A’Erth

The twelfth carried them west out of Old Barovia. Ismark had come to the door before they had shaken off the night; his hands were steady, his voice was not. Take her to Zaleskiy Gorod. I cannot go with you. Ireena must not stay. They took the road.

At the shrine at the crossroads, three ravens sat on the crossbeam. Two watched the party as they passed. The third did not — it faced west, past the horizon of the road, toward the black shape of Castle Ravenloft on the mountain beyond.

South of the Sun Road they came on the Varga pasture. Two rails had been broken inward and three sheep lay in the grass, throats laid open, no scavenging. János, Bence, and Tamás were working the fence and the carcasses. A gray-haired priest was kneeling beside one of the sheep — Father Ákos Székely, bronze sun disk over a wool coat, boots thick with mud from his morning circuit. He recognized Ireena and gave her the quiet acknowledgment a country priest gives a woman whose father has just died: he had heard about Kolyan, and he was sorry, and he did not make her grief the center of it. He examined the sheep. He wanted the carcasses burned before evening. Umbra was nearly full.

The party spoke with the Vargas about what had crossed the fence, took the names, and rode on.

They reached Zaleskiy Gorod in the late afternoon. At the Iron Gate they were stopped and taken through the standard entry questions — names, origin, business inside the walls, how long they intended to stay. When Ireena gave her name the guard’s face changed, and the questions ended. They were passed through with the courtesy owed to Kolyan’s daughter, and the party rode up the pilgrim road to the Cathedral of First Light.

Brother Martin met them at the Pilgrim Gate. He walked them into the precinct, took the horse to the stables himself, and brought them to the doors of the Presbytery.

They waited for Father Ivan. A silver pitcher and silver cups were set them out on the table — cool water, crisp after the day on the road, poured for each of them in turn. Then Ivan came out and met them personally.

He listened. Ireena spoke her petition for sanctuary. It was granted. Ivan then heard what had happened with Doru — and when he heard it, he told them plainly that they had been seen by Strahd, through the boy’s eyes, and that he could offer them a ritual to help hide them from his gaze in the days ahead. He did not press them for an answer that night.

The party was received as Honored Guests of the Cathedral. Mother Elara came to the Guest House and walked them through the rules of the precinct — bells, gates, refectory hours, the corridors that were theirs and the ones that were not, what was expected of Honored Guests and what was not required of them. She did it briskly and without ceremony.

Supper was in the Refectory, and at supper the night handed Invictus and Nyvoria a thing they had not expected: Taki and David, Dawnspire graduates both, alive and here at the Cathedral. Both had been counted lost — dead in the old accounting. They were not. The reunion took the rest of the evening.

The beds in the Guest House were straw pallets under wool blankets. The party slept inside walls for the first night since Dawnspire.

The thirteenth began before dawn with the party’s private devotions. Then the first bell of morning, and Matins in the Hall of First Light.

After Matins the party split. Ali, Nyvoria, and Khamet went to Father Ivan’s office for the interview about what Doru had shown Strahd. When Ali asked why the Cathedral would not simply march on Ravenloft, Ivan set his hands on the desk and told them about the Concord of Dawn and Dusk — what it was, what it bound, what it cost. He did not speak of the three relics.

Later in the day some of the party sat with Mother Elara about the letter to the Citadel. The draft filing under Concord Article VII on the Doru action needed the acting parties named; the party asked that their names be listed and Ireena’s be kept off the record. Elara agreed, made the change herself, and set the letter aside for Ivan’s signature.

Jacob, Konrad, Invictus, and L’Ultimo took the public Library. Sister Helena was working nearby among her own books and lent a hand when they asked; she did not sit down with them. In the morning they pulled the treaty material — the Concord of Dawn and Dusk itself, its clauses and its history, the terms of the peace that had bound both sides for two thousand years. In the afternoon they turned to the Hierophant card of Madam Eva’s reading and to the man the prophecy pointed at: General Grislek — Strahd’s kennel-master, dead at the Battle of Ashwain Stones in 1162, laid to rest deep beneath Castle Ravenloft. The Mad Dog. Somewhere in the reading they noticed that Registrar Marek Voden’s public entry on Grislek’s death was physically cut from the page. Helena saw it too. Neither of them named what they were thinking out loud.