Return to Me: A Strahd/Alek Fanfic
Title: Return to Me Summary: Strahd seeks Alek out. Unsure if his beloved reincarnates, he never expects to find him. A gift for @mochizuke, which is long overdue but aptly timed for the holidays! <3 <3 <3
I was no stranger to ghosts as Barovia was full of them. Those who refused to reincarnate haunted the woods and settlements throughout my valley. In all this time, I had expected to at least once catch a glimpse of Alek Gwilym floating through the halls of Ravenloft or else on some forgotten battlefield where once we had conquered this valley together. He never did. As time wore on, I gave up the silly hope that I might again see Alek Gwilym. Instead, I poured my hopes into securing Tatyana’s soul as my own. Hers was a siren’s call I could not resist and in all this time, I had come to understand that it no longer mattered that I did not desire her nor that she did not desire me. I had made a deal with the Dark Powers and I was cursed. I would chase her even against my own will and watch time and again as she chose death over my wretched lust. I had once had a man so full of love for me that he would live, that he would die, all for my sake. For whom did Tatyana live and die? Was it for Sergei or was it for my torment? She reminded me of all I had thrown away. For a time, I was sure if I could possess her, it might make up for what I had lost.
I never fully believed anything could replace Alek Gwilym, even in my darkest moments. Some nights, I laid awake, listening to the distant howl of wolves or caws of ravens, and I pretended to be a tent away from Alek, as we had spent so much of my mortal life. Was my real curse never to possess Tatyana or was it to be alone and unloved, having killed the only man who had given his all to me? I told not a soul, but I felt Alek Gwilym’s absence keenly in the ache of my lungs, which could no longer draw breath, and the lump of stilled meat that was once my heart, which no longer beat.
I passed the time in sport, hunting adventurers, and taking pleasure in beautiful consorts. I hoarded treasure like that damnable Argynvost once had. These temporary balms only soothed the burning itch for so long before I found myself struggling vainly to remember his laugh. The day I could no longer remember, I smashed fine marble busts and ripped curtains from their anchorings. I heard Rahadin’s choir before I saw him and I whirled upon him, for a moment thinking I might kill him for daring to see me thus.
And then I remembered that elves had long memories.
“Do you remember, brother,” I said, “the way Alek Gwilym would laugh when I was particularly witty?”
“I do not remember you being particularly witty,” Rahadin said, “but you used to make Alek laugh so earnestly, I can understand the confusion.”
“Show me.” I approached my brother and locked eyes with him. “Do not resist. Call the memory forward.”
I made a sign of power and Rahadin looked, for a moment, afraid. It would not hurt him but it irritated me to have to sift through his wary concern from the memory. I watched it, as though a young Rahadin, seated at a campfire, late into the night. A tin mug of stew warmed my hands and smoke scratched at my nose and eyes. I had a distinct sensation of drunkenness. I had no love for such feelings, but from Rahadin’s memory, it was a warm, contented sensation, especially as I looked upon the two men seated together. I recognized myself, younger and human and handsome, my dark hair tied back and coming loose. Beside me, tawny hair roughly cut, grinning and watching me with great interest and even greater warmth sat Alek Gwilym. The scar slashed across his face did nothing to mar his smile. His steel-colored eyes glinted with mirth and firelight and I seemed utterly unaware of his looks of admiration, which Rahadin had caught fully. Perhaps my ignorance was why I had not slapped Alek’s hands away as he reached to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. I said something then for Alek’s ears only. He guffawed, tossing his head back as if basking in the rich, sunlit sound. It burned my veins to hear Alek laugh and Rahadin averted his gaze. I cursed him. I could not remember this night. I wanted to. Then, Rahadin looked back up and watched as Alek and I took turns watching the unaware other with silent affection. Alek caught Rahadin’s gaze and I felt Rahadin’s lips lift into a smile, a knowing thing, too knowing for the teenager he had been and I wondered what he knew that I hadn’t. I burned to know it now. It was obvious to me now. Even as Alek failed to hide his smile but looked somewhat contrite, he would glance back at me with the same fondness. I wanted him to laugh again, but could not call out for him, only feeling a twinge of annoyance that Alek would not dare rise above his station and kiss me. I felt Rahadin’s irritation, too, flare up like a second, lighted torch. Why was I, Strahd, so oblivious? Why was I, Rahadin, doomed to watch the two people I loved the best dance around each other until they shed our mortality and I was left alone? Suddenly, I didn’t like being privy to my brother’s thoughts. He saw too much, and knew too much. What did he think now that I could not die and Alek had never returned to me? I would not abide his pity. I stumbled out of Rahadin’s memories so clumsily that my physical body wavered against the stone floor. Rahadin lurched forward to catch me.
“You knew,” I rasped. “You knew he loved me and that I loved him and still you said nothing-!”
“I was a child, Strahd. Would either of you have listened?”
“You might have told me when you were grown.”
I pulled myself from his grasp and pulled myself upright. Rahadin shrugged. I did not find pity in his eyes, only grief. His Deathly Choir howled, relishing his despair and mine.
“By then, Alek was dead,” he said. “Wouldn’t it have only caused you pain if I had said something then?”
My head ached and I knew it was not the ghosts of those my brother had slain. The only ghost who troubled me was the one who refused to haunt me, the one I could not find, the one I wished would scream at me if only to show he had never left my side. I glared at Rahadin. I hated that he was right, but I hated more that Alek was gone. I hated that I had lauded his position and title onto my brother and that Rahadin could never be Alek Gwilym. I hated myself for refusing to recognize love when it had been gifted to me with Alek’s every word, every look, every gesture.
I hated that I finally understood the nature of my curse.
“Did you not call forth that memory just to cause me pain now?”
“I can call forth a thousand like it,” he said wistfully. “A thousand missed chances, a thousand nights watching him love you and you refusing to be loved, a thousand nights I prayed to the gods you would go to his tent and stay with him until dawn. I can show you more if you’d like. I can show you the times he fought with you and loved you still and the times when I tried to tell you the truth in the way of a teenager and you dismissed me. I can show you things he said to me in confidence if it will make you feel better.”
“So eager to betray your mentor’s secrets? I expected better loyalty from you. It would not make me feel better to hear any more about a dead man. Leave me to my work.”
“Yes, my lord.” Rahadin bowed deeply at the waist. He looked around at the wreckage I had created in my fit. “I shall draw up commissions for craftsmen to replace the damaged items.”
I snarled at him. He did not seem surprised. A wounded animal can do little more than bare its teeth when the fight has left it and Rahadin had already pierced my heart and lungs. I had never been so acutely aware of my inability to breathe or for my heart to beat until I wanted to tear them out and mechanically force them to live. Alone in my study again, I looked up at the portrait of Tatyana. I found I could not remember her laugh, nor her hands, nor her scent, nor anything living about her and that, perhaps, I had never been able to remember these. It had never so gutted me as it had to forget for even an instant how Alek laughed. I pored over the borrowed memory until one of my own surfaced. A memory or an imagining of that night? The feeling of his calloused fingertips grazing my ear as he brushed my hair back and the buzz of want in me that I had too much pride to indulge in. I wanted his hands sunk deep in my hair, pulling me in close until I could taste his breath and let it fill my lungs. Instead of saying anything that might betray the weakness of desire, I persisted in my snide review of the day, knowing only that if I could be clever enough Alek would laugh. Again, like sunlight, the sound erupted in my chest and mind and I sank my head into my hands, wishing for callused hands to stroke my hair.
No hands came. Alek Gwilym was gone and I was alone, chasing a woman I had never loved and who had certainly never loved me. This was my curse: to have my heart’s desire out of reach so long as I pursued Tatyana. At long last, I leveled my gaze at her portrait.
“And what if I set you free?” I asked her. “Would that restore Alek to me?”
She said nothing, did nothing. I don’t know what I expected from the portrait. I don’t know if I expected a Dark Power to appear once more in my study and offer me a deal. Nothing, nothing, but the crackle of the hearth fire. It occurred to me in that silence that if Tatyana could persist, reincarnating across generations, perhaps Alek was out there, too. Perhaps if I had the good sense to pursue him instead…
I sensed Tatyana being reborn in the town of Vallaki. My scouts and spies told me she was not born to riches and the plan seemed simple: I could laud her family with riches and when she came of age, she would know that Lord Strahd von Zarovich had been her family’s benefactor. She would owe me not only her fealty but her love. I considered it greatly, but her parents sequestered her in the Church of St. Andral where I could never get at her, for fear of the visions she had. She died there as she lived, quietly and fearfully and unremarkably. Meanwhile, my search for Alek began anew. I sifted through the young men of the villages and towns in the guise of a census taker. None bore his smile or his eyes or his scars or even his perfect shade of golden hair. I inquired about men who were good with swords and had a fondness for drinking at the inn, but many barred their doors to servants of the count. I took information however I could get it, by trickery and force and threat and magic all. Each lead I turned up led me to men who gazed upon me in fear or defiant revulsion. I adopted the guise of Vasili von Holtz, which allowed me access to more homes but afforded me no answers. A taboo had cropped up in the years since I had become a vampire. You see, it was uncouth to speak of past lives, lest you reveal you had a soul. Those without were quite jealous, you see, and it was all a game of horrid chance. The Dark Powers rolled the dice and filled bodies with those poor souls who had once been in the valley. Sometimes, it was said, they sewed two souls up together in the same body. These souls lived again and again. The soulless envied them immortality; the souled envied those who could die and rest. I could smell the blood of both and tell which were prized calves for slaughter, and which were gamey, mealy meat. I could not tell which was Alek’s, only Tatyana’s and it was a cruel trick. Without a lead on Alek, I amused myself with the deaths of numerous adventurers until almost too happily falling on the blade of the Sunsword.
I lived on as I always did. The cycles of death and reincarnation grew tiresome. I took consorts but I continued to pursue Alek Gwilym. Whenever I found a promising candidate, I would have him duel Rahadin in the courtyard. Only Alek could best Rahadin and so I watched as my brother slaughtered dozens, perhaps hundreds, of golden, primed warriors. I brought him men and women, Barovians and foreigners, and watched as they fell to his blades, some more easily than others.
“What will you do if one of the dead turns out to be Alek?”
Rahadin inspected the body of a foreign paladin whose throat he had just cut. I hesitated behind him, for the truth was so horrible, Rahadin would never forgive me: I would have killed Alek time and again, all without ceremony, honor, or the confession he deserved. I shrugged.
“The dead come back to life in Barovia,” I said. “I have waited this long and I can wait for him still unless you think there might be a better way to test the mettle of impostors?”
Rahadin shrugged.
“Alek could best me in combat a hundred years ago. I’ve had time. I’ve honed my skills.”
“Humility becomes you, Rahadin. You should wear it more often.”
He looked at me darkly. My brother had no other looks, not even when he was a child. Alek had told me often enough that I robbed Rahadin of a carefree childhood, but before he had been my brother, he had been my father’s weapon and before that, he had killed a king. I doubted Rahadin had ever been a child. I understood him and could not pity him. I did not want his pity, either. His mouth twisted and I held up a silencing hand.
“Unless you have a constructive suggestion,” I said, “hold your tongue.”
“You did not love Alek because he was a soldier,” he said. “He may not be reborn as a warrior.”
“Impossible.”
Rahadin grunted, pressing his lips together in a firm line.
“I will not fight him to the death,” he said. “If you loved either of us, you would not ask such a thing.”
“You’ve killed too many to be squeamish now,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve grown a conscience.”
He sat upon a stone and began to clean blood from one of his scimitars. His deathly choir made no great wail, but bitter grief radiated from my brother in a way that almost repelled me. I knew it well and I wondered if he had loved Alek and for a moment, jealousy coiled around my heart. Then I remembered he had been a child then and in our campaigns together, we had missed Father’s funeral. How had it been, then, to lose Alek so swiftly after? How hard was it now to know that he would only disappoint them both? He sometimes mimicked Alek’s mannerisms and, when paired with his stoic voice was easy enough to ignore, Now I knew how deliberate it all was - the somber, quiet chamberlain was not just my somber, quiet brother, but a man who could never fill his mentor’s shoes. In asking him to fight Alek, I may as well have asked him to kill me. If there was one virtue to praise about Rahadin, and I had to admit there were many, his loyalty was that which I cherished above all else.
“How would you find him?” I asked. “I am letting you make your opinion known.”
“How do you find Tatyana?” he asked.
I did not know. It seemed a part of the curse itself that I could find her soul in any vessel. I knew her every time, although my only remembrance of her features was vague at best. I scrutinized the portrait of her which hung in my study often enough, but even standing in the garden, I could only recall it and never her.
“Find me a painter,” I said, voice hoarse as my throat dried up at the simplicity of it all. “Only the best in the Valley. Send Vistani scouts to other lands. Only the best.”
Soon, painters came to Ravenloft by the score. I did not care where they were from, be it my own lands or else far-off ones from whence the Vistani I employed plucked them. The artworks that filled my halls for those years were all of the same subject: a blond soldier with broad shoulders and grey eyes keener than a falcon’s. None of them were Alek, though. Some had his exact features but lacked his warmth of spirit. Others conveyed his fire well enough, but some detail would be wrong - a scar, his knife-like nose, the shade of his hair. If a painter came from elsewhere, I could afford to be merciful enough to send them through the Mists from which they had appeared. However, painters of Barovian origin would likely spread stories of Lord Strahd’s obsession and so I had Rahadin exterminate them. It was never a fair fight, never worth watching as the fights with village guards once had been. He gathered canvases for burning in my study after another failure and another fight. I slumped in my desk chair, poring over the artist’s sketches to see where the woman had gone wrong in trying to render Alek. Surely her mistake had happened in the planning of the canvas and not in the final commission. Rahadin made a noise of displeasure, studying the slashed canvas I’d already taken my frustrations out on.
“Out with it,” I growled.
“This one wasn’t so bad,” he said. “I wish you would show me the art before you had me slaughter the artist.”
“Alek never wore his hair in such a fashion,” I said. “The man was vain, but he was no dandy.”
Rahadin snorted.
“If you’re going to criticize every single brushstroke, I might suggest you pick up a paintbrush yourself, Strahd,” he said.
The crunch of the parchment as he wadded it up filled the tense air. I stood. Crossing to my brother so I could look him in the eyes, I was assaulted with the wails of his deathly choir, but I didn’t care. I was too agitated and far too curious to let a few shrieking women and children keep me away.
“I am not a painter,” I said. Rahadin looked at me. His eyes were tired and I wondered for a moment if the little painter from Vallaki had actually managed to get in a good jab before her death. Then, I realized that the exhaustion was not physical at all. I bared my teeth. “This was your idea.”
“I regret it deeply,” he said. “If I had known that it would lead to the massacre of Barovia’s artists and not the peace of your soul, I would have contented myself to slaughter a hundred guards and soldiers in the courtyard. At least that gave me some sport, if it did nothing else.”
“The peace of my soul!” I scoffed. “I was not born for peace.”
“Clearly not.” He paused. “If you were a painter, do you think you could do Alek Gwilym justice? Do you think any painting could?”
“Don’t overflatter him,” I said. “He was handsome - beautiful, even, the work of gods of warmth and light - but he was a man. He had that ugly scar on his face and too much humor in his eyes. His hands were horribly callused and his cheeks were always a little too flushed from whatever debauchery he’d indulged in the night before.”
Rahadin crossed to my desk and handed me a pencil.
“Sketch him,” he said, “and we’ll have the next artist paint from that drawing.”
“You do not give the orders. Clean this up and leave me be.”
But when Rahadin had gone and the castle lay still and silent, I picked up that pencil and began to sketch. It had been a number of years since I had indulged in the fine arts. My first drawings were rough, crude, almost childish. The next night, I tried again. And so on. For many moons, no artists entered Ravenloft and after a year, I finally had a rendering that passably resembled Alek. It was uncolored, so I couldn’t be sure it was right, but it was enough. I sent Rahadin to round up any man or woman who could hold a paintbrush. Few came. So many had died for their artistic failings that the arts languished in my kingdom. People feared to even paint the walls of their houses, lest they be plucked up in a raid. In the end, there was only one contender brave enough to meet me in my study. The painter from Vallaki was not a young man. Silver streaked his ash blond hair and he wore an unfashionable mustache and beard, which were well-kept. They and the box of brushes and paints seemed to be luxuries he allowed himself in his middle years. Rahadin said that he had been in the town guard of some middling rank until he’d been injured in some internal scuffle and given a hefty sum by the burgomaster in compensation. He lived comfortably, and quietly in the town and Rahadin had been very quiet about him in turn. I supposed there must have been nothing more to tell and I did not care to hear the story, for it was not the artist that intrigued me, but the art.
Makism Radoslav bowed to me, but only with the slightest of gestures. I frowned.
“You would do well to show your lord more respect, Radoslav.” I surveyed him and found that the little smile that curved his lips rankled me in a place deeper than a peasant’s disrespect should have.
“Forgive me,” Radoslav said, dipping only a little lower. “Bad back.”
I almost doubted that he had such a thing, but then, he was human and full of such pedestrian frailties. I waved a dismissive hand.
“Whatever state your back is in, my agent has told me you have quite the eye for beauty and hands talented enough to craft beautiful things.”
Radoslav straightened and stood at attention in the way of a guard or, perhaps, of a soldier. I wondered how he had evaded Rahadin in the years during which I had him spar with any blond soldier to cross his path. Perhaps he’d had his accident by then. My frown did not leave my face, but etched deeper as I watched him weigh his response carefully.
“I did some restoration of the Church of St. Andral,” he confessed finally.
“Modesty does not suit you,” I said. “It won’t serve you well here at any rate. I am seeking the most talented artist in all Barovia.”
“A tall order, my lord.”
“Rahadin believes you may be that artist,” I said. “My chamberlain is no artist and I won’t fault him if he’s wrong.”
“Ah. But you will fault me, no doubt.”
I smiled in spite of myself. He was canny. The others had been smart enough to know their lives were on the line when I brought them to the study, but few had ever dared to say what they knew to me. Maksim Radoslav fixed me with clear, gray eyes, which were woefully common in the area. I offered him a conciliatory shrug. If he were to be honest with me, I would deal justly with him.
“This painting must be nothing shy of perfection,” I agreed.
I did not need to say what would happen to him if it was not. The last artist I had summoned had been from Vallaki. No doubt her fate was well-rumored by now. Besides, it was better to let their imaginations run wild. Artists were said to have great imaginations and, as such, could torture themselves far better than even I could if I told them that it would be Rahadin’s steel and his choir that dispatched them in the end. Better to let them think it would be a drawn out and painful death so that they would do anything to avoid it.
“I see,” Radoslav said. “What is it you wish me to paint? A landscape? A portrait, perhaps?”
“A portrait, yes. The subject must be painted in total accuracy.”
“I will paint you justly, my lord,” Radoslav said. “I assure you that if I am faithful to the face I see before me, the painting will be my best work yet.”
Flattery never had gotten anywhere with me. This play at my vanity should have irritated me, but there was a strange mixture of playfulness and earnestness in Radoslav’s voice that left me speechless. It must have been only a moment, but it felt like a lifetime before I found my voice again.
“I am not the subject of your work,” I said. I reached for the sketch upon my desk. “This man is to be rendered in totality.”
Radoslav accepted the drawing from me and he blinked a few times, the only indication of his surprise. The forced stoicism was familiar to me. I had commanded enough soldiers too proud to admit when they were taken aback by some new order. His lips drew into a thin line. He examined the sketch for a few, long moments and then he shook his head.
“Who drew this?”
I did not answer.
“Well, whoever drew this man loved him very much,” Radoslav said. “Maybe too much.”
“You are not being paid to judge,” I said. “You are being paid to get this painting right.”
“In order to get this painting right, I have to judge the source material,” he said. He lifted the sketch. “I have spent years among soldiers. A broken nose should not flatter a face so much. And this scar?”
Radoslav scoffed. My fists balled at my side.
“They’re easy mistakes to make,” he said. “Whoever drew this is an amateur artist - has only been drawing for a year at most. It’s very good for what it is, but if you want a living, breathing rendering of this man…”
“You think you can do better?”
Radoslav shrugged and his smile became rakish and prideful. It suited him far better than the modesty he’d adopted for me upon his arrival. He did not need to speak to prove his point.
“Then show me,” I said.
“Let’s talk colors,” Radoslav said.
I told him of Alek’s tawny gold hair, which rippled leoninely in the winds of Barovia. I spoke of his work-tanned skin and the ruddiness of his cheeks after battle. The strong white of his teeth. The gray eyes that could see into my soul. In fact–
“Your eyes are perhaps the right shade,” I said. “Commander Gwilym was… prolific. It seems half the valley has inherited his eyes.”
Radoslav laughed. It was a warm sound that spread through my bones. I thought of a campfire and the scent of stew and smoke and wine-stained breath upon my skin. I swallowed. He groaned good-naturedly, seemingly unaware of whatever strange emotion gripped me.
“One man could never populate an entire country,” he said. “When would he have time to enjoy life’s other pleasures?”
“Alek Gwilym certainly made time for other pleasures,” I said. “You should have seen the man seduce a bottle of wine before downing the thing.”
Radoslav laughed again, louder, and shook his head. I hated to admit that I liked the sound and that I thought Alek might approve of the jokes at his expense, the laughter, too. For the first time, I felt a glimmer of his spirit in the room with me and I wondered if he’d crawled out of whatever corner he’d been haunting for centuries to hear this conversation.
“Everyone has their quirks, my lord,” Radoslav said when he recovered. He reached for his tools and for some paints to experiment with color. He slid his hand down the curved glass of the bottle which contained a brown-gold color. His thumb stroked along the side of it gently. Then, carefully, he dipped and swirled his brush inside, gathering paint on the bristles. He inhaled deeply as he pulled the brush from the bottle and the scent of the paint, greasy and heady, wafted through the room. A smile spread across his face. I suddenly expected him to ingest the paint and I could not think why. Instead, he mixed it with other shades on his palette and continued to speak. I could not tear my eyes from his hands as he spoke. I was too fascinated by the way these callused, soldier’s hands could treat paint so gently. “When it comes to the pleasures in our lives, the true pleasures, the things we love best in the world, who can begrudge us a little extra care?”
My mouth was dry. I wanted to watch him mix more colors and thought I could watch him create entire rainbows for hours or even days.
“I never begrudged him it,” I said. “I never understood it, but I could appreciate his appreciation for beauty.”
Radoslav hummed. I didn’t like the knowingness in his voice. I wanted to confess something to him: I had envied the wine bottles which had gotten Alek’s care and ritual, much the same way I envied the women who streamed in and out of his tent. I wanted to be the thing that Alek loved so that he would savor his pleasure in my company and ritualize touching me so that I could feel as close to holiness as a mortal man may come. I was no longer mortal and had no hopes of being holy, so I said nothing of it. Instead, I watched Radoslav clean his brush before mixing the perfect gray for Alek’s eyes.
“Like this, my lord?” he asked, offering up his test palette.
“Yes, exactly like that.”
He asked for my input only when it would please me to give it and otherwise fell into a rhythm. I watched him mix colors to test ratios and I watched him redraw my sketch. It struck me how seldom he needed to look at my paper to copy down what I had set forth. He seemed to memorize the lines readily and then render them even better than I had upon the canvas. By dinner, he only had the larger sketch done but already I could tell he could do something for my commission which no other artist could. That night when I offered to show him to his room, he risked ingratitude by insisting I had better to do than give him a tour. It did not occur to me that he knew his way to the grand guest suites for any other reason than Rahadin’s aid earlier in the day. In fact, I had not cared if he wandered into the wrong room altogether. Of the better things I had to do than give Maksim Radoslav a tour, the one I chose was to stare into the eyes of the new sketch of Alek gracing my study.
“Welcome home,” I murmured to it, gingerly touching the edge of the canvas. Alek said nothing but smiled back at me and it was approval enough.
The painting process was not a short one. It took days and, in that time, Maksim Radoslav was a guest in my home. He was afforded all the comforts the guest of a king ought to be shown. He was given a grand bedroom in the castle to sleep in. His meals were exquisitely prepared from only the finest ingredients. I did not dare to dine with him the first night. I no longer had a stomach for food and I had never had a taste for wine. However, I joined him a few nights later, for I had a thought experiment. It began earlier in the week. We stood in my study and a soft patter of rain drummed against the window pane. I had many other things I could and perhaps should have been doing, but I elected to watch the painter work. He was very careful to set up his station away from my thick, fine rug. Someone – a servant or else Rahadin – had brought him a little table to mix his paints on and a stool for sitting. I noticed that despite his bad back, he elected to stand. Though he had not been a member of the town guard for some years, he still had a broad soldier’s frame and lean muscle that indicated that he kept in practice somehow. I doubted it was through painting and I wondered what his dull, human life must have been in Vallaki.
“I’m sure your wife and babes were distraught to see the Lord Chamberlain had come calling for you,” I said.
He shrugged.
“No wife to miss me,” he said. “And if I have children, then you know more about them than I do, Lord Strahd.”
A lonely life, then. No one to miss him, no one to mourn him. That was good, I thought, for when he inevitably displeased me, there may not even be a need to orchestrate a funeral. And then I watched him uncork the paint bottle with his knife and slow, careful movements. The pungent scent filled the air and he smiled, streaking buttery yellow across the palette to be mixed with brown. His hands were callused, especially where one holds a paintbrush, and large, but they moved gracefully. I understood that he was perhaps not only a craftsman but a real artist. Painting houses perhaps put food on the table, but this was a man who relished his work. Industry was a trait I prized and it well-disposed me towards him. More concerning, I found his movement mesmerizing and comforting at once. I wondered if perhaps the warmth I felt came from the amber glow of the hearth fire. Yes, I told myself, it must be so, for no stranger inspires such warmth in another. I asked another question.
“Where do you get your paints? They’re a fine quality. I’ve not seen their equal in all the years I have entertained painters in my home.”
“You are very kind, my lord,” the man said. “I mix some of them myself. The others I’ve paid Vistani merchants for and they were not cheap.”
I couldn’t imagine the Vistani would ask for more than gold. They were a good people and fair. An occasional snake oil salesman would crop up in their camps, but so often I had seen such charlatans turned out of Vistani society and forced to live among Barovians. The Vistani feared such exile by their own people far more than death, so most preferred an honest trade. The Vistani merchants who made their homes here and who traveled to Barovia from other lands as they passed freely through the Mists brought coveted goods from worlds I had not seen in centuries and worlds I knew I would never see. They would bring spices and books and, apparently, paints for the right price. I found it interesting that Maksim Radoslav also would mix his own paints. I assumed that the only colors he could find in Barovian forests would be muddy browns and grays, but he indicated the rich carmine he was diluting to a fine pink for the lips and scar tissue.
“There are some truly beautiful flowers on Mount Baratok, near the abandoned monastery,” he said. “You have to be brave enough to climb up there – or foolish enough to – but they make some excellent dyes. If I had more skill as a botanist, I’d cultivate them and make a killing selling them in town.”
I no longer visited Mount Baratok and had not since killing Leo Dilisnya. No one went up there as far as I had known, no one, except Maksim Radoslav. He truly was either very brave or very foolish. I came around the other side of the desk to stand behind him and observe his painting. To my chagrined horror, I again found myself watching his damnable hands at work. How delicately he held the paintbrush and how precisely he stroked it against the canvas! I thought of something Alek had once said to me as we shared wine in my tent late one evening:
“You must treat a fine bottle of wine as you would a lover, Strahd,” he had said. “You must savor every moment and take great care to admire everything beautiful it offers you.”
I had taken a greedy gulp of my wine, not at all caring for the taste and making a face that indicated my displeasure, which had made Alek laugh.
“Tell me you are not so overhasty with your lovers, Strahd,” he had said as a coughed, choking on the bitter wine. “It would only leave you both dissatisfied.”
I had wanted to slam his head into the back of his chair then and I now knew why, though at the time, I had only thought it was anger. Maksim Radoslav gave me no such instruction and yet, because his motions reminded me so much of Alek’s, I wondered what it might be like to have him at my mercy. Did I not already have the upper hand? He was here at my behest, doing my work, and painting my- My chest clenched sharply. Had Alek ever really been mine? I looked at the painting and watched Radoslav massage color into Alek’s cheeks and lips. I sneered. My Alek was not a pink-cheeked cherub. If Radoslav thought I had been too kind to Alek’s memory as the man who loved him, what right had he to dull my beloved to something wholesome?
As if reading my mind, he said, “The colors will blend in time. This is far from what the finished product will look like.”
I did not like that he could guess my thoughts. I hadn’t liked it when Alek did it and I did not like it when a lowly stranger did either. My lip curled.
“You had better pray to whatever god you worship that the finished product is better.”
Better still did not mean right and did not mean safe. Radoslav paused for a moment and continued to paint.
“My faith is in beauty and in myself,” he said.
“You are not a pious man, then.”
“If you’d like me to sing hymns to the Morning Lord, say the word,” he said. “It’s been a few years since I’ve attended a proper service but I could hum a few bars for your pleasure.”
“I hired you to be a painter, not a court jester.”
He turned to face me then. His gray eyes had gone steely and serious and outside thunder rumbled as we regarded each other.
“Forgive me, my lord,” he murmured, sounding for all the world earnest and humble and contrite as he should be. Sounding all the world, too, like the voice of a friend who had gone too far and not a strange nobody. “I would never play the jester in front of your court.”
“I suppose you thought only to make me smile,” I said, my voice waspish.
He hesitated.
“From what I’ve come to understand, you’ve done little of that since the death of the man whose portrait you’ve commissioned,” he said at long last. “Something about painting him made me think-“
“Yes?”
“I couldn’t help but think someone really ought to try. Gods know it won’t be Rahadin to make you laugh.”
“Just do as I’ve hired you to do.”
He was right, of course, but I did not give him the satisfaction. It wasn’t until he turned back to painting Alek and began to meditatively paint again that I realized something very odd. He had not used Rahadin’s title. It could have been the same lack of respect he showed me, but something felt different about it. I mulled it over for the next day and the next. Then, after three days, I ordered Rahadin to fetch the finest champagne from the wine cellar and then joined Radoslav in the grand dining room. There, I allowed Radoslav the honor of pouring. He cocked a brow at me without reaching for the bottle.
“What is the occasion?” he asked.
“I don’t drink wine,” I said. “But I’m sure we can celebrate your great triumph.”
“What triumph is that?” he asked, still not yet reaching for the bottle.
“Your painting, of course.”
He looked relieved and he reached for the bottle. His hand slid down it and he pulled it close to inspect the label. Surprise flickered in his eyes. This time, he did not bother to hide it. He almost seemed smug and that piqued my curiosity further.
“A fine vintage, my lord,” he said softly.
“Are you a sommelier as well as a painter?” I asked.
Radoslav shrugged.
“I am a lover of beautiful things,” he said. “Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder, but in the hands, the ears, the tongue…”
As he spoke, he worked the cork deftly. It wiggled back and forth between his fingers before popping free. He inhaled the sharp, sweet effervescence of the it. His grey eyes closed and a smile melted onto his face. I realized that if given a proper shave, he would be quite handsome. I had never particularly liked the mustache Alek took to sporting in his later years but it had never been given the opportunity to mar his good looks as Radoslav permitted his facial hair to. After tapping and tracing the cork with a languid movement of his thumb, Radoslav then poured the glass.
“The wine needs to breathe,” he explained, though I had not asked. “Spend enough time at the Blue Water Inn and you’ll learn all about the proper way to treat a fine vintage.”
I had an instinctive hatred for the Blue Water Inn in Vallaki, though I could not place why. I assumed it was because the building stank of birds’ nests and chattered with the croak of what felt like all the ravens in Barovia. Even in disguise, I felt uncomfortably watched by those birds and I couldn’t imagine learning anything useful, much less anything useful about wine, in such a place. It bothered me that the word “vintage” felt like a double entendre, whose sharp edges I was prepared to fall on.
“Tell me more,” I said.
“About wine?”
“About yourself,” I said. “You’ve painted yourself as a man of mystery.”
“There’s no mystery,” he said. “There is simply nothing interesting to tell.”
“I will decide what’s interesting, Radoslav.”
“Maks.”
I blinked and stared like dumb child who had no means to communicate the question I wanted to ask.
“Call me Maks,” he said. “No one calls me much of anything else.”
“Do you object to your surname?” I asked. I wondered if he was a bastard. It would be fitting, if he was one of Alek’s innumerable descendants that mocked me by only existing. I wondered if he would answer to the last name “Gwilym” and if he did, what I might do in retaliation.
“For some of us, names are just coats we borrow to wear for a season,” he said.
“Maks.”
I rolled the name around on my tongue. It felt wrong, but better than Radoslav had. Maks seemed satisfied and he swished his glass around before sipping indulgently. I watched his mouth, the same shade of pink he had mixed the other day as he clearly enjoyed the taste. I wanted badly to give him a shave but knew that as brave and foolish as he professed to be, he was not stupid enough to bare his throat for a vampire. We slipped into a companionable silence as a servant brought me my own drink of choice. It was iron-rich enough to quell my thirst, but it did not dispel the strange dream of intimacy in which all that remained between Maks and me was a thick lather and a straight-edged razor. Once, Alek and I had talked of the trust such a vulnerability required and I did not know why I craved it now.
But crave I did.
The following day I watched him paint in my study. The Alek in the painting, indeed, had skin which looked suntanned and ready to touch. His posture was lazily regal and his smile more a smirk than anything else. If I had not known the canvas was still wet and that there was yet more to paint, I would have touched him. Instead, I looked at Maks, who was grinning at my uncouth joy.
“Do you like what you see, my lord?” he asked.
“There is more that remains to be seen,” I said. “But you have come closer than the others, I will grant you that.”
“I won’t let it go to my head,” he said. “The last painter you took from Vallaki wasn’t exactly an artist.”
“Had I known what the town was really hiding, perhaps I wouldn’t have wasted that one’s life or my own time.”
“Her life was already a waste,” Maks said. He seemed to realized how cruel that sounded and had the grace to look ashamed. But he said, “An artist without a soul cannot make art. The gods know a soul is hard enough to come by these days. And so art…”
He trailed off expressively. I was not unaware of the strange plight of my people. It seemed only one in ten Barovians, though our numbers had increased in the years since my rule began, possessed a soul. Those without neither laughed nor cried. If I had learned anything about souls from the deathly choir that clung to Rahadin or else from the endless reincarnations of Tatyana, I had learned that souls could not escape Barovia or enter it without my say so. I had long thought Alek cycled through the ranks of Barovia’s soldiers. I now wondered how many of his doppelgangers had been empty vessels meant to torment me. My pulse would have quickened, if I had still had such a thing.
“Do you believe you possess a soul, Maks?”
“Do you?”
I no longer knew. I could laugh and cry and, though Rahadin would undoubtedly disagree, I could make art. But something of me had been lost in the transformation. However, like my subjects cursed to reincarnate across the generations, I, too, came back every time I died. He watched me intently and it unnerved me enough to wonder if Maks possessed the Sight, for he seemed to be reading me like a book in his second language – a little slowly, but fluently – or else eyeing me like a bottle of paint or a bottle of wine – something to be relished and savored. Perhaps he had already made up his mind before arriving to Ravenloft that I was a soulless monster. I would grant him that I was a monster, but soulless? I could not say. I almost did not want to know the answer.
“I will tell you a story, Maks,” I said. “And you shall decide the answer for yourself. When I was a man, I feared Death. As I aged, I regretted the time I had lost fighting battles instead of living my life. I prayed for something and something answered me. At that time, my youngest brother brought a girl home to Ravenloft. She was exquisite – a princess in peasant dress. She was young and beautiful and everything I was not, everything I wanted and did not have.”
Maks’ eyes flicked to Tatyana’s portrait above the fireplace and I followed his gaze. I could no longer look at her. Instead, I looked to him for recognition of this story – even a version of it – and saw instead a kind of anguish etched onto his features. It was more than empathy for my plight. Something of my tale clearly resonated in him and I wondered what he wanted most in the world and what, of the things he most desired, would aways be out of reach. He did not look at me, but instead at her. I continued to speak.
“I had, at the time, a loyal right hand. We had traveled and fought together for many winters. They no longer make soldiers of his caliber and I’ve certainly never had so dear a friend. He was a libertine, overly fond of drink, and if I had known that he had loved me, I would have forsaken the girl to live and die by Alek Gwilym’s side. I was not a wise man then and it took years after I killed Alek myself to understand that to give me my heart’s desire, Death had to take away the only thing my heart had ever truly held dear. I have spent a very long time wishing I could tell him what a fool I’d been and what a gift he was, even if that meant he would never let me know a moment’s peace again.”
A neve beneath Maks’ eye twitched and he looked at me. He would have been very good at disguising his surprise from almost anyone but me. I had seen that look too often in the privacy of my tent or even of this study. A sob welled up in my throat and I forced it down like bile. There was a reason he could navigate Ravenloft without my help and sketch Alek’s face without reference. It was the same reason he teased me so and why I found his every habit so painfully familiar.
“Decide for yourself if you think that I have a soul,” I said. “In the meantime, finish your self-portrait, Commander Gwilym.”
I left him alone. Tears flowed from my eyes and I was thankful there was no one to see, as the servants retreated for sleep at this time of day. Thundering through the castle like a dark cloud, I sought Rahadin out in his office. He barely had time to knock my hand aside as I clawed for his throat.
“Why did you not bring him to me sooner?” I roared. “You must have known!”
Rahadin drew a dagger from his belt, which we both knew would do little good to guard against me. He held it shakily.
“He was grievously injured two weeks before you last sent me to round up soldiers,” he said. “I did not think he would live.”
“Did you know?” This time I slammed Rahadin bodily into a bookshelf and his dagger clattered on the stone floor.
“Not then,” he said.
“When?”
“He told me himself,” he said. “When I brought him to Ravenloft to paint.”
A week! Rahadin had known nearly a full week and not said a single word to me! But if he had known, then Maksim had known all along that he was Alek. My head hurt. I shoved Rahadin again and kicked his dagger to him. Pacing around the room like a caged animal, I began to speak, unsure if I addressed myself or my brother or the dark gods who had cursed me.
“Why would he not tell me? Did he think I would reject him for the injury? Did he think I would kill him again?”
Rahadin began to straighten books on his shelves.
“You have him here until he finishes the painting,” he said. “You could ask.”
“I will have him here until the end of days,” I said. “He will have plenty of time to answer.”
I found Alek in his quarters, packing his meager satchel as though he was going to depart. His paints and brushes were rolled into a smaller bag and stashed on the side. Before he noticed my entrance, he looked sad but at peace in this room and I realized that unthinkingly, I had assigned him his old space in Ravenloft to pass the time. Little had changed about it, despite the guests who had come and gone from my keep. The wardrobe held clothing left behind by former consorts and guests who did not survive their stay; the vanity held baubles that servants secreted away. The bed was the same. The bedclothes had been changed but were made of the same shade of royal blue and strewn with furs. I did not need to announce myself for him to address me and I wondered if his senses had sharpened in this lifetime or if I had begun to cry again. I sorely hoped I was not crying. If this was Alek, he had always been discreet when and if he saw me so vulnerable, but if it was not, I would be obligated to kill the artist myself.
“You’re leaving,” I said.
Alek made a half-hearted gesture and faced me.
“What would you have me do? The painting is complete and you’ll have what you want of me.”
“Do you think I would content myself with a painting when I could have you as you are?”
He laughed.
“I’m a fragment of the man I used to be. This week has reminded me of that.”
I remembered Rahadin’s words: You did not love Alek because he was a soldier. I suddenly understood the truth and wisdom of them. I had always loved Alek’s bravery, and though I was not always glad for it, I loved him for his foolishness. I loved him for his humor and the way he stood up to me, if only to make me laugh at myself. His warmth, his love for the world in all its beauty… I loved him most of all for his loyalty, which it seemed he had lost in the years since his death.
“That’s not true,” I said. “I do not permit it to be true.”
“Oh, yes, Strahd, please. Forbid my joints from aching and my hair from graying. Command me not to have died a dozen times from hunger and disease and natural disasters and werewolf attacks, each time wondering why I could not have only been able to die by your hand just the once.”
“Killing you was the greatest mistake of my life,” I said. “And I’m sure it won’t make it better to know that each of your other deaths have also been at my hand.”
“You are not a famine.”
“I am ancient, I am the land,” I recited and I held up the hand I had once shed blood from to make it so. “You asked if I had a soul. All Barovia is my soul.”
“And your soul has conspired to keep us apart?”
I could hear the venomous sarcasm in his voice. If I said yes, I was damned. If I said no, I was a liar and he would know. I shook my head. I hated to admit the truth I knew, but I hated more the thought of losing him yet again.
“You and I both know what I’ve become.” I had taken a few more meals with him since his arrival and he was keenly but politely aware that I was not drinking hot beef juice at every gathering. “Do you think I wanted you to know that I was monstrous or that, worse, you were right to tell me not to go too far in my arcane pursuits? If you are a fragment of the man you used to be, at least you are still a man.”
“You have your heart’s desire, though, do you not?” he asked.
“I do not have you.”
“If you had only told me-“
“If I had only known-“
He walked towards the door. I did not expect him to try to squeeze past me but I did not expect him to fight me. I did not know what to expect. I had known nothing before now, why should that change? Challenge flickered in his eyes, which were level with my own. My skin burned with desire to touch him, even if it meant touching that horrid, scruffy beard of his.
“You always have me, Strahd,” he said. “I could die a thousand deaths and live a thousand lives if it meant I spent at least one of them with you.”
I laughed weakly.
“Time has made you a sentimental, old fool,” I told him.
“Time will do that,” he said. “But the fact remains that I have always been yours. The question that remains is what you plan to do about it.”
His eyes dropped to my lips and I imagined sinking my fangs into his only to hear him moan my name. Instead, I traced a thumb across his lips and reeled him close but not close enough to kiss.
“I will do anything you like, Commander, but first, you need a shave.”
He laughed and without heed to my warning, crashed his lips into mine. His arms draped over my shoulders, his human nails scratching my back ever so slightly. He did not recoil at the chill of my touch or the sharpness of my teeth as he deepened the kiss. Instead, he pressed closer to me than he had ever been before and I held him fast. I could feel his wild animal heart race frantically behind his ribcage. I could smell the sweet, tangy iron of his blood and sweat and the tears forming in his closed eyes. Raking a clawed hand through his hair I feared to treat him too roughly, but he listed against my sharp fingers. I could have kissed him like this forever. Indeed, I held him perhaps longer than was decent, even between married couples. When at last the kiss broke, I could not scent whose tears were whose as wet tracks streaked both our cheeks. He drew ragged, wanting breaths and shook himself from desire’s heady fog to speak again.
“The portrait is done,” he said. “I’m not vain enough to ask you to hang it anywhere, but it’s yours for the days when I am not here.”
“You would leave me?”
“I am but a man,” he said for what felt like the thousandth time. “All men die, Strahd. It’s what we soldiers do exceptionally well. But I will return.”
I frowned deeply and pulled him flush against my body. He made a groaning sound of pleasure and shut his eyes, canting his hips against mine, which elicited an involuntary sound from me in turn. I tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear and leaned forward where I could better whisper to him.
“I could make you one of my kind,” I promised. “It will only hurt for a moment. Then we will have eternity together.”
“I have heard of those you make ‘like you’. People call them vampire spawn. I don’t want to be your spawn, Strahd.”
“What would you be? Say the word.”
“Your partner,” he said. “I will always respect you as my lord and I will always serve you, but I am not your slave. I love you far too much to settle for less.”
“No. I could never sort you with the rest of my soldiers,” I said. I could not even put him and Rahadin in the same league, for my love for them was different, though I did not always use the word “love” so readily. “Would you wish to be a vampire, frozen in your prime and more powerful than even the mightiest of mortals?”
“I do not trust dark gifts,” he said. “You say the forces that made you as you are asked you to give me up. What do you think they would ask of me?”
My stomach knotted.
“So you will doom me to watch you grow old and die instead,” I said. “I never took you as the sort to relish petty vengeance.”
“I will relish the years I spend with you and I will seek you out when I am born again and of an age fit to love,” he said. “And I will love you now and always. Is that not enough?”
It wasn’t and yet, somehow, it was all I wanted. Heart’s desire.
“Come with me,” I said.
I led him back to the study where I stood in front of the hearth. I reached up for the portrait of Tatyana, wearing a sumptuous gown and jewels I had gifted her. Then, without warning, tossed it into the fire, where it popped and crackled before curling into embers. Alek made a small noise and then watched as I picked up the portrait he had painted of himself as he was when we were young men together. I studied it and wondered how I had not seen Alek immediately in Maks Radoslav’s face. I was a fool, but this portrait encapsulated all that I loved in Alek: his humor, his beauty, his intelligence, his fierce devotion. I lifted it high above the mantle and hung it where Tatyana’s portrait had once sat.
“Now I will find you again,” I said. “But before I lose you…”
He smiled, satisfied and when I kissed him – and after I ensured he got a proper shave – I ensured that he remained smiling and satisfied in Castle Ravenloft, at my side, until his last breath. Then, I began anew a countdown. In twenty years, he would return and if he didn’t, I would need only look for his bright zest for life in my dreary valley. He would be much easier now that he wanted to be found.
