Knight of the Black Rose

by James Lowder

  The blow also knocked the sword from Soth’s grasp. The ancient weapon bounced pommel-first off the floor, then slid with a high-pitched whine of metal on stone out of the knight’s reach. Soth paid little attention to the lost weapon as he balled his free hand into a fist and battered the dragon’s snout.

  The gargoyle lay on top of Magda, pinning her legs and one arm. With her free hand the Vistani pummeled the stone-skinned creature’s face. It was soon clear, however, that she could do the thing little harm with her fist, so she frantically groped the floor nearby for something to use as a weapon. When her hand closed on the sword’s grip, made icy from Soth’s grasp, she did not hesitate.

  Magda was no stranger to such weapons. The villagers in Barovia and the duchies surrounding it had no love for the gypsies, though they greedily bought the foreign goods they sold. Some even frequented the Vistani fortune-tellers, a practice that cost dearly. Still, a gypsy caught away from her people was an easy target for the superstitious peasants, so at an early age all Vistani learned how to handle a blade.

  Gripping the weapon tightly, Magda lashed out and landed the pommel against the gargoyle’s temple. The creature howled, clutching its head as it fell sideways. That gave Magda the time she needed to scramble to her feet.

  The gargoyle eyed the woman and the weapon slyly. “Blade can’t hurt me, ’less it’s enchanted. Give up now ’fore you make me really mad.”

  Tentatively, the gargoyle extended a hand. Magda hesitated. Creatures born of sorcery were often immune to weapons of steel or iron. If the gargoyle were such a beast, it was true—there was little she could hope to do without an enchanted blade.

  The gargoyle sidled closer, its arm still extended. “Give it t’me.”

  Magda struck with all the strength desperation could grant. The bloodstained blade glowed blue, and the weapon cut deeply into the gargoyle’s shoulder. One wing hanging limp upon its back, the ebony-skinned monster tried to lope away, but Magda swung again. One of the gargoyle’s hands fell to the floor. Its taloned fingers contracted twice, then lay still.

  Gray pus dripped from the gargoyle’s wounds as it hopped up the stairs, yelping in pain. Magda let the sword slip from her fingers as the creature disappeared. At last her heart slowed its pounding, and the throbbing in her ears died away. She turned and faced a sight more awe-inspiring than any she had ever seen in the netherworld.

  Lord Soth stood, his right arm held high. The dragon still had its jaws locked onto the death knight’s wrist. Its tail coiled around Soth’s legs, and noisily its clawed feet scraped against his breastplate. The wound on Soth’s wrist brought no blood, but pain burned up his arm like red-hot splinters. Though he knew spells that might harm the creature, the death knight could not use them; magic required concentration and free movement, both of which had been denied him. Soth bore the pain silently and continued to hammer at the dragon with his fist.

  The sight of the two evil titans locked in battle was the stuff of legends, the sort of thing that could form the basis for an epic tale one day. But if I don’t escape the castle, the Vistani told herself, there will be no one to tell the story.

  Magda kept glancing at the battle as she hurried to the pillar-lined dining room. Andari was nowhere to be seen, and no music echoed from the front of the dining hall. The small sack she had filled at her wagon before setting out with the death knight lay hidden beneath a corner of the table. She retrieved her silver dirk from the sack and used it to rip a few inches off her dress’s hem and cut away any frills.

  She left the room just as Soth and the dragon toppled to the floor. The crimson wyrm’s tail entangled the death knight’s legs, and Soth had to use his free hand in an attempt to force apart the creature’s jaws. The entire right side of the dragon’s head was a bruised and bloody pulp; its eye had swollen shut, and many of its scales had been battered away. Still the creature clamped its teeth down upon the knight’s wrist.

  The attack was beginning to show upon Soth. The death knight’s right hand had curled painfully into a fist, much the same way the hand of a paralytic froze into a clawlike pose. The dragon’s teeth had shredded much of the armor on his wrist, exposing skin that was translucent and charred.

  With a grunt of pain, the death knight wedged his left hand into the dragon’s mouth. He pulled back its lips, stained a dark red from its own blood, and shattered three of the creature’s teeth. The needle-sharp teeth remained lodged in the death knight’s arm. Slowly Lord Soth pulled the dragon’s mouth open. A cracking of bone sounded in the room.

  Suddenly the dragon released its grip and rolled back from Lord Soth. Both the dragon and the death knight were slow getting to their feet, but neither appeared ready to acknowledge defeat. “The master will not be pleased I had to destroy you, death knight,” the crimson guardian growled, its missing teeth adding even more hiss to its already sibilant voice.

  Arching its back, the wyrm inhaled deeply. There was a shrill hiss, like rushing air, then the dragon breathed forth a jet of smoke and fire. Magda dove back into the dining hall, but Soth let the liquid fire wash over him. The death knight’s long purple cloak burst into flames, and soon he appeared as little more than a pillar of smoke and fire.

  A deep, rumbling laughter filled the room. “Magical fire wrought by the gods themselves took my life three and a half centuries ago,” Soth said. The cloak fell from the death knight’s shoulders in flaming rags as he stepped forward. “Your spittle is nothing to me, little wyrm.”

  A preternatural calm came over Soth, and he cleared his mind for an instant. A single word, terrible in its intensity, flashed into existence in his brain. Those on Krynn who studied the darker paths of sorcery knew and feared such magical words of power, for they could be used to blind or stun or kill most living things. Not even dragons were immune to the fearsome effects of these ancient sorceries.

  Soth pointed with his uninjured hand and spoke the most deadly of these words. The dragon recoiled at the sound, then opened its mouth to breathe fire again. Before the wyrm could exhale, a crackling ball of black energy formed around it. The sparking bands contracted, and searching tendrils wove their way into the dragon’s eyes and ears and mouth. The wyrm shuddered once, then again, and black light began to stream from cracks in its crimson scales. The death knight, his armor still glowing red from the dragonfire, stood over the dying creature as agonizing spasms racked its body. At last the dragon lay still, its eyes bulging from their sockets and smoke seeping from its nose.

  “Come out, Magda.”

  The Vistani emerged from the dining hall, her dagger in her hand. Soth kept his back to her as he examined his wounded arm; his flesh had been shredded by the attack, his bones scarred. The pain still pulsing along his arm oddly fascinated the death knight, for it was rare that an adversary caused him any harm. “I am leaving Castle Ravenloft.”

  After retrieving his sword, Soth scanned the room for a shadow, one large enough that he and Magda could use to escape the keep.

  Gibbering and howling began to sound from the stairway the Vistani had descended earlier. The woman looked from the staircase to the door. “Let me leave on my own,” she pleaded. “I’ll not tell the count what you did.”

  Soth smiled beneath his helmet as he turned to her. “I want Strahd to know what I did. Besides, you owe me an explanation of the count’s plans…”

  The noise from the upper floor grew louder, and a hunchbacked form emerged from the darkness at the top of the stair. It was a gargoyle, similar to the one Magda had fought earlier, though this one had four arms and a double set of horns atop its slate-gray head. “Here they are!” the creature shouted. A half-dozen other gargoyles appeared on the stairs.

  Lord Soth stepped toward the shadowy corner and extended his hand. “Well, Magda?”

  The Vistani rushed to the death knight. She closed her eyes as she held out her left hand, for she knew Soth’s icy grip would be painful.

  “A wise choice,” Soth murmured, gently closing
his mailed fingers over her trembling hand. Together they disappeared into the darkness.

  Shouting threats and curses, the gargoyles raked their talons through the air where the knight and the gypsy had stood but a moment before. “The master will not be pleased,” the four-armed creature wailed. “He will surely destroy us all.”

  A small gargoyle the color of old rust cowered at the leader’s feet. “Perhaps we can run away,” it suggested meekly.

  The four-armed creature shook its head and slumped to a sitting position. “There is nowhere in Barovia to hide. Strahd is master of this land, and he would find us before the sun rose tomorrow.”

  Sadly nodding their agreement, the other gargoyles crouched statuelike in the main hall, waiting for the sun to set and their master to rise from his coffin. Their punishment would be terrible but quick.

  Strahd Von Zarovich would offer the death knight and the Vistani no such mercy when he found them.

  NINE

  The cracked, weather-beaten sign above the tavern read Blood on the Vine, and it creaked as the wind pushed through the square. The building holding up the sign, a tavern, had seen better days. Sun-bleached wooden shutters framed smudged windows, and whitewash clung to the walls in a few places. The tavern’s closed door seemed to warn that only regulars were welcome.

  Not that many people passed by the shabby place. Though it was almost noon, the village square remained subdued. A few tradesmen delivered their wares, and the scarecrow of a man who held the job of tax collector for the burgomaster shuffled from shop to shop.

  “Looks like a storm. With luck, the bastard’ll be hit by lightning,” one of the patrons of the Blood on the Vine noted sourly, eyeing the tax man through a small clean spot in the window. The words sounded like thunder in the low-roofed room, for the only other noise came from the gently crackling fire in the hearth.

  Taking a swallow of watery wine, he looked to his fellows for support. “I said, with luck he’ll be blasted by lightning.”

  The two other men in the tavern weren’t up to the task. Arik, the barkeep, murmured something incomprehensible in a dull voice and went back to cleaning glasses that would not be used for days. Thin as he was, he might have been a brother to the scarecrow tax man, but he was as well liked as the burgomaster’s man was despised and resented. Most older villagers, both men and women, had been served by Arik or his father—who had also been named Arik. The family that owned the Blood on the Vine thought it best to keep the name of the barkeep the same, and the townsfolk found it convenient.

  The other man ignored the invitation to rail against the tax collector altogether and stared intently at the pattern of rings and chips worn into the tabletop before him. His blue eyes betrayed the nagging dread that welled inside him, and his pale face held a haunted expression. Unlike the other two in the tavern, he was clean-shaven and his blond hair was neatly trimmed. The straight bangs over his wrinkled brow emphasized the plumpness of his features, making him look younger than his fifty winters.

  “Hey, Terlarm,” the man at the window called. “Are you too busy praying to answer me?”

  “Leave him be, Donovich,” Arik said from his place behind the bar, in front of the shelf full of glasses. “If you’d witnessed a beast of the night slaughter your friends, you’d not be so boisterous either.”

  Donovich downed the last of his wine, wiped a dirty hand across his drooping mustache, and swaggered to the open cask set at one end of the taproom. “True enough, I suppose, but it was my brother the damned Vistani murdered the other night, wasn’t it?” To emphasize the point, he slapped the black arm band he wore, a symbol of grief that told all Barovians the bearer had recently lost family. “You don’t see me moping around.”

  Raising his blue eyes at last, Terlarm noted, “Grief is not so easily forgotten where I come from.”

  “You’ve been in Barovia long enough to have learned our ways,” Donovich snapped. Like most villagers, he had little tolerance and less patience for outsiders. He refilled his cup and took a place at the table in front of the fireplace.

  Terlarm swallowed a caustic reply, then tugged at the sleeve of his tattered red robe. The boyar’s words were true enough; he’d been in Barovia for almost thirty years now. Long ago, he and four others had become lost in a bank of fog, only to emerge from the mists in the village of Barovia. Melancholy washed over the cleric as he remembered his home and the four others who had become trapped in the godsforsaken netherworld with him. “I’ll return to Palanthas some day,” he murmured, half to himself. “It’s the most beautiful city in Ansalon. Its walls have never been breached, its white towers have never—”

  The door swung open suddenly, interrupting Terlarm’s morose reverie and eliciting a curse from Arik at the dust spewed into the room by the wind. When they saw the young woman framed by the doorway, they stared, slack-jawed and amazed. The Vistani’s dark curls danced in the wind, and the frayed hem of her blood-red dress swirled up, revealing scratched but shapely legs. She stepped inside, looking over her shoulder as if worried about some unseen pursuer, then closed the door.

  Arik picked up a broom, which looked almost as spindly as his arms, and started to sweep up the dirt. “Your kind’s not wanted here.”

  Magda swallowed hard. She knew it was dangerous for a Vistani to travel alone anywhere near the village; Barovians blamed much of their misfortune on the wandering tribes. “I wish no trouble, friend,” she said, pouring on the charm with practiced ease. “I’m looking for a villager, a priest named Terlarm. Perhaps you gentlemen know where I might find him.”

  Donovich stood, knocking over a bench. The clatter startled Magda, but she maintained her pleasant facade as best she could. The burly man took a step toward the Vistani. “Do you know Boyar Grest from this village?” he asked, his voice even and deceptively calm.

  Her scuffle with the obnoxious landowner who had tried to buy her virtue already seemed like ancient history. She studied the heavyset man who now stood before her. His mustache and shaggy, dark hair marked him as a local, but his beady eyes and the set of his jaw warned Magda that he might be a relative of Grest’s. And the black arm band the man wore told of a recent loss.

  “Many know him,” she replied cautiously. “He is a great man and a friend to my people. But, please, I am—”

  Sneering, Donovich pounded a table with his fist. “Your people killed him.” He fished into the pocket of his rough woolen pants and recovered a silver charm on a long leather cord. The teardrop pendant winked in the firelight. “When they found him, dazed and dying by the side of the road, he kept muttering about the Vistani’s promise. He said the pendant should have made him invisible to creatures of darkness.”

  The red-robed priest stepped between Magda and Donovich. “Go outside,” he said to the woman. “I’m Terlarm. I’ll talk to you outside.”

  A glimmer of recognition dawned on Magda. The fat cleric was the same man who they had seen at the hanging near the ruined church, and who they had encountered in the forest after the dwarf had broken free of his bonds. But before the Vistani could respond, the rugged boyar cuffed Terlarm soundly with a meaty hand. The cleric sprawled on the ground, dazed.

  “Mind your own damned business,” Donovich growled without looking at Terlarm. He grabbed Magda by the throat and pushed her flat on a table. The Vistani struggled against the grip, but the boyar was very strong.

  Arik went about his business. With Herr Grest dead, Donovich was the head of his family now; it wouldn’t do to thwart the vengeance of an influential landowner. Besides, he mused as he resumed cleaning the glasses, the Vistani are never very good customers anyway.

  Magda kicked Donovich hard in the shin and clawed at his face with her fingernails. It may have been the many cups of wine or the stupor of rage that dulled his senses, but whatever the cause, the boyar didn’t seem to feel the blows. The Vistani struggled for the dirk still hidden in the small sack tied to her waist, but Donovich had unwittingly pinned the weapon b
eneath his bulk. She gasped futilely for air.

  “Leave the woman alone.”

  The voice that echoed hollowly in the room did not startle Magda as it did Arik. The barkeep spun about, for the words had come from the shadowed corner right behind him. There an armored figure stood, orange eyes glowing from inside his helmet. The stranger stank of charred cloth, and sooty ash clung to his ornate armor. Holding an obviously wounded right arm close to his chest, the knight grabbed the barkeep’s forehead and twisted his head sharply. The snap of Arik’s neck breaking was followed by the shattering of glass.

  Intent on his victim, Donovich didn’t hear the commotion. Neither did he loosen his grip or turn his beady eyes away from the choking, red-faced Vistani pinned beneath him, even after the wave of cold had settled on his back. In fact, the boyar never saw Lord Soth raise his gauntleted left hand and lash out. Donovich’s skull caved in at the blow, and he collapsed, bleeding, on top of Magda.

  The death knight lifted the boyar’s corpse and dropped it onto the floor. When Magda began to choke, her hands at her throat as if that might bring more air to her tortured lungs, Soth paid her little mind. Instead he knelt by Terlarm’s side.

  The cleric came to slowly, but when his eyes could focus again, the death knight’s ancient, ruined armor—the armor of a Solamnic Knight—filled his vision. “Gilean preserve me!” he gasped.

  “You know who I am?” Soth asked.

  Nodding weakly, Terlarm raised himself on wobbly arms. Few on Krynn, especially those who lived in Palanthas, did not know the story of Lord Soth, the Knight of the Black Rose. Glancing about the room, Terlarm saw the bloody corpses of the villagers.

  The cleric stuttered a few nonsensical phrases, then Soth held up a hand and silenced him. “You and four others were brought here from Palanthas thirty years ago,” the death knight noted. “In the time you have been in Barovia, have you ever heard tales of someone returning to Krynn?”