City of the Dead w-4

by Rosemary Jones

  "Don't complain. I saved your old legs a long climb up some very steep stairs," snapped Volponia.

  "Impertinent woman, you have snatched me from important business."

  "Grave mischief, you mean. It must stop, Dorgar."

  The nobleman blinked at the familiar use of his name and then leaned closer to peer at the occupant of the bed.

  "Captain Volponia," Lord Adarbrent said, and he gave a deep bow, the deepest that Sophraea had ever seen. "I should have remembered your family connections and your complete lack of respect for the nobility ofWaterdeep."

  "Yes, you should have remembered my family," snapped Volponia, but she returned his bow with a courteous nod. "And also what the nobility ofWaterdeep, most especially your family, still owes me for the return of Syllia's Star."

  Gustin turned to Sophraea, a question framed on his lips, but she just shrugged. She'd never heard this story. The old lady rarely doled out complete tales of her long and apparendy colorful past.

  "As I recall," Lord Adarbrent said, "you were well paid for the ship's rescue and no questions were raised about your other, hmm, shall we say 'maritime activities' when you decided to retire. And forty years. Captain Volponia, is a very long time to wait to claim a favor. I doubt any that sailed on the Star are still alive today."

  "But you and I are still here and we both remember the old codes," she said to Lord Adarbrent. "For a nobleman of your character and lineage, it is less than honorable to involve my family in your feud!"

  Lord Adarbrent winced and waved his hand in a fencer's acknowledgment of a hit.

  "And who do you think would maintain your tomb in the City of the Dead if the Carvers were destroyed?" Volponia continued to scold.

  "It was never my intention to involve the Carvers," said Lord Adarbrent with a heavy sigh. "This was a matter of dispute between Rampage Stunk and myself."

  "Look outside! No matter what you meant, there's a battle going on in our courtyard!" interjected Sophraea. "And it's our family in the middle, dealing with Stunk and the dead that you raised up."

  "I rather underestimated Stunk's stubbornness," confessed the old nobleman as he shifted a little on his feet, rather like a guilty schoolboy faced with owing up to a prank. "I thought a night of ghostly visitors, maybe two nights, would discourage him from building in the City of the Dead. Then, with a few words in the right places, others could be frightened away from trying the same trick. Buying up the tombs of extinct families and tearing them down to build some modern monstrosity is despicable!"

  A mottled flush spread across Lord Adarbrent's pale features as he explained. The old man's hand visibly clenched on his sword cane.

  "So you endangered these children to save some moldering tombs?" asked Volponia with a tilt of her head toward Gustin and Sophraea.

  "And what will these children inherit if we tear down the history ofWaterdeep!" Lord Adarbrent roared.

  "Very little, if you and Stunk destroy this house between you!" Volponia shouted back, striking one hand so hard against the headboard that the dragon's head nodded back and forth above her.

  Lord Adarbrent coughed and modulated his tone, obviously reluctant to continue a shouting match with the bedridden Volponia.

  "We have already lost so much," he continued in a quieter voice. "And greed has always been our greatest flaw-we allow men like Stunk far too much simply because they have heavy purses."

  Sophraea placed one hand lightly on Lord Adarbrent's forearm. "I know how much you care for Waterdeep," she said. "But my family is part of its history too. And if we are lost, then what have you gained?"

  Lord Adarbrent sighed and patted her hand. "You are a good girl," he stated, as he had throughout her childhood.

  "No," Sophraea answered slowly, trying to put all her jumbled thoughts of the past few days into a declaration that the old man would understand. "I am a woman grown and I know that no monument is worth more than a single life, even the life of Rampage Stunk. We show great respect to the dead in this family, but we hold the living dearer still."

  The expression on Lord Adarbrent's face was impossible to read. The angry flush along his cheekbones began to recede. He closed his eyes and heaved another deep sigh.

  "I am sorry," Lord Adarbrent said finally. "I let my temper rule my judgment. You are right. It is time I ended this curse." "Can you do that?" asked Gustin.

  "I can try," Lord Adarbrent replied with a thin smile. "It's not simple. My cousin Algozata was an amazing woman in many ways. She wrote this ritual in her book so that it could be invoked at least once by anyone. It did not take a wizard to begin this curse. I think it will not take a wizard to end it. First, the object that you found, that shoe hanging off your belt, needs to be returned to the owner's tomb."

  "But?" said Gustin, in the voice of a wizard who just knew a "but" was coming.

  "If the tomb is not sealed, the ghosts will continue to try to cross at the Dead End House's gate. And sealing the tomb," admitted Lord Adarbrent, "will destroy anyone who tries it. It was this part of the curse that killed my cousin Algozata."

  "Anything else?" asked Gustin. Two deep lines of worry in his forehead drew the wizard's dark eyebrows together.

  "There's some doggerel in Algozata's spellbook that needs to be recited by someone watching," admitted Lord Adarbrent. "It's quite short and can, like the earlier portion of the ritual, be said by anyone holding the spellbook."

  "So all you need is the shoe and the spellbook, and you can summon all the dead back to their graves?" asked Sophraea.

  "Quite," said Lord Adarbrent. "It will mean the sacrifice of one life, as I have said, to close the tomb's door. But once it is done, the dead will lie as peacefully in their graves as they ever do in Waterdeep."

  With some relief, Gustin observed they didn't have the spellbook.

  "So nobody," he continued, staring hard at Sophraea, who was whispering another request info Volponia's ear, "need risk her neck by taking it into the City of the Dead. Which means"-he straightened his chin and Sophraea noticed that he actually looked quite heroic- "no wizard need die trying to close the tomb door for her."

  "But I have a plan," said Sophraea, with a quick smile of appreciation to Gustin for his oblique offer to help, "and getting the spellbook will be the easy part."

  It was the rest of her plan that she wasn't too sure about. But she didn't say that out loud.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ith a nod from Sophraea, Volponia rang her crystal bell. "Algozata's spellbook," the old lady requested.

  A dusty and distinctly rank-smelling spellbook appeared immediately in the middle of her pale pink down comforter.

  "That's all I can do for you today," Volponia told her visitors. "Sophraea, I can't fetch anything more until after dawn tomorrow."

  Sophraea kissed the former pirate queen's cheek in thanks. She stored the spellbook in her wicker basket, paying no real heed to Volponia's grumbles about the marks left behind on the comforter.

  "I can't change the bed until tomorrow either," Volponia said.

  "I'll bring you another cover from my room," Sophraea promised her.

  "You had better," said the old lady and then added, "so don't do anything foolish and come safely home again."

  Sophraea gave a brisk nod to the two astonished gentlemen staring at this domestic exchange and said, "Shall we go?"

  "What are you going to do?" asked Gustin.

  "I'm going back to the City of the Dead. You heard Lord Adarbrent. All we need to do is close the tomb door on this shoe. By the way, my lord, is it the Markarl tomb?"

  "Yes," said the startled nobleman. "How did you know?"

  "We found the shoe directly beneath that monument and Gustin thought that there had been odd magic in its vicinity," Sophraea explained.

  "That's right. I did," said the wizard, a momentary flash of pleasure relaxing his worried expression. Then, more sternly, he told Sophraea, "But you can't go back into the City of the Dead. For one thing, the courtyard is
a battlefield. For another, reversing the curse is going to kill someone!"

  "If I don't, this battle will kill a good many more people," Sophraea began.

  Lord Adarbrent cut off her next sentence.

  "I will close the tomb door," the old nobleman said. "After all, as Captain Volponia so rightly stated, I began this spell. The only honorable action is to close the tomb door as my final act."

  Sophraea nodded. "The door has to be closed but does it have to be someone living who does it?"

  Lord Adarbrent frowned heavily. "I don't recall Algozata's ritual mentioning anything about that. In fact, the first two times that she invoked this particular curse, she used an animated corpse to end it. Both times the curse ended as she wished. I don't know what became of the corpses."

  "I thought you said that the curse killed your cousin," Gustin observed.

  The old man's expression grew even more sour. "The third time that Algozata used this particular ritual, the family discovered what she had done. And she was given no choice but to close the tomb door herself. I was a child then, but, as I recall, it was not a painless death," he declared.

  This dry recital of Adarbrent family justice made Sophraea shiver. The stone face of Gustin's statue had more kindness in it than the old lord's features.

  "What do you want to do? Recruit one ofthe corpses from the City of the Dead? I'm willing," Gustin asked her, "but I've never had much luck with necromancy."

  "Would a statue work?" — Sophraea asked. "Suppose you bring the stone man to life, the one my father carved for you. Animating stone is your best magic, or so you keep saying."

  "My statue!" Gustin exclaimed. "He could really be a hero of Waterdeep!"

  "Absolutely," said Sophraea, ready to lead everyone downstairs.

  "My stone men can walk. I never asked one to close a door," he admitted.

  "If he can't do it, we'll think of something else," Sophraea said. She tried to sound more confident than she felt.

  As she passed near the bed, Volponia caught her hand.

  "Don't forget that ring you're still wearing. Even a half wish is better than nothing. You might need it before the night is done," said Volponia. "There is so much that can go wrong."

  Sophraea gave a curt nod. She rather wished that Gustin hadn't told her so very often that magical items could be undependable and dangerous.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The courtyard of Dead End House was awash in rain, fighting bodies, and general chaos. Rampage Stunk's guards were still trying to herd all the Carvers into the center of the courtyard as Sophraea slipped out the front door with Gustin and Lord Adarbrent.

  Bentnor and the younger men led the charge against Stunk's men. With heavy mallets, they struck at the bullyblades. The younger Carvers used their hard heads and fists as much as their makeshift weapons. They butted and punched, jabbed and weaved, and even bit an ear or two.

  They kicked with hobnailed boots, hooking knees or ankles to send their opponents flying.

  If there hadn't been so much water and mud underfoot, the Stunk's bullies might have overcome the Carvers' tricks, certainly they were better armored than Sophraea's relatives. However, the sheer slickness of the cobblestones worked in the Carvers' favor. The young masons and coffinbuilders whipped their large leather-aproned bodies into the heavily armored men and sent them skidding backward to sprawl on the cobblestones. More lost their footing every time the full weight of the Carvers struck them.

  Bentnor wrestled one bully into the mud. The iron kettles and brooms of his mother and his aunts kept the screaming man pinned down while Bentnor leaped up to hook another around the neck. Cadriffle followed his brother into the fray, swinging a heavy mallet to protect his twin's back.

  "Go on! Fight!" Stunk yelled at his men, as they tried to retreat and regroup. "What do I pay you for?"

  But it was Stunk's shouted orders, "Don't kill anyone yet! I want to question them!" that actually slowed the battle. His men didn't dare use their swords so were hobbled in their efforts.

  By the time Sophraea reached the courtyard, the army of dead from the graves had nearly broken through the family's gate. She saw the hastily mortared bricks and reinforcing boards shatter. Debris was scattered at the base of the wall.

  The family was pushing back Stunk's men but they were distracted by cries for help from their fathers, desperately seeking to shore up the defenses of the Dead End gate.

  "We need to reach your statue!" Sophraea cried over the din of the fighting.

  Gustin nodded, stretching his head this way and that, trying to spot a clear path to the door of Astute Carver's workshop.

  The current melee effectively blocked their route.

  "Stay here," Gustin said to Sophraea. "I will go around them."

  "No," she replied, catching his hand in her own steady grip. "We'll go together!"

  Lord Adarbrent gave a grim smile and unsheathed his sword cane.

  "Allow me to clear the way for you," he said.

  Like a black storm, the old man fell upon Stunk's bullies, striking them from behind, a slash high to the head, a cut low to the knee. Stunk's men howled as the old man's cane lashed across their faces and other vulnerable points.

  The startled fighters fell back, only to be urged forward by Stunk's bellow of rage as he recognized the old nobleman swirling through his guards.

  "Keep fighting, you stinking cowards!" Stunk roared. "Catch him! Kill him!"

  The fat man rocked back and forth in his agitation, his meaty hands chopping at the air as if he could beat Lord Adarbrent down himself. At the same time, the greasy merchant stayed well behind his men and made no actual attempt to join the fight.

  Lord Adarbrent moved too quickly for Stunk's fighters. He teased them with thrusts and backward steps, drawing the conflict ever farther away from the center of the courtyard and closer to the street-side gate.

  The rest of the Carvers, recognizing their noble friend, rushed to his aid.

  "Now," Sophraea said to Gustin.

  They darted across the yard. Gustin flung open the door to Astute's workshop. A startled kitten gave a mew of protest and dashed under the workbench.

  In the center of the room, the statue lay upon the table. Astute had done exactly as he had promised. The stone man looked real. Faint lines creased the corners of its eyes, the veins across the back of its hands showed clearly, even the skin of the face and neck that showed above the elaborate armor had the pores of a living man.

  "It's wonderful," breathed Gustin. "Look at the grip that he's got on that sword. Just as if he was struck down in battle. Your father is a genius! It would have been my very best hoax ever!"

  "Hurry!" Sophraea urged him. Peeping around the workshop door, she could see that Lord Adarbrent and the younger Carvers aiding him had managed to drive Stunk's men back against the street-side gate.

  But none of Stunk's men pushed back. With Lord Adarbrent in the fight, his opponents drew knives and swords, ready to use the cutting edge against the old nobleman and any who defended him.

  When one fighter thrust at Lord Adarbrent with a naked blade,

  Cadriffle gave a great cry and smashed down his mallet, shattering the sword with a well-struck blow.

  In numbers, Stunk's men and the Carvers were evenly matched, but Sophraea could see that the rich merchant's private soldiers held the advantage in armor and weapons. Luck, so far, had favored her brothers and her cousins, but not even men of their size could hope to prevail forever against so many.

  "Hurry," she said again to Gustin.

  Beside her, Gustin held open his guidebook, the illusion of a map slowly dissolving to reveal the spells and rituals hidden beneath. He began to chant, a deep sound like the boom of a bronze bell. His voice rolled through the workshop. The kittens yowled in their basket. Astute's chisels and mallets rattled on their hooks.

  As before, a red glow infused the wizard's frame, illuminating the workshop. Ordinary things, iron nails and empty jars, shone in th
e shadowy corners of the room.

  At the center of Gustin's spell, the stone statue glowed. Light poured from the wizard to the statue until the shimmering ball of magic completely cocooned it.

  And then, between Sophraea's inhale and exhale of wonder, the light winked out.

  The kittens still howled under the workshop bench. Gustin slumped, his lax hands nearly dropping his precious spellbook. The ordinary gloom of twilight once again filled the workshop.

  "Did it work?" Sophraea whispered, unable to speak any louder, nearly strangled by excitement and worry. The statue lay inert upon the table. If the spell had failed, they would have no choice but to try to end the curse without its aid. And that, Lord Adarbrent had sworn, meant certain death for someone.

  Gustin raised his head slowly, as if the weight was almost too much for his neck to bear. But the grin that he gave her was as cocky as ever.

  "It really is my best magic," he declared in triumph.

  With ponderous motion and a sound like the grinding of a millstone, the statue slowly rose from the table. Two stone feet landed with a thump upon the floor. With a solid tread, the statue marched toward the workshop door.

  Gustin pulled the brocade shoe out of his belt and thrust it at the statue. "Take it," he commanded. "Return it to the Markarl tomb."

  The statue gave no response. Gustin went closer, circled the stone man, and pushed the shoe between its hip and its hand. The beautifully carved fingers were slightly curled to look natural. The little shoe glittered in the stone grasp.

  "Does it know what it carries? Will it know to put it inside the tomb?" Sophraea asked.

  Gustin shrugged. "I have never asked one of them to do anything more than walk."

  Sophraea bit back her doubts. They had no other choice.

  She flung the door wide open. The stone warrior stomped past her into the courtyard.

  "Go on!" Gustin shouted at his creation. "That way. To the City of the Dead!"

  Outside, the fighting continued. Lord Adarbrent still held off Stunk's men, but the old nobleman had been forced back to the center of the courtyard.