Authors: Rosemary Jones
“It will be good to be on patrol again,” the little man said to Sophraea. “It gets a bit lonely out here in the winter with only the Walking Corpse wandering through on occasion.”
“Lord Adarbrent?” asked Sophraea, remembering the last time
that the old nobleman disappeared down the pathways in the City of the Dead.
“He’s got family close by,” said Briarsting. “Big mausoleum, the Adarbrents have.”
“Green marble, iron door, two memorial urns in the shape of sailing ships flanking the entrance, and the name picked out in gold leaf above, ” said Sophraea, without even thinking.
“Bit unnerving how the Carvers all do that,” remarked Briarsting to Gustin. The wizard nodded.
“Lord Adarbrent has been visiting us for years,” said Sophraea. “He and my father discuss it all the time. One of the urns cracked during a heavy freeze and we replaced it. Lord Adarbrent wanted it to match the broken one exactly. He wants everything to always look exactly as it did.”
“Not a man fond of change?” ventured Gustin as they walked away.
“No,” said Sophraea, with a last wave to Briarsting and the topiary dragon. “He’s very famous for his resistance to change. Lord Adarbrent is always marching around the city and muttering at people about the history and the importance of this bit of Waterdeep or that bit. Or telling them that there are forces out to change Waterdeep all together.”
“Sounds like an absolute terror.”
“Oh no,” argued Sophraea. “He’s always been very kind to me. When he notices that I’m there. Just, well, changes upset him.”
As they walked along the path toward the Coffinmarch gate, Gustin kept up a steady stream of chatter, asking Sophraea about the nobles of Waterdeep. She barely heard him, she was so lost in her thoughts. Could someone really be rash enough to raise the dead with magic? For that was what she was sure she had felt. Not the usual comfortable wandering of one or two ambulatory spirits. No, this was something darker, angrier, rousing even
chose dead who wanted to be left alone.
But she didn’t know exactly what was going on. She wanted to talk to her family but she did not know what to tell them. That she stood in the middle of the City of the Dead at the start of winter and felt cold? They’d pat her on the head and probably buy her a warmer cloak. Oh, and her mother would remind her to take one of her bigger brothers with her when she went walking through the graveyard at twilight.
She needed to know more. She needed to understand what she had felt so she could explain it properly. And, if it was magic, she needed a wizard to help her.
“So, if we want to tell what was really going on, we need to go under the tombs,” mused Sophraea out loud.
“I’m not going to start digging up the ground here. Who knows what spooks that would raise!” responded Gustin with an exaggerated wave of his hands.
“There were other ways to get under the City of the Dead,” countered Sophraea, “but we’ll have to go through the house. There’s no help for it. I will have to introduce you to my family.”
“But I’ve already met your father and your uncle and at least a couple of other Carvers…” said Gustin as Sophraea steered him back toward the Coffinsmarch gate.
“That’s not quite the same as being approved by my mother, and my aunts, and my grandmother,” replied Sophraea, “but I can’t take you through the house without somebody seeing you. We need to think of a good explanation of why you were visiting me other than courting.”
Gustin’s mouth dropped open. “Courting!”
“It’s the first thing that they will assume,” said the exasperated Sophraea. “I know. I’ll say that I found out that you were a language teacher and I need to brush up on my… noble Cormyr … to get the job in the dressmaker’s shop.”
“But I don’t know any noble language of Cormyr,” protested Gustin. “I’m not even sure there is one.”
“Just don’t tell my family that!” said Sophraea.
“And just think of all the grief that you’ve been giving me about my statue,” huffed Gustin, trotting alongside the girl. “At least I’m not telling fibs to my family!”
“No, you just tell them to the entire city at large!” she retorted. Sophraea blushed a little, because she really didn’t approve of telling falsehoods, but anything was better than her mother, her aunts, and her grandmother making assumptions about a young man visiting her. And, what would be more painful for Gustin, telling those assumptions to the Carver men.
Sophraea convinced herself that this one small lie was just a strategy necessary to get to the bottom of the strange doings in the City of the Dead.
Still arguing, Sophraea and Gustin left the City of the Dead, completely missing the tall, thin, and very elderly man standing in the shadowed doorway of a green marble mausoleum.
Once they were gone. Lord Adarbrent walked quickly to the Mairgrave tomb. He unlocked the bronze door and addressed the pale ghost standing inside.
“It will be well,” he promised in his slow and formal manner. “They know nothing about our revenge and they may even prove useful.”
11’$ waterfowl stew again,” said Reye, stirring the pot. “And there’s 1 more than enough in the pot for a guest.”
When Sophraea pulled Gustin into the kitchen and stammered out her explanation of tutelage in exchange for the occasional meal, Reye only asked, “Does this mean you’ll stay at Dead End House for a little longer?”
“Until the lessons are done,” Sophraea hedged.
“That’s good,” her mother replied and Sophraea squirmed. Reye had said less about her plan to leave Dead End House than any other member of her family. But that was Reye. Unlike the rest of the family, she tended to keep her opinions.to herself.
Sometimes Sophraea wondered if the whole family wasn’t so set against her leaving to become a dressmaker, she might have reconsidered working in the Castle Ward. But she’d announced her decision on too many occasions to change her mind now. At least nobody was raising a fuss about Gustin.
Leaplow leaned over the stewpot to take a sniff. “Like everything else in Waterdeep, it’s more a promise of fowl than anything else,” her brother said, ducking a swat of Reye’s spoon.
“Take a seat and wait your turn,” scolded his mother.
“Tip what’s left of the roast fowl into the soup, boil it until the bones float free, and then add vegetables, and keep adding vegetables and water all winter,” said Gustin, following Leaplow to peer in the pot. “As well as whatever herbs are handy and salt to taste.”
At Sophraea’s look of surprise, the wizard smiled. “We used to do it the same way where I grew up. We got our birds off the river—
or in the woods. Funny to smell it here though. I thought the food in Waterdeep would be more exotic.”
“You think we all dine on dragon soup and roast cockatrice?” chuckled Myemaw as her hands flashed above the vegetables, sorting them out, chopping down with her sharp little knife, and then tipping the whole collection into the stewpot.
“In this guidebook that I have, one that was written here,” began Gustin.
“You should never believe anything printed in Waterdeep.” Sophraea’s grandmother tapped her palm with the flat of the knife. “Most authors will tell incredibly outrageous lies to get you to part with your coin. Cut your gold out of your purse faster than any member of the thieves’ guild.”
Gustin sat on the nearest stool, thrusting his long legs under the broad table. Soup, bread, and assorted pickled vegetables were passed in heaping bowls up and down the line of Carvers.
“Outrageous or not, there are wonderful stories in my guidebook,” he said to Myemaw. “I found it when I was small, in a stack of old paper that my uncle intended to use in the outhouse. Every chance I could get, I’d read that book. I just knew that Waterdeep was the city for me.”
“Oh dear boy,” chuckled Myemaw filling his bowl to almost overflowing, “the whole world thinks that.”
Most of the men kept their noses in their meal, eating steadily, but Sophraea’s uncle Judicious chatted with the latest addition to their dinner tabic.
“Been in Waterdeep long?” the older man asked Gustin.
The wizard shook his head and snagged the heel of a loaf off a nearby plate to crumble into his soup. “Just long enough to find lodgings and start a couple of small business ventures.”
“I swear the city has more strangers in it than native-born,” Judicious continued. “It’s why I never felt the need to travel. Everyone
always comes here. If I want to see all the world’s folks, I just stroll down to the harbor.”
“Actually, he never traveled because he could never carry away all those tools in his workshop,” said Myemaw. “And Judicious would never leave any of his tools behind.”
“I have the best locks and locksmith tools in Waterdeep,” explained Judicious. “More than one of my designs for the mausoleums has been adopted by others for the finer villas and mansions in the North Ward.”
“If you get him started on locks,” warned Sophraea as she passed Gustin another plate of bread, “you’ll be here until breakfast.”
Gustin emptied the second plate as quickly as he had the first. “If the food is always as good as this, I’d be very content.”
But, finally, even the wizard had to declare himself full.
“We should start our lessons,” said Sophraea, piling up Gustin’s soup bowl and bread plate to hand to her cousin Bentnor for washing. Bentnor passed it off to Cadriffle, who turned to pass it off to someone else, only to find the rest of the men already had slid out of the room. With an exasperated sigh, he headed for the tub of soapy water waiting in the corner of the kitchen.
“The smallest parlor should be empty,” said Reye.
“That’s a good idea,” said Sophraea, not looking directly at her mother. “We’ll go there.”
Sophraea immediately pulled Gustin toward the back of the house. She pushed open one door and showed him the small, neat parlor that was almost never used in the winter. The family preferred the big common room off the kitchen during the coldest months, she explained to Gustin, as the heat from the two kitchen chimneys kept that room nicely warm. “As does having a dozen Carvers stuffed in there at any given time,” she added. -
“I’ve noticed your family tends to the large size,” he replied.
“All except me and Myemaw,” agreed Sophraea, crossing the
parlor to pull open the not-very-secret door built to look like a fireplace cupboard. A stack of candles sat on the table at the top of the twisty dark staircase leading down. Looking up at the wizard, Sophraea asked, “Can you keep track of time in your head?” “Fairly well,” replied Gustin.
“We can’t be gone forever,” warned Sophraea, lighting a candle and shoving it into a holder. “But there’s always a lot of chatter and chores after a big meal. We should have time to get under the tomb if we hurry.”
“So where does this stair go?” asked Gustin, following close behind Sophraea. Shadows cast by her candle flickered upon the wall beside him. Within two turns of the stair, a glance back over his shoulder showed the door to the neat little parlor was lost to view.
“To the lowest basement,” she replied. “Step carefully, sometimes things get loose down here.” “Things?” said Gustin.
“You know, corpses that aren’t quite settled in their coffins yet. Unusually large reptiles slipping in from the sewers,” said Sophraea as she drew back the bolt of a door bound with three bands of iron. It swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. The air from the lower depths smelled drier than many dungeons that he had been in, but still had that tang that let him know they were heading underground.
“But the boys did a cleaning down here a few days ago,” Sophraea continued, “all the way down the stairs to the bottom basement. Myemaw insisted.”
“Did they find anything?” asked Gustin, trying to sound as nonchalant as her. One thing he had figured out on his first day in Waterdeep was to never show any surprise or astonishment to its citizens. Even though every step down the most ordinary street made
him tighten his jaw muscles just to keep his mouth from dropping open at the sights and sounds of the city.
Look at their earlier walk through the City of the Dead. A functioning topiary spell, a casual conversation with a thorn about the possibility of the dead moving around on their own, and the sure signs of some major ritual or curse surrounding those two tombs. That was just in the north end of the graveyard, the area that his guidebook said was quiet and of little interest to travelers.
And look at the girl tripping down the stairs so lightly in front of him. None of what they had encountered had surprised her. Perhaps startled or more likely annoyed, especially when she landed under that topiary dragon’s paw. But she’d remained completely calm in that Waterdhavian way that made him feel like he was twelve again and had just rolled off a farm wagon with hay still stuck to his hair.
“Mostly they cleaned out some rodent nests,” she answered his question. “And a couple of lizards. But nothing too nasty.”
Gustin reached into his tunic, tapping for a reassuring moment his guidebook to Waterdeep. But he didn’t need the large spells and rituals hidden there. It was just a gloomy staircase leading into a basement stacked with coffins and corpses. Perhaps a few rodents or a lizard. Nothing to bother a well-traveled young wizard like himself. Sophraea wasn’t the only one on this staircase who could exhibit an unruffled attitude.
A scrabbling of claws sounded overhead. A glance toward the ceiling revealed a flick of a scaled tail before whatever it was disappeared back into shadows.
“See,” said Sophraea. “Just a lizard or two. You get them down at this level. They help keep down the bugs.”
“I don’t mind bugs,” he said, shaking his wand out of his sleeve. He tapped one end against the back of his left hand and a small
white flame sprang up. At least that allowed him to see his feet as they followed Sophraea round another bend in the stairs.
She stopped to unbolt another thick wooden door. “Last one between the stairs and the basement proper,” Sophraea said.
“I keep forgetting this is so heavy,” she added, pulling the massive door toward her. Gustin reached easily over her head and grabbed the door’s edge to shove it open with his free hand.