The dungeons, however, were a different matter. Most of the prisoners there had died, a common enough occurrence, for that was why they were there in the first place, but the stink and rot was a bit much even for me, and I had no need to breathe. Only two wretches remained, barely alive in their cells, starving, and quite mad, which defeated the purpose of their incarceration since insanity was a form of escape. I hungered, and in deference to the injuries I'd taken made a feast of them to speed my complete healing.

  Their blood was adequate, though I had tasted richer, but one cannot expect much by way of nourishment from half-dead cattle. I would have to restock my larder soon, hopefully with better stock. In the meantime I ordered my servitors to open the cells and clear out all the bodies.

  The ones that were still fairly whole I directed to be taken to my work-room for future reanimation.

  Revived to some extent, I went back to my room to strip off my rags and dress again, then sought my magical books to refresh my memory on certain important spells. I also found a goodly stack of missives from my various informants among the boyars as well as notes left by the Vistani, reports on all the little intrigues and rumors, reports on the progress of the border militias and their drills, but nothing of real import. Not even fresh newcomers had bothered to cross into Barovia in all this time. Apparently my lengthy absence had had little effect on anything. I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or insulted and finally decided to ignore the whole business for the time being. I had other things to occupy me. Within an hour I was ready to travel and did so.

  One moment I was in my study, the next at Azalin's manor house. Or at least the site on which it had once stood.

  There was absolutely no sign of the house, not one brick or nail. Before me now was a perfectly scooped out crater some sixty or seventy yards across. The edges were softened by weathering, but not by much. At its deepest point, about thirty feet down, water was gradually pooling. No vegetation encroached within the circle, though growth around the rim was thick and healthy. This was a thoroughly dead area, and would doubtless become the focus of much dread and superstition by the locals once they became aware of it.

  I sensed nothing untoward about it, only a strong tremor of negativity along the latent energy lines in the earth, which was likely due to Azalin's nearly forty years of occupation. Other than that, there was absolutely no sign of the house or tower.

  Or Azalin.

  He was quite incapable of moving anything on this scale; that would involve spellwork which he was unable to grasp. Something else had done this damage—if it was damage. Perhaps the house was elsewhere in Barovia. If so, then I'd have to find it and my missing guest. I cared nothing for his well-being beyond the cheering idea that if he was dead, then a number of problems would be lifted from my shoulders.

  "So, you too survived," a harsh voice said from behind me.

  I whirled, annoyed with myself for allowing anyone to approach me unnoticed. Perhaps I wasn't fully recovered from whatever had happened in the vortex.

  Azalin stood wrapped in the thick shadow of an ancient tree, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked undamaged, but that meant nothing since his entire appearance was an illusion.

  "Surprised?" I snapped, unclenching the fists I'd made.

  "Not really." There was something odd about his manner. He seemed strangely subdued and distant. Had he suffered a similar loss of memory? I would have given much in that moment to find out, but wasn't about to betray my own lack by asking him.

  "What went wrong this time?" I demanded, as I had done far too often over the years.

  He did not reply right away. "I don't know," he finally murmured.

  What was this? His usual reaction to failure was either cool analysis or a fit of violent temper. This… passiveness was singularly disturbing. Had despair seized him? Or was this resignation? Either or both served only to fuel the blazing anger rising in me.

  "You… don't… know." I waited for him to speak again. And waited. Still he remained silent. It was far more infuriating than if he'd fallen into a rage. If I stayed one moment longer I would lose all self-control and do something we'd both regret.

  I made the transformation, taking to the skies once more. My last view before quitting the cursed spot was that of Azalin staring into the barren hole where once stood his home.

  ***

  In the ensuing weeks we continued in our studies, searching tomes and scrolls of all sorts, hoping for any hint or clue which would lead us out of our mutual prison. Azalin's efforts seemed halfhearted at best, almost as if he had despaired of ever escaping. If this were indeed true, I knew that matters could soon turn dangerous. If he had resigned himself to remaining within Barovia, he might decide to finally attempt to challenge my rule.

  These thoughts were constantly in my mind throughout those days following the failure of our latest escape attempt. I watched him more carefully than ever. After feeding each night and tending to whatever menialities demanded my attention, I spent the remaining hours in which I wasn't burdened with Azalin's company pouring over scrolls and books, searching for clues which would help me to destroy him. The initial elation of discovering his name soon faded to frustration when I couldn't find the means to use it against him. I also made frequent use of my crystal ball to keep careful watch over him.

  Thus it was that I was fairly alarmed one evening to discover that I could find no trace of him in all of Barovia. The previous night we had met to search a ruined monastery from which he had detected the resonance of a magical item. The scroll he found turned out to be worthless to our purposes, and we exchanged harsh words before parting. Even if I had angered Azalin enough for him to want to leave the land, he had no better prospects in the few other lands which had recently adjoined themselves to my own. Perhaps someone else had finally disposed of him. If so, it would relieve me of the task but would present problems of its own. Anyone powerful enough to destroy Azalin would present a definite threat to me.

  Desiring to discover the truth, I pressed my crystal ball into immediate service. Letting my view soar out high over the land, I began at the site of the manor house and worked my way outward in a wide spiral. Nothing attracted my attention until I swung westward and stopped cold in shock.

  The Mists were nowhere along that border.

  Questions flooded my mind, the chief being whether or not Azalin had actually succeeded. Had he made it possible for Barovia to rejoin its proper plane?

  To that—after my first excitement passed and I was able to think again—I had to admit a reluctant no, for I'd seen the Mists in their usual line along the eastern horizon when I had flown down from Ghakis the previous evening. So what was I looking at, a new land linked to Barovia?

  I coasted over the Old Svalich Road as it ran through Krezk, holding my view high. The road had been a dead-end into the Mists and unused except by the Vistani. Now it continued on through a verdant forest, as though it had always done so. I pressed over the border, and excitement returning, saw farms and crofts, houses and other buildings collected together into villages and towns and all appeared to be thriving. No desolation like Arak or desertion like Forlorn, this was a living land with a substantial population.

  Following the Svalich to the very end I saw a sizable town sprawled over some chalky cliffs overlooking a harbor—the sea, or a huge lake, with boats at their docks or anchored in the deeper water. Far out on its surface lay the familiar bank of the Mists.

  Would the people know what had happened to them, to their land? That was doubtful. If the refugees from Forlorn were any example, the folk in this new place would be unaware of any change or accept that things had always been so. To be certain I would command the Vistani to travel there for me and gather what information they could.

  The town was quite closed up for the night. Apparently they either had something to fear in the dark as did most Barovians, or it was the local custom for a folk making their living from the sea. I would have to find someone still up and about, listen in on their conversation, and perhaps find out what they called this land—

  Mordent.

  The name popped right into my head, clear as a flash of lightning. I have been here.

  The memory of it still eluded me, but the feeling was very insistent. I had been here with Azalin. The country was Mordent, and this town was Mordentshire, and there was a house… or was it a tower… ?

  Gone. Damnation. Whatever the remembrance, it slipped away like quicksilver. Though able to hypnotize nearly anyone and cause him to recall the most minute detail of his life, I couldn't do the same for myself. I hated being aware that I knew something but denied the knowledge; it was like a book whose pages had been glued together.

  Disgusted, I went north from the town, hoping to trigger another recollection. I followed the coastline to see just how big Mordent might be. As a matter of course I was on the lookout for anything resembling a castle, or some other kind of fortification, but saw nothing, not even the lowly barracks for a small local militia. They were either very well hidden or did not exist, which struck me as being strange. Was the law here so well observed that law-keepers were unnecessary? As a soldier, I had an ingrained caution about invasion that had survived nearly two centuries of isolation, but a country without armies is not likely to trouble its neighbors. A trusting, if foolish policy.

  Continuing northward I passed through the now familiar feeling of a border, leaving Mordent behind. Examining the land, I began to recognize details from previous visits and realized that I had returned to Lamordia. The announcement did not repeat itself; it hadn't done so since my first visit here four years ago.

  How many more lands had come into being here? Just how far had Azalin's experiment carried? Was he aware of what it had done or was he genuinely as ignorant as he had seemed? And why was it these lands had come to join themselves to Barovia rather than the other way around? Surely it must be less trouble to drag one small land to Oerth than to have its lands slipping away to this plane.

  No answers deigned to present themselves, though.

  I pressed on until reaching a second border, then turned eastward. This new country had much less forest, and the people were more thinly spread to judge by the infrequency of houses. Perhaps this was considered to be frontier land, not yet suitable for large settlements. Here there was little more than flat farmland and grazing range and nothing like a real village.

  Lots of burial grounds, though. Quite a large number of them. Did the dead here outnumber the living? Chilling thought, that.

  I finally came upon a narrow track leading from the Lamordian forests into the flat plains marching north and spied a kind of marker between the lands. It was merely two tall posts and a crosspiece, symbol only, and of no real use as a true gateway, but it did give me another name to think upon.

  Darkon.

  The ornate letters were carved deep into the weathered crosspiece, which bore no other information. Either by accident or design there were no guards or anything resembling a toll box. When Barovia was still been a part of the rest of the world such things were common enough. Apparently whoever ruled Darkon had no need of such revenues. Here all was deserted, except for another burial ground close by.

  I rose and skimmed high, following the demarcation between Lamordia and Darkon to see how far it went. It flowed on and on, until the opposing land ceased to be Lamordia and I looked upon Barovia again. I followed the borderline until I recognized a five mile wide pass between Mount Baratak and the lesser peak of Mount Krezk and Lake Krezk just beyond. The pass had gone nowhere—that is, straight into the Mists—until now. Just like Mordent, Barovia was solidly joined to Darkon.

  It took more time and much more travel for the scale of the change to fully register in my mind. Darkon ran on, miles and miles of it, to cover most of Barovia's northern border except a small portion, no more than a league, which was blocked by Arak.

  But that couldn't be right. Barovia's boundary with Arak was thirty miles long at least. Arak's most northern mountain peak; had been cut off by the Mists, now its once hidden side descended into Darkon. How could things have shifted so much? The juncture of the lands was such as to alter their very placement in relation to each other. Seamless. Not even the growth of the grass had been disturbed.

  How was any of this possible—isolated lands floating in a sea of Mists, silently joining to one another in less than an eyeblink? Or was Azalin wrong about his planes theory and the lands had existed there all along, the Mists somehow concealing and barring one's entry and exit?

  My head ached from the effort of concentration, and my neck and shoulders cramped in protest to the hunched posture I'd held for the last several hours. I let the images in the crystal drift and fade along with my unanswerable questions, opened my eyes, and waited for the brief dizziness to pass. These discoveries were fascinating, but there were limits to what even I could do. Ilka had been right about how tiring this could be. And I had not even begun to look for Azalin.

  I sat down to it again. This time I focused my thoughts on my missing guest, but I was not immediately rewarded with a vision of him, distant or otherwise. The center of the ball remained stubbornly opaque. Had he found a way to conceal himself? And if so why had he never used it before? Sheer suspicion should have inspired him to do so prior to now.

  Or was he destroyed? What a pleasant thought. Very cheering.

  Another hour and I was in too much discomfort to continue. I broke off my search to give ease to my pounding head. My limbs felt unnaturally heavy and sluggish, the reason for which presenting itself when I glanced toward my bedroom and saw the pale light of the spring morning seeping through the windows. At that point I wasted no time seeking immediate shelter down in the crypt, taking the precious crystal with me.

  I slept. No dream or even the memory of a dream troubled me.

  Waking, I had to remind myself that this night would be shorter than the last. It was quite an adjustment to have one's mind set on the lengthening darkness of winter, then to forgo all that for sudden spring. I felt as though a thief had stolen all the time in between. A thief called Azalin. He and his damned experiment.

  With the manor house vanished along with its tenant, I had no way of backtracking to find out what had gone wrong. Aside from his journal, I had also duplicated many of his notes, having spent whole weeks doing nothing but copying thousands of pages, a simple if tedious spell. However, I hadn't had the chance to do the same for this latest effort. The major irritant, though, was having the blank spot in my memory in the first place.

  I returned to the study, viewed my paper-stacked shelves with a certain amount of contempt, and sat down before the crystal once more.

  However delightful it might be to hope Azalin destroyed, I had to know for sure. Though the recollection was heavily shrouded, I was certain on an instinctive level that he was still alive but not in Barovia. He might have been trapped in the Mists, but he was resourceful enough to have found his way clear of them by now.

  This time I would spend the night scrying for him within the new countries, covering them foot-by-foot if necessary.

  Mordent was the first—and to my mind the most likely—place to start my investigation. We had been there, after all.

  Reasoning what I would do were I stranded there, I thought he would either attach himself to whatever lord governed the place, or if circumstances favored, forcibly carve out his own position of absolute power. It wouldn't take him long, not with his magical expertise. The only thing that had held him back from such a move in Barovia was his word and the sacred bond of hospitality we'd agreed to abide by. Unless the same happened in Mordent, he would be hard pressed to conceal himself.

  My vision carried me straight to the heart of Mordentshire, drawn into immediate view by what I recalled of my explorations last night. I found what looked to be the intersection of two main thoroughfares, settled in, and shut my eyes, allowing my inner gaze to seem to place me there. Then I added a second layer of vision atop the first as I imagined Azalin's form standing before me. At this point I did not care if he knew about the crystal ball or not; it was more important that I find him.

  A quarter of an hour of striving, concentrated effort rewarded me with nothing more than a severe headache, causing me to stop for a brief recovery. Disappointed and annoyed, I waited until the buzzing ache in my brain subsided, then tried again, this time seeking him in Darkon.

  I placed myself just within the gate post by the burial ground and attempted the same visualization, casting about in all directions. This time I sensed a decided tug drawing me to the north and followed it.

  Followed—I should say I was drawn along like a hooked fish. I sped over the ground faster and faster until all within my Sight blurred. Resistance to this was possible; I found I could pull away if I concentrated hard enough, but chose to see this out to the end. My curiosity was aroused.

  I crossed a vast amount of ground. Darkon was much larger than Barovia if one could judge anything by this swift distance. On I went, then perceptively slowed on the approach to a city. A true city—nothing so large existed in Barovia. The protective walls ran high, indication that fortifications were common here, unlike the others.

  My vision took me through the main gates, which were not open—I just seemed to pass through them. Above, carved into the lintel in the same letters used at the border marker was the name Il Aluk. I had barely read them when the force drawing me forward pushed itself into a renewed burst of speed, carrying me through the streets too quickly for me to perceive any details other than a rush of shadowy blurs. I didn't care much for this and tried to slow things but with little effect.

  Very well, I was to be allowed selected glimpses, nothing more. I would accept it for now but promised myself a reckoning later for this liberty.