Disclaimers: With the exception of a few familiar characters, everything bloody thing in this story is mine.
Chapter Four
Aleaha returned to the inn, somewhat surprised to find that the day had turned into dusk. She hadn't realized she was in Nayan's home for quite so long. Having grabbed a hunk of bread for her dinner, she climbed several flights of stairs to her room. Sitting down on the corner of the bed she reached into her cloak pocket. She pulled out the missive that Trannyth's men had left for her and breaking the seal, gave it a quick glance.
It was just like all the others that had been left for her at various places all over the Sword Coast. Daril needed to speak with her on a matter of utmost importance; lives were at stake, blah blah blah. Aleaha tossed it to the bed. He had certainly wanted to talk to her and now she knew why. It seemed that it was time to pay another visit to his estate and find out what the true story was.
Pulling the curtain open with one hand, she glanced out the window as she chewed thoughtfully at the nutty bread. The clear evening sky was darkening to a deep violet, edged in golds and reds like the embellishment on a fine lady's gown. Selune and Lathander were meeting in a particularly beautiful dance this twilight. She watched for several long minutes as the sun sank slowly below the horizon, leaving just the velvety purple of night.
Brushing the crumbs from her front she twitched the curtain closed. Quietly she headed down the stairs and past the patrons enjoying their evening meal. As soon as she was out of site of the building, she opened her bag and pulled out the small obsidian piece that only vaguely resembled the shape that was bound to it. A mere whisper and Arden was with her, nickering and tossing his head.
She held out her palm, fingers straight so he could lip at the cubes of sugar she had grabbed from the kitchen. Arden may have been from another plane of existence, but he had a sweet tooth as strong as any Faerûnian horse. Aleaha stroked his soft muzzle as he crunched loudly on the sweet morsels.
With her fingers knotted in his silky mane, she pulled herself on to his back. "Time to go visiting," she murmured. The barest pressure on his sides and he was off, heading back to Trannyth's estate.
It didn't take long until they were standing before the high walls of the Daril's home. Silent as the shadows others had named her for, Aleaha gathered the surrounding darkness to her, feeling it drape over her like a well worn cloak, soft and familiar. She made a swift gesture with her hands and rent a tear in the fabric of space around her. The split in space and sky looked no different than the surrounding night, but she could sense the hole as clearly as if a door had suddenly appeared before her. Keeping her eyes trained on the area that she could see through the open gate house door, she stepped through the newly made fissure, appearing on the other side of the gate before her foot even touched back down.
"Now, if I were a mausoleum, where would I be?" she asked herself quietly after she slipped past the guards at the entrance. A glance to the left and right revealed nothing other than well manicured lawns that stretched as far as she could see. She remembered something that she once read, a custom about the dead being buried in the west and the markers facing east. Some sort of symbolic meaning about the death of a day and rebirth of a new one.
With no sun to guide her in the correct direction, she still looked to the night sky. The stars were laid out before her in a familiar tableau. Having shunned the day in favor of the peaceful night there were many times when she simple sat and looked to the sky for answers. The constellations were as familiar to her as her own face.
Directly above her was Belnimbra's Belt, a straight line of five stars. Just off of that shone the Brow Star, the topmost star in Mystra's constellation. Although the Brow star pointed due north, there was another grouping she was looking for. There it was. The Caltrop, the Arrows of the Gods, the Sun's Signpost. It was a group of three lines, all with a cluster of smaller stars at the tips, converging to a point that marked due east. It was said by the nomads of Anauroch that they were flaming arrows launched by the sun goddess to mark her way.
Flaming godly arrows or not, it still worked like a heavenly compass. Still cloaked in impermeable shadows she turned and headed west, moving swiftly out of view of the great house and past the point were the neatly trimmed lawns blended into the more natural landscape. The grounds were huge, and it took quite some time before she made it to the family mausoleum.
It rose up before her from a small grove of trees, a marble monstrosity of architecture. It may have been white in the day, but Selune's cold gaze turned the thick stone walls to a dingy grey. A chill wind rustled the tree leaves and threw moving shadows over the ground and building. Aleaha took a few steps to the entry, her feet crunching loudly on the carpet of fallen leaves that surrounded her destination.
Two winged figures flanked the heavy etched iron door, their pupilless eyes staring at her in silent reproach. Tall pillars supported the graceful arches that decorated the marble and the ivy that climbed the sides and twined around the pillars seemed to reach out in grasping, hungry tendrils. There was a sense of quiet forbidding that emanated from the cold walls, as if anyone who entered was bound to be met by a terrible fate.
Aleaha snorted. Everything about it was so clichéd she couldn't help but smirk. The place looked like every mausoleum in every horror story she'd ever heard. She tipped her head in a mocking bow in the direction of the house to congratulate them on a fine effort.
Still smirking slightly, she knelt at the door and pulled out the slim leather case that housed her lock picking tools. Setting them next to her softly, she tugged off her gloves and tossed them on top. Her hands reached out to the door, sensitive fingertips skimming over the etchings in the metal with a practiced touch. No wards made themselves known and she couldn't sense any non-magical traps. She frowned.
The nobility tended to inter their dead in caskets that had strong anti-decay enchantments on them. In their vanity, they wanted even their corpses to be beautiful forever. At death, the bodies would be cleaned and then dressed in their best clothing and jewels before being encased permanently in their new magical bed. The enchantments would make corpses that were laid to rest even hundreds of years ago seem as fresh as if they had just died. So why then, was the door not warded? Grave robbers were a constant problem and any powerful wizard could put impassable spells in place.
Frown still in place she brushed her gloves to the side to withdraw two slim metal picks from the leather case. Setting them to the lock that was cleverly hidden in the whorls and loops of the etchings, she probed around the interior trying to get a visualization of the makeup. A few practiced twitches of her fingers later and a tiny satisfying click came from the lock.
Now, all I have to do is go down there, she thought as she tugged her gloves back on and put away her picks, take a look at the bodies, and see what really killed all those people. Nice of them to make my job easy. Trying to figure out what killed a skeleton is a major pain in my ass.
She pushed open the door and slipped inside. Ever burning torches lit the interior to a soft glow. With a glance she noticed that they produced no smoke and left no soot marks on the pristine while marble walls. She raised an eyebrow, impressed. Making a mental note to look into those herself the next time she had the opportunity, she headed into the large gilded chamber. The interior of the mausoleum was one room and its only contents were… books?
Several tomes stood open on pedestals. The ones against the far wall had pages that were yellowed and cracked with age. As they marched along the edges of the walls the pages appeared to get softer, whiter. She skimmed a few of the open pages, starting at the oldest ones. They appeared to be journals, accounts of the lives of the patriarchs of the family. The first one was of a man called Veric. The book was open to an entry dated seven hundred years ago that described some sort of business dealings in a neat spidery handwriting. As she tried to turn the pages, they crumbled to dust under her fingers.
She headed to the two most recent ones, Daril's father and grandfather, she presumed. She looked through them quickly, not exactly sure what she was looking for. A clue to what exactly happened she guessed. Aleaha could tell nothing from the little time she stood in front of them, other than they wrote about the most inconsequential things and that they were extremely pretentious. She would need more time with them to see if there was anything usable in the books.
With a shrug she started to pick up the book only to stop when it wouldn't budge from its pedestal. She tried another one, and another. It was all the same. They were magically locked in place and although they could be read, they couldn't be moved. Aleaha huffed an irritated breath through her nose. "Well, that's rude," she muttered. She briefly considered taking the whole pedestal, but dismissed the idea as more trouble than it was worth.
Thinking it was time to find the bodies she studied the walls and floor carefully, looking for a mechanism to get to the crypt. After poking and prodding at various stones that seemed to be set differently from their brethren she finally noticed that two of the book stands seemed to be spaced further apart from each other than any of the rest of them. She stepped between them and felt alone the wall, searching for any indication there was a door there, a seam, a chink, anything. As her weight shifted forward, she felt a stone move under her feet and a solid section of wall slid open before her.
Torch lit stairs led down and she could feel a stale breeze across her face, bringing the scent of must and age. The stairs and walls were cut from rough hewn rock; a surprise considering just a few steps up was all marble and gilt. She ventured down cautiously, visually testing each step for traps before putting her weight on it.
Reaching the bottom without incident, Aleaha looked around the underground chamber. It was large, but not as large as she would have thought necessary to house seven centuries of Trannyths. The walls were notched from floor to ceiling with hollows for bodies. Wooden doors in various states of decay had metal plates embossed with the name and date of its occupant. Her fingers dragging lightly over the surface of the plates, she went through the room until she stood before a plate from the right time period.
"Why hello Elsabeth," she muttered. "Let's take a look and see what really killed you, shall we?" She swung open the polished door that enclosed the stone hollow and stared at the resident inside.
"Well this is… unexpected," Aleaha mused, cocking her head to the side. Where there should have been a casket holding a conveniently preserved body, there was only a metal urn holding ashes. She moved from one door to the next only to find the same thing in each one. All the bodies from the time of Daril's grandfather on had been cremated.
Heading to an earlier generation, she pulled open the door and peered inside. This time a casket contained a skeleton, its rich clothing from a previous century a banquet for moths. She turned to leave, but before she could retreat up the stairs, she found herself pausing before the oldest marker. The door was nearly rotted away and she could see the decrepit casket within. Carefully, she opened the door, briefly reading the name on front. As she looked into the casket, the dim torch light glinted off of something gold.
A heavy gold ring set with a blood red ruby encircled the fleshless fingers of the man's skeleton. "Sorry Veric," she said politely as she wiggled the ring off the boney finger. "Can't have this trip be a total waste. I'm sure you understand."
Her prize freed she held it up to the light. The thick band was engraved with an arcane scrip she didn't recognize. As she turned it slowly, the ruby winked and flashed oddly. Aleaha frowned. There was something wrong with the ring, something that she couldn't put her finger on. With a shrug, she dropped it into one of her many pockets and closed the door gently on Veric's coffin.