"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 peopl
e 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.
FIFTEEN
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 hot 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 seriously 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 dwatf. 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.
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