The Gift
Spell, recorded as a verse. A single loose page in Strahd's own hand, kept among the papers in the study (K37).
The page is unsigned and untitled except for two words at the top. There are no warnings anywhere on it. On a first read it passes for a harvest hymn or a devotional verse about generosity. Nothing on the page says it is a spell, and it only becomes one when someone tries to read it as instructions.
The Page (player handout)
The Gift
The year grows old, the orchard heavy, the bough lets down its swollen fruit. What ripens was not made for keeping, all fullness travels toward the root.
Not as candle lends to candle, each the brighter for the flame, but as rain is lent the river, nothing falls to sky again.
As the moon that moves the water never stoops to touch the foam, so the eye may hold two vessels, one that's laden, one that's lone.
Speak the want as one speaks blessing, name it narrow, name it true. The bough that's shaken for an apple gives the wasps and windfall too.
The one who calls the ferry over carries nothing, owes no fee. Whatever crosses pays the water. So it was, and so shall be.
For nothing in the world is wasted, and nothing in the world is made. All that ever will be given is taken, and the debt is paid.
Known castings of this craft
Full canon on Ether's Flame. The Gift is Zephyrian craft, older than Taara, and it has been used twice at scale before she ever finds the page:
- The freeze of Ether, by Taara herself, roughly eight hundred years ago. She named the Burning Tree as the giving vessel to move Ether's Flame beyond her mortal husband's reach. The casting overshot and took everything. She was spared because the spell spares its asker, and she carried no memory of having cast it until session 31.
- The Erasure of Taara's memories, by Strahd, at the sealed barrier. Her marriage moved out of her mind and into Kept Memories, a refined instrument of the same craft. The chapter order of the book is part of the concealment.
Because her hands have worked this craft before, the verse should feel half-familiar to her on first reading: a cadence from home, her lips one line ahead of her eyes, the want spoken in her own tongue without deciding to. Recognition, never memory. If asked, it "feels Zephyrian," which is true and hands her the wrong explanation.
Current Status
Found by Taara in the study during her off-time before session 27. She has not cast it.
Session 30: cast. In the Sorceress's den, with Myra's help, Taara cast it (the table called it the Transfer spell) and moved Ether's Flame out of Logi and into the Amulet.