“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 Sophraea’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 I 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 her 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.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gustin kept patting her shoulder. Briarsting offered her a thin papery leaf and advised “Blow hard.”
As for the topiary dragon, it collapsed in a sympathetic heap of quivering foliage at her feet.
Sophraea did not know what they were all so upset about. As she informed them repeatedly, she was not crying. She was not.
“I am going to solve this,” she stated for the third time, pleased that she managed the entire sentence without her voice breaking, cracking, or doing any of the other distressing modulations that had plagued the first two pronouncements.
“Well, of course,” said Gustin just as briskly with one more pat. “And we are going to help you.”
“Absolutely,” said Briarsting, still tucking the leaf into her hand. “But what should we do next?”
“End the curse,” said Sophraea with a decisive nod. “Obviously. If the dead stop haunting Stunk, then Stunk will stop hunting for revenge. At least, I hope so.” She turned abruptly on the bench and poked Gustin in the chest. “You’re the wizard. How do I end this spell?”
Looking as serious as she had ever seen him, Gustin said, “I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking about it ever since this began. I don’t meddle with the dead. I have nothing in my very limited spellbook that even comes close.”
From a distance that sounded deep within the cemetery, Sophraea heard a thin cry. She glanced at the other two. Neither made any sign of hearing what she heard.
“But you do have a spellbook? You understand magic,” she continued. Wizards, her tone implied, should be prepared for anything, even a graveyard full of restless corpses intent on bringing trouble to her family’s doorstep.
Gustin reached into his tunic and withdrew the guidebook to Waterdeep that he’d shown Sophraea earlier. Once again he carefully unfolded the crudely printed map bound into the back, laying it flat on the bench between them. He tapped one corner of the map and the streets and buildings swirled together in a rainbow of colors, then faded away to show line after line of tiny writing.
There it was again, a scream that strangled away. Neither Briarsting nor Gustin seemed to notice it. A soft nudge against her shoulder made Sophraea start and clamp her mouth closed to keep from gasping. She felt soft leaves brush her neck.
When she turned her head, her eyes looked straight into one of the dragon’s red berry eyes. It was wide open. The greenery of his brow drew into a deep wrinkle of worry. So she wasn’t imagining the cry. The topiary dragon heard it too.
“All my spells,” Gustin said, still looking down at his book. “All learned in bits and pieces, here and there. Animation of stone. That ritual is especially mine, but how is that going to help? Some defensive spells, which are not nearly as powerful as a good offensive spell. A few illusions, which work well. One spell that lets me run away from danger very fast. I’d be happy to use any of these in your service. But I don’t see how it solves your problem.”
Sophraea didn’t see either. Round and round her finger, she twisted the ring that Volponia had given her. “There’s a half a wish in this,” she finally said, pulling the ring off and handing it to Gustin. “Could that stop this curse?”
“Half a wish?” He echoed, juggling the ring in the palm of his hand. “I doubt it. Wishes are magic based on hope. A half-hearted hope, like a half a wish, probably isn’t enough to trump a good solid hate-filled curse. And the one thing that I can tell about this curse: whoever unleashed it really hates Rampage Stunk.”
He gave the little silver ring back to Sophraea. She slid it on her finger with a sigh. It didn’t seem right that a curse, one not even directed at her family, could create such havoc. But all Waterdeep knew that Stunk was seeking whoever had loosed the curse against him. No one had ever accused the fat man of being fair-minded. He was sure to blame the Carvers and even if they could drive off his bullies or appeal to the City Watch for protection, it would mean days or even tendays of disruption. And Stunk well might hire his own wizards. Dead End House had its protections, but Sophraea still worried about how much the family could withstand before somebody was seriou
sly hurt.
The sound of booted feet crunching heavily down the gravel path propelled Gustin and Sophraea off the bench.
“Is it the Watch?” Sophraea asked as Briarsting leaped to the shoulder of the grieving stone woman overlooking the pool. From there, he hopped to the roof of a mausoleum.
“No,” the green-skinned man called down. “It’s a dwarf!”
The deep orange of the stout dwarf’s waterproof hat and cloak marked him as a member of the cellarers’ and plumbers’ guild. In one hand he clutched a rake for clearing storm drains.
Sophraea started to murmur a polite greeting. The dwarf stared at her blankly.
“Do I know you, young lady?” he said slowly. “Forgive me my haste but I have urgent business at the Plinth. There will be a jump tonight.”
Gustin stepped aside to let him pass. Sophraea watched the dwarf march steadily away from them. There was something odd about the sturdy hammerpipe, the faintest twinge of that same sense that always told her where she was in the City of the Dead. If she narrowed her eyes and stared really hard at the dwarf, she could see the shadow of a much taller figure marching steadily away from them.
“I thought the Plinth was destroyed,” remarked Gustin.
With a start, Sophraea broke her concentration on the dwarf. “Oh, yes, the Spellplague took down the Plinth.” The dwarf had disappeared around a corner of the path. “But the dead don’t always know current history.”
“That was a dwarf. Not a corpse.”
“That was a possessed hammerpipe,” she corrected him. “There’s no reason a member of the guild would be aboveground looking for a long-lost temple.”
“Are you sure?”
“Come on, I want to see where he came from.” Sophraea headed north on the path, following the clear footprints of the dwarf. She stopped at a leaf-clogged grate and the puddle stretching across the path. “I don’t know any hammerpipe who would pass by something like that. No, some ghost has grabbed him.”
“Shouldn’t we do something?”
“You know exorcism spells?”
Gustin admitted he did not.
“They’ll catch him at one of the gates,” Sophraea said to soothe both Gustin and her conscience. “Or the City Watch will pick him up on their patrol. It will give them something to do.”
Another turn of the path showed an open storm grate and a pile of tools lying next to it, obviously where the dwarf had been working. Sophraea took a hard look at the tomb nearest the grate and the family name carved deeply into the granite.
“One of the Lathkule,” she said. “That explains it. A restless family and notorious possessors. This ritual has stirred up too many of the dead.”
A gnome’s head suddenly popped up from the open sewer line. Like the dwarf, he was dressed in the orange of the cellarers’ and plumbers’ guild.
“Here! You, young person,” shouted the gnome. “Have you seen my friend? We’ve found the problem down here.”
Sophraea blinked in surprise at seeing this ordinary worker in the middle of the City of the Dead. “I think your friend went down that path,” she pointed in the direction that the dwarf had taken.
The gnome scrambled the rest of the way out of the hole, then leaned back to call down. “Firebeard has gone off again. Can you get the clog up by yourselves?”
More muffled shouting could be heard from the hole.
The gnome cast a grimy eye over Sophraea and her companion. He tossed the end of a rope to Gustin Bone. “Haul on this, will you, tall guy?” he said. “Faster we get this cleared, the faster we can get out of here.”
With a good-natured shrug, Gustin began pulling on the rope. Slowly, like an exhausted fish being hauled into a boat, a bundle of cloth and bones emerged from the hole. The richly dressed skeleton was followed by a contingent of gnomes and dwarves, all dressed in dark orange. One of the gnomes wore the additional trappings that marked her as a cleric of considerable rank.
“Don’t call it a clog,” scolded the cleric. “That’s not respectful.”
“Caused a back-up all the way to Wall Way, didn’t it?” said the first gnome in unrepentant tones. “That’s a clog in my book. But we got it back here. Now what do you want to do?”
“We need to settle these bones,” said the cleric. The skeleton stirred in its muddy finery. With a shake of her head, the cleric reached into her pocket for a vial of glowing liquid. With a murmured prayer, she shook the holy water over the skeleton, which collapsed back on the ground.
Sophraea leaned over the bones to take a closer look. The heavily embroidered robes wrapped around the skeleton incorporated a number of heraldic devices that she recognized as decorating the nearby Irlingstar monument. Another deceased member of an ancient Waterdeep family had been wandering, she realized. Once the body had no doubt been bathed with perfumed water and wrapped with herbs tucked under his burial robes. Now his funeral clothes smelled of the sewers.
“It was kind of you to bring the bones back here,” she told the collected members of the guild.
“It’s the guild’s rules,” explained the cleric. “If something washes out of the City of the Dead, it has to be replaced properly. Anything else would cause serious problems. But we don’t usually get them trying to dig their way out through a feeder line.”
“How far from here did you find these bones?” Sophraea asked.
“Almost to the wall. Most of the lines directly under the wall are small or gated. This one had gotten stuck in one of the smaller tubes, just south and east of the Andamaar gate.”
That would put the skeleton on a direct underground path to the Dead End gate, Sophraea thought but didn’t bother to explain to the cleric. Instead she pointed out the Irlingstar site. “If you can get him laid down there,” she said, “I’ll send my uncle Judicious to put a dead safe over the grave. That should keep these bones from wandering again.”
“You’re a Carver,” observed the gnome leader of the group. Sophraea nodded. “Good. Save us a trip and take a message to Astute that we’re seeing more disturbances down below. Nothing as big as this, but we’re getting more dirt falls from the City above into the lines.”
“I’ll let my father know. The City Watch is looking for the cause,” she added.
The gnome leader snorted. “Like that group of soldiers understand anything about dirt and digging. Tell your father to send along that Feeler and Fish. I think a couple of graves on the far north are starting to collapse. They’ll know what to do. I’d shore them up myself, but you know how it is. Guild rules. We’re only supposed to work on the sewer lines.”
“Who should they ask for at guild headquarters?”
“Tollemar, that’s me, or Firebeard. We’re in charge of the City of the Dead’s sewers,” said the gnome.
The cleric directed the other sewer workers on the digging and placing of the still slightly twitching skeleton in the Irlingstar grave.
“That should hold,” she told Sophraea and Gustin after a long blessing over the bones. “But this one has been tough to settle. I had to use almost a full bottle of holy water to keep those bones quiet during the trip back here.”
“We appreciate your help,” Sophraea answered. “I’d suggest being out of the City before dark. Things have been …” She trailed off, not sure how to describe the constant march of the corpses and haunts out of the Dead End House’s gate.
“Don’t worry,” answered Tollemar instead. “I’m not letting any of my people in or under the City after nightfall. Guild rules.”
“Probably for the best,” Sophraea agreed.
“Now, where did you see Firebeard?”
Sophraea pointed out the right path to follow the missing dwarf. The guild members carefully closed up the grate leading into the sewers, double-checked the lock, and then shouldering their tools, they marched after their missing friend.
Once the members of the cellarers’ and plumbers’ guild were out of sight, Briarsting and the topiary dragon emerged from behin
d the tomb where they had been eavesdropping on the exchange.
“If the dead are going into the sewers,” said the thorn, “that’s bad.”
“I know,” Sophraea said. “It means all the protections are crumbling.”
“What protections?” asked Gustin.
“When they first dug the sewer lines under the City, the Blackstaff laid certain protections against the dead using those tunnels to escape. You still do get things down there, but usually not straight from a grave.”
“But the wall continues to hold,” observed Briarsting. “You heard the gnomes. That skeleton didn’t get completely free.”
“But for how long?” fretted Sophraea. “And what if they are trying to use the lower ways into Dead End House?”
Gustin shook his head. “I think the gate is still the only exit that the ritual allows them to use. After all, that skeleton got stuck. It didn’t get out.”
“That’s not a lot of comfort. We need to settle the dead permanently and completely.”
“There are great wizards in Waterdeep,” said Briarsting slowly. “Ones who can command the dead.”
“I’m not going to the Blackstaff,” said Sophraea. “Nor to any of the wizards in the Watchful Order. It would be too many explanations and the family is sure to get into trouble about the gate.”
“We can hire someone less legitimate,” suggested Gustin.
“And how do we pay? I have a silver ring with half a wish,” said Sophraea. “I don’t think that’s going to be enough for the type of magic we need.”
The topiary dragon waggled its ears and scratched at the earth with one forepaw.
“There are treasures still in this graveyard,” Briarsting translated. “We could borrow a few gems.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Gustin.
“No,” said Sophraea firmly. “I’m a Carver. And the one thing that we never do is steal from the dead. It leads to trouble. It always does. What do you think happened to Fitlor?”
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