City of the Dead

by Rosemary Jones

  “How could you have lost her!” yelled Reye. “You were supposed to be watching Sophraea!”

  “Don’t know,” muttered Leaplow.

  “Wasn’t me,” added Bentnor.

  Lord Adarbrent gave a small cough behind Sophraea. Reye whirled around and, catching sight of her daughter, sped across the courtyard to snatch the child up. “Where have you been?” she said. “Look at your skirt. You’re all dirty down the front. Where were you?”

  The scolding and questions flew so fast around Sophraea’s head that she didn’t know when or how to answer. Her father came up to them more slowly. A giant of a man, he looked over his wife’s head at Lord Adarbrent and nodded at the old gentleman. “Thank you for bringing our Sophraea back.”

  The nobleman waved one age-spotted hand in dismissal. “The child knew her own way back. Quite a clever girl, Carver.”

  With a final bow, Lord Adarbrent crossed the courtyard to the street-side gate and let himself out.

  “You’ve been in the City of the Dead!” shouted Reye. “Oh, you bad, bad boys, to let her go through that gate! She’s much too young!” Reye swatted bottoms right and left. The boys fled howling with excuses of “didn’t see her!” and “it’s not my fault!”

  Sophraea’s smirk at the rout of her brothers quickly ended as her mother whirled back.

  “You bad girl!” cried Reye, swatting Sophraea hard enough to be felt through her petticoats and then hugging her even harder. “You must never go into the City of the Dead alone! It isn’t safe! Especially after dark!”

  “Sorry, Mama,” mumbled Sophraea.

  “Now, Reye,” said her father. “No harm was done.” He squatted down to look Sophraea straight in the eye. “But you must promise never to go through that gate without me or one of your uncles.”

  “Never?” protested Sophraea, who knew “never” could last as long as a year or more.

  “Not until you’re a grown girl, pet. The City of the Dead is no place for small children alone. Especially at twilight.” Her father hoisted Sophraea up on his shoulder, to give her a ride back to the house. She wrapped her hands around his broad neck and leaned her cheek upon the top of his curly head. “Oh, oh, you’re strangling me!” cried her father in mock terror. “What must I do to get rid of this terrible monster!”

  Sophraea giggled and kicked her heels upon his shoulder. “Take me home!” she cried.

  Despite all the excitement and fussing that followed at supper, Sophraea did not completely forget her father’s orders not to venture alone through the Dead End gate, perhaps because Leaplow made his own promise “to wallop her good” if she ever got him in that much trouble again. But like many Carver family rules, it became relaxed and stretched until she routinely trotted up and down the mossy stairs on errands with the rest of the family.

  Like her boisterous brothers, Sophraea grew up assuming that any haunts or horrors on the other side of the wall would never harm her. After all, she was a Carver and those buried by the Carvers rarely bothered the family.

  And Sophraea’s belief in her family’s safety never wavered until the winter that the dead decided to use the Carvers’ private gate to go dancing through the streets of Waterdeep.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WINTER 1479

  Rain and wind rattled the window, wakeing Sophraea Carver from her troubled dreams. After rolling over twice and punching her lumpy pillows three times, Sophraea sighed and sat up. The last live ember in the bedroom fireplace gave out the faintest red glow. The window shook again as another blast of Waterdeep’s wet winter hit it. The rotting month of Uktar certainly was starting with a roar of watery fury.

  Sophraea slid out from under her tangled blankets. Barefoot, toes curling when they encountered the cold floorboards, she padded to the window. Leaplow had promised to fix the loose casement many times, but her brother never seemed to make it up the four flights of stairs to her bedroom. Which meant that once again she had to deal with the noise and the draft in the darkest hour of the night. Grumbling a little under her breath, Sophraea grabbed the edge of the casement, meaning to shove the bolt as hard and tight as she could. But a flicker of light caught her eye.

  Her bedroom windows faced east, overlooking the City of the Dead rather than the crowded streets of Waterdeep. It was quieter on this side of the house, gravely quiet as the family often joked. From her room at the very top of the house’s crooked east turret, right under the roof, Sophraea could see all the northern half of the graveyard from the Deepwinter Vault all the way to the Beacon and Watchway Towers.

  This late at night, there should be nothing to see. No lights should be shining in the City of the Dead except the few lamps left burning to mark the main paths and mausoleums, and most of those were in the south end where the grand civic memorials stood, well out of sight of her window. The City Watch would have closed and locked all the public gates at sunset. Sophraea knew no honest citizen would be wandering through the old graveyard and the dishonest ones generally kept away after dark. There were far more profitable and less dangerous targets for thieves to be found amid the bustling nightlife of Waterdeep’s best and worst neighborhoods.

  But the whirling ball of light appeared again, a wildfire flicker that started in the north end of the cemetery. It leaped and swirled in patterns resembling the pathways leading away from the northern tombs. The light flickered out and then reappeared much closer to the cemetery wall, almost directly under her window.

  Fully awake and quivering with curiosity, Sophraea threw open the casement and leaned out of the window. Wind blew her black curls into her eyes. With an impatient shake of her head, she peered down into the back courtyard. Far below, she heard a metallic rattling. Someone or something was trying to enter through the Dead End gate. The strange glow shone directly beneath her but on the graveyard side of the wall.

  High above it and invisible in the dark night, Sophraea tried to make out what the light was. Could it be someone holding a lantern? Was there some unusually intrepid thief attempting the family gate?

  The clattering at the gate stopped. The wind died down and, for a moment, Sophraea thought she heard another sound, the rise and fall of an eerie wail. Then the light winked out.

  Sophraea watched for a few minutes more, but another gust of icy rain convinced her to slam the window closed.

  Thoroughly chilled and shivering, Sophraea dived beneath her blankets. She wondered if she should tell her parents about the strange lights around the gate. But it is probably nothing, reasoned Sophraea, nothing at all to worry about. And that odd noise at the end, the noise that sounded so much like a woman sobbing, that was just the wind, Sophraea told herself firmly as she buried her head a little deeper under the pillows.

  The next morning, Sophraea woke to the usual sound of big male relatives banging down the stairs of the Dead End House. Bump, crash, thump, that would be Leaplow two floors below doing his usual dive down the south staircase toward the kitchen. Rattle, slam, shouts, that would be Bentnor and his twin Cadriffle racing along the west staircase to snatch a bite to eat before joining their father in the coffin workshop.

  The City of the Dead appeared to be its usual damp tangle of winter bare bushes and trees in the gray light of a cloudy morning. The rain-darkened roofs of the mausoleums showed as black squares amid the shrubbery. Peering from her window, Sophraea could not see anything unusual. The past night’s disturbances had left no obvious mark upon the grounds.

  One of the family’s multitude of black and white cats strolled along the top of the wall separating the City of the Dead from the Carver’s courtyard.

  As she laced her favorite velvet vest with a new ribbon, Sophraea could not stop thinking about the strange ball of light that had floated through the graveyard.

  Later, after arriving at the family kitchen, she received a flurry of instructions from her mother whisking breakfast on and off the table as fast as the men could gobble their bread. A lighter stream of chatter gushed forth from h
er aunts, also dancing around their large sons and their wives, as they teased the family’s newest daughter-in-law, a pretty Henndever girl who was still a new enough bride to blush at the aunts’ jokes and her husband’s embarrassed shrugs and grins.

  But the Henndever bride grinned just as broadly as the rest when her harassed husband finally grabbed her, kissed her soundly to the accompaniment of the aunts’ sighs, and clattered down the stairs to work.

  Sophraea’s sensible father and equally staid uncles were long gone, already busy in their workshops. With her mother obviously distracted by the bustle of beginning the day, she stayed silent about the strange light that she had seen in the graveyard.

  Somewhere in Waterdeep, Sophraea mused as the morning wore on, there were battles being fought across rooftops, intrigues being plotted in shadowy taverns, and clandestine assignations being made in perfumed bedrooms. But here, in her courtyard, there was laundry. Basket after basket of laundry filled with the enormous shirts and pants needed to cover a Carver male.

  With the rain blown out to sea for the moment, Reye asked her daughter to get the laundry hung. Certainly flapping in the backyard was a better choice than draped over the backs of chairs in front of the kitchen fire or strung along the curved staircase banisters, the usual method of drying indoors during the wettest months.

  A whistle sounded behind her as Sophraea struggled to fling the dripping trousers of her brother Runewright over the line. Spinning around, Sophraea saw a tall, thin man come slouching through their public gate that opened onto the alley leading to Zendulth Street.

  Dressed in faded tan leathers from head to toe, the young man, and he looked only a year or two older than herself, bore a general air of brownness, the brown of new wood or the fawn of autumn leaves. His hair was a medium brown, his close-trimmed beard was a darker brown, even the long sharp nose and high cheekbones were tanned a travelers’ brown. The only spark of color in his face and figure was a pair of extraordinarily bright green eyes shining below dark lashes long enough to be the envy of any girl.

  “I was told I could find a stonecarver here,” said the thin brown man.

  “Monument, marker, gravestone, or statue?”

  “Statue, please,” he answered with a quick smile. “Do you do all the rest?”

  “My uncles build the monuments and do the fine stone ornaments and my cousins engrave markers in bronze or marble. My brothers can cut a coffin to fit you in less than a day, but that’s wood and not stone for most folks. My father carves the best statues,” Sophraea explained. She pointed out her father’s workshop, third door on her left facing into the yard. “You’ll find him there.”

  The young man nodded but seemed rooted to where he was, staying in the courtyard to watch her toss one of Leaplow’s shirts over the line.

  “And are you a Carver too?” he asked.

  Sophraea threw Bentnor’s second best tunic on the line before answering. “I’m Sophraea Carver, but I’m no stoneworker if that’s what you are asking.”

  She dived into the basket to pull out another set of wet pants, the left knee sporting a large hole, which meant patching would be needed. If it wasn’t patching, it was darning. There was always sewing to do, but never the sort she liked. Since the young man showed no signs of shifting from under her clotheslines, she repeated, “My father is the one you want to see. Third door, where I showed you.”

  “Actually, I’m quite fond of the view from where I am,” he replied with a wink and a grin as the stiff breeze whistling into the yard plastered Sophraea’s skirts against her legs and tugged loose her dark curls. “My name is Gustin Bone, in case you were wishing to know.”

  “Not particularly,” Sophraea answered with an ease of practice borne of shopping expeditions into Waterdeep’s markets.

  As she had grown older, more than one young man unacquainted with the size and sheer numbers of her male relatives had tried to flirt with her. Sophraea never minded the flirting, but it did get tiresome to see her cousins, her brothers, and even the occasional uncle take a young man for “a pleasant walk” around the City of the Dead to explain the family’s closeness and their natural concern for the only Carver daughter.

  This young man might be as tall as some of her cousins, but he lacked the breadth to go with the height. Thin as a spear and shoulders bent with a scholar’s slouch, Sophraea doubted this one would ever speak to her again after even the shortest stroll with Leaplow or Runewright.

  Since Gustin Bone’s feet seemed stuck to the cobblestones under his boots, Sophraea used a trick that usually caused her male relatives to disappear like smoke up one of Dead End House’s crooked chimneys.

  “I could use some help,” she said, indicating the nearest overflowing laundry basket. “Perhaps you could hang those shirts.”

  “I’m not one for physical labor,” Gustin Bone stated without moving. “But thank you for the offer.”

  “Come along then, you might as well bother my father instead of me,” Sophraea said, marching over to the door of her father’s workshop and rapping on it with a brisk knock. The top half of the door swung open and her father’s bushy bearded face peered out. “There’s a man here to see you about a statue.”

  “Weeping goddess or shieldbearer or infant sleeping?” asked Astute Carver, leaning on the lower half of the door.

  “Is that all you do?” asked Gustin Bone.

  “I can carve anything you want,” said Astute. “But those are the most popular for monuments. The first for lost lovers, the second for fallen warriors, and the third. Ah, the third is for the heartbroken parents and always the saddest of the lot to carve.”

  “I need someone to carve me a hero,” said Gustin Bone.

  “Any particular one?”

  “No, just a stone man of heroic aspect. Taller, bigger, broader than ordinary men, a great paladin like the old stories,” said Gustin. “And make him as lifelike as possible.”

  “Creases in his clothing and those wrinkles that paladins get from squinting at enemies on the distant horizon?” speculated Astute.

  “Oh excellent. As real as you can make him!”

  “I could even give him pores in his skin. By the time that I’m done, there’s more than one who will wonder if he’s simply sleeping or waiting to draw his next breath.”

  “Wonderful,” said Gustin reaching across the half door to clap Astute’s shoulder. “Absolutely what I need.”

  Astute straightened up and looked over the young man, a long speculative look that Sophraea had seen him use before.

  “What I need,” Astute finally replied in the careful drawl of a Waterdeep man who knew the importance of remuneration, “is money to pay for the stone and for my labor.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” said Gustin, producing a thin brown leather pouch from the front of his tunic. He dropped it into Astute’s broad palm.

  “A trifle light,” said Astute.

  “A partial payment only, saer,” promised Gustin. “The rest will be coming soon. A day or two to make my arrangements.”

  Then the surprising young man grabbed Sophraea’s hand and bowed over it with a smile. “Pleasure, truly a pleasure,” he said. Those wickedly long lashes blinked, momentarily hiding his extraordinary green eyes. “I’m sorry that I cannot stay longer.”

  A little popping sound filled the courtyard. The young man grinned again at Sophraea, bowed elaborately toward her father, and then sprinted for the public gate.

  “Fish guts and torn garters!” exclaimed Sophraea. “What was that all about?”

  “Language, my girl!” said Astute.

  “I didn’t say anything bad,” protested Sophraea.

  Astute shook his bearded head. “Ew, girl, you know how your mother feels about outbursts like that.”

  “Bad enough that your brothers can’t keep polite tongues in their heads,” sang Sophraea. “But surely you can act more like a lady.”

  Astute chuckled at her perfect mimicry of Reye’s most recent and co
nstant scold.

  Another gust of wind tugged at Sophraea’s skirts and remembering the full baskets of laundry, she turned back to the lines. But all the baskets were empty and all the laundry was neatly hung, wafting back and forth as it dried. A pale glow outlined each item, slowly fading away even as Sophraea stared.

  Sophraea could feel her mouth hanging open, snapped it shut, and then looked over her shoulder at her father.

  “A very surprising young man,” observed Astute with a chuckle at his daughter’s astonishment. “I think he liked you. Perhaps I should have a little talk with him when he comes back.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Sophraea with a firm shake of her head. “But I do have something to tell you.”

  Putting thoughts of the brown lad firmly out of her head, Sophraea started to tell her father about last night’s light in the graveyard, but the heavy clopping of hooves outside the street gate interrupted her. A jingle of harness signaled that a coach had stopped outside their public entrance.

  “Ah,” sighed Astute, “I forgot that he was coming today. Go get your uncles. He’ll want all of us to wait on him.”

  From the heavy frown that marred Astute’s usually mild expression, Sophraea didn’t need to ask who to announce to her uncles. Only one man annoyed the family so completely, but was also so rich as to be impossible to turn away. Obviously, Rampage Stunk was about to give the Carvers another set of orders about his mausoleum.

  Sophraea sped to each door of her uncles’ workshops, banging on them loudly to be heard over the hammering and sawing inside. One by one, her uncles popped their heads out of the doors. An aunt or two appeared at the windows overlooking the courtyard.

  “It’s Stunk,” Sophraea called to them.

  “I hope he left his hairy brute of a servant behind,” she muttered to herself.