City of the Dead

FOURTEEN

The wizard jumped, so startled by the disembodied voice behind them that he bumped into Sophraea and almost knocked her over. Her own heart raced and she was hard pressed not to scream. "It's early for you to be here," said their unseen companion. A shifting of green shadows tugged at Sophraea's extra sense of the graveyard surrounding them.

"Briarsting, is that you?" Sophraea demanded, looking around. "Where are you?"

Leaves rustled in a hedge behind them. In the shadows, the topiary dragon blended with other more motionless shrubbery. The thorn gestured from under the shelter of the topiary dragons' belly. "The dead will be back in their mausoleums, tombs, coffins, and graves in a moment."

"You could have told us you were there," she complained, the beat of her heart settling into a less panicked rhythm.

After patting the leafy dragon's neck, Sophraea and Gustin slid out from behind the stone tree trunk and around the bristly beast. Above them, the sky turned dull gray as the early morning sunlight tried to penetrate the cloud cover. The main gate would be open to Waterdeep's Watch. Patrols would go through the pathways to see what disturbances had occurred in the night. Soon the City of the Dead would also be open to the public, if the City Watch decided it was safe.

"When did it start last night?" Sophraea questioned Briarsting. The little man scratched his nose and then shrugged. "Just after moonrise. I was dozing but the shrubbery here woke me."

The topiary dragon waggled its ears at them. "Straight down the paths and through our gate?" She thought she knew the answer but she had to ask. Briarsting nodded. "Just as before."

"And then off to haunt Rampage Stunk." Sophraea sighed. More threats and sensation stories were sure to appeat in every broadsheet in Waterdeep. The ptevious day's Blue Unicorn had been bad enough. She still had it in her basket because she couldn't bear to show it to her family and worry them even more.

"Was the same ghost leading them?" Sophraea asked the thorn.

"The dancing lady? Yes, I saw her clearly." Briarsting had been their spy in the cemetery at night, as worried as they were about the constant disturbances, and more than willing to give what information he had. But the thorn and his shrubbery friend could do nothing to stop the constant escape of the dead from their tombs.

"I saw your father too," he added.

"My father? When was that?"

"Last night. From sunset until almost midnight, sitting on the ground with his back against the gate."

That made no sense to Sophraea. Surely he was mistaken. She had seen her father in the house last evening, going over plans for a strengthened gate with her uncles. "Are you sure it was my father?" she asked.

The thorn turned a brighter green from annoyance.

"I haven't seen him in many a year, but I must tell you, young miss. He hasn't changed a bit. Looks exactly the same as he did thirty years ago," he declared. "I know Astute Carver when I see him."

"He's gone gray," she said, frowning. But Briarsting seemed so sure, she didn't want to upset him. "Probably the dark. If you saw him in daylight, you'd know he's aged."

"I have excellent eyesight," Briarsting huffed.

Muttering about missed breakfasts and curses, Gustin stalked along the paths toward the two small tombs still flagged for destruction by Rampage Stunk. The Carvers had halted work on the site four days ago and sent word to the furious Stunk that nothing could be done until the dead were resting quietly. The merchant had sent numerous messages but Astute and his brothers remained firm. Even necessary burials and other funeral rites were being carried out as quickly as possible these days, the coffins being almost hurried through the City of the Dead to the waiting portals and their final resting place.

"Has he had any luck in figuring this out?" Briarsting asked Sophraea, climbing up on a marble memorial bench to watch Gustin pace muttering around the Markarl tomb.

"Not really," admitted Sophraea, digging a seedcake out of her basket and handing it to the always-hungry thorn.

"Not at all," confessed Gustin even more honestly as he saw food appearing from the basket and joined them on the bench. "I never studied necromancy. And that's about all that's truly certain. Someone has loosed a magnificent necromantic curse against Rampage Stunk."

The wizard nipped a seedcake out of the basket. Hooking the edge of one foot on the bench, he wrapped his long arms around his knee, rocking back and forth. "Wish I knew how they did it. But I'd bet all my nonexistent wealth that the spell started here. Something about the aura of this spot."

"Don't feel too bad," Sophraea said. "Even the Watchful Order couldn't find the cause."

After the first night of the wandering dead, some senior wizards from the Order arrived in the City of the Dead to check the wards on the walls and public gates.

When the attacks continued, the Blackstaff issued a proclamation saying chat Waterdeep and its citizens were quite safe. Since the City of the Dead's gates and walls were quite obviously sealed and no breaches in the defenses found, the so-called "noble dead" just as obviously did not come from there.

On top of that magnificent reasoning, the BlackstafFs proclamation continued that the "contained disturbance" bore the earmarks of a trade dispute between rival merchants, aided by renegade wizards. Those wizards would be found and punished accordingly, the proclamation concluded.

"So, all the corpses in velvet showing up on Stunk's doorstep are just illusions," quipped Gustin. He pulled another seedcake and a copy of the Blue Unicorn from the day before out of Sophraea's basket. He shook his head over the headlines. "At least according to this story, the haunting of Stunk's mansion is all illusions and other reports around Waterdeep were created by a hysterical population. The writer concludes by telling his readers to not believe everything they see is real."

"I wonder if he would still advise calm if he saw that parade that passed the gate today," she said.

"Quite possibly not," he agreed.

"I hear they found a hand swinging from Stunk's doorknocker yesterday morning," added Sophraea with a sigh. "Hard to see how they can say that's an illusion or a figment of the public's imagination."

"Actually," said Briarsting, rooting in her basket for another seedcake before Gustin ate them all, "that's Lady Mellania's hand. She's always a bit absentminded and asked if you would be so kind as to bring it back for her."

"Why am I supposed to bring it back?" Sophraea said indignantly. "I didn't tell her to leave it there."

"She just thought, since she would be passing by your house, you could leave it on the doorstep or somewhere close to your gate."

"I can't even think of a polite reply to that request!"

"I wouldn't worry about it." Briarsting stretched out his legs on the bench and munched happily. "Told you that she's a forgetful old thing. She won't remember she asked by tomorrow night."

"How convenient," muttered Sophraea.

"It is," agreed the little green-skinned man without irony. "And best that the rest of them don't start thinking of requests. They're enjoying these outings to Stunk's mansion quite a bit, you know. In fact, if you'll pardon me saying so, I haven't seen the north end of the cemetery quite so lively in a century or more."

Sophraea shuddered while Gustin smoothed his beard to hide a smile.

"Still," said the wizard, willing to turn the subject to Sophraea's relief. "If the Blackstaff doesn't think that the dead are coming from here, then you needn't worry so much. After all, that means nobody is looking at your family's gate."

"What the Blackstaff says publicly," said Sophraea, amazed at Gustin's innocence, "and what the Blackstaff thinks are two very different things. Didn't they have politics in Cormyr?"

Gustin shrugged and retorted, "Probably, but I never paid any attention."

"Well," Sophraea continued, "nobody is having the City Watch patrol through here quite so vigorously every day looking for pickpockets. Somebody, somebody very important, does think the dead walking through the streets come from here. They just don't know how the deceased nobility are getting out. And once they figure it is through our gate…"

Sophraea didn't know what type of trouble such a discovery would bring, but from the suddenly gloomy expressions of her companions, she suspected they had no cheerful expectations either. Even the topiary dragon looked a little wilted as it hung over her shoulder, begging for a whisker pull.

"It's odd," Gustin observed, "that the Watchmen haven't found your gate yet? After all, they just need to walk the cemetery wall until they come to it."

'They've probably passed it a dozen times or more," replied Briarsting, "and never knew. They're not Carvers, are they?"

"What are you talking about?" said Sophraea. "You don't have to be a Carver to see the gate."

"You have to be a Carver to find it," insisted the thorn. "Or at least to show it to someone else. After all, the Carvers built it for Carver business, not for anything else."

"You're talking about us as if we have magic," said Sophraea. "We're just tradesmen. We have our craft, building monuments and so on, but we're no wizards."

"Your family is part of Waterdeep, aren't you?" persisted Briarsting. "I met your ancestors first when my Honor Garden was laid out. It was a Carver who chipped out the bark on that stone trunk yonder. Another Carver who clipped the hedge into a dragon." :

"But not a Carver who animated it," stated Sophraea.

"No," Briarsting agreed. "That was done by the druids and the elves when they came to finish the memorial."

"But the Carvers were there when it happened," Gustin guessed.

The green-skinned man nodded. "This city does things to the ones who live here longest. Even to the ones who are buried here."

"How long has your family lived in Waterdeep?" Gustin asked Sophraea. "Were they here during the Spellplague?"

She shrugged. "We've always been here. Certainly since there was a City of the Dead. It's in the ledger. Stonehands Carver helped build the first wall around the graveyard. He built Dead End House out of bits and pieces left over from that job. At least that's where the foundation stones came from. And when they built the wall higher and stronger, the family worked on that too."

"And built the house higher with leftover stone and wood," Gustin did not look surprised after Sophraea gave a slow nod.

"Magic soaks into the stones," he mused. "But does it go into the bones? That's an interesting idea. Especially if you had the Spellplague in the house."

"What?"

"It's something that Lord Adarbrent said. Magic has soaked into the very foundation stones of Waterdeep. How could it not? The city has been here for so long, through so much. The City of the Dead must have been touched by hundreds of spells. Thousands perhaps. So why wouldn't the graveyard magic soak into a family, especially a family touched by the Spellplague?"

"The boy is brighter than he looks," Briarsting commented.

Gustin waved the thorn's mocking away, stating, "It makes sense."

"The Spellplague never touched my family," said Sophraea. "Not the way that you're thinking. There were more foreign dead to be buried in the time that followed, that's all in our ledger, but we were spared."

"There were none who left and came back during the later years? None who showed the scars?"

Rosemary Jones

City of the Dead

"No," Sophraea started emphatically, and then she hesitated. "Well, Volponia. She came back from a voyage, very ill, and settled into her room. But that was long before I was born. Long before my parents even married."

"Does she have any scars? Blue marks?" Gustin asked.

"How I would know? She's my great-great aunt," said Sophraea. "She has always been there, wrapped up in her bed, quite covered from head to toe. Besides, nobody in the family has any magic. You've met them all except Volponia. They're not magic-users, spellscarred or otherwise."

"Not consciously. But you do have talents, very specific talents connected to the City of the Dead, like always knowing where you are inside the graveyard. And your eyes do glow blue, especially when you are inside the graveyard walls. I've seen it."

"Some people learn magic, some people are magic, doesn't necessarily take a plague," Briarsting observed. "Look at elves, look at dwarves. Look at my people. There are some who say that we weren't always green." He glanced down at his dark emerald hands. "Although it's hard to imagine being pink. Such an odd and useless color for skin."

"Exactly, and better put than my ramblings. Magic soaks into people, changes them, makes certain things happen," the wizard said. "So, even before the Spellplague, when Carvers needed a gate, they built a gate, and it only worked for them. Makes sense, at least in a place like Waterdeep."

"But you have gone in and out the gate," argued Sophraea. "And you're not family."

"But I was with you the first time that I went through the gate," recalled Gustin. "At least, 1 was following you pretty closely. I didn't even realize we'd gone through the wall until I was well within the City of the Dead. And I've always been with you or just behind you every time that we've used that gate."

"And he's living in Dead End House," pointed out Briarsting. "Which makes Gustin as much a part of the house as that pack of cats you harbor. I've never noticed any of your slinky black mousers having any trouble slipping through the gate bars."

"Cats can always go where they like," Sophraea said. Then she thought of another argument. "Lord Adarbrent uses our gate," she pointed out.

"Often?"

"Well, no, he usually enters through the public gate. But I've seen him leave through the Dead End gate, going into the cemetery, more than once," she said.

"What did you say about the basement door?" Gustin continued. "There's no problem going out from Dead End House. The door's guardian knows you're a friend of the house. Maybe the gate works the same way. If you're a friend of the house or have permission of the family, you can see it. More importantly, you can use it, at least to leave Dead End House."

Sophraea sprang off the bench and took to pacing herself, unconsciously following the trail beaten in the wet grass by Gustin's earlier perambulations around the Markarl tomb.

"So if you have to be a Carver? Or invited by a Carver? Then how do the noble dead know where to go? We certainly didn't ask them to use our gate to go gallivanting through Waterdeep." Her skirts swished through the wet grass, rocking in angry time to her agitated movements.

"Maybe the same rules don't apply to the dead?" suggested Briarsting. When the other two shook their heads at him, he added, "I just live with them. I don't necessarily understand them."

"No," said Gustin, "I think Sophraea is right. It took a Carver to lead the dead through. Maybe it only needed to be done symbolically because the dead can see more clearly than the living, at least where magic is concerned. That sounds like a ritual, something anyone with the right spellbooks could construct. Once that's done, the gate could be opened by the dead whenever they needed it or as the spellcaster commanded."

"So you think one of the family is under a spell? That one of my relatives walked into the City of the Dead and led a parade of noble dead out? Do you think that's what Leaplow did?" Sophraea mused, remembering how they had discovered her brother in the courtyard.

"No, your brother just ended up with the dead on that first night by accident," said Gustin, who had questioned Sophtaea's brother as closely as he dared. Leaplow still tended to react badly to realization that the prettiest girl that he'd ever danced with spent her daylight hours in a grave. "And Leaplow was never in the City of the Dead that day. He's very adamant that he worked at Dead End House all day carving my statue, left through the public gate to go drinking, and came back to Dead End House through the same gate."

How would Rampage Stunk react to such a suggestion that a Carver had started the curse, Sophraea wondered. She shuddered. The fat man's threats against anyone who had helped bring about his current haunting grew more grisly every day according to the Unicorn.

"So who do you think opened the gate and suggested these ghosts and wandering corpses use our courtyard as their shortcut to Rampage Stunk?" Sophraea asked.

"It doesn't have to be quite that literal." Gustin chewed his lower lip, having run out of seedcakes. "As I said before, it was probably a symbolic action, something that the person might not even been aware of. That's how many curses are done, by tricking people into helping the caster. Symbols carry a lot of weight in such rituals. A token that symbolizes permission for the dead to enter."

"So you are saying someone, probably a Carver, carried something through the gate that unlocked it for the dead," Briarsting said. "Makes sense. I've seen a lot of odd mementos used as keys for various tombs around here. A hair ribbon, a dried flower, a twist of wire."

"The shoe!" exclaimed Gustin and Sophraea together.

"What shoe?" asked Briarsting.

"The one we found in the tunnels. A little gold brocade shoe. Volponia said that it had probably been buried with someone," Sophraea explained. "But that doesn't work. I took it through the basement door. And nothing happened that night."

"Wrong door," said Gustin automatically. "The ritual needed the gate."

"What?"

"And my old master said that I never paid attention to my lessons." Gustin looked almost smug. He rapped his knuckles smartly against the bench. "The shoe and the gate were linked together in a ritual. So, until you carried it from the City of the Dead through your family's gate, the dead couldn't follow. That makes sense. At least from a wizard's point of view."

"But 1 didn't," she began and then stopped. "Oh. On the way home from Lord Adarbrent s house, after the fight. We cut back through the Andamaar gate and along the inside of the wall to go home through our gate. Because I said it would be faster."

Sophraea sank onto the bench in despair. The topiary dragon dropped its whiskery nose into her lap. She patted the brittle late autumn leaves gently, appreciating the dragon's gesture of support, but there really was no comfort. She had done this to het family, placed them directly in the middle of a feud between the noble dead and Rampage Stunk.

She had put them all in mortal danger.