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
