The Dream Spheres - Elaine Cunningham [55]
She cast a dark look at the box Danilo had placed on the carriage floor between them. "Is that how you intend to make this announcement? Present them with that thing?"
"Credit me with some small measure of sense! Certainly you must admit that once the tale is told, they have every right to this box. Even if they do not elect to seek resurrection, they will want to inter Oth's remains. The Eltorchul family has a tomb in the City of the Dead-quite an impressive one, I hear: a dimensional door, leading into their private catacombs. I suppose they'd need it," he mused. "They are a large family, with a rather high rate of tragedy. A hazard, I suppose, of being in the business of magical research and mage schooling. Now that I think of it, some of my early tutors had rather close calls. Did I ever tell you about the time Athol's beard caught fire from the lighted ink I created?"
She silenced him with a glare, then turned to regard the passing city. The Eltorchul family, like many of Waterdeep's nobility, had more than one property in the city and probably several outside the city walls. Their hired carriage took them through the Sea Ward, the wealthiest and most sought after district of the city.
Arilyn seldom had reason to come here, and she carefully marked the byways and buildings in her mind. The streets were broad and paved with smooth, dressed stone. Lining them were tall walls, behind which lay lavish estates or temple complexes. Towers rose against the clouds. Many were so fanciful in design that they could only have been contrived and sustained by magic. Turrets, balconies, and gables decked the heights. Gargoyles kept stony-eyed watch over the city. Bright banners whipped about in the driving rain and wind.
"This ward will soon be all but deserted," Danilo commented after a few moments of silence. "There's a promise of winter in that wind."
Arilyn nodded glum assent. Her spirits sank still further as they turned off Morningstar Way and the Eltorchul tower came into view.
The elaborate structure defined the easternmost corner of the narrow street known as The Ghost Walk. Even without the name-and without her own wariness of human magic-Arilyn felt distinctly chilled as she eyed the uncanny place.
Towers of mist-gray stone rose into the sky, most of them connected by walkways and stairs that seemed to go everywhere, and nowhere. Several homunculi-small, bat-winged imps that served as wizards' familiars-winged silently through the architectural tangle, disappearing and reappearing without apparent reason or pattern. Wisps of acrid blue smoke rose from one of the towers, evidence of magical activity within.
As they alighted from the carriage, Arilyn noted that the stone walk near the front gate was as blackened as if it had entertained a hundred campfires-or a few bolts of lightning.
"So much for unwanted guests," Danilo murmured as he reached for the bellpull.
A dark-skinned young woman clad in the robe and apron of an Eltorchul apprentice came to answer their summons. Danilo requested an audience with Thesp Eltorchul, the family patriarch. They were shown into the hall. While the apprentice went off to dry their sodden wraps, they took a seat under a tapestry depicting the coronation of some distant monarch-an ancestor of Azoun of Cormyr, most likely, though Arilyn was uncertain exactly which of several Azouns the weaver intended to commemorate.
After a few moments Lord Eltorchul came to meet them. The old mage was a tall man, not at all stooped by his years, with a dignified manner and hair of the indeterminate gray-beige color to which red often faded. It was not difficult to imagine the mage's hair as it once had been, for the young woman who walked by his side was crowned by ringlets the color of flame.
Arilyn's heart sank. She knew Errya Eltorchul, if only by reputation, as a spoiled, spiteful viper. Though the family fortunes, by all reports, were dwindling, the young woman wore an exquisite russet gown, a fortune in garnets, and a supremely