City of the Dead

SIXTEEN

Once out of sight of Stunk, Sophraea felt her natural courage return, but she had no desire to linger in the merchant's mansion. "Since we only have today," she said to Gustin, "the practical solution is to go in opposite directions. I'll look downstairs and you go upstairs. That way we can search the place twice as quickly. And then leave."

Although the greatglories still burned brightly overhead, the light dimmed in the great hallway as black storm clouds darkened the sky outside.

"We should really go before the storm gets worse " she added. "We do not want to be on the streets in the dark."

Gustin raised his head from his hands. "What is it? What are you feeling?"

Puzzled, Sophraea stared at him.

"I caught it again. Just now. Same as the tunnels," he said. "And in the City of the Dead." "What?"

"Your eyes. Just the quickest flash of blue. What are you feeling, Sophraea?"

"The dead," she admitted. "The City of the Dead. But I don't know why. It's never happened outside the cemetery walls before. But it's like I can see a straight path running from here directly back to our gate and into the City of the Dead."

"The curse laid on Stunk," said Gustin. "We are right, you know, it made a path for the dead to follow here. Made a path that they have to follow. The shoe has to be here."

"Then we had better find it," said Sophraea, settling her basket more firmly over her arm. "You go up"-she pointed at the great staircase leading out ofthe hall-"and I'll go down."

Halfway up the main staircase, Gustin turned around and called over the banister, "Why do I feel like this was a bad idea?"

"Piffle," said Sophraea, trying to convince herself that the shivers running through her body were caused by her wet cloak, "it's still broad daylight and this is the well-guarded house of a wealthy man. What could hurt us here?"

The rumble of thunder shook the house. A crack of lighting illuminated the windows for a brief moment causing the statues and the suits of armor to cast strange and twisted shadows across the floor tiles.

"You don't think that was a sign from the gods?" asked Gustin.

"Go on, hurry up," said Sophraea, "I'll meet you back here."

She set off toward the back ofthe hall, certain that she would find the traditional "servants' stair" there. One guard, standing stiffly at attention, marked the top of the stairs.

A guard on the servants' staircase, thought Sophraea. That shows an unusual amount of distrust on Stunk's part. She was glad that she didn't work for the fat man.

Downstairs, Sophraea found the cook, a friendly soul who obviously ruled the kitchen, and the various female servants clustered around the warm fire were the usual bevy ofWaterdeep gossips. All were perfectly willing to chat with a nice young elf who offered to help them to peel the vegetables for the evening meal.

"Although, dearie, I have to say," the cook remarked, "I didn't think your kind was quite so domestic. Why you ply that little knife so quick and clever that I'd have taken you for one of Waterdeep's own."

Sophraea shrugged and turned the conversation to odd spaces under the house, the sort of place that she thought the shoe might be hidden.

"Well, there're some rooms below," answered the friendly cook. "Although why you'd want to go poking around in that muck, I don't understand."

"The wizard." Sophraea paused. She couldn't remember the name that Gustin had given the door guards. "My master, the wizard," she recovered and stumbled through an explanation, "is creating a great protection spell." She rummaged in the basket hooked as always over her arm. "I need to take certain charms to the lowest levels of the house."

All she really had was a basket full of bricks. But she waved it around, trusting that Gustin's illusion held and the servants would just see a moon elf gesturing with a velvet bag that could hold magical charms.

None of the women surrounding the table looked. at all interested. The laundress folding clean napkins just nodded and said, "That's nice but the ghosts haven't bothered us. They rattle the upper windows something fierce, and some of the servants upstairs have had a hard time, but they don't seem to care about those of us working down here."

Well, they wouldn't, thought Sophraea, but did not voice it out loud. After all, the dead haunting Stunk were all the most noble revenants of Waterdeep's past. In life, they had probably paid no attention at all to kitchen maids, laundresses, and cooks. It was unlikely that they should change their attitudes in the afterlife, she thought.

"Door to the lower rooms is over there," said the cook, gesturing to a little door set by the corner of the chimney. "Watch yourself on the stairs. They are steep. Take a candle with you, for those rooms are dark as well as mighty dank."

Picking up a tallow candle in a tin holder as the cook indicated,

Sophraea lit the wick from a taper. She then proceeded down the dismal stairs leading to Stunk's lowest basement.

The stairs were steep, each step twice the height of a normal stair. Hooking her basket on the crook of her elbow, she held up the candleholder with that hand and pressed her other hand against the stone wall. There was nothing like a railing. One step at a time, she inched her way down. She felt as if the least misstep could leave her a broken heap on the floor below.

Once she reached the bottom, Sophraea discovered that a rich man's basement could be just as full of cluttered jumble as anyone else's. At the very base of the stairs, someone had stacked a few crates and some broken bits of chairs. Cobwebs lightly festooned the pile.

But farther into the cavernous room carved under the warm kitchen, empty barrels and discarded pallets leaned together like drunken ores. Something squeaked when Sophraea's pale candlelight fell upon it. A skinny tail whipped around "a cracked wooden tub and disappeared under a pile of boards.

Sophraea frowned. Stunk could easily afford rat catchers. Undaunted, she pressed forward, resolutely ignoring the scrabbling sound of small claws burrowing away from her. Her steps sounded hollow as she crossed the wooden floor and, with some dismay, she realized that there must be another chamber under this one. Some Waterdeep mansions might have as many as three or four underground floors, dug down into the city's own deep layers.

Where the brocade shoe might be found, she had no idea. However, the night that the phantom lady had danced across the floor of Dead End House, she remembered a pale trail of glowing footprints had been left behind. Perhaps a similar sign of ghostly invasion could be found here.

Raising the candle high above her head, Sophraea peered into the far dark corners of the room. Off to one side, she thought she saw something glint, the faintest twinkle of gold.

Sophraea rushed across the room. A large stack of lumber was heaped against the wall. Between the cobwebbed sticks and broken slats from old crates, she could make out the glimmer of something gold. Setting down her basket and candle, she began pulling the wood aside.

Behind her, a heavy tread sounded on the stair leading up to the kitchen. "Well met!" cried a man. "What are you doing there?"

She froze. Had he come by the women in the kitchen? Had they told on her? No, he must have seen her go into the kitchen. When he followed and found her gone, he'd guessed she was in the basement. But why follow her at all?

Heavy boots banged down the steep staircase, and then she saw who it was.

Stunk's hairy doorjack stood at the bottom of the steps. His eyes widened and he threw his head back to take a large sniff of air. "You're that wizard's elf girl," he said.

Sophraea bobbed a quick curtsy. He stood directly in her path, no way around him if she wanted to flee back up the stairs. "I'm here with the wizard," she agreed pleasantly while bending down to take a firm grip on the basket's handle. "Setting protections for the house."

"You're poking and prying," answered the servant moving toward her. "Stunk wouldn't like that. He doesn't like elves much, either."

He was a good bit taller than she was and heavy with muscle along his shoulders and barrel chest.

"Stunk knows I'm here," she said, sidestepping a bit so the candle wasn't directly behind her. No need to be any clearer a target than she was.

The doorjack stalked forward, head outthrust. Even in the dim candlelight, Sophraea could see how his bristly beard extended down his neck to disappear under his collar. Little tufts of coarse black hair even sprouted from his ears.

"I see a moon elf," growled the doorjack. "But I smell something else. Something human. Something young. Something scared."

"I am not scared!" Sophraea exclaimed, backing into the shadows. She raised up the basket, which was reassuringly heavy with the broken bricks inside.

The doorjack chuckled. "What are you going to do with the poof of velvet?" he snarled. "Tickle me to death, elf-not-elf girl?"

For a moment, Sophraea was confused. Then she realized no matter what he smelled, the hairy man could only see Gustin's illusion. She clutched the basket more tightly, ready to swing it.

"Come here!" snapped the doorjack and he lunged, one hairy hand outstretched. Sophraea leaped away but the man's black nails caught the edge of her cloak and pulled her back.

"Let go. My master is working for Stunk," she said. And then, remembering the quiet power of Stunk's wife in the hall, she added, "I have Lady Ruellyn's approval and protection!"

The doorjack ignored her protests.

"I know that scent," he muttered, hauling her closer and closer, like a wriggling fish hooked on a line.

She tried to swing the basket, but her cloak entangled her arm and she was off balance. Her feet slipped on the dusty floor as he dragged her toward him.

The basket barely grazed his ribs. He gave a grunt and a yank.

Sophraea twisted around, trying to get more solid footing, but the doorjack was stronger than her. She couldn't pull away. He stretched out one hand and fastened on her arm, pulling so violently that she stumbled. The rough floor scraped her open hands when she tried to catch herself.

The doorjack continued to pull at her, trying to force her down upon the floor. Sophraea twisted, let the loose cape slip around her shoulders, and scrambled to her feet. He held on. The collar cut against her throat. Furious, Sophraea spun toward him and lashed out with one foot. He dodged her kick but the cape slid between his fingers. She was able to back up another step away from him.

"I'll get you!" he growled. He shifted, trying to get a better grip. She pulled one arm free and plunged her hand into the basket. Her fingers clamped around a half brick. Hauling it out, she thrust the brick with all her might at the man's hairy face. It crushed his long nose with a loud snap. The doorjack let go with a wild howl.

Sophraea dropped to the floor and rolled away. Once clear of the villainous servant, she sprang to her feet. She knew he was much stronger, but so were her brothers. Through the years she had learned that her small size let her dodge more quickly than a large man. As long as she could stay out of his grasp, she had a chance. Her best defense was to stay beyond his reach.

He staggered back and forth, both hands clapped over the center of his face, blood flowing in a glittering ribbon down his chin. "You broke it," he burbled through the mess. "You're mine!"

While he was distracted, she raced past him and jumped up to the second stair. He heard her. His head snapped up arid he struggled to stand, his knees bent, one hand over his face and the other braced on the floor. For a terrible moment they both wete motionless, staring at each other. She thought about running up the stairs, but they were steep, double height, impossible for her to do anything other than climb carefully. Knowing that, she hesitated, two steps up, facing him, unwilling to turn her back on him and chance the stairs.

That was a mistake, she realized a moment later, as he sprang forward, leaping more like an animal than a man, covering the distance twice as fast as she expected.

Terrified, she stumbled backward up a step. In her head, she heard Leaplow's advice, "Whatever you do, don't let a man pin you. Hit him, keep hitting him, don't quit!"

She swung the basket high and brought it down like a club on the top of the doorjack's head. His feet slid on the tread and he landed on the floor at the bottom of the steps. From where she stood on the stairs, for once in her life, she was taller than her opponent. She took advantage of that fact. Sophraea thumped the heavy basket against his skull again and again.

With a yelp, the doorjack smashed into the floor of the basement. He didn't move.

For a long moment, Sophraea just stood there, breathing heavily, her fingers clutched tightly around the basket's handle. He still didn't move.

She edged back down the stairs, crept forward and tentatively put out a hand to see if he was dead or alive. The doorjack groaned and she jumped. But he didn't open his eyes, just whimpered a little and curled upon his side.

Sophraea circled cautiously around the unconscious man. She rerurned to the candle. With many glances back over her shoulder, she reached into the pile of lumber.

But the glint of gold was nothing more than the edge of a broken picture frame. The shoe was not there.

The doorjack groaned again. A quick search of the debris turned up several stout cords that had once been used to tie up sacks of flour. Sophraea lashed the man's hands and feet together, using the best knots her brothers had taught her. All she needed was a little time to find Gustin and get out of this house. With some regret for the destruction of a favorite garment, she tore the muslin flounce off her petticoat and gagged the doorjack.

Sophraea hurried back to the stairs. She looked up. The door at the top was firmly closed. She listened for a minute or two, but could hear nothing of the activity in the kitchen. With luck, nobody had heard her skirmish in the basement.

She shook out her skirts, gathered up her basket, and started up the stairs, only to turn around and go back down.

She scooped the half brick off the floor and dropped it into the basket. Gustin was right after all. You never knew when a good solid brick might come in handy.

Then Sophraea fled up the staircase to the warm kitchen above.

The cook, the laundress, and the other maids were still gathered around the table, gossiping amid a growing pile of peeled vegetables and folded linen.

"Did you finish your job, dearie?" asked the plump cook.

"Oh yes," answered Sophraea, edging around the table toward the stairs leading to the upper rooms.

"Thought I saw that Furkin go down the stairs to help you," said the cook, continuing to peel with quick strokes of her knife and not looking up.

Sophraea froze in place.

"Good thing you didn't stay down there with him," the cook continued. "He's not a nice man."

The other women were also intent on their work, none of them looking up but all nodding in agreement with the cook.

"He was quite polite to me," Sophraea lied, coming closer to the table. "In fact, he offered to stay down there and keep the rats away from our charms."

The cook raised one eyebrow at this statement. "Well, that was kind of him," she said with no inflection in her voice. "We'll just leave him alone then, down in the basement, to keep the rats away."

The other women chuckled and nodded.

"Go on," said the cook, shoving a chair toward her with one foot.

"Catch your breath before you go back upstairs. You're panting so hard they're sure to ask questions. A suspicious lot, those guards of Stunk's."

Sophraea collapsed into a chair and picked up a knife. She pulled a bowl toward herself and began to chop vegetables with the rest of them. "You are kind," she said to the table at large.

The plump cook shrugged. "Some of the master's men are better than others. And some deserve a lesson or two."

"But won't you get into trouble? If Furkin stays in the basement too long?" Sophraea asked. These women had been nothing but nice to her and she didn't want to bring trouble down on their heads.

One thin and elderly maid shook her head. "Stunk rules his men with a hard hand. But we serve his lady wife and answer to her."

"And she dislikes Furkin as much as any of us," piped up the pot girl from her corner by the sink, a mere child of thirteen with her hands sunk into the soapy bucket of dirty dishes. She earned several stern looks from the other women: Abashed, the pot girl went back to her scrubbing.

"So you think your wizard can chase the ghosts away?" asked the laundress, rising above that brief incident.

"We've promised Lady Ruellyn to do the best we can," Sophraea answered. Then, looking around the table at the honest faces of the women gathered there, she decided to tell the truth. "It would help if we could find a certain shoe. A gold brocade dancing slipper, very old-fashioned in style."

The women waved away any knowledge of dancing slippers. "Now," said one thin maid, "Lady Ruellyn has dozens of slippers, but none of gold brocade that I remember."

"My old mistress used to have little dancing shoes witha painted heel, but hers were silver lace and not gold brocade," said another one. "She kept them in a box, with sprigs of herbs stuffed down in the toes to keep them fresh. She never wore them. But my old girl showed me the shoes once and said that they were her first dancing slippers and she meant to be buried in them. Poor thing, I'm sure the family forgot after she passed away."

The rest of the women murmured an agreement and slipped into discussions of past employers. Sophraea soon realized that all of the women had worked for noble families elsewhere in Waterdeep until their elderly employers had fallen upon hard times.

Each woman told tales of how their elderly and aristocratic employers had eventually sold the family homes to Stunk, after the fat man had bought everything else of value from them.

"He makes the old ones loans," whispered one maid whose own hair was more gray than black. "And tells them that they can pay him back bit by bit. But it's never enough some how, and they start selling off pieces of furniture to make the payment, and then the paintings off the walls, and then the jewels that their granny's granny got for her wedding ever so long ago. And, quicker than you think, there's just nothing left to pay Stunk. And then he comes by, all smiles and flattery, telling them not to worry, he'll take the whole property off their hands, they won't have to worry about paying us servants anymore, and he'll set them up some place nice to live out their last days."

"Nice!" interjected the cook, who had moved over to the fire to stir a cauldron puffing out a spicy smoke. She pulled her dripping spoon out of the pot and waved it with little regard for the sugary splatters she sprayed across the hearthstone. "He put my old lady in one bitty little room down by the docks. It was horrid and dark and damp. If Lord Adarbrent hadn't brought her some nice pieces from his own house and a good wool blanket for the winter, she would have been ever so miserable."

Just about, to leave the table to look for Gustin, Sophraea picked up the peeling knife instead and innocently asked, "Lord Adarbrent?"

"They may call him the Walking Corpse," said the cook, "but he proved himself a kind friend to my mistress."

"And to mine," answered the gray-haired maid.

"He tried to talk my lord out of taking Stunk's loans," declared the laundress, shifting her basket to avoid the cook's wildly waving spoon and stains on her clean tablecloths. "Would that he had listened to him, I wouldn't be working here."

"But there's no denying that Lord Adarbrent has a terrible temper," added the cook as she stalked back to the table. "Why my old lady told me that he nearly horsewhipped a man to death once. When Lord Adarbrent was young, the nobles of Waterdeep were a different breed. Why just look at a man wrong in those days, and he'd be challenging you quicker than you could blink. I see you, saer, let us duel, saer, that's what all the young blades would say when they went on the promenade. And people feared Adarbrents in those days. At least that's what'my old lady said!"

"I thought Lord Adarbrent was all alone and had no family," said Sophraea.

"Well, they've all been gone for a long time," the cook responded. "But they caused some stir more than fifty years ago, during one of the bad times."

Sophraea looked up at this.

"Of course, I was just a baby then," the cook went on. "But so much change was happening inside the city's walls and outside in the world. The dark arts attracted certain nobles, especially those who had suffered great losses. Oh, most ladies played at stances at their parties, but there were some who took it a bit further than that. Thete were some who raised ghosts. The sort that had secret rooms, at the top of the tower or down in the basement, with vats of this and glass tubes of that, and nasty smells seeping out to drive the housekeeper crazy."

Outside, the thunder died away, leaving only the heavy splatter of rain against the high small windows ofthe kitchen. More rain hissed down the chimney and made the fire smoke. The cook snapped an order at the pot girl, who obediently left her bucket and rattled the damper and plied the poker until the smoke settled.

Then the pot girl crept closer to the table. The laundress slid a stool across the floor to her. Perched on top, the child wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered with delight as the older women began to swap tales of hauntings in old Waterdeep. With an absentminded gesture, the cook handed the pot girl a biscuit to nibble while the stories continued.

While their tales of dark deeds in the City of the Dead rarely matched what Sophraea knew to be the truth (one or two exaggerations nearly caused her to giggle), each mentioned more than once the fashion for ghosts that plagued Waterdeep's finer homes for a brief time long ago.

"So the Adarbrents called forth spirits?" Sophraea finally asked.

"Not the current Lord Adarbrent," said the cook with stout loyalty to the man who had rescued her old mistress. "But he had a cousin who frightened my old lady when she was girl. A truly nasty witch, if you know what I mean. She died from some ritual gone wrong and the family sealed up her rooms the very day that they buried her."

Sophraea remembered the sour, cold smell of Lord Adarbrent's house. Perhaps something was dead behind the old noble's wainscoting, something more sinister than a mouse, and something that needed a stronger cure than the gift of a kitten.

Suddenly the tales of haunting were interrupted by a very live bumping noise below their feet. A crash, like a stack of lumber knocked over by a man rolling around, could be distinctly heard.

"Old chimney flue," explained the cook. "Carries sound up from the basement. Sounds like Furkin is having some trouble with those rats."

"Oh," said Sophraea, jumping up from the table and starting toward the stairs. "Perhaps I'd better go find my wizard now."

"Good idea, dearie," the cook agreed. "Furkin might be in a bit of temper later on."

"When he gets loose," giggled the pot girl and was immediately shushed by the other women.

With hurried thanks, Sophraea headed upstairs. As she left, she heard the cook remark, "Well, that's a nice polite and helpful girl for you. Look at all the vegetables that she's peeled and chopped. Of course, if anyone asks, we haven't seen her for ages, have we?" npstairs in Stunk's mansion, Gustin made a great show of pacing back and forth, muttering the occasional odd phrase. He knew that true magic was much more than empty gestures, but, from his experience, the servants expected this kind of act.

Stunk's valet, a portly bald man given to wringing his hands and muttering "please don't touch that," met Gustin at the top of the stairs leading to his master's private apartment. The young man supposed that the valet was watching to see that he wouldn't steal anything. Two more of Stunk's bodyguards stood stiffly on either side of the lacquered door leading into their master's bedchamber.

When one thin male servant turned the corner of the hallway and yelped to see a wizard down on his knees drawing cryptic symbols on the carpet with a piece of charcoal, Gustin gained the general impression that the whole household's nerves were badly overset.

He continued with his search, carefully lifting up curtains and peering under tables. The upper hallways were just as cluttered with bric-a-brac and expensive ornaments as the lower rooms. The brocade shoe could be almost anywhere and nearly invisible among all the other trophies that Stunk had displayed. Not for the first time, Gustin wished he had a spell that could reveal a desired object. That would be much more useful than many of the odd bits that his old teacher made him memorize!

As he advanced down a hallway toward the door leading to Stunk's chambers, Gustin noticed a silk cloth covered one enormous picture frame in an alcove just outside Stunk's rooms.

When he started to twitch the coveting aside, the valet moaned and said "Oh do not! I wish the master would just have it destroyed."

The revealed painting showed the wealthy fat man and his aristocratic lady, expensively dressed in the finest materials and jewels, but the faces above the lace collars were the faces of corpses, rotting away.

"Unusual choice for a portrait," said Gustin, quickly letting the cloth fall back over the portrait. "I'm surprised the attist dared to paint him that way."

"It wasn't always like that," said the valet.

"Did it start to change when the haunting began?"

"Oh no, it's been changing for much longer than that, getting worse every day."

"An early warning, one that wasn't heeded," Gustin speculated.

"The master won't have it removed," the valet moaned. "He only covered it after my lady objected to seeing it every time she came up the stairs. My master said that he won't be frightened by such tricks. He was keeping it to feed to whoever was doing this, scrap by canvas scrap until the jokester chokes. At least that was what the master said."

"After my interview with him, I would say that Rampage Stunk has very little sense of humor," Gustin remarked.

The valet shuddered slightly and responded, "Please don't say anything about the master to me." He gave a quick glance over his shoulder to the two guards stationed nearby.

"No, no, of course not," Gustin had no wish to get Stunk's servant into trouble. "I only meant that I was quite impressed by your master's gravity in the face of adversity."

The last was pitched loud enough for the guards to hear and the plump valet gave Gustin a grateful smile. "Secondus Marplate," said the man, bowing slightly and indicating his round person.

"Philious Fornasta," said Gustin Bone, who'd always been fond of this particular persona. Philious had had numerous dubious adventures among the war wizards of Cormyr but, Gustin felt, always exchanged the social pleasantries with exceptional panache.

"Have you been with Stunk long?" asked Gustin as he continued to examine the hall. He rather doubted that the shoe would turn up here or even downstairs where Sophraea was searching. If the curse was directed at Stunk, than the object tied to the curse probably had been placed in the man's personal apartment to draw the dead to him. Which was one of the reasons that he had not objected to Sophraea searching in the basements below. She would be perfectly safe there and unlikely to run into any of Stunk's more dangerous servants.

"I came here following the master's marriage to Lady Ruellyn," explained Marplate as he trailed after Gustin.

"If she's a lady, wouldn't he be a lord?" Gustin asked casually as he opened the doors of a small cupboard. Inside it, he found brushes, a small fire' shovel, and a bucket for carrying out ashes, but no shoe.

"Lady Ruellyn carries her own title by right of birth to a very noble family. They have a mansion in Castle Ward," Marplate said. "I can say no more." And then he proceeded to follow Gustin, gossiping as the wizard sniffed around for the missing brocade shoe.

In the valet's guarded opinion, Stunk was waiting to buy just the right title for himself, one that would increase his influence in Waterdeep. "As close to a mask as he can get," Marplate explained and then looked as if he'd regretted suggesting his master was angling for a position of power in Waterdeep.

"So, you can become a noble here if you have enough money?" queried Gustin.

"You would be shocked at what you can buy in Waterdeep," said Marplate quite sincerely.

"Not after living here for a very short time," replied Gustin cheerfully as he walked up to the guards flanking the door into Stunk's chambers.

"I have your master's permission to set my protections throughout the house," he told the guards, who looked doubtful. "Of course, I can always tell your master that I could not enter his rooms and therefore they are unprotected, a consequence of your actions."

The two guards stepped quickly aside. Gustin swept through the lacquered door, gesturing to Marplate to accompany him.

In the suite of rooms that Marplate called "the master's apartment," Gustin found a dressing chamber filled with racks of luxurious clothing and shelves of shoes, but no dancing slipper. A bathing chamber, a small study, and an even smaller library, filled primarily with ledgers for Stunk's various enterprises, also lacked any evidence of the haunting except the candles burning in every room, necessary because of the tightly drawn curtains concealing each window that they passed.

"There're always things looking in at night," Marplate said as he checked the curtains, making sure the fabric overlapped at the edges, completely shrouding the room from anyone or anything looking in.

A huge bed dominated the center of the last room, swathed in draperies that allowed the occupant to protect himself from the slightest draft. Gigantic feather pillows filled the top of the bed.

Set neatly to one side was a food safe, a neat contraption of wood and perforated tin made to keep certain types of pastries fresh. Gustin had seen such pieces in bakeries and even the larger kitchens of noble houses in Cormyr. But he'd never seen one in a bedroom.

"The master does a great deal of work in this room," said the valet, obviously feeling the need to explain. "He often needs sustenance in the middle of the night."

"You must spend all your time sweeping crumbs out of the sheets," Gustin said, flipping back the covers to peer under the bed. No shoe. He straightened back up, thinking hard. He was sure that the shoe had to be in the house and, most logically, near Stunk or in a room that Stunk occupied a good deal of the time. Of course, it could be downstairs, perhaps even in the room where Stunk held his audiences. The thought of going back there and searching under the fat man's cold gaze made Gustin shudder.

"There is a maid to change the linen every day." Marplate straightened the covers that Gustin had rumpled. "The master is most particular about such things."

The wizard wandered to the far end of the room where a small table held a number of papers and a few personal items on a tray, like a comb and a bottle of men's hair pomade. Gustin picked up the latter, pulling out the glass stopper to confirm that it was the thick, inky liquid sold in numerous Waterdeep shops with assurances that it would give even the oldest and grayest of gentlemen the luxurious locks of a young man. With a very slight smile at this evidence of Stunk's vanity, Gustin replaced the bottle on the silver tray.

Beneath the inlaid table, he spotted a slip of paper crumbled upon the floor, as if somebody had hurled it there in anger. He glanced back at Marplate. The valet was still fussing with the covers of Stunk's bed, making sure the corners were absolutely straight. Gustin snatched up the note, glanced quickly at the signature, and tucked it in his tunic. He would read it later, someplace where nobody was watching.

"Are you done, saer?" asked Marplate, twitching slightly when he saw Gustin so close to his master's table.

"Almost, almost," Gustin said, circling the room once more. He noticed every time he crossed near the heavily draped windows, the valet flinched. He put one hand upon the crimson velvet curtains to draw them open.

"Oh, there's nothing out there," Marplate said with a nervous start.

"Perhaps I should look for myself." Gustin twitched the curtains open to reveal long glass windows that opened onto a small wrought iron balcony with a planter filled with dead plants. Other than that, there was, as the other man had said, nothing there.

Behind him, Gustin heard the valet give a relieved sigh.

Ah, thought Gustin, this is where the ghosts must appear each night. Throwing his hands into the air and letting his head fall backward until he was staring at the brightly painted ceiling, Gustin cried, "I sense the presence of the dead!"

Marplate let out a startled shriek at Gustin's antics and then clapped both his hands to his mouth.

Gustin slowly rolled his head forward until he was staring at his boots. "Each night, they come here, testing the fortifications of this house. Here they gather, looking in, attempting to reach the master of this place."

The valet let out a strangled whimper.

"They rattle the windows, they shake the handle." Gustin lowered his arms bit by bit and then tested the latch of the windows, rattling it slightly.

Marplate moaned behind him, "Every night, it gets worse. And he won't move out of this room. He always has me open the curtains so he can state at them. He glowers at the dead and then mutters about how he's going to kill whoever is doing this. And he makes me stay in the room so they all know what I look like too!"

Gustin turned until he faced the man, raising one arm gradually to point at him. The valet quivered. Gustin tried not to smile. The deliberate gesture, the deepening of the voice, it worked every time, he thought. Everyone always thought that the worst magic came on the end of a grand gesture.

He drew in a deep breath and stated, "You are also cursed." Then added in a lighter tone, "But if you give me the key for this window's lock, I may be able to save you."

With trembling hands, Marplate withdrew a ring of keys from his tunic. He handed them quickly to Gustin.

"It's the littlest key," the valet said. "He makes me go out there every morning and see if they have left anything behind."

"Do they?" Gustin thrust the key into the lock and turned it. With a distinct click, the window swung open. Gustin walked out on the balcony. It was completely bare as he had seen through the glass, except for the one pottery planter and the dead plants on their withered brown stalks.

"The plants are always dead," answered Marplate, staying well inside the bedroom. "I had the gardener replace them each morning. But today, the master said to just leave it."

"Nothing else?" Gustin asked.

"Well, the first day"-the plump man squirmed a litde and pulled out a handkerchief to dab at his bald head-"I found a shoe."

Gustin whirled around to look at him. "A gold dancing slipper, brocade and fashioned in antique style?"

Marplate nodded. "It looked exactly as you described, saer."

"Fantastic! What did you do with it?"

The startled valet pointed at the oblong planter sitting on the balcony. "I had the gardener bury it there. I did not think it would be lucky to bring it into the house."

Gustin rushed back to the planter, grabbing the plants by their woody stems and pulling them up. Dirt and dead leaves went flying as he flipped the plants out of his way.

"Did Stunk know you buried a shoe here?" Gustin plunged his hands into the wet earth. He dug like a frantic dog into the dirt.

"No," Marplate's voice sunk to a frightened whisper. "He would have wanted it displayed, like the painting in the hall. He keeps saying that he is not afraid of this curse. But I know a fetish when I see one."

"Really?" Under his questing fingers, Gustin finally felt the rough texture of the brocade slipper. He pulled it out from the planter. Sained with dirt, the little shoe looked ghastly, a proper grave good. "How did you know that there was a curse tied to this?"

Marplate straightened himself with a sniff of superiority. "I was born in Waterdeep. Such things are not unknown here."

"Yes, I'm beginning to see that." Gustin stuffed the shoe into his belt. "Interesting city, interesting citizens, I must say. But why didn't you have one of the other wizards marching through here earlier remove it?"

The valet blinked in surprise. "None of them ever came upstairs. None of them ever spoke to me. They just stayed downstairs and cast spells of protection around the doors and gates."

"Which must have helped," Gustin said, as much to himself as to Marplate, "as the dead never got this past the threshold. Or maybe it needed someone living to carry it into the house."

The valet gave a worried glance at the shoe now dangling from the wizard's belt.

"Not to worry," Gustin said with an airy toss of Marplate's keys back to the man. "I'm taking this to where it belongs and that should end this curse."

"I certainly hope so," said the valet, carefully stepping onto the balcony to replace the dead plants in the pottery planter.

Gustin hurried out of the room and headed down the main staircase to find Sophraea. A crackle of paper around the middle of his chest reminded him that he still had the note lodged in his tunic. A turn of the stair revealed a niche with an antique statue. At least Gustin hoped it was antique and Stunk did not prefer his statues of naked women to be missing an arm and a head. Ducking behind the headless woman put Gustin out of sight of the guards at the top of the staircase.

He withdrew the note from his tunic and read: "Saer: If you had any honor, which I have good leave to doubt, you would meet me as a man should, in an appointed hour and place. But send your bully boys against me one more time or threaten my home by any word or gesture, and I will horsewhip you as a. cur should be chastised."

As he had noticed in Stunk's bedchamber, the note bore the seal and the slashing signature of Lord Dorgar Adarbrent.

Hurrying down the stairs, Gustin met Sophraea as she was hurrying up. As usual, she looked intent, as if the worries of Waterdeep settled on her slim shoulders. In Gustin's opinion, she worried far too much these days. Things had a way of working out. After all, they'd gotten into Stunk's house, the illusion spell was still holding (a bit to his surprise but he didn't intend to tell her that), and they may very well be able to settle the dead by sunset.

"I (bund the shoe," Gustin told Sophraea as soon as she'd reached the landing halfway up the main staircase. "And I know who set the dead after Stunk."

"It's Lord Adarbrent," Sophraea said as Gustin pronounced the same conclusion at the same time.

"How do you know that?" Gustin asked even as he handed the note over to Sophraea to examine.

"Servants' gossip downstairs," she said, barely glancing at the note before handing it back to him. "Adarbrent has been championing the nobles after Stunk's cheated them out of their possessions. I'm certain that Stunk's plans to tear down parts of the City of the Dead made him even madder. So he used his cousin's spellbooks to unleash the dead against Stunk."

"Oh," said Gustin, a little disappointed that she hadn't been more interested in the note and scarcely looked at the shoe when he indicated it dangling from his belt. It's that being born in Waterdeep, he thought, it just makes them all so hard to impress. Especially a girl like Sophraea.

She tugged at his sleeve. "We need to leave now," she said, starting back down the stairs. "Hurry up."

"So now Adarbrent is slinging around spells," Gustin complained as they went toward the front hall. Sophraea set an even quicker pace than usual and he had to stretch his long legs to keep level with her. "And Stunk's valet knows a fetish when he sees one. Here I thought magic was a rare and unusual talent. An ordinary wizard doesn't measure up to much in Waterdeep."

"Maybe Adarbrent hired a real wizard to read the spells out for him," Sophraea soothed even as she sped across the hall. "However he did it, it worked. But really, we need to leave now. I had a little trouble downstairs."

Ignoring her last statement, Gustin pulled the brocade shoe from his belt. "I foUnd it." Maybe she hadn't noticed it before. He was expecting just a bit more congratulations from her.

"Wonderful," said Sophraea, urging him across the hall with many nervous glances at the guards still stationed at the top of the stairs and near the doors.

"But can we lock the dead back into the graveyard if we return the shoe?" Gustin mused and then answered his own question. "I'm sure this anchored the whole curse to Stunk's house. If the valet had done what was expected, and carried the thing into the mansion, the dead would have been inside the walls days ago."

Two sets of guards were advancing upon them, one pair from the rear of the hall, the other pair from their posts at the great door leading into the courtyard. Sophraea glanced at them and hissed at Gustin, "Whatever the magical reasoning, we should talk about this later!"

Outside thunder rumbled and the sky looked even darker. Gustin began to catch Sophraea's panicky mood. Perhaps it was time for a rapid departure. But when the guards reached them, he said calmly enough, "We have set the protections that Lady Ruellyn requested. We will return tomorrow to collect our fee."

The men stared at him. Behind him, Gustin heard Sophraea gulp, as if she were about to say something and then swallowed it.

Stunk's guards marched to the great door leading to the outer courtyard. One pulled it open as two more arranged themselves in front ofthe wizard and his companion.

"They will escort you to the gate," said the most senior bodyguard. "Return in the morning for your payment."

Gustin nodded and followed the men out the door. "Keep your eyes on their backs," he whispered to Sophraea. "Don't glance around. That just makes you look nervous or afraid."

"I wouldn't want to look nervous," Sophraea agreed very softly, flipping up the hood of her cloak so it concealed most of her face. "Especially after I left Stunk's doorjack tied up in the basement."

"What?" Gustin almost tripped to a halt.

"Keep moving." Sophraea prodded him. "I don't want to explain here."

The guards swung open the gilded iron gates. Gustin and Sophraea slipped through them. Rain began to pour down, but the pair hurried away from Stunk's mansion, never glancing back until they reached the corner of the street.

Then Gustin risked one look over his shoulder. Oblivious to the rain. Rampage Stunk had joined the cluster of guards at his gate. The fat man just stood there, watching them leave. Another guard came running up to the group, obviously bursting with news.

Gustin pulled Sophraea around the corner of the street, shielding both of them from the stony blank stare of Rampage Stunk.

With some urgency, Gustin asked her, "What is the fastest way back to Dead End House?"