still flagged for destruction by Rampage Stunk. The Carvers had halted work on the site four days ago and sent word to the furious Stunk that nothing could be done until the dead were resting quietly. The merchant had sent numerous messages but Astute and his brothers remained firm. Even necessary burials and other funeral rites were being carried out as quickly as possible these days, the coffins being almost hurried through the City of the Dead to the waiting portals and their final resting place.
'Has he had any luck in figuring this out?' Briarsting asked Sophraea, climbing up on a marble memorial bench to watch Gustin pace muttering around the Markarl tomb.
'Not really,' admitted Sophraea, digging a seedcake out of her basket and handing it to the always-hungry thorn.
'Not at all,' confessed Gustin even more honestly as he saw food appearing from the basket and joined them on the bench. 'I never studied necromancy. And that's about all that's truly certain. Someone has loosed a magnificent necromantic curse against Rampage Stunk.'
The wizard nipped a seedcake out of the basket. Hooking the edge of one foot on the bench, he wrapped his long arms around his knee, rocking back and forth. 'Wish I knew how they did it. But I'd bet all my nonexistent wealth that the spell started here. Something about the aura of this spot.'
'Don't feel too bad,' Sophraea said. 'Even the Watchful Order couldn't find the cause.'
After the first night of the wandering dead, some senior wizards from the Order arrived in the City of the Dead to check the wards on the walls and public gates.
When the attacks continued, the Blackstaff issued a proclamation saying chat Waterdeep and its citizens were quite safe. Since the City of the Dead's gates and walls were quite obviously sealed and no breaches in the defenses found, the so-called 'noble dead' just as obviously did not come from there.
On top of that magnificent reasoning, the BlackstafFs proclamation continued that the 'contained disturbance' bore the earmarks of a trade dispute between rival merchants, aided by renegade wizards. Those wizards would be found and punished accordingly, the proclamation concluded.
'So, all the corpses in velvet showing up on Stunk's doorstep are just illusions,' quipped Gustin. He pulled another seedcake and a copy of the Blue Unicorn from the day before out of Sophraea's basket. He shook his head over the headlines. 'At least according to this story, the haunting of Stunk's mansion is all illusions and other reports around Waterdeep were created by a hysterical population. The writer concludes by telling his readers to not believe everything they see is real.'
'I wonder if he would still advise calm if he saw that parade that passed the gate today,' she said.
'Quite possibly not,' he agreed.
'I hear they found a hand swinging from Stunk's doorknocker yesterday morning,' added Sophraea with a sigh. 'Hard to see how they can say that's an illusion or a figment of the public's imagination.'
'Actually,' said Briarsting, rooting in her basket for another seedcake before Gustin ate them all, 'that's Lady Mellania's hand. She's always a bit absentminded and asked if you would be so kind as to bring it back for her.'
'Why am I supposed to bring it back?' Sophraea said indignantly. 'I didn't tell her to leave it there.'
'She just thought, since she would be passing by your house, you could leave it on the doorstep or somewhere close to your gate.'
'I can't even think of a polite reply to that request!'
'I wouldn't worry about it.' Briarsting stretched out his legs on the bench and munched happily. 'Told you that she's a forgetful old thing. She won't remember she asked by tomorrow night.'
'How convenient,' muttered Sophraea.
'It is,' agreed the little green-skinned man without irony. 'And best that the rest of them don't start thinking of requests. They're enjoying these outings to Stunk's mansion quite a bit, you know. In fact, if you'll pardon me saying so, I haven't seen the north end of the cemetery quite so lively in a century or more.'
Sophraea shuddered while Gustin smoothed his beard to hide a smile.
'Still,' said the wizard, willing to turn the subject to Sophraea's relief. 'If the Blackstaff doesn't think that the dead are coming from here, then you needn't worry so much. After all, that means nobody is looking at your family's gate.'
'What the Blackstaff says publicly,' said Sophraea, amazed at Gustin's innocence, 'and what the Blackstaff thinks are two very different things. Didn't they have politics in Cormyr?'
Gustin shrugged and retorted, 'Probably, but I never paid any attention.'
'Well,' Sophraea continued, 'nobody is having the City Watch patrol through here quite so vigorously every day looking for pickpockets. Somebody, somebody very important, does think the dead walking through the streets come from here. They just don't know how the deceased nobility are getting out. And once they figure it is through our gate…'
Sophraea didn't know what type of trouble such a discovery would bring, but from the suddenly gloomy expressions of her companions, she suspected they had no cheerful expectations either. Even the topiary dragon looked a little wilted as it hung over her shoulder, begging for a whisker pull.
'It's odd,' Gustin observed, 'that the Watchmen haven't found your gate yet? After all, they just need to walk the cemetery wall until they come to it.'
'They've probably passed it a dozen times or more,' replied Briarsting, 'and never knew. They're not Carvers, are they?'
'What are you talking about?' said Sophraea. 'You don't have to be a Carver to see the gate.'
'You have to be a Carver to find it,' insisted the thorn. 'Or at least to show it to someone else. After all, the Carvers built it for Carver business, not for anything else.'
'You're talking about us as if we have magic,' said Sophraea. 'We're just tradesmen. We have our craft, building monuments and so on, but we're no wizards.'
'Your family is part of Waterdeep, aren't you?' persisted Briarsting. 'I met your ancestors first when my Honor Garden was laid out. It was a Carver who chipped out the bark on that stone trunk yonder. Another Carver who clipped the hedge into a dragon.' :
'But not a Carver who animated it,' stated Sophraea.
'No,' Briarsting agreed. 'That was done by the druids and the elves when they came to finish the memorial.'
'But the Carvers were there when it happened,' Gustin guessed.
The green-skinned man nodded. 'This city does things to the ones who live here longest. Even to the ones who are buried here.'
'How long has your family lived in Waterdeep?' Gustin asked Sophraea. 'Were they here during the Spellplague?'
She shrugged. 'We've always been here. Certainly since there was a City of the Dead. It's in the ledger. Stonehands Carver helped build the first wall around the graveyard. He built Dead End House out of bits and pieces left over from that job. At least that's where the foundation stones came from. And when they built the wall higher and stronger, the family worked on that too.'
'And built the house higher with leftover stone and wood,' Gustin did not look surprised after Sophraea gave a slow nod.
'Magic soaks into the stones,' he mused. 'But does it go into the bones? That's an interesting idea. Especially if you had the Spellplague in the house.'
'What?'
'It's something that Lord Adarbrent said. Magic has soaked into the very foundation stones of Waterdeep. How could it not? The city has been here for so long, through so much. The City of the Dead must have been touched by hundreds of spells. Thousands perhaps. So why wouldn't the graveyard magic soak into a family, especially a family touched by the Spellplague?'
'The boy is brighter than he looks,' Briarsting commented.
Gustin waved the thorn's mocking away, stating, 'It makes sense.'
'The Spellplague never touched my family,' said Sophraea. 'Not the way that you're thinking. There were more foreign dead to be buried in the time that followed, that's all in our ledger, but we were spared.'
'There were none who left and came back during the later years? None who showed the scars?'
Rosemary Jones
City of the Dead
