City of the Dead (18 page)

Another bit of her brain whispered temptingly that perhaps the gate was still intact and there was nothing to be seen.

Sophraea shook her head to silence all the arguing voices and left the kitchen to continue down the stairs.’ 1

When she reached the outer door, she set her candlestick on the floor and worked at the latch with both hands. Once the door was open, she leaned out and listened.

A low wind rustled the branches. Otherwise there was no sound. She picked up the guttering candle, stepped outside, then eased the door closed.

She crossed the cobbles until she reached the gate. Stopping to listen, she turned and looked up and down the yard. Not so much as a shadow moved. Sophraea raised her candle and stifled a scream of frustration and fear.

It had happened again! Where the latch should be, there was a huge gaping hole. Small bits of broken metal littered the ground. The bars were bent or broken, hanging crookedly from the cracked hinges.

She slowly pushed open the broken bits of the gate. Perspicacity

had done his usual excellent job with the repairs. The hinges didn’t creak.

When the opening was wide enough, she slipped through, determined to find answers. Perhaps someone living had passed this way during the night, someone who was controlling the ghosts, driving them into Waterdeep. Bending over to hold her candle near the ground, she searched for footprints. Once before she had seen the tiny marks of dancing shoes. This time all she found were scuffs where the moss-slick stairs led down to the rain-darkened gravel paths.

She heard a distant sound of laughter, thin, high-pitched, or was it sobbing? She strained to tell where the noise was coming from. As usual her sense of the graveyard expanded until she knew exactly where she stood in relation to the Dead End gate, the tombs, and the paths running throughout the City of the Dead. All the public gates were locked tight and she sensed additional members of the Watch stood outside each one, looking in, wondering as she did which members of the noble dead roamed abroad.

The branches overhead shook with a rattle of leaves. Sophraea gasped, startled out of her trance, then muttered, “Look at me, panicking at a breeze.”

The breeze turned into a quick gust and blew out her candle.

She stood absolutely still, not blinking, not breathing. And then she heard footsteps, very quiet ones, barely crunching on the gravel of the path, and knew that someone was sneaking up on her. Moving silently, she pulled the snuffed candle out, dropped it into the basket hooked over her elbow, and tightened her fist around the top of the metal holder. It was a heavy candlestick with a wide base.

As the footsteps moved nearer, she raised her arm above her head.

She could sense him now, a presence behind her, something breathing, not a ghost.

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As she felt rather than saw him reach toward her, she swung around. A hand grabbed her other arm and she bent forward to retain her balance, then kept swinging. The candlestick collided with solid flesh.

And a familiar howl sounded in her ear.

“Gustin?” Sophraea whispered.

The wizard staggered away from her. He gasped and doubled up, his arms wrapped around his waist. “Gustin, what are you doing here?” “Getting my ribs broken,” he rasped.

“Why did you sneak up on me? Oh dear, I’d better take you back to the house and wake Myemaw. She can bind them up.”

She heard him catch his breath. His voice shook but he managed to say, “No, I am quite all right, Sophraea.”

“But what are you doing out here?” she asked.

“Following you. Someone is using dangerous magic to stir up the dead. You shouldn’t be out here at night by yourself. It’s not safe. I thought we agreed that we would only come here in broad daylight.”

“But we haven’t found anything so far in broad daylight, and it’s not really night, it’s practically morning,” she argued, “and I heard the gate shatter last night. And, just now, I heard something else. Oh, there it is again!”

From the distance she heard thin screeches of laughter and the sound seemed to be coming closer.

“Come on, we shouldn’t stand out in plain sight,” she said and led him deeper into the City of the Dead until they reached the Honor Garden. When she saw the stone tree trunk, she pulled Gustin behind it.

“Who are we hiding from?” Gustin whispered.

“If I knew that, I might not be hiding,” she whispered back. “Gustin, when did you follow me here? I didn’t see you in the yard.”

“I heard you open the outer door,” he said. “There I was, nice and warm in a clean bed, then one of your mad cats came dashing through the room, leaped right in the center of my stomach and, once I was awake, ran off.”

Sophraea almost chuckled. “You should latch your door.”

“I think your cats can walk through walls,” muttered Gustin. “But being awake, I decided to get up and go looking for something to eat. I was in the kitchen when I heard the door open. And I thought, who would be fool enough to go out before it was light?”

Suddenly, the odd laughter grew nearer, a loud mingling of moans and insane giggles. She could hear shuffling, as though a small army approached. Clutching her candlestick, Sophraea leaned out to squint into the dim pre-dawn light. At first all she saw was empty path.

Then they came floating, twisting, dancing by, feet occasionally touching the ground, ghostly hands beating out a rhythm, heads swaying to some music that Sophraea could not hear.

They were dressed in flounces and tatters and spiderweb trimmings, faded velvet and dulled silk. Some had faces of shadows and starlight. Others were worn down to bones gleaming white under the waning moon. They moved in a swirl of cold air that smelled vaguely of mold and perfume and death.

Sophraea pressed back against Gustin. If they saw her, those ghastly remnants of the dead, what would they do? She was torn between fear and pity. She d reacted the thought of being dragged along in their company. But more, she felt so sorry for them, wandering like that, unable to rest quietly in their graves.

Night gave way to the first weak rays of sunlight. The damp clean smell of wet grass replaced the faint scent of decay.

Leaning close to Gustin, she breathed with relief, “Dawn.”

They both watched and kept silent, not daring to say more.

hardly daring to breathe, until they saw the last of the dead revelers disappear into the morning shadows.

“You can come out now,” a clear voice said.

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.”