Knight of the Black Rose Read online

  The swelling, trembling ground made a sound like thunder, and as the fingers of energy pulled the door open, another noise was added: the groaning of the metal gate. The cacophony reminded Soth of the cries made by tortured souls in the Abyss. Anything within a mile of the fork would undoubtedly hear the racket.

  A dark crack shot across the bulge, swallowing stones and dirt. Deftly the fingers of energy slipped into the crack and forced it wider. With one final surge of effort, the death knight turned his palms to the midnight sky. The doors burst through the ground and swung wide, showering the area with debris.

  The blue light disappeared as Soth walked to the edge of the stone-lined tunnel. “Come,” he said wearily. “I long to be free of this accursed place.”

  ELEVEN

  The tunnel sloped steeply at first, and the going was treacherous. Water dripped from the stone walls and ceiling, then ran in foul rivulets down the floor. Patches of pale, rank-smelling lichen grew everywhere. More than once Magda slipped and nearly fell, and even Azrael, in half-badger form and moving on all fours, lost his footing twice. Only Lord Soth traversed the corridor as if it were level ground.

  “It looks like it goes on forever,” Magda whispered, holding high the torch she had fashioned out of driftwood and reeds. The guttering flame showed that the slope gradually evened out and the walls narrowed so that the trio would soon have to go single file.

  The death knight walked more quickly. “If the portal at the tunnel’s end will take me to Krynn, I will gladly cross the breadth of the Nine Hells to reach it.”

  Azrael followed close behind Soth as he entered the narrow section of the tunnel. Magda came last, the flame from her torch licking the ceiling. Although the death knight had closed the massive doors behind them and they had passed no holes big enough for anything but rats along the way, Magda had a nagging suspicion that something followed them just beyond the reach of the torchlight. Time and again, a sharp crack or low gurgle made the Vistani spin around and hold her torch out like a talisman. But if anything lurked in the corridor, it contented itself with following the trio at a distance.

  At length the hallway grew wider, and soon the werebadger and the young woman flanked Soth again. The tunnel veered sharply to the right, and halfway around the bend Azrael skidded to a halt. “I smell bones,” he growled. He stood up as tall as his stumpy legs would allow and sniffed the fetid air. “Bones but no meat.”

  At the end of the curve yawned an arch of jet-black stone, and beyond that, a vast chamber. The room was huge, lined with black stone columns that rose higher than Magda’s torch would illuminate. Every few paces along the walls, torches hung in iron sconces. The wood was shriveled and warped. After a few false starts, the Vistani succeeded in lighting a dozen or so of these, and their combined light washed over the chamber.

  Magda looked up and saw row upon row of filled sconces climbing toward the ceiling. “The room of the torches,” she said in awe, “where Kulchek fought the guardians of the portal.” She looked around. “There’s no guardian here now, though.”

  Bleached bones lay scattered in heaps toward the room’s center, the piles broken by the rotting remains of wooden trestle tables. The bones were surrounded and partially covered by patches of filth. Magda was disgusted by the sight, but the grisly remains drew Azrael like a tavern drew layabouts. The werebadger lifted a brittle leg bone and studied it carefully.

  “Human… male… not too old. That’s my guess.”

  He turned the bone over and over in his hairy paws. After sniffing it once, he bit down upon the end. The thing crunched unpleasantly, and Azrael chewed it, his mouth opening noisily with each bite. “Feh. Ancient, too. Not a bit of marrow left in ’em.”

  Soth paid little attention to his companions. The death knight carefully studied the walls, running his gauntleted hands over the cold stone. Once he stopped and traced a long, straight crack in the masonry, but when it turned out to be nothing more than a fissure in the wall, he moved on. Both Magda and Azrael were caught up in their study of other things in the room—a store of rusted swords having captured the Vistani’s eye, and a few bones of newer vintage having aroused the werebeast’s senses.

  But Magda and Azrael offered little of interest to the sinister eyes that opened only a slit to study the intruders. One eye, then two, then a dozen, blinked away a cover of filth and dust, then stared up at Soth from the dirty stone floor.

  “Aiyeee! Look at this!”

  Pleasant surprise made Magda shriek, and her smile told of a wonderful discovery. Pushing aside a broken sword, one that was as old as Strahd’s ancient castle, the Vistani grabbed a gnarled wooden club. It was short, only as long as Magda’s forearm, but the knob on its end was twice as large as her fist. “A cudgel. It’s very old. Do you think it might—”

  “There’s nothing here!” Soth shouted from across the room. “No portal. No door other than the one through which we entered.”

  Azrael dropped the skull he was toying with and looked up sharply. “Perhaps I could help you search, mighty lord. My senses are quite keen, you know.”

  As the werebeast stepped away from the scattered bones, the pile of dirt that lay between him and the death knight heaved up from the floor. As the filth fell away from the thing, its true form was revealed. A cloudy, viscous glob made up its body, and its shape shifted constantly, like something made of water. Tentacles of ooze flailed around it, disappearing from one part of the creature to reappear somewhere else on its body. It had no face to speak of, though it had the features of dozens.

  Two hundred eyes, some large and staring, others small and heavy-lidded, covered the creature. Only a few of these were fixed on the intruders. The rest scanned the room and peered into the darkness that filled the corridor, looking for other foes. Around the eyes gaped dozens of mouths. These held a myriad of expressions, most contrary to each other. One opened hungrily, running a black tongue over pointed incisors, while another smiled sweetly. A third, a handsbreadth away, drooled like the maw of an idiot.

  From each of these mouths came a constant babble, a cacophony of screams, curses, laughter, diatribes, and pleas. The stone walls echoed the waves of sound, doubling them, then doubling them again. Azrael, who was closest to the thing, threw his clawed hands against his ears. His muzzle rippled with a snarl of pain, but he remained rooted in place.

  The voices called to the dwarf. They exploded in his mind and summoned his most vivid fears and dreams. Through a vague haze of pain, images flashed through his consciousness, one after another.

  Azrael looked down at the blood on his hands and smiled. It was his brother’s blood—or was it his mother’s? He couldn’t tell any longer; the murders had blended together in his mind. The fact that the screams of his kin had all been surprisingly similar didn’t help matters. Azrael wondered if his death-scream would be very much like theirs.

  Without warning, the door burst in, the shattering of ancient wood sending fragments across the modest dwarven home. Azrael glanced once at his brother, his neck broken, his face covered in gore, then saw the city’s chief constable standing in the doorway. The fat politskara was frozen in shock, his jowls quivering with fear or, perhaps, anger. Azrael felt a rush of energy pulse through him, and he charged past the constable.

  He was free! Rushing into the courtyard of his family’s small home, the dwarf felt the cool air of the city flow over him. Dwarves bustled everywhere, and the clink of hammer upon metal, chisel upon stone, filled his ears. A disgust for all the inhabitants of the Crafter’s Quarter—faint-willed lackeys like his family—threatened to overwhelm Azrael. He had to fight down the urge to attack anyone who came near. But, no, he had to escape, had to reach the dark tunnels that led even deeper into the earth.

  The cry of “Murder!” rang out from behind him. The constable was shouting out Azrael’s crimes at the top of his lungs. The young dwarf pushed a stonecutter out of his way and ran.

  A sea of faces watched Azrael pass, eyes starin
g in shock and horror, mouths agape with strangled shouts. For a moment, the dwarf thought they were going to let him go, that the blood covering his arms, the scratches and bruises on his face, would hold them in terror.

  Then the arrow bit into his arm.

  Pain flashed from his elbow to his shoulder, and the world turned red in his eyes. The dwarf cursed the unknown archer who’d shot the arrow, then fletchers and arrowsmiths in general. He’d never liked bows; they were a coward’s way to fight. No threat of blood on your hands if you shoot someone from a rood away, he thought, stumbling in pain.

  The crowd closed in, and Azrael found his way blocked. The eyes of the dwarves stared at him, but those eyes held a different emotion now. Anger, not fear, colored the faces of the craftsmen as they tightened their circle around Azrael, and the threats they murmured filled his ears as he tumbled to the ground.

  In the underground chamber in Barovia, the gibbering creature loomed over the fallen dwarf, one of its mouths locked on to his arm. The eyes nearest Azrael bulged with a hungry look, and the thing’s body throbbed forward to bring another gaping mouth close to its ensorcelled victim.

  Soth and Magda stood mesmerized. They, too, were caught up in paralyzing visions.

  Magda found herself once again creeping down the long tunnel toward the underground chamber. A large hound, its head standing almost as high as her chest, followed at her heels.

  “Come, Sabak,” she said. “We must find a way out of this land.” The strain of so many days without sleep had changed her voice to a husky whisper.

  Light from a room up ahead bled into the tunnel, and the noise of a celebration filled the air. Magda edged along the wall until she came to the open doorway. The room was bright from the light of thousands of torches, and their dancing flames illuminated a scene of savage revelry. One hundred men crowded around trestle tables piled with raw red meat and dark ale. At their feet, rats with twisted horns fought over the bloody scraps that fell to the ground, squealing and biting their kin. Across the room stood the object of her quest, the portal that would take her from Barovia.

  Boldly Magda stepped into the room. She was a hero, the stuff of legends, and mere mortals would not stand between her and freedom. As one, the guardians of the portal turned to face the intruder, drawing their swords. Uncertainty gripped Magda for a moment, then a plan of action formed whole in her mind: Use your dagger to reflect the torchlight and blind half of them, then lay into the others with Gard.

  The weight of her cudgel, Gard, felt reassuring in her right hand, and with her left she reached for her dagger. She patted her high leather boots, but the handle didn’t jut over the boot top. Panic gripped her, and she looked down. Novgor, the ever-sharp dagger with the point like a needle, was gone.

  The hundred men closed in, and Sabak leaped to protect its mistress. A dozen of the guardians lashed out at the faithful hound, striking it down. As the dog lay bleeding, the horned rats scurried over its body and burrowed into its chest, seeking its still-beating heart. The sight made Magda loathe her own weakness.

  She rushed forward and lashed out with Gard, shattering one of the guardian’s skulls. His teeth rained to the floor, and his staring eyes closed for the final time.

  In the chamber, the gibbering thing shuddered at the blow. It released the huge, fanged mouth it had fastened to Azrael and hissed at the woman. She bashed the gaping maw in with the club. Keeping a grip on the fallen dwarf with three other mouths, the thing lurched in the Vistani’s direction. Tentacles appeared all over the side facing her. The dripping arms lashed out and tried to snatch the ancient cudgel from her grasp. One struck her across the face and sent her sprawling.

  Soth did not see any of this, though his eyes still stared ceaselessly into the chamber; like the others, he was caught up in a vision brought on by the guardian’s myriad voices. The scene that lay before the death knight was one that had not welled up in his mind for many, many years. Goblins filled a dank, dismal cavern. Their flat faces—hundreds of them—all turned to look at him, and their grins of victory revealed small fangs eager for his flesh.

  Along with two fellow knights, Soth had entered this, the most remote section of the Vingaard Mountains, on a quest. He and his fellows sought a relic of the greatest of the Knights of Solamnia, Huma Dragonbane. Legends claimed Huma himself had entered the mountains, searching for a minion of the evil goddess, Takhisis. The hunt took one hundred days, and during the long trek, the great knight’s spurs were lost. Huma had cherished these spurs, for they had been presented to him by the church of Majere for his good deeds, but he did not stop to recover them. The quest was always foremost in Huma’s thoughts.

  It was for these spurs, symbols of Huma’s devotion to the cause of Good, that Soth and his companions quested. Like the other two warriors, Soth had hoped the adventure would present a chance to prove his bravery—for that was the only way he would ever advance from Knight of the Sword to Knight of the Rose, the highest honor of the Order.

  The trappings of rank held little interest for the young Sword Knight at the moment. A goblin horde guarded the relics, keeping them hidden from agents of Good, and the evil creatures had succeeded in isolating the knights and capturing two of them. Now Soth stood alone, all thoughts of glory gone from his mind.

  I am a Knight of the Sword, he told himself, brushing the sweat from his forehead. Paladine, Father of Good, teach your servant not to fear.

  Although the young knight repeated the prayer over and over in his mind, his hand still shook slightly as he raised his sword. “Release my fellows,” he heard himself say, surprised at how clear and commanding his voice was. He pointed to the two wounded knights that hung on one wall of the cavern, heavy chains holding their wrists to the dripping stone. “I will ask once for their freedom. If you do not comply swiftly, I will cut a swath through your ranks and free them myself.”

  Both captive knights were battered and bloody, and Soth wondered if either of them still lived. The notion was dismissed quickly; his duty to them, dead or alive, was clear. He must rescue them or die trying.

  The goblins became a jabbering mob. Some slapped their short, flint-tipped spears against their shields. The leather ovals thudded dully as they were struck, but, added together, they sounded like thunder rumbling through the cavern. Others shouted and cursed in their harsh, guttural tongue. The mob moved forward, the red skin of their faces making them look demonic in the cave’s torchlight. Their slanted yellow eyes glowed with malevolence.

  Soth gripped his sword tightly and said a prayer to the gods of Good. “You have been warned,” he said to the mob, but the goblins came closer.

  A command shouted from the rear of the press halted the creatures’ advance. Many of the mob turned to face the goblin that had given the order, and fell aside. Down the wide path cleared for him came the goblin king, his armor clanking with each step.

  Whereas his subjects were short, perhaps half of Soth’s six-foot stature, the king stood almost as tall as a normal human. His skin was bright red, like the rest of his tribe’s, his face gaunt. The armor he wore heightened his muscular appearance, and he moved with the steady step of one used to treading unopposed through even the most chaotic battlefield. Soth had seen creatures like this before, had even faced a few in combat. They were proud and skilled and deadly. Defeat with honor was a foreign idea to such warriors, as was mercy for bested foes.

  “Throw down your sword, knight,” the goblin king shouted. He lifted the studded mace he carried and shook it menacingly at Soth. “Let me split your skull and be done with it.”

  The young Knight of the Sword swallowed hard. “I am glad to hear you speak the tongue of humans,” he said, “for I can inform you that the path of surrender is one I will not tread. Release my friends and give me the artifacts your tribe unlawfully holds. Only then will I leave.”

  “And if I don’t turn these things over to you?”

  Unbidden, the teachings of one of the elder knights flew into So
th’s mind: When facing tribes of goblins, a direct challenge to the king or leader can prevent greater bloodshed. If the king is defeated, the tribe will often disperse, for they hold such deaths to be a sign of displeasure from their gods.

  Soth straightened and held his sword point-down, a clear sign of disdain for the goblin king. “If you fail to release my friends or do not give me the things that rightfully belong to my Order, I will face you in individual combat. It is my right as a knight to demand this of you, and it is your duty as a warrior to accept. Unless, of course, you fear me.” Soth forced a smile. “If that is so, I will face your champion.”

  For a moment the goblin king stood in shocked silence. “I do not fear you, human.” He sneered. Raising his mace high over his head, the king barked a command. The mob rushed forward. Over the cries of the charging soldiers he added, “But I am not foolish enough to send only one of us against your blade.”

  Soth slashed the first goblin to come close enough, then cut a second from shoulder to stomach. As the soldiers died, the blood pooled around the knight’s feet, making the stone floor slippery. Panic gripped him just long enough for a spear tip to slip past his guard. The flint bit into his leg. As he struck that attacker down, another goblin stabbed him in the back. His left arm went numb, and his head began to swim.

  This isn’t how it happened, Soth realized as another goblin fell before his blade. On the day I entered the cavern, the goblin king accepted my challenge. I killed him and a dozen more of his kind. The others fled. I won. My courage earned me the right to petition the Knights’ Council for advancement…

  Another jolt of pain lanced through Soth’s sword arm, making it difficult for him to grip his weapon. He looked down and saw a yawning hole in his armor. The wrist beneath the hole was almost translucent, and the flesh that barely covered the bone was pale and scabrous. The skin of a dead man, he realized, though the gibbering voices in his mind tried to push the thought away. Goblin voices? No. Something else, something in a bone-filled room at the end of a long tunnel. And the wound on his arm wasn’t the work of goblin spears, but the dragon in Castle Ravenloft.