Chapter Text
When Morena Dekarios had first approached Tabitha with the proposal, she thought it had sounded too good to be true. Now, as she looks up, surveying the height of the spiral staircase before her, she knows that to be the case. From the outside, it had looked like little more than a regular townhouse; three storeys with a view over the docks. Modestly sized and near identical to the others on the street, and yet still not something she could have afforded with her meagre inheritance. (Unmarried youngest daughters of merchants do not tend to be thought of as a priority in a will, as it happens. That, and her mother likely thought she would have been married by now.)
However, as she'd tied up the last of her mother's affairs, the sale of the family home and the settling of various, unexpected, debts, Morena — a close friend of her mother's — had insisted that she stay in her son's old townhouse, "for as long as you would like." Which had seemed generous at the time, but now, seeing the scale of the house, the fact that the spiral staircase stretched further up than the three storeys that were visible from the outside... (Tabitha hazards a guess at there being seven, maybe eight floors). There is also, she notes as she looks off to the side, a set of stairs that lead down. Maybe nine, then. Not that she will explore down there; cellars are, in her experience, dark and dank and best left alone.
This seems much too generous. Morena would likely benefit from someone living here and paying her for their stay. Tabitha doesn't know for how long she plans to stay and nor does she really have the means to pay until she finds some sort of occupation. The small allowance she has been left with, leftover after all the debts have been cleared does not lend itself to the lifestyle she had been leading up until this point. She cannot deny that had Morena not stepped in and offered her a roof over her head, she isn't sure where exactly she might have ended up. Best she not think further on that for now.
The house itself has been stood empty for a just shy of a year. Morena had explained briefly that she has only been inside once since Gale's death — there is a statue, recently completed, commemorating him in Heroes Garden in Sea Ward — and she has not been back since. In fact, Morena had given Tabitha the keys that morning, had walked with her as far as the front gate before tearfully telling her she could go no further. She cannot blame the woman. It has been a great loss to lose her own mother so soon after her father, but for a mother to lose, and therefore outlive, their only child? She cannot pretend to understand the depth of that kind of grief. She had simply squeezed Morena's hand and watched her hurry away before entering the house.
Tabitha puts down her pack in the hallway, beside a large terracotta pot; tangled brown vines droop over it's lip and stretch across the floor towards a thin sliver of sunlight coming from the window above the door. She trails a finger lightly over one tendril, only for it to disintegrate at her touch; no salvaging that, then. Not a good sign for what further decay may lie ahead of her.
There are two archways either side of her; to the left is a large sitting room — a pair of slippers sit discarded beside the fireplace — and to the right is the kitchen. She dreads to think what may have been left to rot in the cupboards and pantry. Though, she realises with relief, she cannot smell anything untoward. Perhaps on her one and only visit Morena had cleaned things out, or perhaps she had hired someone to do the job; that seems more likely. Had there not been sheets covering most of the furniture and counter-tops, she imagines there would be a thick layer of dust coating everything. The sensible thing to do would perhaps be to make herself a cup of tea and sit down, figure out where she will start in terms of making this liveable for a short time, but Tabitha finds herself wandering past the archways and taking the staircase up to the first floor. She wants to know just how high this townhouse — tower, she supposes, given the enchanted hidden floors— goes.
Gale Dekarios is a name still bandied about Waterdeep, even as it comes close to a year after the wizard's death. Tabitha would have been hard pushed not to have heard all about him, even if Morena hadn't been her mother's friend. Their paths had almost crossed in their youth, but by the time Tabitha was making her debut in Waterdhavian society, Gale had been chosen by Mystra and spent little time away from her or his work; in life he had been a mystery, in death, legendary. Now, as she climbs the stairs of his former home, she cannot help but wonder at the man who once lived here.
She had heard stories, of course. Before the dust had settled there had been many rumours to reach Waterdeep about each hero involved in the salvation of Baldur's Gate. But, most prominent, unsurprisingly, had been the ones about the wizard. The scandal of being cast out by Mystra, the ensuing year of isolation prior to abduction, his atonement by way of sacrifice. A sacrifice that had left the City of Splendours reeling, and, in part, divided. There were a number of vigils in those first few weeks. The House of Wonder was also vandalised a number of times. Tabitha's mother had mourned as if her own son — Tabitha is one of six daughters — had met his demise, despite the fact that only a few years before she had been lamenting that Tabitha hadn't 'snatched him up' before Mystra; that the wizard clearly lacked basic common sense, taste and had gone so far as to suggest that perhaps something terrible would befall him if his head stayed in the clouds. This particular sentiment was not renewed following his death.
What Tabitha gleans from the first three floors, is that the man owned a lot of books. More books than she has seen in one collection before, aside from a public library, of course. She resists the urge to examine them more closely; Gods know how long she might be there otherwise. Another day. The fourth floor appears to be one large wooden panelled sitting room; perhaps a space intended to entertain. There is a full drinks cabinet, a large fireplace framed by two plush burgundy sofas. The room looks, even in it's abandonment, like it was rarely used.
The fifth floor, she hurries past; the master bedroom — she shan't be sleeping here — is almost too well preserved. Light filters in through a large stained glass window, casting one half of the four poster bed in an array of soft purples and blues. It makes Tabitha wonder if there is an enchantment on the chamber as a whole, keeping it so immaculate in comparison to the other rooms. Wonders again if this is something Morena did, or had arranged for, when she visited. She does not hang around long enough to investigate; it feels rather like walking through a shrine than a bedroom. The sixth floor has three rooms branching off from the hallway; the first and second doors open with ease; potions, packed tightly together, line shelves, all ordered it seems, by usage and then alphabetised. How infuriatingly meticulous, she thinks. Though, it makes her smile. The third door she cannot budge. The door rattles in such an unusual way that Tabitha takes a step back, and a sudden feeling of dread threatens to overwhelm her; there is a spell upon it, and not a nice one. Perhaps another day, she muses, or not at all; again, she is not staying permanently.
The seventh floor opens out to the top of the tower, with a mezzanine that connects to an eighth, and final, floor. A large study-come-library. Bookshelves line the room save for a set of shutter-like double-doors across the room. Tabitha walks towards them immediately, the intention being to let a little light into the room. She does not expect there to be a balcony, nor does she expect the view to take her breath away; she grew up in Waterdeep, she knows what the view from the docks looks like, and yet, from this vantage point it feels new and… there is a clatter behind her.
Morena had assured her there is no one else in the house, nor has there been anyone for quite some time. Hells, she hopes that is indeed still the case. Knowing no one had stepped foot in here in a year means that in all likelihood no one has been monitoring it; Morena definitely hasn't been. There may have been an opportunist in the time it has been empty. Though, she has not seen any evidence to suggest there has been an intruder. When Tabitha steps back into the study, she finds it still empty. There is, in one corner, a rather tall — if it were not for the mezzanine it would surely have touched the ceiling — piece of furniture draped in a dust sheet that she had initially walked past. And though it is no different to the other items covered up, she finds herself drawn to it. Even more so when she hears a faint scratching sound coming from it. Perhaps there is a rodent caught behind it or—
She yanks the sheet away. At first, she thinks it a large painting; unusual, for it depicts what looks like— Tabitha glances behind her — the study itself. Perhaps a rather mundane subject on its own. Only, rather than everything being covered in dust sheets, the painting appears to show almost a mirror image of the room in its prime. Almost, because the furniture is slightly out of place. But it is definitely the same room depicted. How peculiar. Not least for how uncannily lifelike it looks, but for the fact that upon closer inspection, the candle on the desk in the painting is flickering. How charming.
The scratching sound continues. Tabitha checks behind the painting; there is nothing there. The scratching stops. Perhaps, she thinks, she is simply unnerved by the silence in the house and her mind is creating noise for her; it did it before in her mother's house. At one point Tabitha had been so convinced she'd heard laughter coming from her mother's bedroom that she had burst in there, half expecting to see her mother waiting; she'd been dead for a week, by then. The mind can play cruel tricks in its efforts to bring comfort, she has found. This might be no different.
She stands up straight, only, when she looks at the painting again, the study within it is not empty. Tabitha shrieks and stumbles backwards. A man stares back at her from inside the painting.
"What are you doing in my mirror?" He asks, far too calmly for the situation at hand.
"I thought you were a rat!" Tabitha wheezes pressing a hand to her chest. A mirror. Of course. She blinks hard. Once, twice, hells, three times. Because her eyes must be deceiving her. It has been a long few weeks, after all. She's hearing things. And now, she must be seeing things.
Because the man in the mirror staring back at her is Gale Dekarios, and Gale Dekarios is very much dead.