'I wouldn't give much for a man who took me walking in such a gloomy place,' added the woman, who looked at Sophraea with sympathy.
With an indignant sputter, Sophraea started to explain that she wasn't out walking with the wizard, at least not in the romantic sense of the word. Gustin just tucked her arm through his, smiled sweetly at all three Watch members, and said, 'Well, I thought about a stroll through the Sea Ward, but you know the ladies. Some of them find monuments quite moving.'
'I never said any such…' But Gustin dragged her quickly away from the Watch.
'Do you want them trailing after us?'
'No, of course not.'
'Then smile at them all and come along.'
After a turn in the path hid them from the Watch, Sophraea reclaimed her hand. Tucking it firmly through the handle of her shopping basket, she said, 'We need to go north. I saw the light first there. Somewhere near the old noble tombs.'' 'Old nobles?'
'The families who were buried inside the walls. Only the oldest nobility kept their monuments on the grounds. The rest were moved long ago, and anyone who dies now, unless they belong to one of the old noble families, is buried in the newer sites.'
'I thought there was only one graveyard, in Waterdeep.'
'Within the walls, yes. But we use the portals to go to the others like Coinscoffin or the Hall of Heroes. A lot of the richer, older families have small markers, a statue or a plaque, for their private portals to their own gravesites.'
'I'm sorry,' said Gustin, 'but did you say portals?'
'Certainly.'
'Real portals, little pools of magic that move you from one place to another?'
'Of course, how else would they manage it?'
'It really is a city of wonders,' whistled Gustin. 'The guidebook didn't lie.'
'Don't they have portals to move bodies wherever you come from?' Like most who were born in Waterdeep, Sophraea had never thought much about how others lived outside the city. Although, if she did think about it, she would be forced to express a certain conviction that they didn't live half as well organized as those fortunate enough to dwell in Waterdeep.
'I've heard talk, everybody has heard stories about portals, of course, but people don't just use them for… well… for everyday business.'
Sophraea pondered this for less than a moment. 'But what would you use them for?'
'Descending into demon realms, visiting the gods in their palaces, that sort of thing. Not carting coffins to their final resting place.'
'Why would you want to go to a demon realm?' She couldn't see the sense in that. Demons were supposed to be unfriendly creatures with unpleasant habits.
'I didn't say that I did.'
'Well, the City of the Dead's portals go to very specific places,' said Sophraea resolutely. 'It's all down in the family's ledger. I can show you if you want.'
They rounded another monument, one carved with a frieze of flowers with tightly furled petals. Sophraea paused to trace the stone petals with one hand. 'That's one of Fidelity's carvings,' she said to Gustin. 'He was my great-grandfather. A flower still in bud meant a youth had died, one fully in bloom indicated a mature person.'
'And for the really elderly, did he do a bare twig?'
Sophraea giggled and shook her head. 'No, a sprig of evergreen, usually, or one of the herbs that grant long life.'
'And do all the carvings have a message?'
'Most do. But the meanings change with the generations. That's why we keep the ledger, so we remember why a family asked for a particular decoration and who carved it. And you should avoid tombs like that.' She pointed out a grave marker that was set flush into the ground. Above it, a cage of iron was mounted, with the bars sinking into the earth.
'Why?'
'It's a dead safe,' explained Sophraea. 'Judicious came up with the design. It keeps the restless ones from leaving their graves and roaming through the City.'
'Do corpses walk much around here?' Gustin glanced over his shoulder. They were the only ones on the path, surrounded completely by monuments.
'Not as much as they used to. But a particularly unquiet grave sometimes needs something extra like that. Most of the dead safes aren't within these walls, but out at the other graveyards.'
As they walked on, the pathways became more overgrown. While not derelict, the tombs were obviously smaller and less visibly kept up than the more important public monuments in the southern part of the City of the Dead.
When Sophraea made a turn to the left, she told Gustin, 'This should cut through to the place where I first saw the light.'
When Gustin questioned Sophraea about her sense of direction, she realized that he didn't know about the family talent.
'All the Carvers can just do that,' she finally said, 'those of us born into the family always know where we are in the City of the Dead. Some of the aunts and sister-in-laws seem to have the talent rub off on them too. Perhaps it comes from working here all the time.'
'But you don't work in the family business. You're a dressmaker or will be soon.'
'Odd, isn't it? Maybe it is because I was born a Carver. Anyway, we just can't get lost inside the City of the Dead,' she told him.
Skirting around a large and rather foreboding marble tomb, the roof overhung with grim gargoyles carved from dark red granite, they came upon a memorial statue of a woman in full armor, weeping into her hands. Sophraea stared into the little basin of clear water at the statue's feet. An old memory stirred. 'I know this place,' she said.
The long-legged wizard twisted around. 'I swear that bush over there moved,' he said.
'Don't be ridiculous.'
'No, it moved, it changed position.'
'What?'
Gustin cocked his head to one side. 'Interesting. See, it was all bunched up there. Now it's longer, with a pointy bit at the very end over there. Sophraea?'
'Hmm?' She knew, in that strange way that she'd always known exactly where she was in the City of the Dead, that they were too far south of the place where she had first seen the light. That was more north and west of their present location, near that small tomb where she first met Lord Adarbrent. 'Brick and mortar,' said Sophraea out loud, fixing the location in her mind. 'With a bronze door.'
'Sophraea,' Gustin sounded much more insistent. 'Do you see shapes in bushes?'
'What are you talking about?
'Shapes in bushes, like you see shapes in clouds?'
'I don't know. Sometimes you see faces in the shrubbery here, shadows of things that have gone. Ignore it.'
'No, I mean that bush really looks like a tail, a big long twitching tail and that bit… that round big bit… that looks like a hind leg ending in a large clawed foot.'
Sophraea glanced over her shoulder at the dark green hedge surrounding a round memorial, a simple pillar polished and carved to look like a storm-blasted tree. The hedge obscured the carving, but Sophraea pushed aside the leaves to look at details, she could see the stone cut in the shape of bark and broken branches protruding from the trunk.
'This is really old, probably one of Fidelity's, for somebody famous, I just don't remember the name,' she said to Gustin, circling the hedge to find an opening. When she came to an open place, she crossed the winter-browned lawn to examine the stone tree more closely. A druid, she thought, the family used to carve tombstones like this for druids but there weren't many inside the graveyard walls.
