The Crucible of RVR (Short Story)

The Crucible of Rudolph Van Richten

Adapted from the work by David Wise, in Tales of Ravenloft

As Darkon's heavens deepened past indigo, receding beyond the ready backward reach of dusk, sinewy vapors slid between the trees and churned into dim mirages of an old forest road. Shadows lost their confining edges, merged, and thickened. To scorn shelter in the land of the mists after sunset was deadly folly, but for one traveler, the promise of a bright hearth and a warm bed had already slipped into darkness. Dr. Rudolph Van Richten turned and grimaced at the burden lashed to the rump of his horse: the stiffened corpse of a dark-haired young man. "We may both be ghoul meat tonight, but I'll catch your people before the flesh-eaters find me, Vistana!" he spat, with a great deal more conviction than he felt.

The lean, middle-aged herbalist searched the diminishing horizon ahead, desperate for any sign of a brightly painted vardo. He'd ridden hard since morning, yet the gypsy caravan had somehow outdistanced him anyway. There's no other route they could have taken from Rivalis, but he had seen no sign of them all day. Still, Van Richten rode on doggedly, as fearless of the impending night as a lamb to the chopping block. The Vistani had kidnapped his beloved only child, Erasmus, and all the torments that might descend out of the night were nothing compared to that loss!

As Tasha trotted across the eclipsing lane, Van Richten scanned its overgrown borders. He spotted a slender oak branch that hung by a feeble tether of bark; the bough snapped off cleanly in his hand as he guided Tasha past it. Draping the reins over the saddle, he trimmed and peeled the wood into a crooked pole about as tall as himself. Then, grasping the coarse linen shirt of the lifeless Vistana, he ripped free a wide swath, which he wrapped around the end of the staff and tied off, fashioning a long torch. Now for the courage to light it.

Overhead, the leafy ceiling cast a net of opaque shadow over the horse and rider, reducing the gritty road to a colorless strip that withered into void just ahead. A deathly hush smothered the forest, and the lonely staccato of Tasha's hooves rose in the silence, growing painful to Van Richten's ears. He vainly wished she could walk above the ground so they might slip through the woods without a sound, but with every step, her saddle creaked in betrayal. All creatures of the night were deep in their lairs, while things that creep in the night were just rising, pricking up their ears at the isolated clip-clop in the spreading blackness. The anguished father wondered if he could keep the path without a torch. They were alone, and he wanted to remain so. Dr. Van Richten was just a peaceful herbalist from a small village—no match for danger—and only the tortuous vision of Erasmus drove him on. A man who braves the Darkon night, went the saying, will see wondrous things before he dies. Until now, that had been an old preacher's proverb, spoken with a chuckle… and behind safely bolted doors.

The merest suggestion of a queer noise implanted itself in Van Richten's ear, and a cold shiver wrung his spine. A dim wisp of something in the nearby underbrush—or so he thought. He ogled the dark spot, but spied nothing beyond the murky flank of the road. A glint of light  flitted by, and his eye darted across the motion, but caught only a gyrating mist. He blinked and squinted at the depthless surroundings, then shivered again. Tasha expelled a tense low whinny and turned her sleek head in the same direction. She had seen something, too. He glanced to the other side of the road, where now a pale fire kindled beneath the brush. Soon a greenish glow slithered through the eerie silhouettes of the thicket, illuminating the undergrowth in a faint pall. "Easy, Tasha, easy, girl," he urged, soothing the mare with a stroke on her gray-dappled neck. "It's only mist and faerie fire." Tasha threw back her head and snorted anxiously, stamping one hoof and then another. The ghostly light, a legendary fixture of the Darkon countryside, was said to glow over the graves of the dead—perhaps not enough people died here in the woods, the doctor thought blackly, for its luminescence aided his old eyes little. "I suppose I must light the torch," Van Richten muttered, putting down the reins once more and reaching into the chest pocket of his old woolly cloak for a small spring-loaded spark block. He squeezed the roughened strip of steel against the small flint bar, compressed the spring, and then released it. The file scraped across the surface of the block as the spring recoiled, releasing a flurry of brilliant sparks. "I hope we're alone, girl," he remarked to Tasha. "This torch will—" Van Richten caught his breath and held his tongue. Something had whispered in the mist. Tasha's ears snapped forward, angled and trembling, and her muscles went taut between Van Richten's legs.

A blood-chilling, unnatural moan fluttered the horse's muzzle, inducing an ominous tingle under the man's skin. Instinctively, he pocketed the spark block and caught up the reins. Then Tasha's ears went flat—with a sharp heave, her equine scream splintered the silence, piercing Van Richten's heart with icy dread. The mare reared up and leaped as if she would climb into the air, nearly flipping onto her back. Van Richten madly flung down the torch, seized her mane with both hands, and leaned into the cringing saddle, clutching with all the strength his forearms could muster. The unhinged animal bucked and spun in blind, reckless hysteria, filling the air with shrieks that wound higher with every convulsive breath. Meanwhile, the Vistana corpse behind Van Richten flailed wildly on Tasha's haunches, striking the doctor with blows from its floppy limbs. With each thrash, Tasha's sturdy mane slipped further through Van Richten's fingers. For a moment, he experienced a queasy weightlessness, until he and his mount collided with a barrier of pine trees, brutally knocking the wind from him. Tasha writhed against the clawing needles and lunged away with another scream, leaving the doctor entangled in the branches; she ripped free of his clasping legs and wheeled out of sight while he plunged headlong into the pulpy thicket.

For a long, dizzy moment, Van Richten lay oblivious in the wet and thorny bed, but fear that Tasha might whirl back and trample him provoked him into action. He rolled out of the bushes and into the road, now illuminated in the subtle blaze of faerie fire. He frantically searched around him for stampeding hooves, but Tasha rampaged in another direction. The thought struck Van Richten that she might bolt back to Rivalis and leave him stranded, so he crawled stupidly toward her, still unsure of his feet.

Van Richten clawed at the cold dirt behind him, his will teetering. Then, by chance, his hand fell upon the torch. He climbed drunkenly to his feet, planted the tip of the staff in the road, and pulled himself up. The still  smoky torch sent up a dirty ribbon of soot and cast a yellowish glow over the bushes around him. He stared dazedly after the movement until the pounding in his ears subsided. Slowly, the internal cacophony diminished, only to be replaced by a grating shuffle behind him. The doctor wheeled about and squinted through the torchlight, only to crumple back to his knees and groan helplessly at the faces of two walking dead men!

Van Richten saw the zombies' waxy skin sagging from the bone beneath their eyes, puckering about the neck and cracking at the folds. Their splintered teeth were clogged with dirt beneath wide, cleft, blackened lips. Brittle hair dangled in a wiry chaos atop their seeping heads, sometimes bordering upon an encrusted patch of sloughed-off scalp, and rotted flesh clung pointlessly to meatless bones wrapped in torn, leathery skin. Behind them, motionless and open-eyed, lay the remains of Tasha, the Vistana still somehow lashed to her lifeless launches on the cold earth. Shadows of several more of the dead lurked over the poor mare's remains, and Van Richten thrust his eyes away from the details of that sight.

"Whatever you are," he pleaded to the walking dead before him, "I beg of you. Raise me to living death if you must, but leave me the will to avenge myself upon the—"

The dead men halted and hovered silently over him, radiating frigid oblivion, then spoke, moving their lips in absolute unison. "I am the voice of Lord Azalin," they croaked through moldering vocal cords.

The Witch-King! Here? "L– Lord Azalin?" stammered the man.

The king was a powerful wizard, but to detect the plight of a subject at the very borders of his domain, let alone come to the rescue, was astounding. He must have used his magic to animate the dead men and make them perform his will.

"Identify yourself," the dead ordered monotonously.

"I am Rudolph Van Richten."

Another corpse joined the pair from behind—this one a female, with her throat torn open. "I know you," claimed all their flayed lips together, some with a hiss, others with a croak. "You are a physician of Rivalis."

"Yes, Lord Azalin. Thank the gods you are here!" exclaimed Van Richten, fighting down the rush of bile in his mouth at the sight of sunken eyes and air-dried bones.

"Do not rejoice, Van Richten. There is no mercy for those who defy curfew. Only one thing stays your death: curiosity. What are the Vistani to you?" Another zombie shuffled up and joined the chorus. Van Richten stared dumbly at the ribbon stumps of its fingers, worn away from digging free of the earth.

"Speak! What are the Vistani to you?" they all asked in sepulchral tones.

The man's gaze sank to the ground as the story formed in his head. "They came yesterday, to my house in Rivalis, and demanded that I treat one of their tribe: Radovan Radanovich—that man there," Van Richten said, pointing a trembling finger at the raven-haired Vistana, who lay beside Tasha's scored, crimson haunches. "But he was too sick. I couldn't save him."

Van Richten's throat constricted as the memory came into focus. "He was the son of their leader. She accused me of letting him die, and threatened to curse me. I told them they could have anything of mine if they would withhold their terrible powers. And when I awoke this morning, I found that they had chosen to take my son!" the doctor halted, swallowing his rage like a shard of broken glass.

"Old Bellendolf—my neighbor—saw them go west," he finally growled. "I've chased them all day, but they're faster than I expected." More zombies lumbered into the simmering circle of fairy fire, which now outshone the dwindling embers of cloth on the torch, and he could hear the graceless shuffle of even more approaching.

"The Vistani do not travel the roads," intoned the raspy chorus. "They travel the mists. Most likely they are in Barovia by now, for they are Strahd von Zarovich's toadies, and he grants them asylum."

"Barovia? That must be four or five days' ride from here."

"For them, it is not an hour's walk."

"Then my son is lost!" moaned Van Richten.

"Most certainly," returned the manifold voice of Azalin. "So how would you avenge yourself, if you could?"

"I—" he paused, unprepared. "I don't know, but I'd figure something out."

"Would you… murder them?"

"I am a doctor. I am a healer. I don't know how to kill anything! I… I hope to simply steal back my son. I may have seen more than forty winters, but I could still move quite stealthily."

"You cannot even follow the Vistani at a distance, let alone approach them unnoticed," retorted the undead assembly. Still others were arriving; there must have been more than twenty or thirty of them now. Van Richten felt a prickle of irritation. "How could I know what to do when I haven't done it before? Without knowledge, one can learn only through experience—"

"And thus are many fools killed."

"I am no fool—I'm a desperate father! Besides, my lord, I learn quickly, and as a doctor, I am sure that knowledge is power."

The forest echoed with the throaty laughter of desiccated vocal cords; the doctor felt spiny icicles form in the pit of his stomach. "Indeed, Van Richten, it is the purest power, but one must wield it only when one has acquired it."

Van Richten blustered with ill-fitting bravado and claimed, "I am here, after all!"

"Well said. I am of a mind to help you in your revenge, for I cannot tolerate the Devil Strahd’s gypsy poachers in my lands. Besides, it will be interesting to see if this dead Vistana of yours can guide you through the mists."

"You can restore his life?" cried the doctor with sudden hope and awe. "That would be perfect! Surely the Vistani will return my boy if Radovan is returned to them!"

"I did not say I would restore him to life…"

The chorus began to whisper first in unison and then in dizzying counter rhythms that blended into an acidic hiss. Ebony coils of smoke belched from their mouths and slithered across the ground, coalescing into a tiny, scaly cord that wormed its way into Radovan's mouth. When the ebony tip curled and sank between his lips, the chanting subsided, and Radovan's eyes fluttered open. He wobbled to his feet and stood crookedly, for his spine had snapped when Tasha had fallen. His slack-jawed, listing face was flushed with chalky blue, and his chestnut eyes rolled back, white, while his swollen tongue punched between his teeth and waved in the air, as if it were lapping at the remains of the inky smoke that had animated him.

"Fetch the bridle of the horse," commanded Azalin's multitude.

Too numb to question, Van Richten stumbled to Tasha and knelt beside her still head; her icy blue eye lay open wide in motionless terror. He stroked her jaw and mumbled, "I'm sorry, girl." A pang of guilt stabbed him as his hand caressed the velvety lip; gently, he unstrapped the bridle and slipped it off her muzzle.

"Put the bit in the mouth of the Vistana," ordered the voices.

Van Richten looked at Radovan, perplexed. "You want me to put the bridle on him?"

"Correct."

"…Will he not attack me?"

"By my will, no unliving thing may touch you this night. Now, obey me!"

"Have you even that much power, Lord Azalin?" uttered Van Richten, stricken by the thought. "How do mortals possess such omnipotence?"

"Obey me!" commanded the multitude.

"Yes, my lord." Van Richten stood before Radovan and searched the lolling dark irises; they returned his gaze in a cadence of movements, but no glimmer of sentience shimmered behind them—nothing, except perhaps some instinctive craving for some forgotten thing, long gone. Gingerly, the doctor reached out, grasped Radovan's cold chin, and forced the bit of the bridle between his crusty lips, pinning back the waggling tongue. He slipped the muzzle strap over the top of the Vistana's head and cinched it behind, letting the rest of the harness and reins dangle to the ground.

"Hold this minion's reins, and he will heed your commands," the deathly voice of Azalin instructed. "Learn if he can guide you through the mists. Report to me, Van Richten, if you return."

Dr. Van Richten reluctantly took up the reins. "Radovan?" he whispered, but the gypsy made no reply. "Radovan," he repeated, loudly. "Take me to your people."

The zombie lingered a moment longer, then turned his back on the doctor and paused again. "Radovan! Damn you, take me to your mother!"

With that, the bridled, emaciated scout staggered forward, and, as one, the undead mob turned and followed. Gray tentacles of mist embraced and drew them all into a blind fog, leaving the netherworld of fairy fire and blood hunters behind. Van Richten's walk among the dead stretched into a time-trapped phantasm, a shuffling nightmare in which his leaden feet slavishly ignored the constant, desperate urge to flee.

There was little to see as he trudged squeamishly behind his ghoulish beast of burden, and all he could hear was the funereal shuffle of the lifeless herd, so he stared glumly at Radovan's broken back ahead of him, unwillingly reliving the Vistana's last moments of life.

"I didn't kill you, Vistana," Van Richten asserted. "Blood on my hands washes clean. Find your people," he growled. "Find them now."

In response, a breeze swelled and broke the mist, swiftly scattering them to reveal the foothills of an unfamiliar mountainous region. Van Richten searched the terrain around him and wondered at the stark, keen ridge peaks to the east, carving a jagged horizon in the starry sky. The heavens behind them were vaguely blue, portending morning's advance, but dawn was at least an hour off.

Slowly, the size of the undead horde around him dawned on Dr. Van Richten. A great host of them—perhaps a hundred!—stood by in a huge crescent. They gibbered with ravenous urgency while their mindless presence pressed against Azalin's protection around him, grasping for a seam with an unconscious, unliving will of their own. Only Radovan looked away from Van Richten, to the south, along a grassy road that led to a knoll. His tongue began to writhe under the bit of his bridle, rattling the metal rod against his yellowish teeth.

"You found them, haven't you?" breathed Van Richten, and as if they understood his words, the legion of corpses turned and lumbered toward whatever lay atop the large hill.

What to do, Van Richten mused. The undead would shred any living thing they found. What if a farm lay before them? Even if the kidnappers were there, was this what he wanted? What if the zombies should attack Erasmus?

Van Richten dropped Radovan's reins and jostled through the moving throng of the dead. They groaned hungrily at him, but let him pass. He slowly climbed toward the crest of the hill and looked upon a short, flat expanse, where he spied the twinkle of a campfire. A large circle of broken rocks partially hid the rounded roofs of three large wagons on the far side, under the canopy of an ancient oak tree. It was the Vistani caravan.

The undead mass lurched forward, grasping with their claws and grumbling in incoherent agitation, but as they moved across the hilltop and near the camp, an alarm went up. From within the advancing mob, Van Richten watched the gypsies rush about, casting glittering dust into the air and making frantic gestures. Two dark-haired men swung thick staves at the first zombies to reach the camp, beating them to the ground. Another cadaver cast itself upon a defender, and the two of them went down; the man began to scream as it bit into his shoulder. A young woman snatched up a heavy staff and jabbed it sharply against the undead's ragged skull, knocking the head from its shoulders. Meanwhile, the walking dead circled the encampment, but their inward progress halted as the gypsies completed a warding circle.

Sharp commands rose above the grunts and sighs of the thwarted zombies as they huddled on the perimeter. Van Richten sought their source and finally sighted a hunchbacked old woman. It was Madame Radanovich, rushing among her people, snapping out orders and reinforcing the perimeter with somatic hexes of her own.

As he looked upon her frightened, yet resolute, face, Van Richten seethed in vexation. Without a plan, he parted the wall of undead and crossed the Vistani’s warding line. Two of the tribe moved to halt him, but they fell back, amazed, when they recognized him.

"Madam Radanovich! Thief!" he charged.

"Dr. Van Richten!" gasped the wrinkled woman. "How came you to Barovia? How have you set these flesh-eaters upon us?"

"Where is my son? Give me my son!" he cried in answer.

Radanovich looked over the zombies, then back at Van Richten with hardened eyes. "No! The boy is forfeit, by your own agreement and your own incompetence."

"Return him to me, or I'll– I'll unleash the dead upon you," the doctor threatened.

Two burly men seized the doctor, and the old Vistana raunie laughed cruelly. "Your brainless minions cannot touch us, Van Richten," she sneered.

"I want my son, witch."

Madam Radanovich hobbled up to the prisoner and gazed into his pale blue eyes. "We sold the giorgio child for a fair profit. He now belongs to Baron Metus. If you want the child back, deal with him."

"You sold Erasmus?" he gasped. "Why, I will– I will–" He struggled against the rough hands that held him. The old Vistana laughed.

"What will you do, little doctor? Your companions can't reach us, and it's a wonder you even found us—"

She paused and frowned. "How did you find us? Only the Mists could purvey anyone here so quickly, and only the Vistani can travel the Mists."

In spite of his predicament, Van Richten realized it was his turn to smile. "Radovan showed me the way," he replied.

"Radovan?" she sputtered, taken aback. "My Radovan?" She began to cast worried glances toward the undead. "Doctor Van Richten, where is my son?"

"Call him," whispered Van Richten coolly. "Call your son."

"No!"

"Then I will. Radovan! Radovan, come to me!"

The dead Vistana pressed to the fore and halted at the warding circle. The gypsies who held Van Richten cried out and released him, backing away from the sight of their lifeless fellow, who weaved like a broken doll, a horse's bridle in his mouth. Madam Radanovich wailed and wrung her hands, moaning, "My poor son!"

Van Richten rushed to Radovan, seized his reins, and snarled, "Here's your son, witch! Don't you want him back? I've brought him for you!" The doctor flipped the reins over the dead gypsy's head and began to pull him across the invisible barrier. Radovan's feet remained planted where they were, but his body folded unnaturally from his severed spine. He seemed to look at Van Richten as if to plead not to be pulled so, but the man tugged harder. Finally, with a stumble, the zombie crossed the line.

"He's inside the circle!" yelled a young Vistana girl.

Now Radovan staggered past Van Richten and moved toward his mother.

"Stop!" she cried, making a sign against her son, but he continued to advance.

Van Richten caught Radovan’s reins and held them, and the undead Vistana paused. "Tell me where to find Erasmus!" demanded the doctor. This time the entire army of undead pronounced it with him this time. 

"Where is my son?" they all asked in unison.

Madame Radanovich's expression changed from fear to horror and finally to fury. She pointed two fingers and a thumb at the doctor and hissed, "I curse you, Rudolph Van Richten, with all the power I have, to lay you low! Live you always among monsters, and see everyone you love fall beneath their claws! Starting with your son! Erasmus is the slave of Baron Metus, and he will be forever." She laughed hysterically and cried, "The Baron is a vampire!"

"No!" cried Van Richten in horror. "NO!" 

Hatred burst his heart, transporting him beyond reason. "You curse me, Madam Radanovich? You curse me? Feel the power of that oath redoubled upon you—I curse you! I will have my son back, as you have yours!" He threw down the reins and cried, "Go to her, Radovan!"

Van Richten wheeled upon all the terrified gypsies and screamed, "Curse you all! Living dead, take you as you have taken my son!" The army of undead writhed on the circle, pressing against it with inflamed determination, until one of them suddenly broke through at the spot where Radovan had crossed. Like water breaching a broken dam, another penetrated the ward, then a moment later, another on the other side of camp. Screams of alarm went up among the tribe as the circle's magic failed and collapsed, and the mass of voracious corpses swarmed over the camp. Some of the living futilely swung weapons or tried to flee before falling under the rush of starving, oblivious, unnatural carnivores. Horrific stenches thickened the air and slowly penetrated Van Richten's delirium of rage—he gaped in shock as Radovan tore the bit from his mouth and began to devour his own mother.

"Stop!" he shouted, but the feeding frenzy was long beyond his control. "Stop! Stop! Stop!" He bawled again. And when there was no relenting, he ran from the butchery, leaving the undead to finish their human repast. He careened down a footpath away from the carnage—running, tumbling, stumbling to the bottom of the knoll till he crashed into some bushes at the edge of the clearing, and lay there retching in utter misery. Soon his dry heaves gave way to sobbing, and he wept until dawn.

"I am a murderer," he confessed woefully.

When the sun began to cast its beams upon the peaks of the mountains, brightening their snowcaps with blue-white radiance, Van Richten sat up and wiped his eyes and mouth. There, in the wilds of Barovia, far from home, he realized that he had survived the night. He looked toward the wall of mist he could now see to the west. Somewhere out there, his son remained the prisoner of a vampire. It was said those creatures must sleep by day, and if Erasmus had somehow survived the night as well, perhaps Van Richten might still find him! Weakly, he stood, then staggered off to find his way. He would find this Baron Metus, and nothing would daunt him from that.

… when he returned from that drip, he began to write…

It is with some measure of trepidation, and yet resolve, that I, Rudolph Van Richten, begin this journal as I begin a new life—if “life” I can call it.

In truth, I am more like a monster now, for all that I knew of life is gone. I am most assuredly a foul murderer, and will never be the same. Madam Radanovich's tribe was slaughtered by my hand, for I set doom upon them like vicious dogs upon a fallen beast. My son, whose rescue was my only chance for vindication—for redemption—is dead, again by my hand, for he was transformed into a monster by the vampire Metus, and it was I who drove the killing stake through his tender heart. My beloved wife, Ingrid, is dead, and still again I am to blame, for Metus preceded me and vented his wrath upon her!

I should have died that night on the Ludendorff Road, when the undead attacked; perhaps I did, for all that is left of me is predation and violence, which has inflamed my spirit beyond mortal limits. I have forever lost myself to the night, belonging only among those whom I would obliterate.

If I may only live to see Baron Metus delivered into everlasting darkness—I will yield what "life" remains in me. I will make no claim to heroism in the assassination of the fiend, but if even one person is spared my agony by the destruction of Metus and his kind, then I may rest in peace.

—Rudolph Van Richten
Rivalis, Darkon
735