“How does the dynast plan to defend these entrances against an invading army?” Jera whispered, ducking her head to walk beneath a glistening wet cavern ceiling.
“He must be wondering that himself,” said Tomas, with a slight smile. “Fterhaps that’s why he’s shut up in his room with his maps and military advisers.”
“On the other hand, he may not be worried at all,” pointed out Jonathan, assisting Alfred to his feet. “Necropolis has never fallen in battle.”
“Wet pavement,” murmured Alfred in apology, cringing at the earl’s look of irritation. “Have there truly been that many wars fought among you?”
“Oh, yes,” Jonathan answered, quite cheerfully. They might have been discussing rune-bone games. “I’ll tell you about them later, if you’re interested. Now, we should probably keep our voices low. Which way, Tomas? I get rather muddled down here.”
Tomas indicated a direction, and the group entered a perfect maze of dark, intersecting tunnels that had Alfred completely lost and confused in a matter of moments. Glancing around, he saw the dog, trotting along behind.
The first streets, those nearest the wall, were empty. Narrow and dark, they wound among a confused jumble of shabby houses and small shops, built of blocks of black rock or carved out of lava formations.
The shops were shuttered for the sleep-half, the houses dark. Many of them appeared to be deserted, abandoned, left to fall to ruin. Doors hung crazily on hinges, rags and bits of bone littered the street. The odor of decay was unusually strong here. Curious, Alfred peeped through a broken window.
A cadaverous face loomed white in the darkness. A pair of empty, dark eye sockets stared sightlessly into the street. Alarmed, Alfred stumbled backward, nearly knocking Jonathan off his feet. “Steady, there!” the duke remonstrated, catching his balance and helping Alfred reestablish his. “I admit it’s a depressing sight. This part of the city used to be quite nice, or so the old records tell us. In the ancient time, this area housed the working class of Necropolis: soldiers, builders, storekeepers, and the lower echelon necromancers and preservers.
“I suppose,” he added, lowering his voice after a warning glance from his wife, “that you could say they live here still, but they’re mostly all dead.”
So depressing were these empty streets with their tomblike houses that Alfred breathed a sigh of relief to actually emerge into a larger tunnel and see people moving about. Then he remembered the danger of the dog being observed. Despite Jera’s whispered assurance that everything would be all right, Alfred crept nervously along, keeping near the wall, avoiding the pools of dim light cast by the sputtering lamps. The dog followed almost at his heels, as if the animal itself understood and was willing to cooperate.
The people in the streets passed them without a glance, not seeming to notice or care about them at all. Alfred realized, gradually, that these people were not living. The dead walked the streets of Necropolis during the slumber hours.
Most of the cadavers moved along purposefully, obviously intent on performing some task assigned to them by the living before the living took to their beds. But, here and there, they came on a cadaver roaming about aimlessly or performing some task it should have been performing during the waking time. Necromancers patrolled the streets of Necropolis, picking up any of these dead who had become confused, forgotten their tasks, or were making nuisances of themselves. Alfred’s group took care to keep out of the way of these necromancers, slipping into the shadows of doorways until the black-robed wizards had passed.
Necropolis was built in a series of half circles that radiated out from the fortress. Originally, a small population of mensch and Sartan had dwelt inside the fortress, but as more and more people began to settle in the area permanently, the population soon overflowed the fortress and began building homes in the shadow of its sheltering walls.
In the days of Necropolis’s prosperity, the then-current dynast, Kleitus HI, took over the fortress as his castle. The nobility dwelt in magnificent homes located near the castle and the remainder of the population spread out around them, in order of rank and wealth.