate as he lowered his face and slurped up the awful stuff.
Each swallow made his teeth ache and his temples throb with pain. The water burned like molten tar as it coursed down his throat. That awful heat had barely filled his gut when he heard the first voices. He sat down before they overwhelmed him.
The fragments were unconnected, a swarm of words that filled Azrael’s mind. Questions without answers, cries of joy, agonized screams, the keening of the banshees at Nedragaard Keep-from all across the domain these sounds came to him. He focused and began to filter out the dull stuff of everyday life. The dwarf didn’t care about the drivel people spouted over the breakfast table or lovers’ inane pillow talk. He wanted to hear fear-
“Quick, Tomas, hide! They’ve got swords!”
Or sorrow-
“I can’t face another day like this.”
Or, better still, words edged with madness-
“Dead, eh? No bother. We’ve still got a use for your corpse, my dear.”
Azrael listened for a time, letting the grief and pain of Sithicus fill his mind. He’d stumbled across this place a decade ago, not long after the Great Rift opened on the surface. The tremors that accompanied that event collapsed the chapel’s back wall and revealed the tunnel that led him here. He assumed that this Lake of Sounds, as he had come to call it, was somehow linked to the rift, that the gaping rent gathered up the cries and whispers and funneled them here.
The cacophony had threatened to overwhelm his mind that first day, but he mastered it. And from that chaos he had forged a clarity of mind that left him immune to the confusion plaguing the domain. He alone could remember his past with crystal clarity-and the pasts of anyone else he cared to remember, too. For when Soth and the rest of the land raised their voices in confession to close the domain’s borders, Azrael could hear and recall later the sins they proclaimed.
Why the lake’s voices were only audible after its fetid water had been sipped didn’t concern him. Azrael only knew that the place was more useful than any network of spies. One gulp and he could listen in on anyone he wished-well, not quite anyone. For some reason the White Rose, the Bloody Cobbler, and the Whispering Beast all remained beyond the reach of this magic.
Like everything else concerning that trio, this was a matter for concern, but one he assumed would be rectified soon enough. The dark resided in the vast, black expanse of the Lake of Sounds, and Azrael always trusted the dark. It was a voice in the dark that had prompted him to taste the waters on the day he discovered this lifeless shore. Just as it had given him Soth, it had given him access to all those voices, all that information.
And the dark used that cacophony now to pass along a message to Azrael, a message he had been expecting. The voice of the dark did not cut through the babble. It rode upon the mundane utterances, touching individual words, juxtaposing phrases that had already been spoken.
“They’re not going
to like this at the mine.”
“Pay attention when I’m talking to you, young man.”
“Why does it always have to be about you, Ginnie?”
“We’re supposed to meet them on the border at noon. You coming?”
“Are they now?” Azrael said. He focused his thoughts, winnowing away all but two familiar voices.
“He’s a beast,” Magda said. “Below your notice.”
He could hear a slight breathlessness in her voice. It wasn’t prompted by a fear of the meeting about to take place, but by the cold. The dwarf smiled. She really is getting old, he thought, when a chill as mild as today’s makes her shiver.
Soth’s response was a low rumble of impatience, but Magda pressed her point anyway. “Azrael should not be trusted, cannot be trusted.”
The dwarf’s smile broadened into a grin at the irony of the situation, and his coarse laughter filled the purple twilight hanging over the Lake of Sounds. In the reverberations the dark was laughing, too, but Azrael was too caught up in his own mirth to hear that laughter’s mocking tone.
Five
The wind whispered around Magda’s deceptively slight frame and tugged at strands of her graving hair. It was no more than a breeze, the chill breath of a dying day, but she shivered nonetheless. The cold reminded her body of old battles, skirmishes long since fought and wounds not quite healed. At home she would have cloaked herself in her favorite shawl, but she’d left the wrap back at her vardo. It wouldn’t do to meet Lord Aderre swaddled like some feeble old grandmother-though Magda had to admit she felt at least twice her fifty-one years tonight.
Soth’s presence did not help matters. He radiated the unrelenting cold of the grave. Magda kept a discreet distance from the death knight, but it helped little.
She glanced at her silent companion. How much worse for him? she wondered. The ache of five hundred years wracks his bones, and no hope of death to free him from it.
The Vistana shook her head. It was a trap to pity the dead man. He’d brought his fate upon himself, was even proud of that fact. That self-destructive urge ran strong in Soth. It colored every decision he made, right down to his choice of Azrael as seneschal to his domain.
“He’s a beast,” Magda said without preamble. “Below your notice.”
Soth’s only reply was a low rumble of impatience.
That was not enough to make the Vistana let the matter drop. Pulling a few errant lengths of hair away from her mouth, she continued.
“Azrael should not be trusted, cannot be trusted.” A measure of aggravation crept into her voice. “You must know, after all these years, just what manner of beast he is. Yet you continue to keep him by your side.”
Magda had tried to break their vigil’s silence many times in the past hour. She was cold and weary, and the quiet only let her focus on those discomforts. She was also unnerved by the situation. Any Vistana would have been.
Magda and Soth stood at the center of a stone bridge that spanned an offshoot of the Musarde, the feeble little waterway known as the Widow’s Tears. At the far end of that bridge lay Malocchio Aderre’s domain, a land that was death to all Vistani. Despite her powers, despite her years of battling the terrifying creatures that roamed the Sithican night, Magda would not have come here had Soth not requested her presence.
Requested? Magda frowned. It was no request that brought her to the perilous place, but a demand. She could have refused, of course, could have made the master of Nedragaard pay dearly for the impertinence. But Soth had been correct in noting a show of solidarity was important now. It might keep Malocchio at bay, at least for a little while.
Restless, Magda paced a little on the rough-hewn stones that comprised the bridge between the two lands. She paused to see what it was that had captured her hound’s attention. Sabak snuffled intently at a dark blotch. Bloodstains. They were too fresh to have been washed away by storms or licked clean by scavengers.
Magda did not know of the battle that had occurred on that spot, how a gallant animal had tried to carry its master across the bridge to safety, but the bloodstains told that tale to Sabak, and more. The hound lapped at the gore, sniffed furiously at the tiny bits of horseflesh that remained on the bridge. In that admixture of fear and blood and sweat, he recognized the scent of the one animal his hound’s heart was able to hate: Azrael.
A low, deadly growl issued from Sabak’s throat, echoed off the bridge and across the valley. The angry rumble seemed to be endless. Not even the dense forest could contain it.
Her nerves on edge already, Magda had no patience for whatever nonsense Sabak was up to. She made the shortest of whistles. The dog’s ears pricked up instantly. After only a moment’s hesitation, which was a moment longer than he normally took to answer her summons, the giant hound padded silently to stand at Magda’s right side.
She rested her hand at his shoulders and unconsciously traced patterns in his coarse, gray-white fur with her fingertips. This motion soothed both woman and beast.
Lord Soth’s dead voice broke that momentary respite. “I might ask the same question of you, Magda Ilyanova Kulchevich.”
At Magda’s puzzled expression, he continued: “You asked why I allow a beast such as Azrael to serve me. Yet you keep a creature as fierce and unpredictable by your side.” He pointed to Sabak, who regarded the death knight without the slightest hint of fear. “Your own child wishes the hound dead. Is there any other member of your troupe who does not walk in fear of the creature?”
“No.”
“Surely your daughter has warned you that the hound might turn its teeth on you.”
“She has.”
“Yet you keep the beast with you, and demand your people accept him-despite their fear.”
Magda nodded, but she had lost the thread of the discussion. Her attention was focused instead on Soth himself. The topic seemed to have fanned some spark in him. His words held a passion she had last heard in him years ago, on their trek through Strahd’s domain.
“Azrael is the same to me,” Soth continued. “He is my beast, and useful-despite his need of housebreaking.”
Sabak snorted at a fly buzzing around his snout. For all the world, it sounded like a huff of laughter.
Finally, the death knight leaned close to Magda and said, “We both know too well that we would slay our beasts in a moment, should they turn against us.”
Soth seemed willing to continue the conversation, but a distant thunder shook the forest to the north. Birds burst up from the tree line and raced across the red-gold sky. Through her boot heels, Magda felt the rolling tread of a group of large creatures. She glanced at her companions. Both Soth and Sabak remained utterly still, as if they’d been carved from the bridge’s stone. Magda was not so calm; her pulse quickened and a flush suffused her cheeks.
Malocchio Aderre had arrived.
Thirteen ogres served as the procession’s vanguard. The lumbering brutes marched along the verge of the narrow road, stomping the undergrowth and shoving aside trees. Like most of their kind, these were large, hulking giants, with little intelligence lighting their purple eyes. Some stood partially erect, but most crouched in an apelike fashion. Their orders must have been to clear away any flora that impeded their movements, so their posture saved them some work.
Magda studied the ogres as twelve of the thirteen arrayed themselves into a semicircle to either side of the road, sealing off the Invidian end of the bridge. At first glance, they weren’t particularly impressive, even for ogres. A few wore rusted, poorly fitting chain mail, while most sported ratty furs or other lice-ridden bits of clothing. A closer look at their weapons told another story, though. Their clubs were notched from countless battles and darkly stained with the blood of fallen adversaries. The thirteenth ogre, Onkar by name, stood out from his kin. He was neither dirtier nor coarser than the others, of average height and build. What set Onkar apart was an unusual feature, or rather, a lack of one. When this ogre approached the bridge, he squatted down in pr
ofile fashion and balanced on the balls of his feet. Because of this angle, Magda could see he was quite clearly missing his nose.
Before the Vistana could wonder what became of the ogre’s snout, and what price his foe had paid for taking it, the semicircle opened at its center to admit a single rider: Malocchio Aderre.
He rode a black stallion large enough to carry one of his monstrous soldiers with ease. A cloak the color of midnight flowed out behind him like the wings of some immense predatory bird. His breeches, boots, shirt, gloves, everything he wore was of the same ebon hue. Only his face, as white and smooth as bleached bone, presented a contrast. That was all that there was to him: black and white. He was all extremes and nothing else. He brought his mount to a stop with a casual tug of the reins. Behind him, a score of armed riders and another dozen ogres clattered to a stop. Malocchio kept his gaze locked upon Lord Soth as this rearguard arrayed itself along the banks of the river. A slight frown creased his pallid mask of a face when the death knight offered no reaction to this obviously superior force.
In one easy motion, Malocchio swooped down from his mount, cape aflutter, black spurs jangling. Just as he alighted, a pair of neatly attired soldiers approached. They were identical twins, half-elves, Magda guessed. Such crossbreeds were common enough in Sithicus but not so in Malocchio’s domain. Malocchio has trotted them out for some reason, Magda mused. But what?
Lord Aderre strode purposefully to the bridge’s terminus, the very brink of Invidia’s southern border. Even had he wished it, he could have gone no farther. Within their domains the dark lords ruled supreme, but those same domains were prisons, too.
The half-breeds took up positions flanking Malocchio, but a few respectful paces behind him. They kept their gazes turned down, their slender-fingered hands clasped before them like monks at prayer. The rest of Aderre’s forces moved restlessly among the horses and trees, clearly ill at ease. The ogres and human soldiers didn’t really appreciate the restraint required for this sort of politicking. Their style of negotiations involved clubs and burning brands.