I, Strahd: Memoirs of a Vampire: Ravenloft The Covenant

by P.N. Elrod

The others learned caution, but had given themselves over to fear—a sign that they’d already lost the battle.

but as final arbiter of my own laws, I could make changes as I saw fit.

The armies I’d commanded were gone now, but I would always uphold the legacy we’d brought to this land, namely that I was lord and law here, and I would not suffer any incursions against me, whatever their form.

Women had always amazed me with their ability to ignore a man’s drawbacks so long as they found him attractive.

I had never been one to deny a lady anything reasonable,

Arrogance was ever a failing with you. A good ruler should not hold too much of that quality. It clouds his judgment.”

His faith was in himself; he had none to spare for the gods.

A soldier I’d been, and a soldier I would remain, despite the passage of years.

I held him easily and resumed my meal, this time with his fear adding a piquant flavor to the blood.

“Then hear my wish, Leo. Live on for as long as you may and then be damned.”

He’s hungrier than you’ve ever been in all your life. Every moment he’s in there it becomes worse. It’s as if one great cat is clawing at his belly to get in and a second is inside him clawing to get out. He’ll be doubled over by the pain of it, but nothing will help him. He’ll gnaw on his own flesh, drink his own blood, but nothing will help him. He’ll scream and beg and burn his tongue calling on the names of the gods, but nothing will help him. He’ll beat his head on the stone, hoping to kill himself, but will fail. Only the hunger will kill him. It will consume him like a slow fire consumes the wax of a candle.”

He was a huge, tough-looking man, of the sort that would have done well in the company of any of my soldiers, but there was a cringing light in his eyes, which I did not care for.

“All knowledge is of use,” I hedged, while blessing the fates that had made Ulrich favor greed over piety in his decision.

At that point, I made sure to remind him of Lord Strahd’s devotion to honesty in all his dealings and his reasonable expectations of honesty in return.

“Your lordship,” she said, dutifully correcting herself. Same voice, same face, same graceful body, she was Tatyana come back to life again. I was absolutely witless from astonishment.

Her question was so earnest and so intense with troubled longing that it all but cracked my heart,

“Yes, yes, I do. Your name is Tatyana. Your home is far from here, in a great castle. And you are loved. Loved more than any other woman in all the land.”

“You will. I shall help you.” If she’d been somehow reborn into the world, then a new beginning was before us—a beginning unmarred by murder and sorcery, free of rivals and old griefs. Very, very few times in my long life had I ever been moved to tears and had never once given in to them. Since my change those many years ago, I thought weeping was beyond me, but now I felt my eyes begin to sting and my vision blur. I dropped my head into my hands, and though their names would have dripped fire upon my tongue, I could have offered up a thousand prayers of thanks to the gods who had sent her soul back to me once more.

Out of respect for Ilona’s memory, I felt a distant pity for those who came to either type of priest for the betterment of their souls.

the thought of Tatyana wasting away in such wretched surroundings angered me beyond endurance.

Her words rekindled a joy within me that I thought lost.

When I pulled her up and pressed her lips to it, she began to drink. I know not what pleasure she may have taken; my own was beyond any that I’d ever experienced before. It was more intense than any sharing of love I’d enjoyed while bedding a woman in the usual sense—more intense, and infinitely more desirable.

All the tears I’d not shed before in my life filled my eyes now. Far, far above me, the stars glittered and danced, mocking my grief.

And I had … eternity before me, an endless march of nights bearing this unbearable loss. Nearly half a century had passed, and I’d grown accustomed to the pain of mourning. Then to have her return … to have those bleak years wiped from my soul as though they’d never been, to have a glimpse of the paradise that lay before us, and then— —to lose her again … It was too much. Despairing, I wallowed in the mud and gave in to the grief, unable to stop.

“The mist took her,” he whimpered. “Filled the room and … gone. Mist.”

For Barovia was no longer a land alone in this pocket of existence. As the centuries passed, the mists at the borders pulled back, revealing new countries beyond. Other lords like myself ruled them, and, like myself, were trapped within their lands. This did not prevent them from warring amongst themselves, but the results were usually indifferent.

We could not fight openly in honorable battle, but only by sly and subtle political maneuver. Though I’d have preferred a more straightforward conflict, I played this lesser, if not more demeaning, variation well enough. It was necessary to Barovia’s survival—and mine.

How many times over the centuries had I met her? How many times had I lost her? I could not say.

And somehow, I’d always lost her: Marina, murdered by her adopted father … Olya, dead from a fever, so they said … and all the others, taken from me.

I’d made hundreds of forays to the borders, challenging them with my own growing powers, and failing. I’d talked long with the gypsy tribes that freely traveled the mists, but could not grasp their ways. I’d pored through every book on magic I could lay hands on and found nothing to help me understand the nature of my prison or how to leave it.