I. The Boy in the Book
The castle had risen from the pages of Strahd’s Tome. Beyond it lay a white expanse bounded by mist.
PaK stood with the others.
Granny had been about to stitch his mouths shut when the mist took him. He had seen Validus through the trees before, though Validus had not heard him call. He thought his friends had finally found him. Instead, he had arrived wherever they were now.
Haleria promised they would come for him. First, they needed to understand the place the book had brought them.
As she approached the castle, guards of paper appeared along its walls. They held crossbows and waved. In the courtyard, Rahadin pursued a dark-haired boy around a cardboard well. Rahadin looked no older than he did in Barovia. The boy was Strahd, perhaps fourteen, and he could not keep his rapier between himself and the older swordsman.
Rahadin disarmed him and sent him tumbling into the well. The painted prop turned to show its hollow interior beneath the fallen prince.
Haleria hurried over and offered a hand.
Rahadin called her a courtesan. The prince would never learn to rule, he said, if his mother’s household kept coddling him. Books would not save them from the elven mercenaries. He ordered Strahd to continue practicing and went inside.
Haleria helped the boy up and dusted him off.
He apologized. He hoped his father would not punish her for helping him.
“You are just a boy.”
Strahd shook his head. He was a man. In two years he would be married and placed in command. His mother was expecting another child; he needed to become the prince his family required.
Haleria told him there was nothing wrong with loving books. Knowledge mattered to a ruler. Strahd spoke of a brother studying at a university and wished he had been born second, free to study instead of inherit.
He would be the best king his country had known. He loved his land more than anything.
He looked out over a country with no color and no shape.
The white space was not the landscape as young Strahd had seen it. The man whose memories filled this book no longer remembered what his homeland looked like.
Haleria asked what he loved about it. He said it was where he had been born. Then he recited the history of Borca’s ruling families, his father’s victories, and the vassal whose defeat had secured their claim.
Those names remained to him. The land did not.
Haleria tried another approach. There was more to love about a thing than its surface, its future, or what it could stand for. One had to love it for what it was.
Laughter sounded from inside the castle.
Strahd seized his sword. Rahadin would burn his remaining books if he found him idle.
Haleria followed the voices. As she passed the prince, she went straight through him. He had become a cardboard figure practicing with a cardboard blade. Ahead, the castle doors had acquired weight, tarnished metal, and the gold arms of House von Zarovich.
The memory was moving on.
II. What the King Intended
Inside, the hall had the familiar shape of Castle Ravenloft. Armor lined the way to a throne room. Rahadin stood beside the king, and both men were laughing as they watched the boy outside.
Rahadin spoke of the campaign against Mordent. Even with two years’ training, he doubted Strahd could take the mountain pass where experienced generals had failed.
The king was untroubled. He had no intention of leaving his kingdom to the son he considered weak. There was another child on the way. Strahd could be sent to conquer Mordent, and a more suitable heir could inherit when the attempt failed.
Haleria remembered the dinner at Ravenloft. Strahd had told them how he conquered Mordent when everyone said it could not be done.
Rahadin stopped laughing. He turned toward the courtyard and called the prince back to training.
Mist burst through the hall. Adult Strahd’s voice spoke of a past now filled with regret.
The book slammed shut.
They stood again in Hazlik’s ruined library beneath the winery.
PaK was gone.
Haleria thought they had reached the end of a chapter rather than the end of the story. Validus distrusted the account. It came from Strahd, and even a truthful detail could be chosen to win sympathy. Haleria wondered why a man so proud would show them his own humiliation unless some part of it mattered to him.
Whatever they believed about the Tome, it had given them no more time to leave PaK with Granny.
III. The Empty Pole
Davian Martikov offered to carry the wine to his son at the Blue Water Inn. Szoldar, restored but still recovering, would be at the inn as well. If the party wanted to hunt the werewolves with him, they could find him there.
First they wanted PaK.
Haleria remembered the point on the road where Granny had taken him. PaK had seen Validus from a place his friends could not see. She had a scroll of Revealing Light. Perhaps the path was concealed rather than distant.
They set out for the bridge and the wooded crossroads.
On the way, Da’amir and Validus noticed that the scarecrow they had burned no longer occupied its pole. They considered whether it might be another of the winery’s creatures. Haleria thought it might be something else. Da’amir saw no reason to stop over a missing scarecrow while PaK remained in danger.
At the place where Granny had vanished, Haleria took out the scroll and released its light.
A flash went through the woods.
At the hut beyond, Granny saw it too.
IV. Granny’s Patient
Granny came out on all fours. Dingo, a great fleshwarp with his mouths sewn shut, stood behind her.
Haleria demanded their friend.
Granny said she had freed him from his slavers.
PaK emerged and greeted them as his friends. He had been told they meant to cut him up for science. Validus insisted that any examination he had considered would be after PaK’s death. That qualification did not reassure PaK, and Granny made certain he heard it.
Validus said PaK was employed, paid, and free to leave. PaK agreed that he had been told he could leave. He liked helping people. Granny shook his empty purse and asked what his wages were.
Food and services, Validus answered.
Granny had her own name for that arrangement.
Haleria refused to decide for PaK. If he wanted to remain at the hut, she would not force him away. If he wanted to return, she would take him. Granny said the mouths and tendrils made him an abomination in need of repair.
PaK did not want them sewn shut.
“It’s me.”
Granny said she had once been a spirit of the land, worshipped by people in the valley. Haleria addressed her with the respect due a spirit and apologized for approaching as an enemy. Granny replied that PaK was in danger from the people who had come to retrieve him. Something else was living inside him.
She pointed to the changes in his voice. PaK had not known he was speaking differently. Granny had tried to examine him, she said, but he resisted. Perhaps that resistance came from the thing within him.
PaK knew why he resisted. He did not want to be cut and stitched.
Haleria set down her weapons, asked permission to approach, and used her magic to examine him. She found an unholy presence.
Granny called him a ticking time bomb. She said she could put him to sleep before operating. PaK still did not consent.
Haleria turned to Validus. Had he known?
He had noticed something. He had not known whether removing it would kill PaK, and that was part of what he had been researching. He had not told him.
Then Granny turned toward Haleria.
There was something in her as well.
V. Blood for a Friend
Granny sensed a curse deep in Haleria’s chest and spine. It felt familiar, though she could not place it. Validus studied Haleria and learned enough to become suddenly careful with his answers.
Haleria picked up a stone and cut her palm against it. She held out the bloodied rock.
Granny wanted it. In exchange, she would release PaK.
Validus warned Haleria against dealing with a hag. Haleria asked what giving Granny her blood would cost her. Granny said it would not harm her. Validus could not promise that the answer settled what the blood might be used for.
Da’amir could see no certain way to bring PaK home without the exchange.
Haleria made the deal.
Granny let PaK go. He walked toward his friends.
“I’m an object.”
Haleria told him he was a friend.
“I’m a friend object.”
Granny smelled the blood on the stone with evident pleasure. She ordered Dingo to begin excavating her shrine. PaK explained that people had once prayed to her there and that he had offered to help clean it. Haleria offered help too.
Granny refused. The last time she let one of them near the shrine, she said, she had become a hag. She did not explain whom she meant.
She swallowed the stone.
As the party left, Granny told PaK that he could always come home. She warned him against being locked away in a church or madhouse. PaK looked between her and his friends. Perhaps another time, he said.
For now, he went with them.
VI. The Mark Under Haleria’s Skin
Haleria drove the carriage toward Vallaki and demanded that Validus explain what he knew.
He spoke of the Dreadlords described in Van Richten’s books. He believed Haleria bore markings like Strahd’s, not merely on her skin but in some deeper sense. She showed him the broken-wheel scar on her shoulder. Her own people had branded her when they cast her out.
Validus did not think the iron brand was the whole of what he had sensed.
Haleria remembered why she had received it. Her people had condemned her as a Dukkar, a Vistani with the gift of sight whom her people feared under an old prophecy. They had tried to kill her and her mother. Her mother placed herself between Haleria and the attack and died. Haleria was spared, marked, and expelled.
She had survived in a world that was meant to decide her fate for her.
Validus saw mysteries gathering around the party: PaK’s other presence, Haleria’s mark, his own studies of the occult. Perhaps, he suggested, their arrival in Barovia had not happened simply because Strahd invited them.
Haleria remembered the Count’s private offer at dinner. He had promised to reconnect her to the ancestral spirits cut off by the Mists if she agreed not to interfere with the customs of Barovia’s Vistani. She had refused. Customs had already cost her mother her life.
Validus wondered what purpose the powers of this realm might have assigned Haleria. She wanted to know why her mother had died for what others called an ill omen.
There was a rustle among the trees.
Validus heard it. Haleria snapped the reins, and the carriage swept past a scarecrow standing at the forest’s edge. They did not stop to discover whether it had anything to do with the empty pole on the road from the winery.
Validus returned to his account of pieces placed on a larger board. Haleria would not accept it.
“I am a person, Validus, not a damn chess piece.”
PaK leaned forward.
“And I’m an object.”
He had been traded that day, he said. Being an object meant being useful.
Haleria told him he was a person and a friend. They would work out the rest.
Vallaki came into view as night fell.
VII. The Carnival Wagon
The party entered the stockyard.
Rictavio’s Carnival of Wonders wagon lay on its side. Its rear doors had blown open. Gunther, the stockyard’s owner, was caught in the jaws of an enormous circus tiger.
The animal threw him down and turned toward the newcomers. It bounded onto a wagon with enough force to crush its wheels.
Silver could hurt it. PaK carried the silvered Durst longsword. He advanced with his shield and called the tiger an overgrown house cat that needed a spray from a water bottle.
Da’amir moved in with his rapier. The tiger sprang down onto him, drove him to the dirt, and caught him in its jaws. It shook and threw him against a cart. He fought his way free but could only crawl back from it.
Haleria saw him mauled and screamed. Mist gathered around the tiger. Her eyes shone red as she marked it with the power Granny had sensed in her.
PaK launched himself into the animal and knocked it off Da’amir. When Validus rushed into reach to treat their wounded companion, the tiger struck at him. PaK stepped into the blow and took it himself. Validus reached Da’amir and closed what wounds he could.
The tiger rose and went after PaK. Its claws struck again and again. He was still standing when he looked toward Validus.
“Run.”
His eyes closed.
The mouths across his body opened.
“Finally, I’m back, baby.”
VIII. The Other Voice
PaK’s own mouth did not move. Something inside him spoke through the others, and his body held its ground.
Haleria brought her power against the tiger again. The stranger in PaK’s body called her “kiddo” and boasted that the Dark Powers had their attention elsewhere. Haleria stared at him. He seemed to recognize the red in her eyes; she did not know him at all.
Validus conjured a misty reflection of himself to flank the tiger and struck it. Da’amir got to his feet, danced back into reach, and drove his rapier in. The tiger lashed out once more and sent Validus sprawling. Haleria called upon her healing magic to bring him back into the fight.
The thing inside PaK fought with the sword for a moment. Then it let the blade fall.
PaK had carried those tentacles all this time without fighting with them. The stranger chose one now.
A great tentacle erupted from PaK’s abdomen and wrapped around the tiger’s neck. It lifted the animal from the ground and threw it through the stockyard sawmill.
The blades cut through the tiger. Blood sprayed over the yard, Da’amir, and PaK. The mouths along PaK’s body opened to drink it.
Haleria demanded to know who was speaking.
“I’m just a friendly gentleman caller.”
The voice faded. PaK’s body settled back into its familiar shape. He blinked, yawned, and looked at the others.
Was the tiger dead?
Validus told him he had got it.
PaK had no memory of the tentacle, the sawmill, or the voice. Haleria wanted to know what Validus had just seen. He could only say that he was beginning to feel surrounded by Dreadlords.