CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

For the first time in his life, Taeros Hawkwinter held vigil for dawn. All night he'd paced the mooncast shadows outside the City of the Dead, praying to every god he knew to hasten the coming of morning, and dreading what dawn might reveal. The stern line of Guardsmen had been unmoved by his pleadings and use of the Hawkwinter name. Scores of times he'd cursed himself for noticing Varandros Dyre striding out of that inn. If they hadn't found Faendra to ask her where her sister had gone, Korvaun would never have gone sprinting off to find his Naoni, and Enough. 'Twas done, as surely as Malark's entombment, the gods save us all.

Taeros wasn't alone in his fearful restlessness. A throng had gathered outside every gate of the cemetery, anxious to learn the fates of friends and loved ones locked within-or to reclaim the dead and dying who were only too visible through the high iron gates. A veritable army of Guardsmen, Watchmen, and Watchful Order magists grimly barred passage, unmoved by threats, brandished blades, and sobbing pleadings alike.

Throughout the night several frantic folk had tried to scale the walls, only to be hurled off by warding magics. Others had wept helplessly as they recognized a familiar voice, inside the walls, raised in terror or pain. The cries soon died away, leaving only ominous silence, and still the citizens waited, shivering in the chill grey damp of the night-mists.

At last the darkness started to lighten, and men started to call, "In! In!"

Others took up the cry, and it quickly rose into a chant. Taeros stood nose to nose with the Guardsman who'd firmly denied him several times and saw the man's eyes change as someone spoke inside his head.

The officer turned and said curtly, "Open the gates."

Binding spells wavered and sighed away, locks were undone and great bars hurled aside, and the great iron gates swept silently open. With a collective sigh, the waiting throng streamed inside.

Taeros jostled with dozens of robed priests and heard the rattling progress of many haulcarts behind him. The carters would convey the known dead to their grieving families and haul the unclaimed to The Last Bath in South Ward, the grim house where unknown dead were laid out in hopes someone would miss them and come looking. Taeros prayed silently that this day wouldn't include a trip there to seek Korvaun Helmfast among those ever-quiet faces.

He pushed his way through the growing thunder-rumble of carts, looking this way and that for some sign of his friend. Heartsick, he saw nothing, nothing… no gleam of blue gemweave amid the sprawled bodies.

And then, in the far tree- and tomb-studded distance, above the heads of the milling crowd of searchers, he caught sight of disheveled fair hair. Korvaun was taller than most-it could be…

Taeros broke into a run, dodging and darting.

Yes! Korvaun alive, by all the Watching Gods! And beside him, both clinging to and supporting the rather bedraggled Lord Helmfast, was a slender, flame-haired lass who could only be Naoni Dyre.

Relief flooded the Hawkwinter. Laughter welling out of him, he raced forward and threw his arms around them, and the three clung together, laughing and crying, as carts rumbled by and others wept.

Finally, starving for air, Taeros pulled away. "Thanks be to Torm for friends too bloody stubborn to die!"

A shadow passed over Korvaun's face, and Taeros winced. For what were the ghosts that so swarmingly haunted the Deadrest, but folk too stubborn to die?

"Do you count me among your friends, then, Lord Taeros?" Naoni Dyre asked quietly. "On such short acquaintance, and me a common-born lass?"

Her stare told the Hawkwinter that his answer really mattered to her. Glib phrases rose readily to his tongue-and there stopped. Taeros blinked, realizing that what he was about to say was simple truth.

"Strangely enough, I do," he marveled.

Before he could chastise himself for that slip of the tongue, both of his friends, the old and the new, burst into laughter.

Taeros heard the high, wild edge to Naoni's mirth and told her quickly, "Let's begone from here. I saw not your father nor sister outside the gates, but in all candor, I wasn't looking for them."

"Nor would you have found them. Father told us not to expect him in at all last night-New Day work, I've no doubt-and I took his room, so I could sleep while Faen slipped out to a revel. She's probably not back even yet, and neither of them knows I came here. But they'll soon find me missing, and worry."

"I've a coach waiting, if you can walk four streets west."

Relief and gratitude shone on Naoni's face, making her look like a lamp lit from within, and Taeros wondered why he'd ever thought her plain.

The three lost no time in departing the City of the Dead. Handcarts laden with corpses were already rumbling past. Naoni winced as an arm slid off its chest to sway and dangle, but Taeros gazed at smeared lip-paint on the dead man's face and said softly, "I'll wager that one never thought, hurrying to an afternoon tryst, that he was rushing to his grave."

"Few think of their own deaths until they lie dying," Korvaun replied. He looked down at Naoni with the future in his eyes and added, "Much less what comes after. I'd never had reason to do so myself, ere last night."

Taeros stiffened in enlightenment. First Roldo, now Korvaun! With Malark gone and Beldar so troublingly preoccupied, he'd soon be reduced to drinking and wenching with just Starragar. And Lord Starragar Jardeth was certain to wed young, for what better way to maintain his customary ill spirits?

Leaving him alone, with his books and inkpots.

Another handcart rumbled past, bearing a lone dead man. It was followed by a sobbing, staggering woman. Taeros winced. Well, there was alone and then there was alone.

"Nao! Naoni!" The frantic whisper resumed, and so did the rattling of the heavy bolt.

Striding through cheering merchants to take his place at the gleaming table where citizens could confer publicly with the Lords of Waterdeep-all of them unmasked and rising to applaud his entrance-Varandros Dyre frowned. That sounded like Faendra, and what would she be doing here, whispering for her sister in all this tumult?

"Naoni Dyre, wake up! If you don't get up and out of here soon, Father'll be back, and then what-"

Varandros Dyre was suddenly receiving applause from no one, and the glossy carved chair under his hands was… the smooth-worn lip of the inn bed, and he was blinking at the door as its bolt rattled again.

"Naoni!"

Not bothering with his breeches-the knee-length inn nightshirt would do-Dyre rolled out of bed, shot the bolt, and pawed the bolt open.

Faendra staggered back, wide-eyed. "Father!"

"What, lass?"

His youngest daughter peered past him frantically. "She's not here!"

"Naoni? Why would she be here? Out with it! Where is she?"

"I… I don't know!" Faendra looked ready to cry. "I thought she was in here! S-she-"

Fear closed iron fingers around Dyre's throat. There'd been some sort of brawl in the City of the Dead last night, with the Watch and half the Guard called out! What if Naoni'd been there? She went betimes to put flowers on…

Gods, what if she'd somehow still been inside when they closed the gates at nightfall?

"No!" he growled fiercely, "She's a stubborn lass, and houseproud to a fault. Most likely she went back to the house for some of her spinning and stayed to work, trusting she could keep it standing if the Lords came a-calling by… well, by sheer pride."

The trembling beginnings of a smile touched Faendra's worried face. "Yes, that sounds like Naoni. We must go and make sure!"