he said. 'Maybe we need to destroy it. Burning? Burying? Immersion in running water?'
'Which one?' Sophraea asked.
Gustin gave one of his rippling shrugs. 'It's hard to know,' he admitted, 'without the original spellbook.' 'And that's with Lord Adarbrent.' 'We think,' the wizard pointed out. She answered with a shrug of her own.
'So what do we do with this?' Sophraea asked, contemplating the tarnished shoe in her hand.
'Take it with us,' Gustin decided, plucking it out of her hold and once again wedging it under his belt.
A movement at the entrance of a tunnel caught her eye. Something large and distinctly bony was emerging from one of the tunnels that led farther under the City of the Dead.
'Gustin,' Sophraea exclaimed, 'the curse is still working!'
'We can't be sure,' he said.
'1 am certain,' replied Sophraea, seeing two more corpses line up behind the bony skeleton in velvet robes. The dead made their stately way through the tunnel toward them, marching stiffly, staring straight ahead. 'Gustin, I think we should go now!'
The dead, unlike the ones encountered at dawn, seemed to be advancing with a steadier tread. One bore a rusted antique sword and made the occasional slow slashing motion with it. Another held aloft a tattered but obviously antique banner bearing the insignia of a long dead religion. Once again, the most noble of Waterdeep's corpses were on the march toward Dead End House. And this time, they were taking the lower route to the basement door.
Gustin finally spotted the increasing army of dead accumulating in the tunnels. He grabbed at Sophraea and began pulling her away from the corpses on parade.
Feeler gave a shout. Fish dropped back a step or two. More corpses appeared at other entrances to the tunnel. Many of these dead wore rusted armor and rotted leather, and carried shields or spears.
'They're taking portals now,' exclaimed Feeler. 'These must be from the heroes' graves.'
'You mean all the dead are heading toward Waterdeep?' Sophraea was appalled. The ancient nobility roused out of the tombs within the walls of the City of the Dead were a fair number. What if all the corpses from the outlying graveyards started tele-porting through tunnels and into the City ofthe Dead above them!
Eventually the sheer numbers would overwhelm any defenses set into the walls or gates.
Gustin groaned. 'I didn't end the curse! I think I strengthened it.'
'Come on,' Sophraea said to Gustin. 'We have to get home and warn everyone.'
It took her less than a moment to get her bearings. The tug of each monument in the City of the Dead felt stronger than ever before.
Sophraea pointed to a narrow feeder tunnel that they had passed once before. She ran to it and peered through the entrance. 'I don't see any moving skeletons or other revenants. I think it would be safer to go this way to Dead End House.'
'I don't think we can avoid this,' Gustin muttered. The tunnels behind them echoed with the steady tramp of marching feet. Feeler and Fish dropped back, keeping a wary watch over their shoulders. So far, none of the dead had reacted to them. Instead, the corpses seemed to be hurrying to a predetermined destination.
With her sight of the City of the Dead above them filling her vision, Sophraea could barely see the tunnel walls around them. She could feel a tug in her breastbone pulling her toward her family home and the gate above, the only exit the dead could use to escape the graveyard.
'Perhaps we're going the wrong direction,' said Gustin, when Sophraea led them through the corkscrew turns of the narrow tunnel. 'This isn't like the way that we used the last time.'
'No, this is the right way,' said Sophraea, acutely aware of the dead filling the tunnels behind them and the graveyard above them. Like the tide moving water in Waterdeep's harbor, Gustin's amplification of the curse was drawing them nearer and nearer.
'I still think we are going to have problems when we get there,' said Gustin, his shoulders twitching as if he too could feel the growing numbers of the dead walking above them as well as behind them.
Sophr. it. i was right about the tunnel leading back to Dead End House. It joined the main tunnel just a short way before the basement door.
Gustin was right about their problems increasing.
An army of the dead stood facing the door, weapons raised as if poised to attack.
TWENTY-ONE
Bow upon row of skeleton soldiers stood at attention in front of the basement door of Dead End House. The skeletons faced the door as though waiting for it to open.
'How do we get past them?' said Sophraea. She stared, appalled, at the rows of shining spines revealed by holes in their decrepit armor. Every skeleton was outfitted in a motley collection of rusting plate and rotting leather. Each carried a pitted sword or a bent spear.
'They look pretty brittle,' whispered Gustin in her ear. 'Maybe we could bowl them over.'
'With what?' she snapped back a little louder than she meant to. The noise didn't seem to matter to the skeletons. No heads turned under dented helmets to seek them out. Instead the entire bony squadron looked uncomfortably like they were waiting for someone to come along and command them. Perhaps an angry hero returning from the far fields, she thought.
'I may be able to raise up a little wind,' Gustin said, 'but that spell is better outside than inside.'
'What will it do down here?' Sophraea whispered. 'Don't know,' said Gustin. 'Haven't ever tried it inside before. Should be interesting.'
'We would do better to summon the door's watcher,' suggested Feeler. His fellow gravedigger Fish hissed and shook his scaly head. Feeler frowned at him and shook his own head back, the tentacles writhing in agitation around his face.
'The watcher will let Sophraea pass,' Feeler said to Fish's unspoken objection. 'And the rest of us who dwell at Dead End House. It knows its duty.'
Fish pursed his lips and made a slight popping sound.
Feeler shrugged, 'Sophraea can call it; she's a Carver.'
'I've never even seen it,' Sophraea objected.
Vaguely, she remembered the uncles talking once or twice about whistling for the door's watcher but she thought that was an adventure that belonged to their youth. Neither she nor any of the family in her generation had ever needed to invoke the guardian who watched over Dead End House's lowest entrance.
'Any Carver can command it,' said Feeler. 'But you need a whistle to wake it.'
'Is there one on this side of the door?' Sophraea asked. As far as she knew, two whistles were in the house. Like all the children, she had been shown the one on the hook in Feeler's rooms and the other one hanging near Myemaw's kettle in the kitchen. As she recalled, they'd all been firmly told the silver whistles were not toys and must never be used except-under the direst of circumstances.
Having a squadron of skeletons assembled for the invasion of Dead End House probably counted as dire enough, Sophraea decided.
'There's one whistle concealed in a hollow rock in this tunnel, for any Carver who might need it on this side of the door,' revealed Feeler.
'Really? No one ever told me that!' she exclaimed. 'You'd think they might have done.'
'And where's the rock?' asked Gustin in a suspicious tone of voice.
Feeler pointed silently at the closest skeleton. One of the dead guard's booted feet rested on a smooth gray stone that stuck up a little from the floor.
'Of course that's where it is.' Gustin sighed.
Sophraea hefted the basket full of bricks and shook them in front of his face.
'How good are you at throwing?' she asked Gustin.
With a grin, he reached into her basket and pulled out one of the half bricks.
'I used to knock nuts out of the trees by throwing stones at them,' he said. 'And I was pretty good at skipping stones too.'
