City of the Dead

TWENTY-THREE

Flustered and flushed from Gustin's kiss, Sophraea wriggled free of his grasp. The minute her hands left his shoulders, which felt harder and broader than she had expected, her feet thumped back onto the floor.

Although she would have given almost anything to have examined his face for a moment longer, she dashed toward Volponia's room.

Timing, Sophraea moaned to herself, timing is everything and she just didn't have any time left. Or she would have stayed still longer and maybe kissed him back.

She burst through the door into Volponia's room. Still, despite that recent distraction, she suddenly knew exacdy what to do and who could help them. She rushed to Volponia's bed and bent over the old woman sleeping under her silken quilt.

"We need to fetch Lord Adarbrent here," Sophraea said, shaking awake her dozing great-aunt. "Immediately. He started this and he must stop it!"

"Don't ruffle my ruffles so," scolded Volponia as the former pirate queen pulled herself up higher on her feather-stuffed pillows. That day, the gilded headboard of her bed was carved in the shape of a rearing dragon.

"What is happening?" Volponia asked the agitated Sophraea dancing from foot to impatient foot at the end of her bed.

"We don't have any time left," panted Sophraea. "Stunk's bullies are in the yard, the dead are breaking through the wall. The family is all downstairs fighting but they can never stop them uguunnui jgnuu all. We need Lord Adarbrent and his spellbook."

Fully awake now, Volponia's eyes narrowed as she listened to Sophraea's tale. Spotting Gustin in the doorway, she pointed at the young man.

"Is that your wizard?" she asked.

"Yes… no," Sophraea stuttered to a halt and then started again. "We can never get to Manycats Alley in time, but you can fetch Lord Adarbrent here. The way that you bring everything to your room."

A faint frown drew down the corners of Volponia's lips.

"Fetching a cup of this or a bite of that is one thing," she said. "A living man is quite another."

"But you did it to Myemaw once," said Sophraea, "when you wanted her for something and she was too slow on the stairs. Rang your bell and fetched her up here."

"And she was cross about it for days." Volponia's expression lightened. "Lord Adarbrent may not want to be snatched from whatever he is doing either."

"I don't care!" declared Sophraea with a stamp of her foot that sent her straight back into childhood. In a slightly more reasonable tone, she added, "We never asked for him to send the dead through our gate. Now Stunk's here and he's going to punish the Carvers for something that Lord Adarbrent did. And that's not fair!"

"But will he care about fair?" asked Gustin. He moved forward into the room with the gingerly step of a tall man surrounded by a multitude of china ornaments and other gewgaws, all eminently breakable and all wobbling on the top of spindly little tables.

"Actually," responded Volponia. "He might care. For the one thing that I would be willing to swear about Dorgar Adarbrent is that he is an honorable man. Besides, if he allows the Carvers to be driven away, who will bury him in the manner that he expects?"

Patting the chiffon ruffles swathed around her throat into order,

Volponia reached for her crystal bell. She rang it once, a single high sweet note sounded through the room.

"I want to see Dorgar Adarbrent and I want to see him now!" Volponia stated in the same clear voice that once rallied frightened men to their posts on a storm-tossed ship.

A flash of light and Lord Adarbrent appeared between the slightly tippy three-legged table and a six-drawer trunk. As always, he was dressed from head to toe in rusty black, and had evidently been about to go outside, for his hat was in one hand and his sword cane was in the other.

The ancient noble ofWaterdeep blinked to find himself in a room so fussy and filled with antique furniture swathed in billows of lace that it could only be the bedchamber of a lady of a certain age.

"Madam," he said, correctly identifying Volponia propped up on her feather pillows as the owner of the room and his probable summoner, "how dare you bring me here in such a fashion?"

"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.