“Morninglord!”
The man who had shouted the title forced his way through the crowd. He was tall and thin, probably in his mid-thirties, with pale blue eyes that held the glow of a zealot. The formal pink and gold robes that marked him as some sort of cleric fluttered as he dropped to his knees in front of Jander, bowing his head in abject servitude. “Morninglord, you have come to us at last!”
The elf felt sick.
It was not the first time in his long existence that his resemblance to the god of the dawn, Lathander “Morninglord,” had been noticed. Yet how did the priest know of the human god from Faerûn? Perhaps he, too, was a victim of the land’s strange, evil mists.
“Good sir,” Jander said firmly, “please rise. I am not Lathander Morninglord. Look upon my face.”
“No, no. Thou art the Morninglord, who has come to put an end to the nights of terror in this cursed realm!” the cleric babbled.
“Leave the elf alone, fool!” Strahd spat. The cleric only continued gibbering, clinging to Jander’s leg, his face on the elf’s white leather boots. Jander didn’t know what to do, and he could sense Strahd’s patience evaporating like mist under a hot sun.
“Come, good Brother,” came a clear voice. Gentle hands reached down to the priest and eased him up. A young man compassionately put his arm around the Morninglord’s cleric. His garb was similar to that of the priest’s, but was much less ornate. “The Morninglord has not come. Not yet.”
The youth, a slender young man in his early twenties, bowed gracefully to Strahd and Jander. “I apologize for Father Martyn’s behavior. His wits are addled. However, my noble elf lord does indeed resemble the image of the god. Your Excellency, do we have your forgiveness for this outburst?”
The young priest’s voice was resonant and strong, and he kept his eyes politely averted. Strahd was pleased and graciously waved his hand. “We celebrate spring tonight, not winter’s harshness. I can be generous to the courteous. Take him away.”
“My most noble liege is too kind.” The young man led the priest away. Conversation began again, and Jander was relieved to find that some of the attention was beginning to drift away from him.
Strahd was watching the elf, amusement brimming in the depths of his dark eyes. “You upstage me!”
Jander shrugged. “Cults come and go. Lathander will die with his cleric. You, Count Strahd, are certain to outlast any daylight deity.” Strahd laughed aloud at that.
For the rest of the evening, Jander held back, watching everything and participating in nothing. Strahd, however, cut a swath through the throng. He selected the most beautiful women as his partners and performed the steps of the elaborate Barovian dances with catlike grace. As he watched, leaning up against a door that opened into a small garden, Jander noticed the expressions of the women going from frightened to shy to enamored as they danced with the count.
The elven vampire shook his head mournfully. Strahd was undoubtedly planting suggestions in those minds. One by one, the women would wander up to Castle Ravenloft over the course of the next week or two. Their families would never see the girls again.
At least, they would pray not to.
“I have in my hand a pendant that, should I brandish it, will cause you great pain. Not only that, it will reveal your true nature to every person here. I don’t think you want that.”
Jander did not move for a moment. Then, slowly, he turned to the person who had dared address him so boldly. It was the young man who had aided the priest earlier. The boy watched him, but avoided direct eye contact.
“What do you mean, my ‘true nature?’ ” the vampire inquired mildly. “You are threatening a guest of both the burgomaster of your town and Count Strahd von Zarovich.”
The young priest continued to keep his gaze averted and smiled a little. “I don’t think you want to risk it, nosferatu. Turn around slowly and step out into the garden.”
So, Jander mused, the priest knew what he was doing. He was right—any disturbance and he would advertise the elf’s vampirism to the population of the village. The townsfolk’s reaction would be predictable and violent. Jander did as the priest requested, thinking to lure the youth into the shadows.
“Stay in the light of the doorway.”
“As you will.” There was something uncannily familiar about the young man. The priest was of slight build, but the way he set his shoulders—not to mention the deft way he had managed to confront Jander—indicated a stubborn will and inner strength. His face was handsome and delicately made, almost pretty, but a square jaw and sharp black eyes curbed any hint of weakness. There radiated from him a sense of great sorrow and loss, but a great determination as well.
“Very well. You have me,” Jander said quietly. “You’re not as stupid as you’d like the villagers to think, are you? What do you wish to do?”
The black eyes roamed his figure almost hungrily. “I know more about you than you think, nosferatu. You are Jander Sunstar. You are an elf from another world. Nearly twenty-five years ago, you arrived here in Barovia. You saved a gypsy boy from a lynch mob. A girl, the boy’s lover, swore the friendship of her family to you.”
Jander waited, expectant.
“I have been looking for you for a long time. My name is Alexei Petrovich. They call me Sasha in the village. I am Anastasia’s child. It was my father’s life you saved.”
The voice was steady, with only a hint of the deep-set anger and pain. Jander marveled at the youth’s self-control.
“You are a very lucky young man, Sasha Petrovich, on many counts. How did you escape the fate of your family?”
“I was not home that evening. A friend and I spent the night outside. I came home the next morning to find …” His words trailed off.
“You were reading the book,” Jander remembered aloud, “in the circle of stones. You were wise to camp there. That really is a holy place. The undead will rarely have the strength to violate the sacred ground.”
Sasha tensed, and Jander realized he had made a mistake. “How did you know?”
Jander did not answer. Sasha’s mouth set in a hard line, and his hand closed about the medallion again. He lifted it, prepared to present it against Jander. The elf averted his face. “How did you know?” Sasha demanded hotly.
“We were there,” Jander admitted. “You and your friend escaped death by a hair’s breadth. If … my fellows had been hungry enough, we could have braved the sanctity of the circle for your blood.”
Anguish filled Sasha’s face. “Did you …?”
Jander knew what the boy was thinking. “No. I did not murder your family. You resemble Petya very much, Sasha. I didn’t know your parents very well, but they seemed like good people.” He kept his voice calm. “I mourned your mother’s death, and she did not die by my hand. That, I swear to you.”
The youth’s eyes finally searched Jander’s. After a moment, Sasha relaxed slightly. “You could have saved my father and done … that … to my mother anyway. I want to believe you, but you are …”
“A vampire? Yes, and I have been for several centuries. That doesn’t mean that I cannot be saddened by slaughter. Sasha, you trusted me a moment ago when you looked into my eyes. You knew that to be dangerous. I choose not to harm you, just as you are choosing not to betray me.”
Sasha swallowed. “My mother told me about you. I swore never to harm you, if I ever met you. It is not a choice, vampire. I’d expose you to the crowd if I could, but I am crippled by my honor.”
“Many years have passed since I last drew breath. I have forgotten more than most mortals shall ever know, but I have not forgotten honor,” Jander said slowly. “I shall not harm you or yours, child of Petya. More, I cannot do.”
A breeze stirred the night air, causing Sasha to shiver. He did not speak for a time, and Jander respected his silence. Moments passed. Finally, Sasha said in a low voice, “I was born in this house. The village is my home. Its people are my people, whether they want to claim me or not. The
re are things worse than dying, Jander Sunstar, and what you and your kind do is one of those things. How is it that you look so like the Morninglord and yet are his worst enemy?”
Sasha’s dark brows were knotted in puzzlement and pain. “How is it that you saved the life of a boy you didn’t know and yet live by drinking blood? I can’t begin to understand such things. Maybe humans aren’t meant to. I shall keep the bargain my parents bound me to. More, I cannot do.”
He disappeared as quietly as he had come, blending almost as easily with the night shadows as the vampire did. Jander marveled at the skill; it was probably a trait he had inherited from his gypsy ancestors. With a sigh, the elf returned inside and directed his attention back to the crowd.
As the evening wore on, Jander noticed a young woman stealing not-so-covert glances at him from the shelter of her fan. She was fairly attractive: blond, with warm brown eyes. When she caught his gaze, she smiled teasingly.
Jander held that gaze. He crooked a finger, inviting her to approach. Hiding her giggles from behind her fan, she exchanged knowing looks with her friends, who pushed her toward Jander with coy smiles of their own. The elf’s mouth began to ache, and he realized how hungry he was. It was time to feed.
Sasha had sought refuge from his emotions by walking in the courtyard. He breathed deeply of the cool night air, fragrant with apple blossoms and other flowery scents, and tried to calm himself down. Sasha couldn’t believe what he had just done. He had exchanged words with a vampire.
The priest looked up as a horse clattered into the courtyard. Katya, her cloak flying, rode up to him. “Sasha,” she said in a worried voice, “it’s Martyn. I think you’d better hurry.”
Sasha’s heart sank. He had asked Katya to take Martyn back to the church, but apparently something had gone wrong. Without even bothering to get his own horse, Sasha clambered up in front of the girl and grabbed the reins, turning the beast toward the church.
It wasn’t far from the burgomaster’s mansion to the church, but to an anxious Sasha it seemed to take forever. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked Katya as they hurried along.
“He seems to have lost all reason, and he’s in great pain. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
Sasha slid off the horse as they reached the church, turning to help Katya down. Together they opened the doors into all but complete darkness.
“Martyn?” Sasha called, blinking.
A single candle at the altar provided the only illumination. Sasha made out a huddled shape near the wooden table.
“Martyn!” He ran down the aisle to the priest. Katya hurried about, lighting more candles so that Sasha could see. Martyn was moaning softly and clutching his side. His pale face was twisted with terrible agony, yet when Sasha touched him his eyes opened and he smiled.
“Sasha, you’ve been like a son to me,” he gasped. “I shall miss you when I go, but I have seen the Morninglord, and He has called me!”
“Martyn,” Sasha said gently, “that was not the Morninglord. That was an elf. He’s not divine. Let me heal you, please!”
Martyn shook his head, arching with pain and gripping his side harder. “Nay, my boy. Don’t waste a prayer on me. He has called me, and I must go. I tell you, that was the Morninglord. I remember him. I remember that kind face covered with blood …”
Sasha felt a chill shiver through him. Martyn’s family, like Sasha’s, had been destroyed by vampires. Yet a being Martyn thought of as the Morninglord had spared him. It had to have been Jander. The young priest began to tremble.
Then … was it all a lie? Was there in truth no Morninglord other than Jander? It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t.
“Martyn, please, don’t die, I can heal—”
“No!” Martyn protested in a surprisingly vigorous tone. His pale blue eyes were distant, unfocused. “Aye, Morninglord, I hear … I come … ah!” He gasped with mingled pain and pleasure, and he reached out a slender, trembling arm to something Sasha couldn’t see. The arm fell just as the priest shuddered and sighed one final time, then lay still.
Stunned, Sasha could only stare for a few moments. At last he folded the cold hands across the corpse’s sunken chest and closed the pale blue eyes. Tears started in his own. For nearly fifteen years, Martyn had been his family. Ludmilla and her husband Nikolai had been kind to both Sasha and Martyn, but the half-gypsy youth knew where his heart lay—with Martyn and the Morninglord. Now, his faith had been badly shaken.
Gently, Katya knelt beside him and slipped a comforting arm about him. Just as gently, Sasha disengaged himself.
“I’ll be all right,” he told her, touching her soft cheek lovingly. “I shall tend to Martyn shortly. Can you leave me for a little while? I must be alone with my god. I have many questions for him.”
Jander was down in the cells again because he did not trust the mindless skeletons and zombies or the evil vampiresses to deliver the proper food to the newest prisoner. He unlocked the door with the iron key that hung outside, and it creaked open.
The little girl gazed up at him with huge eyes. “Here,” said Jander, setting the plate of food down. “Eat.”
She looked at the food, wrinkled her nose, then looked back at him. He turned to go. Tentatively the child reached toward him, tugging on his pants. Her face was solemn as he squatted down at her level. The elf could see the angry red puncture wounds on her neck. Jander had learned to feed delicately and with little trace if he so desired, and he had taught the technique to Strahd. The other vampires that Strahd created, however, were all bloodlust and savagery. Strahd found them eminently disposable, and even Jander found it easy to care little about their true deaths whenever Strahd wearied of them. The slaves were vicious; the child would not survive a second feeding.
Without knowing why, and more than a little annoyed at himself for his weakness, he said, “Do you want to go home, little miss?”
“Yes, please, sir,” she said, her sweet voice trembling. What Jander was about to do bordered on reckless, but he had sat idly by for too many years. What was one little child to Strahd? Without another word, Jander picked her up in his powerful arms. She locked her own arms about his golden neck and rested her head, as naturally as if he were her nurse, against his shoulder. A few minutes later, she was asleep.
Jander made his way carefully up to the entrance hall, wary for any sound that would indicate another vampire. He encountered a few skeletons, but apparently all the slaves were away hunting. Strahd, too, was out for the evening. The count had started disappearing almost nightly, never inviting Jander or Trina along and never saying what he was up to.
Anyway, Jander thought, if one of the slaves remarked about the child, Jander could always claim he was taking her elsewhere to feed. The cool night greeted him as he went out into the courtyard. The elf closed his eyes in relief.
A sharp bark startled him, and he looked around. One of the wolves that made Castle Ravenloft its home was sitting next to the elf’s feet, its tail thumping on the cobblestones. Jander was wary, as the wolves were now by and large Strahd’s creatures. Yet when he tentatively prodded this one’s mind, he sensed nothing more hostile than the wolf’s quest for companionship. All right, my girl, Jander told the wolf, let’s go for a run.
Jander ran swiftly despite the slumbering burden he carried. The wolf who had accompanied him was panting heavily. Even so, it was only an hour till dawn by the time they reached the village. He paused at the bridge. Swollen with the recent thunderstorms, the brown, turgid lvlis was running swiftly. It would not do to fall in. He glanced at the bridge. Twenty-five years before, he had not been able to cross it under his own power; Petya had had to carry him. Since then, he and Strahd had either flown or run in bat or wolf form directly to the village, or else they had crossed the river in the carriage.
Jander’s powers had changed since he had entered Barovia. The land had cruelly taken away his contact with nature by giving him a touch that was lethal to plant life. Yet he noticed
that he needed less sleep here than in Faerûn and that his grip was stronger than before. He wondered what would happen should he try to cross the bridge.
Before the thought was fully formed he was halfway across, the child still resting peacefully in his arms. Elation bubbled inside him as he neared the other side, and when his feet touched soil once more he was hard put not to leap for joy. What else might he do that had been forbidden to him? Wear holy symbols? Look in a mirror?
See the sunlight?
His musing was interrupted by a low growl from his wolf companion. The animal stiffened, her ears swiveling forward and her black nostrils flaring. With a whuff, she bounded off into the shadows, heading back to the castle. Jander gazed in the direction the wolf had been looking. The elf’s infravision showed him a large red shape up ahead. Shifting his slumbering burden slightly, he moved with absolute silence.
Further inspection revealed the figure to be the young priest Sasha, and Jander thought he knew what the youth was up to. The young man was not clad in his usual garb of gold and pink robes, but completely in black. A hood bobbed about his throat, and his face was pale and drawn. He carried a sack stained with blood over his shoulder.
“Well again, Sasha Petrovich,” Jander called in a traditional Faerûn greeting. His voice held a hint of amusement. “So you are the one killing off the undead. I suspected as much.”
Sasha started violently, whipping around and half drawing a medallion. When he recognized who had hailed him, some of the tension dissipated. When he saw what the vampire was carrying, however, he was horrified.
“Drop her this instant!” he commanded.
Jander smiled humorlessly. “She’ll have a nasty bruise if I do that. It’s not what you think. I’m bringing her back from … where I found her.” Sasha’s expression registered suspicion. “By the tresses of Sune, boy, do you think I’d call out to you the way I did if I was supping on the girl?”
Vampire of the Mists Page 22
