On the other hand, my curiosity was as great as his. If something had dealt with his zombie, chances were it might prove as dangerous to Azalin. Quite a cheering thought, that.

The risks for both of us seemed equal at this point.

I shrugged as if unconcerned. "Do as you please."

Without further delay, he stepped forward into the grass, shaking the snow from the hems of his robes. He paused after ten paces, carefully looking and listening. I knew he would be alert to any magic in the air as well as trying to re-establish contact with his servant. Another ten paces and nothing happened.

"Can you see it?" I called after him.

"Not yet."

The wind kicked up to a higher force, and he had to lean into it to keep his balance. It would greatly restrict his ability to hear anything. Ten more paces, fighting the rising wind for each one of them.

"Well?" I shouted.

He made a dismissive waving motion, too occupied trying to stay on his path to answer. The wind howled around him, tearing at his clothing. He struggled mightily against it, and I got the impression he was going to try some spellwork to make the weather more accommodating to exploration. He started to pull a scroll from one of his pockets-

Then Azalin staggered as though struck by a large, invisible fist. The force of it was enough to lift him right from the ground and send him flying high and far. Arms flailing and legs kicking, he arced straight over my head and landed with an audible thud, sprawling gracelessly in the snow, his rich robes in much disarray. I hurried over in time to see the look of vast surprise flashing across his face, but that was soon supplanted by anger as he recovered from the assault.

I looked down at him and tried to hide my amusement at his indignity with bright curiosity. "It seems your presence is not welcome there," I concluded.

"Impossible," he snapped, struggling to his feet. I didn't offer to help.

"Then what else could it be?"

He sneered. "Maybe it was more goblyns."

"It looked more like a backlash effect, which means someone interfered with your hold on that thing. They cut off your control, lured you in, then gave you a bloody nose for your trouble."

I must have been living up to my name, for the devil was certainly in me at that moment. His red eyes flashed on me for an instant, his expression that of pure, naked hatred. I had seen it before and was unimpressed.

To his credit he managed to hold in his temper and not try anything foolish. He smoothed his facial illusion back to its usual lines of disdain and turned from me to the new land.

"Going to make a second try?" I inquired, all interest.

In answer he strode forward and crossed in-by exactly one pace.

"Any sense of another's presence?" I asked after a moment.

He shut his eyes and-evidently straining as if to hear distant sound-shook his head. "There is a… I can't quite…"

Then I heard it-a kind of voiceless whisper, the sort that can only happen when spoken directly into one's mind. I recognized it, having heard something very similar centuries ago when making my bargain with Death.

"Arak," it said.

I saw by Azalin's reaction that he "heard" it, too. He quietly stepped back across the border.

"What is the meaning?" I murmured, staring out over the new land's wind-blasted landscape.

He shook his head. "I think that is the name of this place. Arak."

As he spoke the name the conviction came to me that he was absolutely correct. I grunted a short acknowledgment. We were both too used to the vagaries of the Art to question this strange mental missive. "Do you plan to study this place?"

"Of course I will."

"After the business with Forlorn, I got the impression you were not especially interested."

"Only after I'd exhausted all the other lines of investigation it had to offer. With Arak's appearance, I can now repeat what I have done and compare the two with what I know about Barovia, then see if any useful answers reveal themselves."

"Will you require more laboratory equipment?" When it came to such material supplies, Azalin was a bottomless pit of necessity.

"I'll inform you if I do."

"Have you any initial hypothesis to prove with all this research?"

"It has to do with the conjunction phenomenon."

He'd spoken of his pet theory a few times in the past. He had the idea that our plane occasionally joined itself with others, including the one belonging to the elusive Oerth. In this manner outsiders were able to enter, but the openings must be in one direction only and but temporary in nature. If the gates were a permanent and obvious fixture in the other planes, there would be far more newcomers invading Barovia.

"My thought is that it may be possible for whole sections of lands from outside to be drawn to this plane," he said.

"Why?"

"That remains to be discovered, but it may be for a similar reason why so many bandits and the like are transported here by the Mists. It could be triggered by some harrowing negative event centered around a single powerful individual, a reverse conjunction, if you will."

"On a very large scale. It seems rather much to center around a single person."

"Yet you are here; your isolation generated the night of your brother's wedding."

A reminder I did not welcome. "And what about Forlorn?"

"That worthless creature skulking in the castle apparently collected enough negativity with its pathetic crimes to cause the surrounding lands to break away-or perhaps the Mists came for it."

After several years of poking and prodding, I eventually discovered the existence of Forlorn's reigning lord. "Creature" was as accurate a description as it could hope to have, being an unlikely hybrid. At night it was a ghost and by day one such as myself, its movements limited. By common consent Azalin and I generally ignored the wretch, and it returned the favor.

Azalin continued, "I shall attempt to find the reason behind Arak's appearance here."

I silently wished him luck in that endeavor, for he would certainly need it.

"I am of a mind that other lands may also come to join themselves to Barovia in this plane, like pieces of a table puzzle. Gather enough together and one might understand the whole picture."

"That could take centuries at this rate."

He sniffed. "Neither of us is going anywhere."

"My exact point," I dryly returned.

He deigned not to respond to that, and I took my leave skyward, riding the winds along the new border, going over the ground I had viewed in the crystal. Nothing interesting presented itself. If Azalin's optimism about discovering anything useful paid off, well and good, but I had serious doubts. He'd failed far too often in the past for me to start bolstering myself with hope at this late date. The idea of sharing eternity with his abrasive company was a dismal one, but unless some other change happened besides the bringing of new inmates and property into the prison, it looked to be the future for us both.

My instincts were that the Barovian peasants here would simply accept the continuation of the land into Arak without question, the same as the mining communities in the south had accepted Forlorn. I had sent declarations out to the boyars in the area, advising anyone against crossing that border owing to the danger presented by the goblyns. I did not forbid the activity entirely, only cautioned that they would do it at their own risk. It's been my experience that once any given activity is prohibited it becomes irresistible bait to lure the foolish into trying it. Though it was a way of clearing out the mental deadwood, I preferred to cleave to my own less wasteful methods. I despise the squandering of perfectly good blood.

The recovery and exhibition of additional goblyn bodies over the years proved to be an excellent determent to would-be explorers and emigrants and inspired the boyars to willingly cooperate in the assembling of a loose domestic militia along the border. When the weather permitted they gathered at least once a moon to do battle drills, and the cultivation of sword fighting skills came to be the fashion among the upper class families. Very impressive, though I doubted if any of them could stand more than five minutes in the heat of real combat before running like rabbits.