City of the Dead (20 page)

hope, like a half a wish, probably isn’t enough to trump a good solid hate-filled curse. And the one thing that I can tell about this curse: whoever unleashed it really hates Rampage Stunk.”

He gave the little silver ring back to Sophraea. She slid it on her finger with a sigh. It didn’t seem right that a curse, one not even directed at her family, could create such havoc. But all Waterdeep knew that Stunk was seeking whoever had loosed the curse against him. No one had ever accused the fat man of being fair-minded. He was sure to blame the Carvers and even if they could drive off his bullies or appeal to the City Watch for protection, it would mean days or even tendays of disruption. And Stunk well might hire his own wizards. Dead End House had its protections, but Sophraea still worried about how much the family could withstand before somebody was seriously hurt.

The sound of booted feet crunching heavily down the gravel path propelled Gustin and Sophraea off the bench.

“Is it the Watch?” Sophraea asked as Briarsting leaped to the shoulder of the grieving stone woman overlooking the pool. From there, he hopped to the roof of a mausoleum.

“No,” the green-skinned man called down. “It’s a dwarf!”

The deep orange of the stout dwarf s waterproof hat and cloak marked him as a member of the cellarers’ and plumbers’ guild. In one hand he clutched a rake for clearing storm drains.

Sophraea started to murmur a polite greeting. The dwarf stared at her blankly.

“Do I know you, young lady?” he said slowly. “Forgive me my haste but I have urgent business at the Plinth. There will be a jump tonight.”

Gustin stepped aside to let him pass. Sophraea watched the dwarf march steadily away from them. There was something odd about the sturdy hammerpipe, the faintest twinge of that same sense that always told her where she was in the City of the Dead.

If she narrowed her eyes and stared really hard at the dwarf, she could see the shadow of a much taller figure marching steadily away from them.

“I thought the Plinth was destroyed,” remarked Gustin.

With a start, Sophraea broke her concentration on the dwarf. “Oh, yes, the Spellplague took down the Plinth.” The dwarf had disappeared around a corner of the path. “But the dead don’t always know current history.”

“That was a dwarf. Not a corpse.”

“That was a possessed hammerpipe,” she corrected him. “There’s no reason a member of the guild would be aboveground looking for a long-lost temple.”

“Are you sure?”

“Come on, I want to see where he came from.” Sophraea headed north on the path, following the clear footprints of the dwatf. She stopped at a leaf-clogged grate and the puddle stretching across the path. “I don’t know any hammerpipe who would pass by something like that. No, some ghost has grabbed him.”

“Shouldn’t we do something?”

“You know exorcism spells?”

Gustin admitted he did not.

“They’ll catch him at one of the gates,” Sophraea said to soothe both Gustin and her conscience. “Or the City Watch will pick him up on their patrol. It will give them something to do.”

Another turn of the path showed an open storm grate and a pile of tools lying next to it, obviously where the dwarf had been working. Sophraea took a hard look at the tomb nearest the grate and the family name carved deeply into the granite.

“One of the Lathkule,” she said. “That explains it. A restless family and notorious possessors. This ritual has stirred up too many of the dead.”

A gnome’s head suddenly popped up from the open sewer line.

Like the dwarf, he was dressed in the orange of the cellarers’ and plumbers’ guild.

“Here! You, young person,” shouted the gnome. “Have you seen my friend? We’ve found the problem down here.”

Sophraea blinked in surprise at seeing this ordinary worker in the middle of the City of the Dead. “I think your friend went down that path,” she pointed in the direction that the dwarf had taken.

The gnome scrambled the rest of the way out of the hole, then leaned back to call down. “Firebeard has gone off again. Can you get the clog up by yourselves?”

More muffled shouting could be heard from the hole.

The gnome cast a grimy eye over Sophraea and her companion. He tossed the end of a rope to Gustin Bone. “Haul on this, will you, tall guy?” he said. “Faster we get this cleared, the faster we can get out of here.”

With a good-natured shrug, Gustin began pulling on the rope. Slowly, like an exhausted fish being hauled into a boat, a bundle of cloth and bones emerged from the hole. The richly dressed skeleton was followed by a contingent of gnomes and dwarves, all dressed in dark orange. One of the gnomes wore the additional trappings that marked her as a cleric of considerable rank.

“Don’t call it a clog,” scolded the cleric. “That’s not respectful.”

“Caused a back-up all the way to Wall Way, didn’t it?” said the first gnome in unrepentant tones. “That’s a clog in my book. But we got it back here. Now what do you want to do?”

“We need to settle these bones,” said the cleric. The skeleton stirred in its muddy finery. With a shake of her head, the cleric reached into her pocket for a vial of glowing liquid. With a murmured prayer, she shook the holy water over the skeleton, which collapsed back on the ground.

Sophraea leaned over die bones to take a closer look. The heavily

embroidered robes wrapped around the skeleton incorporated a number of heraldic devices that she recognized as decorating the nearby Irlingstar monument. Another deceased member of an ancient Waterdeep family had been wandering, she realized. Once the body had no doubt been bathed with perfumed water and wrapped with herbs tucked under his burial robes. Now his funeral clothes smelled of the sewers.

“It was kind of you to bring the bones back here,” she told the collected members of the guild.

“It’s the guild’s rules,” explained the cletic. “If something washes out of the City of the Dead, it has to be replaced properly. Anything else would cause serious problems. But we don’t usually get them trying to dig their way out through a feeder line.”

“How far from here did you find these bones?” Sophraea asked.

“Almost to the wall. Most of the lines directly under the wall are small or gated. This one had gotten stuck in one of the smaller tubes, just south and east of the Andamaar gate.”

That would put the skeleton on a direct underground path to the Dead End gate, Sophraea thought but didn’t bother to explain to the cleric. Instead she pointed out the Irlingstar site. “If you can get him laid down there,” she said, “I’ll send my uncle Judicious to put a dead safe over the grave. That should keep these bones from wandering again.”

“You’re a Carver,” observed the gnome leader of the group. Sophraea nodded. “Good. Save us a trip and take a message to Astute that we’re seeing more disturbances down below. Nothing as big as this, but we’re getting more dirt falls from the City above into the lines.”

i “I’ll let my father know. The City Watch is looking for the cause,” she added.

The gnome leader snorted. “Like that group of soldiers

understand anything about dirt and digging. Tell your father to send along that Feeler and Fish. I think a couple of graves on the far north are starting to collapse. They’ll know what to do. I’d shore them up myself, but you know how it is. Guild rules. We’re only supposed to work on the sewer lines.”

“Who should they ask for at guild headquarters?”

“Tollemar, that’s me, or Firebeard. We’re in charge of the City of the Dead’s sewers,” said the gnome.

The cleric directed the other sewer workers on the digging and placing of the still slightly twitching skeleton in the Irlingstar grave.

“That should hold,” she told Sophraea and Gustin after a long blessing over the bones. “But this one has been tough to settle. I had to use almost a full bottle of holy water to keep those bones quiet during the trip back here.”

“We appreciate your help,” Sophraea answered. “I’d suggest being out ofthe City before dark. Things have been…” She trailed off, not sure how to describe the constant march of the corpses and haunts out ofthe Dead End House’s gate.

“Don’t worry,” answered Tollemar instead. “I’m not letting any of my people in or under the City after nightfall. Guild rules.”

“Probably for the best,” Sophraea agreed.

“Now, where did you see Firebeard?”

Sophraea pointed out the right path to follow the missing dwarf. The guild members carefully closed up the grate leading into the sewers, double-checked the lock, and then shouldering their tools, they marched after their missing friend.

Once the members of the cellarers’ and plumbers’ guild were out of sight, Briarsting and the topiary dragon emerged from behind the tomb where they had been eavesdropping on the exchange.

“If the dead are going into the sewers,” said the thorn, “that’s bad.”

“I know,” Sophraea said. “It means all the protections are crumbling.”

“What protections?” asked Gustin.

“When they first dug the sewer lines under the City, the Blackstaff laid certain protections against the dead using those tunnels to escape. You still do get things down there, but usually not straight from a grave.”

“But the wall continues to hold,” observed Briarsting. “You heard the gnomes. That skeleton didn’t get completely free.”

“But for how long?” fretted Sophraea. “And what if they are trying to use the lower ways into Dead End House?”

Gustin shook his head. “I think the gate is still the only exit that the ritual allows them to use. After all, that skeleton got stuck. It didn’t get out.”

“That’s not a lot of comfort. We need to settle the dead permanently and completely.”

“There are great wizards in Waterdeep,” said Briarsting slowly. “Ones who can command the dead.”

“I’m not going to the Blackstaff,” said Sophraea. “Nor to any of the wizards in the Watchful Order. It would be too many explanations and the family is sure to get into trouble about the gate.”

“We can hire someone less legitimate,” suggested Gustin.

“And how do we pay? I have a silver ring with half a wish,” said Sophraea. “I don’t think that’s going to be enough fot the type of magic we need.”

The topiary dragon waggled its ears and scratched at the earth with one forepaw.

“There are treasures still in this graveyard,” Briarsting translated. “We could borrow a few gems.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” said Gustin.

“No,” said Sophraea firmly. “I’m a Carver. And the one thing that we never do is steal from the dead. It leads to uouble. k always

does. What do you think happened to Fitlor?”

“I was going to ask you about that,” Gustin began. “Didn’t he used to sleep in my room?”

“He was a distant cousin,” Sophraea emphasized. “And he took something that he shouldn’t have, something he found when he was helping Leaplow repair a tomb.”

“And then?”

“He went through a portal and never came back.”

“Maybe he’s just traveling,” Gustin suggested hopefully.

“We’d like to think so. But we can’t take things from the dead. It never goes well. Look what damage I’ve done just by removing that shoe!”

“Then why don’t you bring it back?” suggested Briarsting. The two humans stared at him and the thorn shrugged. “Look, it’s just logic. If taking it out caused the problem, maybe putting it back where you found it will quiet down the dead.”

“That’s brilliant!” said Gustin, shaking the little man’s hand so vigorously that the thorn’s feet bounced off the ground. “I should have thought of that. After all, I am the wizard. He’s right. If we could get back what started the spell, we should be able to cast some type of basic reversal. I know a ritual that might work like that in a pinch.”

“But I don’t have the shoe. It disappeared from the house, the night that the dead started walking,” Sophraea protested.

“Hmm,” Gustin tugged his beard, a green flash burning bright under his long lashes. “Bet I know where it is. But you won’t like it.”

“Where?”

“Stunk’s mansion.”

“Oh, no.”

“Makes sense. From a wizard’s point of view. It’s the token, the object that draws the dead through your gate. And keeps drawing

them back to one specific place, Stunk’s mansion. If it was still at your house, they’d be knocking on the Dead End door all night.”

“So we have to go to Stunk’s and ask politely to search his house for a shoe that was taken from the City of the Dead?” Sophraea asked.

Gustin nodded. “We could do it.”

“How? His servants will recognize us immediately. Stunk knows me. And once he sees me, he’ll assume that the Carvers are involved. Which means he will try to cut my family into tiny pieces.” She heaved an enormous sigh. “All right, I’ll go to the Watchful Order. Perhaps they will know some way to end this.”

“No, no,” Gustin said excitedly. “We don’t need those wizards. I’ll tell Stunk that I’m a ghost banisher from Cormyr, able to perform miraculous exorcisms. You can be my assistant. Nobody will stop us from removing a cursed item from his house. And when we do, the noble dead will stop bothering him. Stunk will be happy.” Gustin grinned. “He might even pay us. And then I could pay your father for my statue. This could work!”

“But the minute we set foot on his doorstep, his servants will recognize us!”

Gustin pulled out his disguised spellbook. “Illusions! What do you want to be? Redhead, blonde? Halfling? Elf?” He unfolded the map from the back of the guidebook and began muttering, tracing blue and brown lines that transformed from Waterdeep’s familiar streets and buildings into spiky symbols and rounded letters. The air began to sparkle around his wildly waving brown curls.

As the magic engulfed him, Gustin started to look much older than usual, balding on top, bushier beard on his chin, and burly. Only his eyes remained his normal bright green.

“You make a charming elf,” he said as his hair slowly faded from brown to gray.

Sophraea blinked. The same sparkling light swirled around her.

She reached up her hands to touch the tops of her ears. Both ears felt as rounded as ever.

“They look pointed to me,” said Briarsting, realizing what she was doing. “That’s a good disguise. Your face is completely different. Moon elf, I’d say. You even look taller.”