Knight of the Black Rose (Ravenloft The Covenant Book 2) by James Lowder

Author:James Lowder [Lowder, James]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780786963423
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2012-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

Soth sat crosslegged at the mouth of a small cave, watching the rain fall in cold, swollen drops. It beat a jarring, staccato rhythm on the ground around the mouth of the cave. The death knight silently cursed the weather. The noise would make it difficult to hear anything creeping from the rocky crevices or scattered copses of trees nearby. It might even prevent him from hearing if the traps he’d set up were sprung during the night.

Turning his orange eyes to the nighttime forest, Soth scanned the inhospitable landscape for any sign of the trio of wolves that had begun to follow them almost immediately after they’d left the village almost two days past. The shaggy beasts had always remained just out of sight, exchanging piercing howls. Something else was tracking the duo as well. Magda had glimpsed it once, outside the village, and the death knight, too, had spotted a hairy, child-sized thing loping through the underbrush on the following day.

“Are they still out there?” Magda asked from deeper inside the cave.

“Yes,” Soth replied. “But the wolves will not attack me, and the other thing … We shall see.”

A pause followed. “Why hasn’t Strahd come after us?”

The death knight did not respond at first, for he truly did not know why the count had failed to chase them. The wolves were clearly his spies; they had led Soth toward the Vistani camp his first night in Barovia. “His reasons do not matter as long as we reach this portal near the river or the one in Duke Gundar’s castle.”

A wolf howled long and low in the distance. Closer to the cave, another answered, and a third yelped its response from an outcropping of rock above the cave entrance. As Soth scanned the trees and blisters of granite for some sign of the beasts, another sound came to his ears: music.

Magda half-sang, half-hummed an ancient Vistani bardic song. The death knight caught snatches of the story—a strangely familiar tale of love gained and lost. It was not the fact the gypsy was singing that caught Soth’s attention; he’d been in enough battles, awaited enough tense confrontations during his time as a Knight of Solamnia, to recognize an attempt to calm jangled nerves.

No, it was the tune itself that tugged at the corners of his subconscious. The song insinuated itself into the death knight’s mind and curled up like a cat before the cold hearth of his memories. At this prompting, images buried by hundreds of years of disregard shrugged off their ashes and flared to life. Soth marveled at the memories, even as he attempted to smother them. The images would not be damped, though, and soon he was lost in the past, remembering.…

Music filled Dargaard Keep. Five minstrels in the gallery overlooking the large, circular main hall played a light air on dulcimer, horn, flute, and drum. The spritely notes seemed to leap over the railing, down the twin curving stairs running along the walls, then prance around each reveler in the room.

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