Chapitre Douze: L'Effraction d'écureuil

  The Vallacian church was in far better repair than the Barovian one. The parish of St. Anselme’s was no larger than Père Donatien’s nameless little one, but at least there were no holes in its roof or walls. It was made up of tidy, scrubbed beige stones and roofed with wood shingles which had long been weathered into the gray-green color of ancient trees. There was a patch of scrubby, dead lawn before the entrance where gatherings could be held, and a dirt path wound around the side leading to a small graveyard enclosed by a picket fence. The only ornamentation which set this building apart from a little boutique were the stained glass windows lining it. The pictures were simple, made of basic shapes and limited colors. The ones that could be seen flanking the front door as they approached depicted a pink-glazed sun surrounded by alternating turquoise and clear glass rays.

  Within, St. Anselme’s was nearly deserted despite the relatively good weather. The elderly priest stood near the pews, chatting with an older woman who was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Near the altar, a young human boy swept the floor. A slightly older, teenage dwarf lurked around the darkest corner of the church as if trying to escape notice.

  Emily made a beeline directly towards the priest. Without any sort of preamble, she demanded, “Where is the artifact?”

  The harengon they called Jinghua had not reappeared. Rosaire’s best guess was that as the lycanthropy had taken hold of her mind, she had lost the focus necessary to maintain her astral body. Somewhere, wherever her true body had lain in meditation, a wolf had awakened. There was nothing they could do about it. Everyone was extremely wracked by guilt about it—except, of course, for Emily.

  What they could do was accompany Emily back to Vallac, on the trail of the artifact of Saint Anselme’s which she had heard could repel Strahd. And the most logical place to seek a relic of Saint Anselme was within the church called St. Anselme’s. They had successfully talked her suspicious self past the gate guards, helped along by the charm of Rudolphe de la Rosaire in his Romaric persona. Romaric himself had been sent off with the pouch full of money gifted to Valentina by Strahd and instructions to procure them new horses and a better wagon.

  The priest looked as startled as you might expect, when approached by a cloaked, six-foot-tall lioness tabaxi in a predominantly human city. He wore a set of spectacles which already made his eyes look large and round when they were not being made so by fright. Steel-and-salt hair clung in a semicircle to the back of his pate, and hard times had left their mark on his rough cheeks. His stocky body was draped in flowing white robes adorned with the sigil of the Morninglord.

  Aeon lingered uncomfortably in the doorway. Illyan nudged him. “What’s up with you, mec?”

  “...I don’t think I’m welcome in here…”

  “Pish!” Valentina said, emphatically. “The Morninglord is an extremely welcoming god! Everyone is welcome here!”

  “You are not worse than kresnik,” Sveta commented. “If I am welcome, so are you.”

  “‘Old on, you’re with the Morninglord, too?”

  “Yes? Have been for long time.”

  “Did I know that?”

  “Oh, Mr. Père!” Valentina linked arms with Sveta and rushed towards where Emily was looming over the poor priest. “Hi, it’s lovely to meet you! I’m a fellow cleric of the Morninglord and so is my friend Sveta here!”

  “Oh, ah,” the priest fumbled to push up his glasses. “Yes, always lovely to meet sisters of the faith. Welcome and well-met. I am Père Lucien of the Church of St. Anselme. What can I do for you ladies…?”

  Emily opened her mouth, but Valentina cut across. “We’ve heard a rumor that St. Anselme’s houses a very powerful artifact which once belonged to the saint herself! Is that true?”

  Père Lucien’s already-bulging eyes looked fit to pop right out and roll down the nave. “‘O-’O-’Ow do you know about that?!”

  “Oh, it is true!” Valentina said, obviously not having expected this.

  “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs.” Emily, tired of waiting, invoked her eldritch sight. She assumed that this relic, whatever it was, must be powerfully magical. Beneath the edge of the hood which concealed her face, fuschia light swirled into two spiral galaxies. The edges of the light flickered and moved, leaving ghostly imprints of geometric patterns that faded as soon as you tried to discern them. These glowing eyes were only visible to those shorter than Emily herself and able to peer beneath the concealing edge of the hood–this was, however, the majority of those present. Père Lucien spluttered, his skin going white in uneven patches.

  The pale muzzle protruding from beneath that hood swept slowly from side to side, glowing pupils taking in the entirety of St. Anselme’s around them. After a moment, she opened her mouth to growl, “There’s nothing magic here.”

  “Oh, that ain’t even fair,” Illyan muttered. “I gotta fiddle with my equipment for ‘alf an ‘our to see magic and she just ‘as to say a verse?”

  Valentina nudged his shoulder companionably. “You chose to innovate instead of selling your soul to shady gods!”

  “Ouais, ouais…”

  “No, um, there wouldn’t be?” Père Lucien said, faintly. “The relic, it was… Well, it was a secret, so I’ve no idea ‘ow you learned of it! But it was also stolen, the other night.”

  “Of course it was,” Sveta sighed deeply. “By who?”

  “I don’t know, of course! Sisters, if you are faithful of the Morninglord, per’aps you might lend an ‘and to restore it…?”

  “Of course,” Valentina sighed just as deeply, looking extremely put-upon. “What was the relic, exactly?”

  His voice dropped to a shivering whisper, “The bones of St. Anselme ‘erself!”

  “Oh, ‘belonged to the saint’. I get it,” Emily said, without humor. “Can we inspect the scene of the crime?”

  Somewhat helplessly, the priest gestured at the altar behind them. “I ‘ave… already replaced the floor. I couldn’t leave it like that for my flock to see! The relic used to be ‘oused beneath the altar. The floorboards were torn up and it was missing when I arrived at dawn two days ago.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Emily snarled, showing every sharp, yellow tooth in her mouth. Père Lucien buckled where he stood, knees knocking audibly together. “That was evidence!”

  “Hang on,” Sveta cautioned. “You are keeping missing relic a secret from public? Why not ask city guards or Baron to catch thief?”

  The group waited with various levels of impatience for the old man to collect himself enough to answer. He pressed a hand to his chest and breathed deeply. Then, when he seemed about to speak, he removed his glasses and polished them furiously on a sleeve. Finally, after several more deep breaths, he answered. The time to compose himself seemed to have done some good, since his words came out in a swift torrent strengthened by real passion. “The political situation in Vallac is… complicated. The relic is of a Saint who defied the conquest of Strahd when ‘e first arrived in the valley. Not all in Vallac may wish it restored. My flock and I rely on it for protection, but I would not dare ask frightened, grieving citizens to put themselves in ‘arm’s way to find it or to strip them of all ‘ope by admitting it gone! My parishioners are ‘ere every night to pray, terrified of the Baron and more terrified of Strahd. Every night! They are carrying too much to carry any more.”

  “Right, yes, politics.” Sveta grimaced.

  “Well, we’ll take a look around town for it!” Valentina promised. “It’s on our list!”

  Rejoining Aeon outside the church, the cleric tapped her full lower lip with one thoughtful finger, nose scrunching cutely. “Well, I do know a spell designed for locating missing objects, but… I think in the case of the bones it would just lead me to the nearest person with a skeleton?”

  “Or to your own,” Emily said, visibly sour even with half of her face hidden. The lights in her eyes had gone out, leaving them once more shrouded in shadow.

  “I don’t mean to be selfish,” Illyan put in. “But could that spell be used to track down something of Isma?l’s or Irénée’s? I’m worried for them, me. We ‘aven’t made contact in days.”

  “Who?” Emily asked.

  “My ‘alf-sibs. We ‘id ‘em ‘ere ‘cause Strahd was going after Irénée.”

  She made a dissatisfied noise. “Only if it’s quick. We still have to find the bones.”

  “It probably could.” Valentina brightened. “In fact, isn’t Irénée wearing one of my own dresses? I can track that easy-peasy! Hang on.” She stooped to grab a forked stick from the road, holding it aloft with a flourish. Her eyes fluttered closed as she pictured the dress in her mind’s eye. It had been white, lined with ruffles. No feathers like the one she wore now, but with white silk ribbon tied in bows. She knew it right down to the thick, white-yarn stitches holding the lace onto the skirt where she’d had to mend it many years ago. “Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor! Oh, some wise man from the skies! Please to tell a little pilgrim where the place called morning lies!”

  The warm glow of her spell slid across her skin, the kiss of the dawning sun on her face. And yet… no more than that. Valentina felt no tug, no warmth, no light guiding her down the right path. The spell couldn’t locate her dress.

  Her brows furrowed as her eyes opened. “It’s not within a thousand feet. That’s surprising.”

  “What? No way town is that big.”

  It was Illyan’s turn to frown. “What d’you mean, mec? That’s less than a mile. Sure felt like more than a mile when we were walkin’ across it.”

  “Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Okay, we have to move. Now. Quickly.” Valentina set off at a jog, quickly gaining Main Street and heading east, deeper into Vallac. The others exchanged glances before hurrying after.

  “...What for…?”

  “Because this spell is only going to last for a minute!”

  As one, the group broke into a sprint. For the next minute, Vallacians were forced to throw themselves clear of the charge of the Morning Glories. Carts swerved and horses reared. Pedestrians leaped right into the path of wagons in a bid to escape being trampled. People stared out of storefront windows at the latest unlikely parade traveling through the city of municipally-mandated unlikely parades.

  In the lead, a beautiful young woman in an angelic white dress and shining silver armor legged it with a sound like a drawer full of silverware being upended onto a tiled floor, holding a forked stick up in front of her like a child running with a toy sword. Next, a white lioness the size of a man bounded, tail and cloak streaming behind her as every stride ate up more distance than a human could cover, heedless of the hood which covered the upper half of her face which left her apparently blind. Just behind loped an elegant woman in a striking blue dress and red lipstick whose serene bearing was entirely at odds with her manic sprint. Near the back rattled a cobalt-haired man who seemed not to have slept in weeks, encased in black-laquered armor which was no less noisy than their vanguard’s. Bringing up the rear stumbled a fire genasi with their flickering red hair streaming behind them like a comet’s tail, panting audibly as they struggled to keep up with the others.

  The cries of havoc chased this cavalcade past the main intersection where l’Auberge de l’Eau Bleue stood, past the town square where they had witnessed the Baron’s humiliation, all the way to where the road branched north towards Lake Varius. With the last fifteen seconds of the location spell slipping away, Valentina at last felt the certain warmth of dawn to the north, prickling on her skin and drawing her face towards it as if she were a daisy. She peeled off at once, the others skidding a bit as they followed suit up this new road.

  In the final moments of the spell, it stood before them: The dismal chateau. They had probably passed this place during their earlier tours of Vallac, but none had taken special note of it. It was simply a generic mansion home, built of brick and oak, the same as any other noble’s dwelling in the valley. Vallac in general was richer and larger than the village of Barovy, but even Barovy had one or two buildings of this kind. It was similar to the Imberts’ chateau in size. Where Chateau Imbert had looked as if it had recently withstood the tides of evil, this chateau looked as if it currently harbored evil intentions. It stood hunched and secretive off its own byway removed from the main road, a once-lush garden standing between now left brown and dead.

  The Morning Glories gathered at the end of this byway, regarding their new enemy. They did not yet know how truly familiar they were going to become with the floorplan of this building.

  “...So…?” Aeon ventured.

  Illyan responded by noisily sucking in air, bent over his own knees.

  “My dress is definitely in there,” Valentina said. “Whether Irénée is…”

  “Am betting she sold dress and this is new buyer,” Sveta said, flatly. “Is our luck.”

  “Think positive…” Illyan gasped. “...Maybe this is… the new ‘ouse they bought…!”

  “Shall I scout it out?” Valentina volunteered.

  Illyan remembered with incredulity the rigamarole they had gone through outside of Chateau Imbert before at last settling on exactly this plan: knocking on the front door. Was this a sign of the group’s growing maturity, their growing experience infiltrating hostile chateaus, or simply their impatience?

  To various noises of assent, Valentina skipped up the path. She paused a moment on the raised concrete stoop, looking back at the others. She made a shooing motion with her fingers. With a start, they hurried to conceal themselves. After a moment of dithering, the group trooped past Valentina to take shelter around the southeast corner of the building. The west side, facing the garden and the road, was absolutely full of tall windows. The southern facade was the same. As it turned out, so was the west side. Only time would tell regarding the north side, but Illyan had a hunch. In any case, the southeast corner was free of windows and provided a shady place for the group to lurk while Valentina knocked loudly on the front door. She finally did once they were all settled.

  A little brass plate in the upper third of the door slid open. The eyes of a human man peered through at her.

  “Yes?” he drawled, in a voice as unfriendly as it was nasal. Maybe he had something stuck in his nose.

  “Hi! I was hoping to have a word with the lady of the house?” Valentina chirped.

  “Madame Woodlock is currently entertaining. I’m afraid you’ll ‘ave to come back another time.” The brass plate began to slide shut.

  “Hold on! Are you sure? I can’t just come in for a second and ask?”

  “Quite sure. Good day.”

  With a snap, the plate was shut.

  Defeated, Valentina joined the others at the corner. “Okay, well that was a bust. No idea if Irénée’s in there or not.”

  “We could come back at night and break in,” Emily suggested.

  “...We could break in right now…?”

  “That would really be throwing stealth out the window.”

  “What if I turn into squirrel? Go down chimney?” Sveta suggested.

  Again, Illyan wondered if breaking into chateaus was simply becoming passé for the Morning Glories. Once, Sveta had resisted this very plan in case she needed to be able to wildshape later. Now, it was the first thing she volunteered to do. This was the most efficiently they had ever broken into a building.

  Everyone approved of this idea. Before their eyes, Sveta briefly became as insubstantial as a moonbeam which shimmered and faded into the tiny shape of a white squirrel. In the flick of an eye, the squirrel was up a nearby tree and leaping onto the shingled roof.

  There were three chimneys to choose from. Sveta eyed her options and scurried across the red clay tiles towards the western one. It wasn’t as if any chimney looked more promising than another. Might as well start from the left. The chimney itself was brick and it was no effort at all to fit her little claws into the soft pores of the stone and ascend. Over the lip, then descend headfirst. Even the slick buildup of soot couldn’t prevent her downward progress. Come to that, it was a very well-swept chimney indeed. The main issue was not the footholds, but the heat.

  The fireplace below was clearly in use. Sveta closed her eyes against the stinging curls of smoke, trusting her own sense of gravity to continue to lead her “down”. She crawled as quickly as she could, practically skidding down the rough brick, not because she couldn’t hold on to it but because the surface beneath her feet continued to get hotter and hotter and hotter. It was becoming somewhat difficult to breathe by the time her questing forefoot encountered air. Grateful, Sveta popped her head around the opening and into the slightly-clearer air of the room beyond. After a few quick breaths of cleansing oxygen, she squinted open her streaming eyes.

  This was the kind of room that people called a “den”. It held a large desk strewn with papers and a seating area populated by comfortable armchairs. A few cabinets decorated the green-papered walls. Tall, latticed glass windows looked out onto the dead, brown expanse of the garden beyond, letting in the pale light of the overcast day. From elsewhere in the house drifted the cheerful plucking sounds of lute music and gentle conversation. On the central, glass-topped oval table in the seating area was a glittering decanter of some brown liquor. And sprawled across one of the chairs was a human man, drinking that same liquor from a glass.

  Sveta’s nose twitched. The man… looked familiar, even upside-down. She couldn’t place it. He was quite short for a human, his skin brown and his hair black. It was close-cropped, as was the goatee on his round chin. His clothes were unremarkable, as were his features. Yet, Sveta swore she had seen him somewhere. The town square? L’Auberge de l’Eau Bleue? It itched at her but she just couldn’t remember.

  What was most important was that he was so occupied with lolling around and drinking that he didn’t notice the squirrel crawling out of the fireplace. It was clear the Imbert siblings were not in this room, but there was an open door leading into the next one. She hopped up onto the mantel, gratefully cooling her burned paws on the comparatively colder plaster. Looming above her like a strangely inverted mountain, a stuffed deer head presided above the mantelpiece. Sveta scurried out from its shadow, dodging tchotchkes along the mantel and launching herself off the edge. She landed with a nearly-soundless flumph on the thick rug. Keeping her belly low to the floor, Sveta proceeded to crawl for the door with just about the least-natural kind of locomotion a squirrel was capable of. Chin and belly plastered to the floorboards, her fore and hind legs came up and around like a wind-up toy’s limbs rotating, tail dragging limply behind. Each foot was placed so that the nails hardly made a sound against the wood. In this way, she rounded the doorframe and into the house beyond.

  The room beyond was indeed apparently the majority of the house. The space which adjoined the den was a dining area, featuring a crystal chandelier, a long table, and a series of chairs decorated with elk horns. Its southern wall was lined with the latticed windows which showed the front path where the rest of the Morning Glories had approached. To the left of it, in a kind of open-concept plan, was a parlor area. Like the seating area of the den writ large, this area was a cluster of overstuffed furniture around a glass table. The walls were lined with bookshelves showing off both books and various assorted decorative knick knacks.

  This parlor was populated with people. First, a woman who resembled nothing so much as uncrowned royalty. She was a human approaching her late sixties, her skin as paper-white and gnarled as a birch tree’s. She wore a plum velvet gown which in a bygone era must have been the grandest article of clothing in the valley: leg-of-mutton sleeves, a generous bustle, layers of ruffles supported by steel panniers beneath, a line of glittering onyx buttons down the bodice, and black lace around every edge. The gown, however, showed every bit of the time which had taken it from that era into this one. Moth-bites scattered holes around the skirts, unraveling lace trailed behind every motion, and almost as many wrinkles creased its sleeves as framed the woman’s mouth. Her hair was steel gray and pulled back into a severe bun which displayed her widow’s peak like a coronet. The women around her were hardly so extravagant. There were three of them, all women of the same age bracket who wore more ordinary dresses in muted jewel tones. They were equally gaunt, though without the core of steel which seemed to sustain the queenly woman in plum. One, her brown hair in a bouffant and her cheeks sunken above a heavy, squared jaw, held her teacup and stared blankly into the middle distance as if witnessing unseen horrors rather than participating in a genteel tea party. The others chatted lightly as nervous birds as they sipped from the tarnished silver tea set.

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  As for the live lute music, that was being produced by the final woman around the table. This one was a tiefling woman–no child, but appearing about twenty years younger than anyone else in the parlor. Her skin was the vibrant shade of catmint flowers, her hair a wavy mass of red and black like ripe cherries. Perched on her nose was a pair of smoked-glass spectacles with rectangular lenses. On either cheek, a stripe of crimson trailed from beneath these glasses all the way to her jaw like tear-tracks made of blood. She was dressed in a tight, red leather jacket with a huge, fluffy black wrap around her shoulders and upper arms. Her slim, spade-tipped tail coiled down one black leather-wrapped leg. A pair of ridged horns, dark and shiny as fresh eggplants, jutted out from her temples and then straight back. A smile played around her red-painted lips as she held a lacquered lute in her lap and strummed it. The notes of the rhythm chased each other repetitively up and down the scale like falling raindrops behind the strident melody of the chords. It was a song as confident and bold as the woman playing it.

  But none of these people were Isma?l or Irénée.

  Behind the tiefling bard was another roaring hearth fire, the fireplace clearly back to back with the one in the den. That accounted for two of the three chimneys. The only other visible door leading away from the parlor and dining area was shut. Sveta doubted her ability to subtly open a door in full view of a tea party while in the body of a squirrel. Still, she had one remaining option for stealth.

  Quick as a flick, Sveta darted back into the den, dashed across the floor, and launched herself at the fire. Almost before her claws caught on the brick, she was scrambling upwards. The fire burned briefly in a line down her belly, culminating in a hot pinch at the tip of her fluffy tail. She was moving too quickly, however, for the fire to take hold. Up, up, up, she scurried until she emerged into the frigid, gray haze of the open Vallacian air. Her beady eyes fixed on her goal: the third chimney, on the east side of the house.

  Her little white body crossed the distance in a series of arcing hops, like a furry dolphin leaping across the waves. The cold air soothed the burn in her skin and cooled the sweat from her feet. It was really no wonder that the house had no fewer than two fires burning, on a day like today. It felt about ten degrees above freezing.

  The third chimney immediately raised that number to three fires in the house. This time, Sveta closed her eyes against the smoke and recklessly descended in a mad rush, her bushy tail flailing behind her like a loose hose. In mere seconds, she was popping her head out of the fireplace and taking in big, gulping breaths of fresh air. After a few more, she was able to cautiously open her streaming eyes. Framed by short whiskers, mouth a tiny, open oval, Sveta’s nose twitched.

  This room was a kitchen. There was nothing currently being cooked within it, by the smell, but the hearth was lit nevertheless to warm the space. The whole place was absolutely spotless. The sanded-smooth floorboards were polished to a dull shine, matching the resin coat on the pine countertops. The fixtures were cheerful bronze, as glowing and orange as the fire in the hearth. Above the central preparation table, a rack on the ceiling dripped with cast iron and silver implements so beautifully wrought that the whole thing could have been mistaken for a slightly eclectic art piece. Hung from various fixtures around the room were embroidered, linen hand-towels which added splashes of color. Not a single one was stained or crumpled. Flanking the fireplace on either side were more tall, latticed windows looking out into the shadow of the house. Bustling around the space, rag in hand as he scrubbed the cabinet fronts, was the cook responsible for this meticulous cleanliness. He was a human man with swarthy skin and a bulging forehead beneath a receding line of short, fuzzy hair. His sleeves were rolled up beneath his apron to bare scarred forearms. Instead of proper shoes, he wore a kind of indoor slipper with no treads to track mud or dust.

  Sveta crawled out from the lip of the mantle and allowed herself to drop. She landed on all fours like a cat, tail straight up. The cook was busy enough that he paid no attention to the invading rodent who trotted bold as brass across his scrubbed kitchen floor.

  To Sveta’s dismay, the door to the rest of the house was shut. From its position, it either led to the same room as the one off the parlor or it was, in fact, the same door. There was another door tucked away near the back of the kitchen, past the shelves full of ingredients. Also shut.

  Very well. This was what she would have to do. Though in the body of a squirrel, Sveta still possessed the mind of a centuries-old hunter. A closed door wasn’t insurmountable. The only trick would be navigating past it without alerting the cook. He was distracted, yes, but in a brightly-lit and completely silent room. If she was careless, she’d find herself spotted in a second.

  Before considering the handles and how she might be able to work them in the body of a squirrel, Sveta instead looked at the door frames. Exterior doors were designed to keep out thieves as well as weather and temperature, so they were often fairly flush. Interior doors, on the other hand, were designed to block sightlines and muffle sounds. They were usually not measured as carefully or securely. Nobody cared if there was a several inch gap at the bottom of an interior door. Sometimes they were even designed that way in order to open over rugs. Sveta examined the two visible doors at her disposal. The one tucked behind the shelves was practically flush to the floorboards, so much so that it might not have been possible even for a cockroach to slip in. The one leading back towards the parlor, not so much. It hovered just about an inch or so above the threshold.

  Probably people who were unable to shapeshift were ignorant of the fact that squirrels sweated from their feet. It wasn’t something that would come up in most peoples’ lives. Fewer would ever experience it for themselves. More people were aware that a squirrel could squeeze into very small spaces. That one came up in everyday life, when families would find colonies of squirrels nesting in their attics. But even those who were aware would never experience doing so firsthand. In the realm of experience, Sveta was a pioneer.

  Sveta wedged her head into the gap beneath the door. It was just barely big enough for her jaw to scrape along the floor, her ears catching and yanking no matter how she tried to flatten them. The skin of her face was scraped backwards over her skull like butter across toast. Her eyes became long, narrow slits. Slowly, laboriously, her head emerged on the other side of the door. Whiskered nose, then bulging eyes, then each ear popping up, paws and legs stretching out before her while her belly slid forward…

  …then stopped. Her hips were wedged in the gap beneath the door. There wasn’t enough space to wiggle her feet or knees beneath her. All she could do was bend her legs as sideways as possible, like a frog, and try to get leverage with her toes. Her tail wagged furiously in time with her kicks. Sveta scrambled to get a hold with her front toes so that she could pull herself forward. She sucked in her breath, as if compressing her belly would compress her hipbones. No good. She couldn’t get enough of a hold on the polished floorboards to push or pull her pelvis through. If she only had something on this side to grab! Unfortunately, it appeared to be some sort of entrance hall or vestibule. The narrow hall only had a thin rug in the exact center, many inches away from the grasp of Sveta’s little claws. The sound of lute music drifted in through the opposite door which must have been the one she saw in the parlor. It sounded like the same song, even though it had been several minutes.

  Any second now, that cook might glance over and see half of a squirrel in his kitchen. Throwing caution to the wind, Sveta exploded into a frantic whirl of twisting, flailing, clawing rodent. She! Had! To! Get! Through!

  From the kitchen behind her came the sound of a Barovian swear word followed by pounding footsteps. In a second, the painful pressure holding Sveta down by the hips dragged her backwards in a wide arc as the door was flung open and took her with it, belly and chin scraping along the floor.

  “Sacre bleu, a squirrel?!” a booming voice shouted.

  Alright, the time for stealth was over. Sveta pushed herself backwards, popping her head back onto the same side of the door as her butt, and made to spring away. Two hands came down in a scoop on either side of her body, the huge palms surrounding her. Where the door had pinched her vertically, she was now squeezed horizontally around the middle. The cook lifted her up to eye level, easily ignoring her attempts to twist free. It was a squirrel’s strength against a man’s. Sveta had no chance.

  “‘Ow did it get in?” the cook wondered aloud, giving Sveta an unfriendly sneer. Sveta fell momentarily limp, mouth open to pant in rapid, tiny breaths. Alright. This wasn’t a contest she could win. Should she give up and resume her kresnik form? That would really blow any chance they had of stealth out of the water. Then again, did that chance even still exist?

  Wait. Sveta fell still except for the pulse of her breath, alert. The cook was moving. He was hip-checking the door aside and stepping into the entrance hall. He was approaching the front door of the chateau. Was he doing what Sveta thought he was doing? She coiled up, ready for the slightest chance.

  The first sign that the Morning Glories’ plan was descending into chaos was the front door opening. A strapping human man stepped out onto the stoop with his arms held awkwardly before him, clutching a ball of white fuzz. Beneath his hand unfurled a banner of fluffy tail. Silent, seen from a distance, the man swung his arms in a powerful arc, launching whatever he held through the air towards the road and the fields beyond.

  The animal released from his palms arced through the air with its forelegs spread like an acrobat. In midair, the silhouette was clearly that of Sveta in her squirrel wildshape. As soon as she hit dirt, she neatly switched from fore to hind feet with a twist that turned her around, then released the coil of her body and sprang immediately back the way she had come, all in a split second.

  The Morning Glories watched as before the man even had time to pull back his extended arm, Sveta hit the ground and bounced. Like a bolt from a crossbow, she flew between the man’s legs and into the chateau behind him.

  For an instant that lasted hours, the man didn’t move. Neither did the Morning Glories. A raven called in the distance. Extremely faintly, the sound of lute music drifted out over the road.

  “Everyone! Venez-ici! There’s a squirrel!” the man turned to the chateau behind him and bellowed. The lute music cut off with a twang.

  At once, it became clear that their scout, despite successful re-infiltration of their target, was in danger.

  Valentina was the first to dash away, scooping up a rock from the grass as she went. Instead of heading for the open front door, she instead turned and went the opposite direction. She rounded the southeast corner of the building, where the windows looked into the kitchen, and let the rock fly. It crashed through the window, leaving a fist-sized hole. Valentina straightened, ready to call out to her friends.

  She didn’t have time to get a word out before a torrent of darkness was rushing past her. It, too, crashed through the window, now leaving a hole the size of a fully-grown tabaxi woman.

  Emily landed in a crouch in the kitchen, a snarl on her face. From here, she had a clear line of sight through the open kitchen door into the entrance hall and from there through the open parlor door into the parlor beyond. Not much of the actual parlor was currently visible, however, due to the assembly of servants jammed in the doorway. The aproned man who had thrown Sveta stood in the hall, a valet and a maid clutching a broom clustered in the parlor doorway. Behind them stood a tiefling woman peering with great interest over her glasses. Every face was stamped with confusion and anxiety except for the tiefling, who was full of schadenfreude.

  As far as Emily was concerned, the situation was still salvageable. These people still thought Sveta was a normal squirrel. All she had to do was come up with a plausible statement which explained her presence in the kitchen and that she was on their side. Easy.

  “I’m here for the squirrel!” she barked.

  “Um,” said Valentina from behind her, through the broken window. “What?”

  Unseen by any except for her companions, the lady of the house in the plum dress set down her teacup and rose from her sofa. Calm and unruffled as if her house was not exploding with shouts around her, she glided towards the entrance hall. The tiefling bard who had been entertaining the party had leapt up to crane behind the maid and valet, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on in the entrance hall. She and the three servants parted to allow the lady through, stately as a galleon in full sail. She came to a stop in the spotless kitchen and aimed one gnarled, white finger in the direction of the crouching tabaxi.

  “The spirits of the dead who stood in life before thee are again in death around thee–and their will shall overshadow thee. Be still!”

  The incantation came with the tolling sound of church bells. It was met by a violet flash beneath Emily’s hood and a fearsome lioness’s yowl. The spell splashed off of her will, not yet overshadowed. The lines which framed the lady’s nose and mouth deepened in disgust. Outside, Valentina sucked in a breath, startled to find that the elderly aristocrat they knew resided here was in fact a spellcaster whom Emily now faced alone. Within, the tiefling bard blinked into the now-cleared pathway, at last able to take in that far from a squirrel, her employer now faced a large, angry, armed home intruder.

  Simultaneously, both women moved to protect their side.

  “I see a red door and I want to paint it black

  No colors anymore, I want them to turn black!”

  An eerie, staccato melody was plucked out on the lute. A balloon of darkness expanded from a point just before her, washing insubstantially across the people and the walls around it, consuming them into its body. The darkness enveloped the entrance hall, staircase, and half each of the parlor and the kitchen. It stopped just before the broken window.

  “My heart heard the whole world listening!”

  A flash of dawn lit the sigil on Valentina’s shield like the pass of sunlight over the surface of water. The whole house fell quiet with the hush of early dawn, before the birds awakened to sing. The lute music was first muffled, then silenced. No sound of breath or voice broke the air. Within the bubble of darkness conjured by the tiefling’s song, the servants, tiefling, and lady alike were both blind and deaf.

  Valentina pursed her lips when that dark bubble didn’t burst. She’d hoped that it was an ongoing spell, the likes of which would be countered by her magical silence. At least it would prevent any more attempts to ensorcell Emily. Her work here done, Valentina legged it.

  Still at the southeast corner, Illyan swore and threw Ivoire into the air. “Check the upper windows! Come back if you see Isma?l or Irénée!” The homunculus spread her wings, using the momentum of the throw to quickly circle a quarter of the house, going counterclockwise. Below, Illyan set off at a clockwise sprint towards the front door of the house, Aeon beside them.

  The front door was gone, replaced by a smooth sheet of impenetrable darkness which was poking through the building’s facade. Neither willing to risk stepping into it, the pair sprinted past to the long windows lining the dining room.

  Sveta, by now, was topping the stairs. As soon as she had escaped the grip of the cook, she had beelined straight for the staircase, knowing that the second floor was the only place left to search. Halfway up, the spells had enveloped her. The darkness only stretched ten feet up the fifteen-foot staircase, but the silence went all the way up. Consequently, even at the top, Sveta couldn’t hear the panicked stampede of footsteps following behind her. She did, however, feel the rattle of the floor beneath her as a warning.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Sveta strafed left and right, frantic as a pinball as buckled leather shoes slammed around her. A sweep of silent crinoline passed overhead, and a dropped broom toppled silently down the stairs into the black void below.

  It was a maid, frantically fleeing the sudden loss of two of her senses, utterly oblivious to the druid she had nearly trampled beneath her feet. She slammed into the wall with a crash which Sveta could not hear but which the maid evidently could. She whirled to put her back to the wall, clutching her throat and gasping for breath, eyes darting frantically around, apparently reassuring herself of her returned senses of sight and sound.

  Sveta took a second, meanwhile, to observe the second story. There was a corridor here much like the entrance hall below, this one lined with closed doors. In total, there were about five. Once more, it would be quite difficult to circumvent these in her squirrel shape. Well, come to that, stealth was already a losing game. Sveta had no idea who was throwing around spells below, but it was obvious the residents of the chateau had been alerted to something more than a rogue squirrel.

  The maid, slightly calmer, at last looked down. Her eyes locked on Sveta. For a moment, squirrel and woman stared one another down.

  The time for stealth was over.

  Sveta bared her teeth and sprang like a tiger.

  The maid let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

  Ivoire zipped through the air like a diving falcon in reverse, covering one-quarter of the upper floor in a matter of seconds. One, two, three windows went by on the eastern face. The shadow of her white-and-copper body skimmed the surface of the glass like a pale shark cutting through dark waters. The first window looked into a room at the southeastern corner of the second story: a large, well-appointed bedroom, with a canopy bed draped in lace curtains. No signs of life within. Ivoire stretched her neck and pumped her clockwork joints. The second window looked into a smaller, more humble bedroom, also devoid of any living beings. The final window, into the hall from which all these rooms branched, where the stairs led down to the first story’s foyer. This hall had living beings in it. A woman dressed like a maid, cowering back against the wall beside one of the windows, and a squirrel in midair, suspended at the top of a parabolic leap. Her tiny claws were spread and her mouth open like a hunting cat, and the maid’s screams could be heard through the rattling glass. Emerging from the bubble of darkness partway down the stairs behind them was a purple-skinned tiefling in red and black clothes, as yet unseen by squirrel or maid.

  Neither one was Isma?l or Irénée. Ivoire flew on.

  Valentina slowed a few yards past the chateau, panting and staring over her shoulder. Nobody had followed her. She felt both relieved about this and worried: no enemies may have followed, but neither had any of her allies. She couldn’t even see any of them, anymore. Had they scattered?

  With no visible pursuers, she slowed to a jog, then a stop. From this angle, something caught her eye about the northeastern corner of the building. There was a door, made of the same wood as the front door but square and set with an iron ring. It leaned against the foundations of the chateau, clearly leading down into some kind of cellar or basement.

  Valentina glanced around. Still no observers. She crept cautiously back towards this cellar door. She’d just try it, just to see. There was no way it was going to be unlocked. She’d just try it and then keep running. Maybe she’d hook up with Romaric in the market. They could have a shopping date! As an alibi, of course. Valentina could truthfully tell any guards who asked that she had had nothing to do with the squirrel break-in.

  Idly, not expecting it to move, she tugged on the iron ring.

  The door swung open easily. Any creak it might have made was negated by the silence of Valentina’s spell. A flight of wooden stairs led down into a dimly-lit cellar.

  Valentina blinked. Well, okay. They were kind of just asking for break-ins, weren’t they? She’d take a peek. Maybe they kept treasure in their cellar.

  Alone, within the radius of the magical silence, Valentina trooped down the stairs into the cellar.

  Halfway around, now. The northwestern corner. Ivoire blasted around it in a hurricane of flapping, clicking wings. Her momentum swung her tail and legs out in a drift that left her clawing to tuck them back in as if she was running on the mist for a moment. Windows flashed past almost too fast to peek through, if only there hadn’t been one every foot or so looking into the same room. All of them looked into a large room on the western side of the building. This one was dark, but Ivoire was able to make out the shapes of bookshelves lining the walls and thrusting out into the middle of the space. A library.

  Smack! The homunculus let out a startled croak as something hit the inside of the window as she passed. If not for the glass, she would have been struck! The bird-shaped machine craned her head back to look over her own wing. Her button eyes met the glowing yellow ones of a cat, its paws pressed to the glass, its mouth flexing rapidly open and shut as it stared in her direction. The next window confirmed it: the library was full of cats, lounging all over the floors and the furniture.

  None of them were Isma?l or Irénée, so Ivoire flew on.

  In the kitchen, Emily opened her mouth to try to elaborate on her premise and convince the lady of the house that she was there for legitimate, squirrel-hunting reasons, only for no voice to emerge. After a fruitless moment of gaping like a fish, she let rip a completely silent growl and threw herself back through the broken kitchen window. The way forward was blocked. She’d have to circle behind the spellcasters. Once on the grass, she became a streak of white and black, circling the house and blowing past the sheet of darkness concealing the front door. She arrived just as Aeon put one armored elbow through a dining-room window.

  At the same moment, the cook who had been stranded in the doorway when he had abruptly found himself deaf and blind, stumbled out of the bubbles and onto the front lawn to find the monster from his kitchen now directly beside him. The man screamed in terror and set off down the road at a dead sprint.

  Emily spared the man only a single contemptuous sniff. Once more, the tabaxi woman used her body to make the small hole in the window into a large one. Aeon blinked as Emily landed in a shower of glass shards and set off into the bubble of darkness at her own dead sprint. A shower of eldritch, violet sparks surrounded her like fireflies, briefly lighting up the path she had to take in order to gain the stairs.

  After a moment, Aeon shrugged and climbed through after her at a more sedate pace. Illyan dithered for a moment before cursing and sprinting forward, past the southwest corner of the house and aiming for the rear, northern side. Surely there was a back door! Overhead, the artificer’s homunculus shot past in the opposite direction.

  The penultimate corner, now. Ivoire banked around the protruding architecture on the western side with a clatter of gears and a flutter of white feathers. Only a few more windows. The first looked into that same library. The second into a much smaller, much dustier storage room. The third looked into a second small, nondescript bedroom which appeared to contain no living beings at all until, suddenly, it was thrown open by a human body tumbling through. The tiefling bard held the door open, while the distressed maid fell to her knees, trembling in fear as she fled her sciurine pursuer.

  Ivoire recognized both from moments ago in the hallway; neither one Isma?l or Irénée. Ivoire flew the last leg of her search.

  Within the overlapping bubbles of silence and darkness, Emily, the tiefling bard, the lady of the house, and the servants’ movements were perfectly concealed.

  No bang or yelp indicated that Emily had just knocked into the protruding decorative elk horns on a dining room chair.

  No shriek or sizzle indicated that the valet, fleeing wildly into the kitchen, had bounced off of the live fire in the hearth before stumbling through the broken window and legging it away from the chateau.

  No whisper of petticoats indicated that the lady was moving through the chateau at an unhurried pace, her direction certain as she passed through the kitchen and into the room beyond, leaving the door standing open behind her.

  And no footstep indicated that the tiefling bard was mounting the stairs with one hand on the banister, a wicked grin crossing her face. She arrived at the top in time to see the maid scramble and half-fall away from a pouncing squirrel, fleeing in terror towards a set of double doors. She was brought to a sudden halt by the rattle of a lock. The maid whirled, eyeing the squirrel on the floor behind her as if it truly was a tiger about to pounce on her once more. Sveta met her gaze and threw out her legs into a wider stance, ready for a second charge.

  The tiefling bard moved past this standoff, swanning down the hall and trying every door until she found one unlocked. It opened into a fairly nondescript bedroom. “Here! This one should be safe!” she called out to the maid.

  With a grateful sob, pursued by a squirrel, the maid fled towards safety. The bard shut the door behind her with a bang. Sveta skidded to a stop a few yards away. Bard and squirrel now eyed one another warily, waiting for the other to make a move.

  After a moment, Sveta’s graceful shape unfolded from the squirrel’s. She flipped her pale hair back, looking as if she would never do anything as undignified as get her butt stuck beneath a door. “Hello. My name is Sveta. Am looking for missing children.”

  “Interesting…” the tiefling drawled, her grin not faltering. “Well, I’m Minnie Mélodie. I was hired to play for this intensely boring tea party until you showed up. They’re kidnapping children, you say?”

  “Something like this. Or maybe they only steal children’s dresses. Anyway. Excuse me.” From within a pocket of her dress, Sveta drew out her Wand of Knock. The tip she aimed at a door across the hall.

  The door blew open. Seeing this, Minnie Mélodie shrugged and pulled out a series of picks which she set to another door. Behind the one Sveta had opened was another bedroom, this one elaborately appointed. There was a seating area as well as numerous bookshelves sporting thick volumes bound in leather and bracketed with bronze. The bed in this room was massive, sporting lacy, translucent curtains which blew aside in the breeze created by the door to reveal a dark figure laying still on the bed. Sveta approached the bed and lifted the curtain aside with the end of her quarterstaff.

  The man lying there was certainly not Isma?l. For one thing, he was dark-haired. For another, he was a large man whose gray skin now clung to his frame like loose crepe paper. For a third, he was long dead. A pair of copper pieces weighed down his eyelids.

  “Creepy,” Sveta noted.

  “Excuse me? Can I ask a favor?” Minnie called from across the hall.

  Without looking, Sveta aimed the Wand of Knock over her shoulder.

  The door in front of Minnie blew open. Something behind it made a startled yowl and sprang away. Minnie blinked into a third room which was almost entirely bare of furniture. The only thing in the whole room was a dirty bed with chains dangling from the corners of its frame. The bare, plaster walls had once been papered with a patterned yellow wallpaper the shreds of which were now the only decoration on them. There were no windows or lights at all except what was now filtering in from the hallway.

  The source of the yowl was a young woman with dark, lank hair which hung in greasy tangles over her face. She was wearing an incongruously nice white dress, tiered and trimmed with lace and ruffles, oddly clean in such dismal surroundings. Even this dress, however, had clearly suffered beneath the young woman’s restless nails, which had similarly left their marks on the bedposts and the inside of the door. To complete the strangeness of her, the young woman had leaped onto the bed on hands and knees, rounding her shoulders and baring her teeth towards Minnie.

  “Who are you? Kitty doesn’t like you!” she hissed.

  Minnie blinked behind her glasses. “Yeah, I have that effect on women. Is this one of your missing children or dresses?”

  There was a backdoor indeed, Illyan found. It was just beyond another series of windows looking into what appeared to be the servants’ quarters: a long, plain room lined with four cots and four oak chests. One of the beds was occupied by a plump woman whose snores were silenced on the other side of Valentina’s spell bubble. No siblings, no teammates, no visible enemies. The backdoor past it was all but identical to the one at the front, only with a ground-level pavingstone serving as the stoop. Muddy boots were left around the perimeter of this, and a hoe leaned up against the wall beside it.

  Illyan flung himself at the door shoulder-first, only to hear the predictable rattle of a lock. Fingers shaking with urgency, they fumbled in one of their pockets to retrieve their lockpicks. There were worryingly few sounds from within. Illyan had no idea what was happening to the others. Could the silence mean that they had all been neutralized as soon as setting foot in the chateau? He may be headed right for the same kind of trap, but how could he stop now? Irénée was in there. They’d left her there for days. They’d known she was in trouble, hunted by Strahd, and still they had just turned around and left her in Vallac to fend for herself! What, had he thought Isma?l would look after her? That buffoon couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel!

  They clenched their teeth and tried to steady their hands, working at the lock. Plink! Their care was rewarded when the lock clicked open. Illyan padded within, finding his footsteps muffled immediately. The bare edges of the bubble of darkness could be seen through the walls. They found themselves in a tiny vestibule, tiled and utterly featureless. The door to the right was shut. The one to the left was standing open, apparently leading into a storage room stacked floor to ceiling with crates and sacks of foodstuffs. Given what Illyan had seen of the chateau so far, that storage room was adjoining the kitchen. Directly in front of them, the door stood open, too, into a tiny closet area.

  The door to the right wasn’t locked. Illyan turned the knob ever-so-slowly, pushing the door open to find a long, dim room. There were multiple windows with curtains drawn, light coming in through the uneven cracks. It must have been the servants’ room, for it resembled a dormitory. A line of neat little beds and dressers. In the closest bed lay a shape breathing beneath the blankets. No sound could be heard, only the gentle undulation along the coverlet. The diffuse golden light which came off of Illyan’s hair and halo turned that body into a fuzzy, mauve mountain. There was nobody else in the room, nobody else in this part of the house at all. Nobody would hear anything that happened here. Illyan’s golden sclera glinted in the darkness as they pulled out their paper knife.

  When it was done, they pulled the door shut behind them and entered the tiny closet. Coats and uniforms hung along the walls, shoes neatly lined up in racks beneath. Illyan reached up to wipe his knife on one of these coats, lips pursed in a silent whistle as he did so. His hair cast light around the enclosed space. The shadows cast by the empty coats seemed to dance. Illyan ran their hands along the walls behind the clothes. The doors had been open as if showing the trail someone had taken. But there was nobody in this tiny closet except for them.

  Sure enough, his hands caught on an invisible seam. Illyan dug in with his nails and pulled the hidden door open, revealing a flight of wooden stairs leading down into some kind of cellar.

  At last, Ivoire had circled the entire building. No sign of either of her inventor’s siblings, nor even the missing white dress. She could no longer see much of Sveta or the tiefling bard except their backs, as they peered into some interior room.

  Ivoire spread her wings and pumped, rising up above the gable of the chateau. Illyan lay on the other side of the building, searching inside the back door. Ivoire folded into a dive that would take her swiftly back to her creator. She had to tell him.

  Neither of his siblings were anywhere within this house.

  The cellar was half the size of the chateau above, a cool, open space which Valentina imagined echoed quite a bit when there wasn’t a silence spell enclosing the staircase. Sconces flickered on the stone walls, filling the space with the scent of oil as well as the scent of rotting potatoes. Valentina paused to take in the space on the wooden staircase leading down from the eastern side. Across from her on the western wall was an identical, but mirrored wooden staircase. The door at its top was upright rather than the tilted, square one Valentina had come through. Both staircases terminated in smooth dirt. Aside from the sconces, there was hardly anything in the large space at all. While the scent indicated it might once have served as a regular root cellar, no longer were any foodstuffs in evidence.

  Instead, lining the southern wall was a series of four cots. The furthest of these was occupied. A woman with oily, blotchy brown-and-blonde hair which had once been pulled back and was now half-torn free. She wore a nightgown covered in stains. Some seemed to be food, while others were clearly dried blood. The fabric was worn almost through in places and torn asunder in others. The woman must have been very cold. Finally, her hands were clearly tied to the frame of the cot beneath her, and her mouth was covered by a cloth gag. Huge blue eyes focused on the light spilling down from above and the silhouette of Valentina on the stairs.

  This high up, Valentina was still within the bubble of silence, but she could tell by the jerking shoulders and head that the captive must have been attempting to shout through her gag. Those eyes and that face could not have been more familiar to Valentina, despite the terrible, fading dye-job on the hair. It was the face she saw in her own looking glass every morning.

  It was Irénée.

  Valentina didn’t pause. Without hesitation, she charged down the stairs. There was no way to alert the others right now! She had no communication spells and regular talking would be consumed by her own spell of silence. No one was even close enough to shout at, anyway! Valentina was the only one who knew Irénée was here.

  As soon as her boot touched the surface of the dirt floor, two things happened:

  The first was that she exited the bubble and sound returned. Indeed, the captive Irénée was shouting behind her gag and indeed it did echo throughout the space.

  The second was that patches of earth all around the cellar began to bulge and churn. A familiar sound of scraping punctuated Irénée’s warnings. Valentina watched in horror as eight skeletons clawed their way free of the earth between herself and Irénée.