City of the Dead

THIRTEEN

Ieaplow Carver rolled his way home, just a little foggy from having had more than one drink. But a man needed to celebrate and soothe a heated constitution. And that bout with the big sailor who thought he was the best wrestler on land or sea had certainly left Leaplow sweating. Still and all, it had gone well. Leaplow had never been to sea, but he could safely say that he was the best wrestler within the walls of Waterdeep.

He rubbed his eye and winced. It would be black and swollen by morning. He should remember to ask Myemaw for some cold meat to cool it when he got home. Glancing at the yellow moon riding low in the sky, he considered his grandmother's temper if he roused her out of bed because he'd acquired another black eye. Better to wait for morning, he decided.

People suddenly filled the silent street. A great crowd of revelers appeared, spinning all around him. The men and women were richly dressed and obviously returning from some masquerade in the northern part of the city. For some wore skeleton heads over their faces, bone gleaming under their broad-brimmed hats or finely trimmed wigs.

One pretty young lady grabbed at Leaplow's hand. He started at the coldness of her touch. She must have been outside for a long time, he thought. But she smiled at him sweetly and tugged him into the dance.

Leaplow went with a kick of his heels and a happy shout. Because if there was anything he loved as much as fighting, it was dancing with a pretty girl.

Round and round the street they whirled, and the rest of the nobles jigged and bobbed with them.

The cobblestones rang under the pounding of Leaplow's hobnailed boots, but the lady on his arm glided silently beside him. She drifted and spun, light as thistledown in the moonlight, and Leaplow chortled at her grace.

The dance swung up the street and then swirled through the alleys and the broad avenues.

Finally they reached a place that Leaplow recognized. A bell jangled over his head as they entered through the public gate into Dead End's courtyard. The house's windows were all dark, a sure sign that the entire family was sleeping.

"Shh, shh," Leaplow tried to shush the patty without realizing that he was the only one making any noise.

The pretty lady patted his shoulder and waved good-bye. Leaplow blinked and stumbled to halt, waving after her. But she faded through the gate leading into the City of the Dead and her party faded with her.

Leaplow slid down until he was sitting on the cobblestones of the courtyard. He found a lump of granite to pillow his aching head. With an enormous yawn, he began to settle back for a nap.

"How nice of them to bring me home," was his last thought before he fell asleep.

And it wasn't until morning, after his cousin Cadriffle woke him with a pail of cold water, that he noticed the iron gate leading into the City of the Dead was hanging wide open, the lock broken, leaving Dead End House unprotected and vulnerable to excursions from the graveyard side.

Sophraea sat beside her bedroom window, watching the night sky change from black to pale gray. For the past five mornings, the family had gone into the courtyard to find the Dead End gate shattered by the roaming dead.

At least now, nobody in the family doubted that real trouble stirred in the graveyard. But, at the same time, none of the Carvers could quite agree on what to do, except to keep quiet about the gate and try to fix the problem themselves. Especially since the broadsheets started publishing the threats of Rampage Stunk against any and all involved in the dead's persistent attempts to invade his mansion.

Late the previous day, Uncle Perspicacity did what he had done on the preceding nights. He built up the fire in the forge until the heat reached the temperature he needed. And then, sweating and weary, he worked steadily pounding away the damage to the gate and strengthening the bars with added bands of metal.

While he worked, the other uncles stood around and argued with the aunts about what to do next. Some, like Judicious, thought the addition of chains and padlocks would be enough to keep the ghosts from breaking through. Others, like her aunt Catletrho, argued for more drastic steps, like bricking closed the opening. But the majority of the family was not quite ready to give up the entrance to the City of the Dead that was so handy for their work.

With their hands wrapped in rags to protect them from the still cooling metal, Leaplow, Bentnor, and Cadriffle had picked up the reforged gate, carried it back, and fastened it in place. Then Uncle Judicious added his locks and chains, checking everything more than once.

Sophraea kept watch at the window throughout the night. As had happened on previous nights, she heard the gate shatter. Remembering the exhaustion etching lines on the faces of her family, she decided not to wake anyone. Instead, she'd go down to the courtyard first and see how badly the gate was damaged.

If the gate was destroyed, she would not hesitate. She would go into the City of the Dead and see if she could find out how or why the dead were so persistently marching through Waterdeep to the house of Rampage Stunk.

For the past five days, she had argued with Gustin, certain the answers lay beyond the wall and inside the graveyard, answers that could only be found after the dead had left their tombs for their nightly revelry. And for five nights, the wizard had stubbornly refused to venture into the City of the Dead after sunset.

But all his spells and investigations during the daylight hours had yielded no answers. With dawn so close, Sophraea decided, venturing into the City of the Dead should be safe enough. And, she thought, this time she would go alone.

Her mother would not approve. Her father would shake his head against it. Leaplow would say that she was too small to do anything. Not that Leaplow was any tower of sense or rational action! In fact, if she said anything about her suspicions that the trouble started at the Markarl tomb, the rest of her brothers, sisters-in-law, cousins, uncles, and aunts would add their contradicting opinions, just as they had for the past five days.

Sophraea sighed. No matter what she did, her family would have a dozen arguments against it and so worrying about what they would say was no reason to hesitate. She grabbed her shoes and pulled a cape over her sturdy winter gown.

Her bedroom candle was nearly burned down to a stub, but there was enough left to light her way down the stairs.

She moved carefully, carrying her shoes past Volponia's door. The old lady was a light sleeper and as troubled as the rest of the family by recent events.

Sophraea avoided the centers of the treads where they were most likely to creak, tiptoeing on the firmer edges. The loud steady snores of the Carver males overrode any sound made by her soft footsteps.

Once down to the main level of the house, she made a quick detour through the kitchen. The banked-up fire left the room unnaturally cold and silent. In less than an hour, the Carvers would be up and the fire roaring, breakfast baking, the day starting properly. A Carver cat slid around the door and stared at her for a moment, waiting to see if she would produce any food, then slipped from the room on its own mysterious errand.

Prompted by the rumblings of her own empty stomach, Sophraea grabbed her shopping basket and stocked it with seedcakes from the pottery jar. After all, there was no reason to starve while wandering through a graveyard just before dawn, she reasoned. But another part of her overactive imagination scolded her for the delay, telling her that she was a coward, afraid of what she would find past the shattered gate.

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. tfWDHIfllll JUTIbU

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.