As dusk approached, a wagon passed by the house along those same cobblestones, turning into Key Street and passing north, crossing Market Street into Clock Street, before finally turning into Needle Alley and stopping in front of a squat black building across the lane from Arlob's Emporium. A tall, angular man exited the wagon, opening the door to the building and passing through with a sombre calm.
The entrance-way was decorated like a funeral parlour. Incense wafted in the air, permeating the hallway with a mystical aura that seemed sad and serene, dreamlike and harshly real at the same time. The tall man looked around, a grim but resigned look on his face as he walked up to the desk at the back of the entrance-way and rang a bell that sat on the counter.
A bent, wizened old woman in a grey shawl and black dress shambled from a door in the back wall, before advancing to greet the tall man. It was impossible to tell how old she was, from her snow-white hair to her sad, hard eyes and rough skin, she resembled a winter's snow on a craggy, withered tree. Carulus the Grey never seemed to change with the passing of time, despite the thousands of people who had crossed her path. She adjusted her spectacles and peered up at the tall man.
"How many for the crypt this week, Carulus?" the tall man asked. He glanced sidelong at the cold, grey walls and their featureless, faded expressions.
They all ended up like this, sooner or later.
"Come with me," was all Carulus said quietly, her voice crackling like aged, dusty parchments. She escorted the tall man through the door in the back wall and brought him into a room that resembled a vast marble mausoleum, where several bodies lay on a large stone table in the center. Morkhul was a good son, well able to handle the transport of the bodies where his mother no longer could. All of Carulus's sons contributed to her undertaker's business, and they were content to handle the physical work, while she tended to the ledgers and dealt with the customers.
Morkhul walked past Carulus to the first of the cadavers, a heavily scarred man with a huge frame. His hairy body, the thickness of his muscles, and the markings of his tattoos singled him out as a Strongarm, a tribe of hairy men renowned for their incredible strength and their incredible stupidity. This one seemed strangely emaciated, and his body was marked with the bites of fleas and lice.
"What's this one's story?" Morkhul asked his mother.
Carulus adjusted her spectacles as she tried to recall.
"He was crippled in some war long ago, I think. Couldn't fight, drifted into Blacksand, and became a beggar. Lived hand to mouth for several years, until he was found in an alley with his throat cut and the four silver pieces he had on him gone."
"A shame," Morkhul answered as calmly as he asked. "Carry a sword for king and country, and what does it bring you? Ruin and tragedy."
"A better fate than this one," Carulus said calmly, indicating a blond-haired youth clad in filthy, reeking breeches, his body marked with a hundred knife wounds. "Robbed a wealthy merchant who'd just arrived in the city, then he was ambushed by a street gang. One dagger against twenty."
"So much for the rules against killing brother thieves," Morkhul stated. "What about her?" he asked, indicating a beautiful young woman clad in a tattered gown, her body covered in bruises. He scowled, as his cheeks flushed red with anger.
"You can guess," Carulus answered. Her normally impassive face fell into a sympathetic frown, as her voice began to quaver. "I don't need to describe what was done to her. Suffice to say that I'd rather have the animal who did this to her laying on our table, but there wasn't enough left of him after the Leaf Beasts had finished to fill a mixing bowl," she answered, referring to the magical, carnivorous foliage that owned by Lord Azzur. Azzur often fed his beloved plants with the worst of Blacksand's criminals.
"Libra works in strange ways, it seems," Morkhul answered as he considered the fourth body. "It's not often we welcome an elf, especially a mountain elf. An interesting tale, I take it?" he prompted, instantly regaining his cold, sombre demeanour.
Carulus became cold as ice before she spoke again.
"He's an adventurer, I think. He was inquiring into some business of the sorcerer Brabantius, and this is the result," she said as Morkhul turned the body over to reveal the elf's scarred and burned face.
"And this one?" Morkhul asked, pointing to a bloated body dressed in fine silken robes that bore the marks of being let out several times to accommodate their owner's expanding waistline.
"A rich merchant, ate himself to death."
"And these two?" he asked, indicating two men whose clothes smelled of fish and the sea. The body of one was covered with what appeared to be teeth marks, while the other simply stank of alcohol.
"They're from the Fish Market District," Carulus answered. "One of them was a fisherman who got into a fight with a snapperfish and lost. The other was a dockworker who died after a drinking contest at the Drunken Fisherman Inn."
The last body was that of a very old man dressed in robes marked with magical symbols and sigils. Morkhul looked at his mother for an explanation.
"He was a great wizard, one of the highest in the guild," Carulus answered. "Old age put an end to his ambitions."
They suddenly heard a clanging of the bell from the entrance hall. Someone needed their service.
Mother and son returned out front, finding a young couple waiting for them, their cheeks streaked with tears. The man cradled a small bundle in his arms, even as the woman tried to stop crying.
Carulus the Grey and her son suddenly took on soft, tender expressions as they gently greeted their customers.
"May I ask what occurred?" Carulus asked in a quiet, motherly tone. She waited until the young couple had regained their composure enough to answer.
"She ran out into the streets…" the man said sadly. "The coach didn't even try to stop…" The woman began crying again. It was the same as so often before-the coaches of the wealthy tore through the streets of Blacksand with impunity.
"Morkhul, please take care of this poor child. Make sure she gets the same treatment her spirit will receive from Lord Titan," Carulus ordered her son. Morkhul gently took the body into his arms, cradling it with all the compassion he might have if it were still alive. He then walked quietly back into the mausoleum to make his preparations.
"What would you like us to do?" Carulus asked. These poor youths, barely more than children themselves, could do with a mother figure now. Let her worry about the grim details, they just needed to be taken care of. All she needed to know was what they wanted, and she would deliver without fault.
Morkhul had laid the child onto the stone table by the time Carulus had finished with the couple. She ordered him to take his coach and drive them home, giving him instructions on what to tell them for the funeral. Morkhul nodded and walked back into the main room to console the grieving couple.
Carulus was alone in the mausoleum, gazing at the nine bodies in front of her. Children, ruffians, rich nobles, fishermen or brave heroes in life, they all came to her eventually. Whoever you were in life, in the end you were no better or worse than the person next to you. No amount of gold or magic would prevent Death and Time from claiming their own.
Those who saw Carulus might have seen her as cold and heartless as the marble slabs on which the bodies rested. They would not have recognized her in the kindly old woman who had tried to ease the suffering of those left behind. For her part, Carulus saw herself as no different than anyone else in the world, living or dead. She would hardly have been human had she not been either so cold or so warm.
The old woman, for close to nine decades of life, had simply been more acquainted with death and the dying than most of her friends, though eleven times in the past she had become quite familiar with giving life. Her sons had been well-raised by their mother, and the business would be in good hands when death came for her.
She turned around and stared directly into the mirror above a sink. The image staring back at her did not frighten her, did not disturb her in the slightest. She had devoted her life to helping others accept the fate of their loved ones.
I know you, she thought to the dark god she knew was watching. You make us fear you. No one can escape you, no one can hide from you. Anywhere, anytime, you can strike us. But without that fear, you are nothing. I am no great hero, no great wizard…but with my work, you are as powerless as the people you take into your grasp.
She knew what the god would have replied if he could.
So be it, then.