Sophraea placed one hand lightly on Lord Adarbrent's forearm. "I know how much you care for Waterdeep," she said. "But my family is part of its history too. And if we are lost, then what have you gained?"
Lord Adarbrent sighed and patted her hand. "You are a good girl," he stated, as he had throughout her childhood.
"No," Sophraea answered slowly, trying to put all her jumbled thoughts of the past few days into a declaration that the old man would understand. "I am a woman grown and I know that no monument is worth more than a single life, even the life of Rampage Stunk. We show great respect to the dead in this family, but we hold the living dearer still."
The expression on Lord Adarbrent's face was impossible to read. The angry flush along his cheekbones began to recede. He closed his eyes and heaved another deep sigh.
"I am sorry," Lord Adarbrent said finally. "I let my temper rule my judgment. You are right. It is time I ended this curse." "Can you do that?" asked Gustin.
"I can try," Lord Adarbrent replied with a thin smile. "It's not simple. My cousin Algozata was an amazing woman in many ways. She wrote this ritual in her book so that it could be invoked at least once by anyone. It did not take a wizard to begin this curse. I think it will not take a wizard to end it. First, the object that you found, that shoe hanging off your belt, needs to be returned to the owner's tomb."
"But?" said Gustin, in the voice of a wizard who just knew a "but" was coming.
"If the tomb is not sealed, the ghosts will continue to try to cross at the Dead End House's gate. And sealing the tomb," admitted Lord Adarbrent, "will destroy anyone who tries it. It was this part of the curse that killed my cousin Algozata."
"Anything else?" asked Gustin. Two deep lines of worry in his forehead drew the wizard's dark eyebrows together.
"There's some doggerel in Algozata's spellbook that needs to be recited by someone watching," admitted Lord Adarbrent. "It's quite short and can, like the earlier portion of the ritual, be said by anyone holding the spellbook."
"So all you need is the shoe and the spellbook, and you can summon all the dead back to their graves?" asked Sophraea.
"Quite," said Lord Adarbrent. "It will mean the sacrifice of one life, as I have said, to close the tomb's door. But once it is done, the dead will lie as peacefully in their graves as they ever do in Waterdeep."
With some relief, Gustin observed they didn't have the spellbook.
"So nobody," he continued, staring hard at Sophraea, who was whispering another request info Volponia's ear, "need risk her neck by taking it into the City of the Dead. Which means"-he straightened his chin and Sophraea noticed that he actually looked quite heroic- "no wizard need die trying to close the tomb door for her."
"But I have a plan," said Sophraea, with a quick smile of appreciation to Gustin for his oblique offer to help, "and getting the spellbook will be the easy part."
It was the rest of her plan that she wasn't too sure about. But she didn't say that out loud.
TWENTY-FOUR
ith a nod from Sophraea, Volponia rang her crystal bell. "Algozata's spellbook," the old lady requested.
A dusty and distinctly rank-smelling spellbook appeared immediately in the middle of her pale pink down comforter.
"That's all I can do for you today," Volponia told her visitors. "Sophraea, I can't fetch anything more until after dawn tomorrow."
Sophraea kissed the former pirate queen's cheek in thanks. She stored the spellbook in her wicker basket, paying no real heed to Volponia's grumbles about the marks left behind on the comforter.
"I can't change the bed until tomorrow either," Volponia said.
"I'll bring you another cover from my room," Sophraea promised her.
"You had better," said the old lady and then added, "so don't do anything foolish and come safely home again."
Sophraea gave a brisk nod to the two astonished gentlemen staring at this domestic exchange and said, "Shall we go?"
"What are you going to do?" asked Gustin.
"I'm going back to the City of the Dead. You heard Lord Adarbrent. All we need to do is close the tomb door on this shoe. By the way, my lord, is it the Markarl tomb?"
"Yes," said the startled nobleman. "How did you know?"
"We found the shoe directly beneath that monument and Gustin thought that there had been odd magic in its vicinity," Sophraea explained.
"That's right. I did," said the wizard, a momentary flash of pleasure relaxing his worried expression. Then, more sternly, he told Sophraea, "But you can't go back into the City of the Dead. For one thing, the courtyard is a battlefield. For another, reversing the curse is going to kill someone!"
"If I don't, this battle will kill a good many more people," Sophraea began.
Lord Adarbrent cut off her next sentence.
"I will close the tomb door," the old nobleman said. "After all, as Captain Volponia so rightly stated, I began this spell. The only honorable action is to close the tomb door as my final act."
Sophraea nodded. "The door has to be closed but does it have to be someone living who does it?"
Lord Adarbrent frowned heavily. "I don't recall Algozata's ritual mentioning anything about that. In fact, the first two times that she invoked this particular curse, she used an animated corpse to end it. Both times the curse ended as she wished. I don't know what became of the corpses."
"I thought you said that the curse killed your cousin," Gustin observed.
The old man's expression grew even more sour. "The third time that Algozata used this particular ritual, the family discovered what she had done. And she was given no choice but to close the tomb door herself. I was a child then, but, as I recall, it was not a painless death," he declared.
This dry recital of Adarbrent family justice made Sophraea shiver. The stone face of Gustin's statue had more kindness in it than the old lord's features.
"What do you want to do? Recruit one ofthe corpses from the City of the Dead? I'm willing," Gustin asked her, "but I've never had much luck with necromancy."
"Would a statue work?" — Sophraea asked. "Suppose you bring the stone man to life, the one my father carved for you. Animating stone is your best magic, or so you keep saying."
"My statue!" Gustin exclaimed. "He could really be a hero of Waterdeep!"
"Absolutely," said Sophraea, ready to lead everyone downstairs.
"My stone men can walk. I never asked one to close a door," he admitted.
"If he can't do it, we'll think of something else," Sophraea said. She tried to sound more confident than she felt.
As she passed near the bed, Volponia caught her hand.
"Don't forget that ring you're still wearing. Even a half wish is better than nothing. You might need it before the night is done," said Volponia. "There is so much that can go wrong."
Sophraea gave a curt nod. She rather wished that Gustin hadn't told her so very often that magical items could be undependable and dangerous.
TWENTY-FIVE
The courtyard of Dead End House was awash in rain, fighting bodies, and general chaos. Rampage Stunk's guards were still trying to herd all the Carvers into the center of the courtyard as Sophraea slipped out the front door with Gustin and Lord Adarbrent.
Bentnor and the younger men led the charge against Stunk's men. With heavy mallets, they struck at the bullyblades. The younger Carvers used their hard heads and fists as much as their makeshift weapons. They butted and punched, jabbed and weaved, and even bit an ear or two.
They kicked with hobnailed boots, hooking knees or ankles to send their opponents flying.
If there hadn't been so much water and mud underfoot, the Stunk's bullies might have overcome the Carvers' tricks, certainly they were better armored than Sophraea's relatives. However, the sheer slickness of the cobblestones worked in the Carvers' favor. The young masons and coffinbuilders whipped their large leather-aproned bodies into the heavily armored men and sent them skidding backward to sprawl on the cobblestones. More lost their footing every time the full weight of the Carvers struck them.