“I’ve noticed your family tends to the large size,” he replied.
“All except me and Myemaw,” agreed Sophraea, crossing the parlor to pull open the not-very-secret door built to look like a fireplace cupboard. A stack of candles sat on the table at the top of the twisty dark staircase leading down. Looking up at the wizard, Sophraea asked, “Can you keep track of time in your head?”
“Fairly well,” replied Gustin.
“We can’t be gone forever,” warned Sophraea, lighting a candle and shoving it into a holder. “But there’s always a lot of chatter and chores after a big meal. We should have time to get under the tomb if we hurry.”
“So where does this stair go?” asked Gustin, following close behind Sophraea. Shadows cast by her candle flickered upon the wall beside him. Within two turns of the stair, a glance back over his shoulder showed the door to the neat little parlor was lost to view.
“To the lowest basement,” she replied. “Step carefully, sometimes things get loose down here.”
“Things?” said Gustin.
“You know, corpses that aren’t quite settled in their coffins yet. Unusually large reptiles slipping in from the sewers,” said Sophraea as she drew back the bolt of a door bound with three bands of iron. It swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. The air from the lower depths smelled drier than many dungeons that he had been in, but still had that tang that let him know they were heading underground.
“But the boys did a cleaning down here a few days ago,” Sophraea continued, “all the way down the stairs to the bottom basement. Myemaw insisted.”
“Did they find anything?” asked Gustin, trying to sound as nonchalant as her. One thing he had figured out on his first day in Waterdeep was to never show any surprise or astonishment to its citizens. Even though every step down the most ordinary street made him tighten his jaw muscles just to keep his mouth from dropping open at the sights and sounds of the city.
Look at their earlier walk through the City of the Dead. A functioning topiary spell, a casual conversation with a thorn about the possibility of the dead moving around on their own, and the sure signs of some major ritual or curse surrounding those two tombs. That was just in the north end of the graveyard, the area that his guidebook said was quiet and of little interest to travelers.
And look at the girl tripping down the stairs so lightly in front of him. None of what they had encountered had surprised her. Perhaps startled or more likely annoyed, especially when she landed under that topiary dragon’s paw. But she’d remained completely calm in that Waterdhavian way that made him feel like he was twelve again and had just rolled off a farm wagon with hay still stuck to his hair.
“Mostly they cleaned out some rodent nests,” she answered his question. “And a couple of lizards. But nothing too nasty.”
Gustin reached into his tunic, tapping for a reassuring moment his guidebook to Waterdeep. But he didn’t need the large spells and rituals hidden there. It was just a gloomy staircase leading into a basement stacked with coffins and corpses. Perhaps a few rodents or a lizard. Nothing to bother a well-traveled young wizard like himself. Sophraea wasn’t the only one on this staircase who could exhibit an unruffled attitude.
A scrabbling of claws sounded overhead. A glance toward the ceiling revealed a flick of a scaled tail before whatever it was disappeared back into shadows.
“See,” said Sophraea. “Just a lizard or two. You get them down at this level. They help keep down the bugs.”
“I don’t mind bugs,” he said, shaking his wand out of his sleeve. He tapped one end against the back of his left hand and a small white flame sprang up. At least that allowed him to see his feet as they followed Sophraea round another bend in the stairs.
She stopped to unbolt another thick wooden door. “Last one between the stairs and the basement proper,” Sophraea said.
“I keep forgetting this is so heavy,” she added, pulling the massive door toward her. Gustin reached easily over her head and grabbed the door’s edge to shove it open with his free hand.
They emerged in a dark cellar room, lit only by one guttering candle on a table near the door. Two men sat at the table, making loud slurping noises as they finished the last drops of something dished out of the iron kettle resting between them. Even in the dim light, neither could be mistaken for fully human. One had tentacles instead of hair and the other had scales instead of skin.
The big man with tentacles writhing around his head pushed back his chair, rising quickly as soon as he spotted them in the doorway. The smaller man, who resembled a two-legged fish, pursed open his mouth as he turned in his chair toward the girl, revealing a double-row of sharp pointy teeth.
The tentacled man hurried forward, his arms opened wide, a dripping fork in one hand.
Gustin grabbed the girl in front of him and, ignoring Sophraea’s squeak of protest, pulled her behind him. He joggled her hand, causing her to drop her candle. The little flame winked out, leaving the basement full of shadows, the only light the single candle burning on the table.
The stranger’s tentacles fanned out around his head, whipping back and forth like a snake about to strike. The one with two rows of teeth sprang out of his chair to follow his companion.
Gustin’s hand flew up and the flame flared at the end of his wand.
Sophraea latched onto his wrist, shoving down his hand. “Wait,” she cried as she had in the graveyard when she wanted to protect the topiary dragon.
He began to pull away but Sophraea shifted her grip, pushing at his wand to direct the flaming tip away from the man advancing toward them.
“Don’t … be careful …” Gustin warned the girl.
Trying to take the wand out of Sophraea’s grasp without hurting her, Gustin lost his own grip on it. In fact, as had happened once or twice before, he was sure that the cursed thing twisted deliberately under his fingers. With its usual spite, the wand spun out of his hand. Swearing under his breath, Gustin made a flailing grab for it. The flame detached itself from the end of the rod, rolled itself into a ball of sparks, and whizzed out of reach.
Sophraea squeaked as the ball of sparks sped past her nose. The strange little ball ricocheted off the wall, and bounced back over his head. He waved his arms wildly, trying to deflect it away from his hair, trying to call up a shield between them and the out-of-control ball of sparks as quickly as he could. The spluttering ball of light flew upward, colliding with the ceiling.
With a sharp crack, a chunk of plaster broke loose and fell from above, hitting him squarely on the top of his head.
His knees buckled and he fell back onto the sputtering Sophraea. Just like a farm boy falling off the barn roof, he thought a little incoherently as he tumbled into the girl that he had hoped to impress with his quick wits and magic.
There wasn’t much of her but what there was cushioned parts of him nicely as they both landed on the hard cold stone floor. Still, she wasn’t very long and Gustin cracked his chin on the top of her head and, then, the back of his head on the stones below them.
After one more breathless squeak underneath him, Sophraea balled her hand into a tight little fist and punched his closest ear.
“Ouch,” Gustin groaned. The girl might be tiny but she could hit hard.
“Get off me!” Sophraea cried.
And the big man with tentacles for hair lunged at Gustin.
CHAPTER NINE
For the second time that day, Sophraea found herself pinned to the ground by a large body. Gustin was a dead weight that wasn’t actually dead. As a Carver, she knew the difference.
“Sophraea, Sophraea, are you all right?” She looked up into the concerned faces of the gravediggers Feeler and Fish. She hadn’t expected them to be in the basement. Usually they went out after dinner for a drink in the Warrens.
Feeler grabbed Gustin’s shoulder and rolled him off Sophraea. Fish reached down a scaled hand to help her to her feet. After a quick “thank you” to Fish, she bent over Gustin.
He struggled to sit upright with his head between his knees. Muffled groans emitted from him with greater drama than she felt was necessary. After all, he’d hit her on the top of the head when he fell and she could feel that lump forming. And she had not punched him that hard. When she tipped his head back, he blinked at her, looking somewhat cross-eyed.
Squatting down beside them, Feeler patted Gustin’s arms and legs. His tentacles waved around his head, a sure sign that the big man was a bit upset by all the magic that had been whirling through the basement. To Sophraea, however, he spoke in his usual mild deep tones, “Nothing broken. Perhaps a bruise or two in the morning. He’ll be fine.”
Relieved but unwilling to show it, Sophraea asked Gustin sharply, “What was all that about?”
“Why did you grab me?” he countered. “Don’t ever do that again! That’s dangerous!”
“You were attacking my friends.”
“I was just trying to give you some light. You dropped the candle.”
“What sort of light makes a hole in the ceiling!”
Gustin shook the plaster dust out of his brown curls, wincing a little at the movement. “It’s a wand with several uses, that’s what it is. But you can’t break my concentration or I lose my grip on it.”
“What kind of wizard are you?” she demanded.
“Fairly good, by all standards,” replied Gustin evenly as he crawled around on his hands and knees, patting the floor in front of him. With a grunt of satisfaction, he located his lost wand, tucking it back up his sleeve. “But this little item isn’t all that reliable. It likes to slip out of its user’s hand.”
“Then why do you have it?” Sophraea asked as she climbed to her feet.
“Payment for a job. Never take magic items from another wizard. The cheap ones always cheat by giving you trash,” said the young wizard with casual condemnation of his profession. “That’s why I prefer to make my money in other ways.”
Aware of Feeler and Fish listening carefully to every word that Gustin was babbling, she stopped him before he could say more about his schemes and introduced the two gravediggers to him.
“So,” said Gustin with a cheerful grin, as if he had not just knocked a hole in their ceiling, “you live down here?”
“People don’t bother us here. It’s quiet,” said Feeler while Fish nodded and lit another candle. Fish rarely spoke in front of strangers, Sophraea knew, because of the odd lisp created by his two rows of teeth and split tongue.
“I am sorry about interrupting your supper,” said Sophraea.
“Not to worry,” said Feeler, “you’re welcome any time.”
“We just need to use your door,” she explained.
“Your parents know you’re going into the tunnels?”
Sophraea gave the type of a shrug that might be taken for a “yes” in dim light. Feeler appeared skeptical and Fish pursed his mouth in a disapproving frown.
“I’ll watch out for her, saer,” said Gustin.
To Sophraea’s frustration, Feeler looked straight over her head at the wizard. “You wouldn’t want to know how deep we could bury the body that harmed this child,” he said.
“No, saer,” said Gustin sincerely. “I’m sure I wouldn’t.”
“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” asserted Sophraea. Really, just because the gravediggers had given her rides on their shovels when she was a baby, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t protect herself now. “It’s not like I haven’t been in the tunnels before!”
“With a pack of your brothers and cousins,” said Feeler. “Not alone. That’s different.”
“He is a wizard. With a wand,” Sophraea pointed out because she had a feeling that would impress them more than her usual argument that she was fully grown and quite able to navigate the tunnels on her own. “And we’re only going a short way. I just want to show him something and then we’ll come right back.”
With a heavy sigh, Feeler agreed. “But take our lantern with you. Candles blow out too easily.”
“But there’re lights in the tunnels.” Sophraea picked up the lantern even as she protested.
“But that’s magic,” Feeler said. “And, as your young man pointed out, some magical items are not always reliable. I know you won’t get lost, but there’re things out there that you don’t want to meet in total darkness. What if you stumble across those sewyrms everybody keeps seeing down here?”
Sophraea started to tell the gravediggers that Gustin wasn’t her young man, but realized that would plunge her into even more lengthy explanations. Instead, she nipped quickly out of the door that Fish opened, promising that she and Gustin would return shortly and keep a sharp eye out for reptiles and other threats.
Gustin lingered in the doorway.
“Sewyrms?” Gustin said to Feeler.
The man held his two hands far apart, indicating the size from nose to tail tip. “Big ones,” he replied. “Some say that there’s even a great albino sewyrm, down in the darkest, deepest sewers, living off the garbage. That it’s grown so big that it can’t even move through the tunnels anymore.”
Sophraea snorted. “That’s just story! Albino seawrym in the sewers of Waterdeep. Like nobody has ever heard that one before!”
“Well,” the wizard began. “I don’t think that I’ve …”
She grabbed Gustin’s sleeve and tugged him through the door.
“We’re just going a little way,” she said over his shoulder to Feeler. “Just beneath the graveyard. It will be dry as dust and twice as safe as above ground.”
“Come back quickly,” the gravedigger prompted.
“We will,” Sophraea promised.
The door shut firmly behind them. Sophraea nodded in approval as she heard the latch click down. It would never do to leave Dead End House defenseless on the lowest level, a lesson drilled into her as soon as she started to beg her mother to be allowed to accompany her brothers through the tunnels leading from the basement to the upper streets of Waterdeep. And, although she would never admit it out loud, it was a little comforting to know that Feeler and Fish would wait by the door until they returned.
She gave a quick glance up to the dark outline of the door’s watcher. One stony wing was folded halfway across its horned head and its bearded chin was tucked firmly into its shoulder.
“That has to be the ugliest statue that I’ve ever seen,” remarked Gustin, holding the lantern a little higher to cast a light into the niche above the Dead End door.
Sophraea looked upon the ugly creature with affection. She could just make out the slightly notched left ear. Bentnor had jumped up on a bet with Leaplow to pat the watcher’s paw. And, of course, once Bentnor did that, Cadriffle had to get high enough to tweak its nose. And once the twins had done that, Leaplow had to best them by twisting the left ear a bit askew. No wonder it kept its wing extended over its head after that!
She opened her mouth to explain the watcher to Gustin and then shook her head at her own foolishness. Such knowledge should only be shared with members of the family and the others who dwelled at Dead End House. No matter how friendly Gustin was, he could not be considered family.
“Come on,” she said instead. “We don’t have much time.”
“So where exactly are we?” Gustin asked as Sophraea hurried down a short dark passageway.
“Into the old sewer tunnels, heading directly under the City of the Dead,” she said. She paused for a moment, waiting for the special tug that signaled she was passing under the walls of the City of the Dead. “This is an access tunnel used mostly by the cellarers’ and plumbers’ guild. If you go the other way, it turns south toward Coffinmarch.”
She went a few steps farther in and immediately knew exactly where they were.
“Good, there’s the Deepwinter tomb,” she glanced up but nothing could be seen in the lamplight except the dull masonry holding the earth above them. It was all instinct that guided her, but she was certain that they were directly below the big mausole
um.
If she closed her eyes, the tunnels around them disappeared. She could picture herself standing on the gravel path twisting through the rain-soaked shrubbery around the tomb’s north corner.
“We’ll need to turn at the next branching of the tunnels to reach the spot that we want,” she told Gustin, opening her eyes and looking up at the wizard.
“Are your eyes blue?” he asked her.
Surprised, Sophraea shook her head. “No, brown, like the rest of my family. Why do you ask?”
Gustin tilted his head to one side, staring at her. “It’s gone now. But, just for a moment, there was this flash of blue.”
“Trick of the light,” Sophraea guessed, heading into the tunnel that led them past the Deepwinter tomb and deeper under the City of the Dead. “Everything always looks a bit strange down here.”
“You use these tunnels much?” Gustin moved easily at her side, his long legs easily covering twice the ground as her shorter, quicker steps.
“We all do. Feeler and Fish the most, because it’s the quickest way in and out of the graveyard, and many of the portals that they use are below ground these days. The rest of us use the tunnel to Coffinmarch for a shortcut if it’s raining too hard to go by the upper streets. Lots of families have entrances in their basements that lead to these tunnels.”
She didn’t try to explain to him how she felt like she was walking in two places at the same time, one Sophraea in the City of the Dead above them, the other Sophraea in the tunnels below. It was a slightly disconnected, somewhat floaty feeling, but not altogether unpleasant.
As they rounded another turn, passing by a shadowed doorway, Gustin remarked, “I’m surprised they don’t get more unwelcome visitors in their basements. This looks like the perfect arrangement for housebreakers.”
“The underground doors are well guarded by stout locks and magic. Besides, we’re under the graveyard here. That door just leads into the old Narfuth crypt. There’s nothing there worth anything.”
City of the Dead Page 9
