That is what is foremost in my mind, to return to my own land and deal with the traitors who pursued me into that damned mist in the first place. I judge that I can put up with Von Zarovich for whatever length of time it takes to effect the spell; it should not be long, but one impediment worries me.

I have discovered a truly devastating obstacle: I am unable to learn new magic.

It has to be the single most unpleasant surprise I have faced in the last century, and I refuse to accept its permanency. Not a day goes by that I do not attempt to break the barrier that prevents me from learning even the simplest of new spells. Thus far it remains intact. Until and unless I can breach it I will have to preserve the peace between myself and Von Zarovich, since he has no such limitation.

What an intolerable situation this is. For he is ever eager to exploit my fund of knowledge, yet I am unable to improve my own concerning the practical application of a spell. I must be very careful never to allow him to suspect this weakness of mine, lest he gain greater power over me. How this will affect the swiftness of my escape I do not as yet know. Until then I can make no move against Von Zarovich, for I need him to cast spells I cannot learn for myself.

The other secret I must preserve is that of my own true nature.

Mortals and uncanny night creatures alike have a universal revulsion to what I am. It is an instinctual thing that goes beyond all reason with them and the usual reaction is to attempt to destroy me-which has yet to happen. Von Zarovich might be able to countenance the truth, but it is not my intention to test him. To that end I have very carefully cast a spell upon him, preventing him from determining what is beneath my concealing illusion. It is a much subtler version of one I took care to employ on my own servitors; anything more and he would notice the spell. Thus far there has been no change in his manner to indicate that he is aware of the spell on him or my secret.

He may harbor curiosity about my peculiarities but hopefully will never be able to answer his questions. The core of the spell has to do with preventing his mind from making certain key connections. The danger for me is if he accidentally stumbles upon the answer, but now that I have the free run of his library I have been taking steps to prevent such an event from happening.

I am spared from the necessity of additional castings on those around him, since his dealings with living mortals are infrequent. His castle servitors, guards and the like, are already dead and altogether mindless, being one of his best lines of defense against an ordinary attack. He takes advantage of the fact that people who can think are so frightened by those who cannot-the dead.

I, of course, am the exception to that.

543 Barovian Calendar, Barovia

The passage of a single year may be swift or slow for me depending on the focus of my attention. When waiting upon some important occasion, such as the return of my Tatyana, time seems to nearly stop. When working on research that might lead to my escape, I forget about it altogether and blink in surprise to find it is again mid-summer.

The passage of this past year has been paradoxically both swift and slow, which has been due entirely to the presence of my "guest," Azalin. Though stimulating company, to say the least, he is rather like having a tame bear about the castle… an amusing novelty-until it decides to turn on you.

We spent the initial weeks of our new partnership exchanging information, both magical and otherwise, though we were as yet both very cautious in what we shared, neither desiring to give advantage to the other. Furthermore, we used these initial discussions to begin to learn one another's native tongue so that the use of spells would no longer be necessary to converse. The use of spell work to communicate soon became altogether unnecessary for us.

The solstice was nearly upon us again. Tonight, as the year turned from season to season, Azalin would call upon the resulting fluxing energies to lend power to the spell we would attempt. Of course, a lot of preparation had gone into this.

542 Barovian Calendar, Barovia

In that dank and crumbling manor house Azalin and I settled on the generalities of just how we were to work together to engineer his return home and my possible escape. The latter was not very important to him, I could immediately see that, so it would be up to me to not let him forget it in his haste to leave.

It had been many years since I had to actually stoop to negotiating with another, but his power was such that I dared not press him too strongly against his will lest he decide to press forward with the open challenge he had mentioned. All things between us had to be carefully balanced, so I had to hurriedly scrape the rust off my bargaining skills in order to rise to the need at hand. I did rather well for someone with virtually no position of strength. The art of the bluff is not to be underestimated.

I also believe that it had been long since he had to do the same, else he would have come out ahead on some points. He was cautious and patient, but perhaps too much so; there is a time and place for such, but one must know when the moment is right to decisively strike. Even now, he may end up waiting too long and fall behind.

Each moment I spent with him added to my knowledge of his idiosyncrasies, all of which would be useful to me as a strategist should open conflict come about. If I could prevent it I would, but now was not the time.

Despite my instinct to kill him and be done with the threat, reason told me that he was my best chance to escape. His knowledge-so he informed me, and so I later discovered-of the Art was indeed profound. I could learn much from him and intended to do just that. Dangerous as he was, the risk was worth it if it could expand my own knowledge.

To make this a relatively safe and viable undertaking, I found I had many other duties to suddenly perform, such as apprising the nobles in the immediate area of the manor house about its new tenant. This task I assigned to Zorah. I deemed her intricate social circle within the boyars to be the best way to deliver instructions to the local nobles. She was an important figure to the various families, making her a most useful tool to manipulate the twisted workings of Barovian politics. Besides, she seemed rather grateful to me for having handled the situation with Azalin and my efforts to keep him at a safe distance from her own home.

The locals would know only that Azalin had arrived in the land by a traveling spell that went awry, and it was my express order that he be left strictly alone for as long as he was here. The story I gave was mostly the truth, that Azalin was an extremely dangerous sorcerer, easily offended. Zorah's own experience with him would bear that out.

On the surface this policy was to keep the nobles from endangering themselves by encounters with Azalin's quirks of temper. In reality, I did not want him making allies of any disaffected members of Barovia's nobility. The idea of their using Azalin as a figurehead, his magical talents as a weapon, and rebelling against me was one of the first possible dangers I'd thought of, and denying him the opportunity seemed the best solution. Perhaps it might even avert the war Madam Eva had warned me about.

My boyars could be a fractious lot. I had held full control of them for nearly two hundred years, and except for that one attempt at civil war that I'd foiled, things had been relatively peaceful. Sometimes there would be the odd assassination or two happening between rival houses, but when those occurred I arbitrated things back to normal when necessary. If the death was justified, I let things stand. If not, then the perpetrators were issued an invitation to come inspect my dungeons at Castle Ravenloft. The more intelligent ones always elected to kill themselves outright, their relatives tendering regrets to me. The rest would either try to hide (which was quite useless) or bolt away to take their chances in the Mists. Then would I set my wolves to track them down first and dispose of the problem. As I have said, I had not established my rule in order to be loved.