Chapter Text
The Vistani camp had the look of a place made to disappear by morning. Wagons stood ready to take the road again; cooking fires belonged to separate families, but talk passed easily between them. Rivka had mistaken the arrangement for cheerful disorder until she began asking after a guide and watched her question travel ahead of her from fire to fire.
It reached a woman seated on the steps of a painted wagon, replacing the leather binding on a harness strap. By the time Rivka crossed the clearing, the woman had apparently learned both her destination and that even having heard about the dangers of Mount Ghakis, she was not willing to give up.
“Tsolenka Pass,” the woman said. Her hands remained busy. “You will want the elf, then.”
“I was told there are several.”
“Only one in our camp tonight.”
“And he knows the road?”
“He says he does. Calls himself Kasimir.” She tested the new stitching with her thumb, then pointed the awl toward the edge of the clearing.
That was how she found him lingering near the edge of the light. Her steps slowed. He stood with a spine like an iron rod, entirely separate from the revelry around him.
He was pitched so far out of the fire's reach that the Barovian chill seemed to cling to his clothes. Standing there invited the wind - and every hungry thing beyond the wagons.
Rivka adjusted her cloak, letting the heavy fabric slip just enough to bare the curve of her neck. The bait earned no visible response.
He raised a single hand, his palm flat. "Stay where you are," he called out, his voice clipping cleanly through the crisp air. "Speak from there."
Rivka waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, are you alright? I'm certainly not going to shout over this racket if I can avoid it." She didn't break her stride, carrying her carefully arranged smile across the final few yards.
The moment she crossed some invisible threshold, a wall of sound blasted the smile off her face.
It hit her like a hammer. A cacophony of shrieking, agonizing screams layered over one another. Suddenly, the calculated sliver of bare skin at her neck just felt horribly exposed. The noise drove her briefly off balance. She dug her nails into her palms and forced her face to remain pleasant.
The dusk elf watched her recover, his expression an impenetrable mask. "I told you to stay back."
Rivka swallowed the metallic taste of adrenaline pooling in her mouth. "What is that?"
"A curse," he said, offering no further explanation.
She took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing the agony in her ears to become just another layer of background noise.
"Well," she said, her smile only slightly strained. "My name is Rebecca Grenfell, and I am not afraid of curses. I was told I might find a guide here. Though your accouterments look entirely too pristine to be dragging travelers through the snow."
The dusk elf turned slowly, his golden eyes moving from her mud-splashed boots to her expensive cloak as the silence lengthened.
"I am Kasimir," he said. His syllables were clipped, the cadence formal and precise. "And you are unprepared for Tsolenka Pass."
"Oh, I'm unprepared for most things," Rivka said and shrugged. "But I learn terribly fast, and I pay wonderfully well."
A slight narrowing of his eyes disturbed the mask of mild detachment. He let the pause lengthen until she had to resist filling it.
"The pass is treacherous," he noted dryly. "The mountains do not care how fast you learn."
Rivka laughed. “Then it’s a good thing I’m hiring you, and not the other way around!”
The dismissive line of his shoulders faltered for a fraction of a second. Rivka wondered if he had finally noticed she was watching him just as closely as he was watching her.
“What do you seek there?”
“A means of fulfilling an obligation.”
“And if the mountain does not provide it?”
“Then I shall find something else. Grenfell will not become less my responsibility merely because one mountain proves disappointing.”
His gaze remained on her, but the scrutiny had changed. She could not have said why, only that she no longer felt dismissed.
“You are still unprepared,” he said.
Rivka arranged her mouth into a wounded little pout. “You might have begun with your price before resorting to personal criticism.”
“Price doesn't matter. I'm not taking you across the pass.”
Rivka blinked. “No?”
“You are ill-equipped, poorly informed, and in far too great a hurry. Whatever you believe waits beyond the pass, desperation will not make you ready to meet it.”
She frowned. “If I had a proper guide, I would certainly become considerably less desperate.”
“You will find this line of questioning most disappointing. Find another guide, Lady Grenfell."
His tone closed the conversation with the finality of a door shutting.
She turned back toward the wagons, the fiddle, and the overlapping voices. Once her back was to him, the buoyancy left her step. She rubbed her eyes and walked toward the wagons as though her pockets were full of stones.
The past few weeks had been an agonizing ordeal. Being spirited away to an unknown realm while her ancestral home was in disarray before she could even send a missive back home to let them know she was on her way didn’t feel like simple bad luck; it felt like she was being punished for something.
She needed a way out of Barovia, fast, and Mount Ghakis sounded promising. Rumors placed powers on Mount Ghakis that still answered bargains, and bargaining was among her few reliable talents. She was done trying to save Barovians from their own shadows. Her friends’ noble intentions had seemed tempting at first, but no longer, not since she realized the true depth of this land’s corruption.
They hadn’t necessarily sent her to find a guide, but they did agree that Mount Ghakis was a potentially worthwhile destination, so they couldn’t really hold it against her if she came prepared.
With any luck, her ancestral home in Grenfell was not yet beyond saving. She cursed herself for leaving instead of staying to fight.
Yet here she was, stuck in a godforsaken camp deep within the forest.
“He told you no, then.”
Rivka recognized the woman from the painted wagon, though the harness strap had been replaced by a deck of cards.
“Repeatedly.”
“It doesn't look like you've decided to hear him.”
“You're rather observant. Of course, I'd rather turn that no into a yes.”
The woman’s mouth twitched.
“My name is Mirela,” she said. “ Since you were too busy to ask earlier. And no, I am not another guide. But I could offer you a Tarokka reading, if you promise not to tell any of my cousins.”
“So he will not take me through the pass, and you should not be reading cards.” Rivka’s face brightened. She knew an opportunity when she saw one.
“It would be against our traditions, giorgio,” Mirela said with a lop-sided grin. “But I am eager to learn, and you are hungry for knowledge.”
“If we are breaking ancient laws, let's do it twice.” She hurried toward Kasimir and stopped just beyond the screams’ reach. Right, she hadn’t really thought through the logistics. “Would you join me for a reading, Kasimir? Perhaps it will tell us if the mountains will forgive my many mistakes.”
Kasimir wore the rigid, displeased patience of a man enduring a bothersome child.
“Do you intend to shout the seer's prophecies at me across the fire? Or perhaps you wish to force the Vistani to endure the wailing that currently keeps you at such a polite distance, Lady Grenfell?”
“I apologize for trying to be neighborly. I suppose I can just ask the fortune-teller to write yours down for you. Slip it under your door, as it were.” Rivka examined her fingernails, granting him ample time to answer.
When she finally lifted her head, she noticed Kasimir freeze. Surprise displaced his irritation for a heartbeat; by the time she looked directly at him, both were gone.
“That will not be necessary,” Kasimir murmured. “Your consideration is noted.”
The Vistana glanced toward the dusk elf with the frank curiosity of someone who had been watching him from afar all evening.
“One reading,” she said. “Not two. You seek one road, do you not?”
“I seek a road,” Rivka said. “He appears determined to prevent me from finding it.”
Kasimir did not dignify that with a response.
The Vistana spread a square of dark cloth over an overturned crate. Tiny silver stars had been stitched around its edges. She began to shuffle the deck.
“Both travelers must cut.”
“It is like I told you, he does not wish to travel,” Rivka said.
“Then the reading is forfeit. I already asked a question, and I will not ask another.” The Vistana held the deck out toward Rivka. “If you wish to hear the answer, bring it to him.”
Rivka took the deck.
“Surely,” she said as she approached, “you’re not going to make me suffer all that noise just to prove you don’t believe in fortune-telling.”
She crossed the invisible threshold.
The wailing struck her again. Rivka’s fingers tightened around the cards as pain crowded behind her eyes. One scream rose above the others before sinking back into the chorus. Kasimir watched her struggle forward.
“You are being unreasonable,” he said.
She held out the deck.
For a moment, he hesitated. Then one brown hand emerged from the folds of his cloak. His fingers closed over the cards, avoiding hers.
He cut the deck once.
Rivka carried it back at a measured pace, quickening only once she crossed beyond the screams. She set the cards in front of the Vistana and exhaled through her nose.
“There,” she said. “We are both now thoroughly implicated.”
The Vistana placed the first card at the center of the cloth.
A robed figure stood amid a storm of flame, hands raised toward forces too large to contain.
“The Evoker,” she said. “Power without mastery. Magic that consumes the hand which tries to wield it.”
Rivka leaned closer. “That sounds promising.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“I’ve had promising experiences with worse.”
The Vistana laid down the second card, crossing the first.
A narrow tower rose from a field of darkness. Its single window was barred.
“The Donjon. You search for a road home, but the path before you does not lead toward freedom.”
Rivka’s smile lost some of its brightness.
“What does it lead toward?”
“A prison.”
The fire crackled between them.
Rivka examined the card as though a sufficiently skeptical stare might persuade the painted tower to change shape.
“Well,” she said at last, “at least it’s a destination.”
The Vistana drew a third card and placed it beneath the first two.
A solitary figure stood beneath the weight of a crooked staff, sheltering smaller shapes beneath a heavy cloak.
“The Shepherd,” she said. “One who protects. One who carries a burden too great to be borne alone.”
Her dark eyes lifted, not to Rivka, but to Kasimir.
“This is your aid. The one who must lead you through the mountain.”
“You presume too much,” he said.
“The cards presume nothing.”
“I have already refused her.”
The Vistana rested one nail upon the Shepherd.
“And yet you cut the deck.”
Something cold passed through his expression.
“He bears another’s burden. He walks a road chosen by another. Yet the choice before him is still his.”
Rivka glanced toward Kasimir. He had gone utterly still.
For once, she resisted the urge to fill the silence.
The fire snapped. Somewhere behind the wagons, a fiddle stumbled into a new song.
At last, Kasimir said, “First light.”
Rivka’s brows rose.
“You will bring winter clothing, proper boots, climbing rope, and provisions for no fewer than three days. You will follow my instructions without debate. If you endanger the expedition through negligence, I will turn back with or without you.”
Her smile returned in full.
“So you’ll take me?”
“I will prevent you from dying before you reach the pass.”
“How wonderfully neighborly.”
The Shepherd lay between them.
“Do not mistake a bargain for kindness. You will pay handsomely, as promised.”
“Of course I will.”
Power imprisoned in the mountains and Kasimir as the guide between them. Properly arranged, the reading was considerably more encouraging than the Vistana appeared to think. Rivka had always found omens comforting when she was the one handling the interpretation.
The Vistana gathered the cards, hiding her smile as she returned them to the deck.
As Rivka turned away, the old woman’s thumb paused over the next card.
A painted figure looked out from beneath a jester’s mask.
She slid it back into the deck before Rivka could see.