The Spell of the Black Dagger

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Then don’t tell me how to do my job,” Sarai retorted. “I’ve investigated this. We’ve questioned everyone connected with the victims, everyone who was involved; we’ve looked at all the evidence we can find.”

  “Ha! You’re just taking credit for work that was done by magicians—wizards, mostly!”

  “I’m not taking credit for anything,” Sarai answered. “There’s no credit to take—we haven’t caught the people behind these killings. And that’s why I’m asking everyone here to help, to tell me anything you can that might help.”

  “Why should we?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?” Sarai put her hands to her hips and shouted angrily, “This conspiracy, if that’s what it is, killed one of your own Guildmasters! Don’t you want Serem the Wise avenged? Aren’t you worried that you might be next? Or with all this talk about credit, are you worried that wizards might get the blame for these killings? It’s wizardry that’s at the heart of them, as far as we can determine—is the Guild covering something up?”

  “You’re the one who’s covering up!” the wizard shouted back. “You’re the one who isn’t getting her job done! And it’s because it’s magicians getting killed, because you want the Wizards’ Guild to take the blame!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” another wizard asked, before Sarai could reply.

  “It’s true!” Algarin insisted. “She’s jealous of us all, jealous of our magic! We solve far more crimes with our spells than she does with her so-called ‘investigations,’ and she’s jealous!”

  Telurinon, who had stood silently during this argument, spoke again. “I believe I see the reason for this baseless charge of treason. She’s Lord Kalthon’s daughter; he’s ill, probably dying, and we’ve refused to heal him—the Guild does not heal aristocrats, as you all know, and perhaps Lady Sarai resents that. I’ve heard these nobles claim we’re all playing at being gods and getting above ourselves when we make such rules; maybe the lady would like to put us back in our place.”

  Captain Tikri’s fingers were closed on the hilt of his sword, but Sarai put out a hand and stopped him before he could draw it. “No violence,” she whispered. “Not with so much magic here.”

  With Lady Sarai thus distracted for a moment, Mereth tried to speak in her defense; other voices rose in protest against Telurinon’s words as well, and in seconds the entire room was a chaos of shouting and arguing voices. Fists waved in the air; none, so far, had been aimed at anyone.

  “You have no right to blame us because you can’t find the people responsible!” someone shouted at Sarai.

  “I’m not blaming you!” Sarai shouted back. “I’m just asking you to help me find them!”

  She let the bickering continue for a moment longer, but when it showed no sign of reaching any conclusion, Sarai shouted over the hubbub, “Guildmaster Telurinon! Whatever my reasons, the charge stands and requires an answer—why did you refuse my request for a meeting and the Guild’s assistance in this?”

  Telurinon turned back to face her, abandoning his argument with other Guildmasters.

  “Because, my lady,” he said, “this is a matter that the Wizards’ Guild wishes to handle on its own. Someone has killed a Guildmaster; we cannot allow that person to be brought before the overlord’s courts, or thrown in the overlord’s dungeon—whoever it is must die, as horribly and publicly as possible, as a direct result of our Guild’s actions.”

  “Well, damn it,” Lady Sarai shouted, “why didn’t you meet with me and say so?”

  The argument died away, as the wizards turned to listen.

  “I have no problem with recognizing the Guild’s claim to vengeance,” Sarai said. “The overlord’s government makes no claims to priority in these matters. I would be delighted to arrange terms whereby, in exchange for the Guild’s full cooperation, I would, as Acting Minister of Justice, turn the guilty parties over to the Guild for execution.”

  Telurinon blinked stupidly at her.

  “Well, there, Telurinon,” Heremon called. “I told you you were being hasty.” Several other voices murmured agreement.

  “You barged in here, accused us of treason...” Telurinon began.

  “I had to get your attention,” Sarai retorted. “You were ignoring me.”

  “You brought all these soldiers...”

  “I can send them away. If you’ll agree that we’ll all sit down together and pool our information, and that henceforth I am to be kept informed of everything the Guild learns about this matter, and every action it takes concerning it, then I’ll send the soldiers away and we can sit down and talk.” She smiled at Telurinon. “What do you say, Guildmaster?”

  Telurinon turned helplessly to the other wizards; a moment later, with Telurinon abstaining and only Algarin dissenting, they had agreed to do as Sarai suggested.

  Swords were sheathed and the soldiers dismissed, all save Captain Tikri and two others who remained as Sarai’s assistant and bodyguards. Mereth, Sarai, Teneria, and Tikri found seats, and the meeting began.

  The discussion started well enough; Sarai gave an account of the known crimes to date, and let Mereth report on what her spells had shown her. Then Sarai spoke again, mentioning that both wizardry and warlockry had been involved.

  “We were aware of that, my lady,” Telurinon said chidingly.

  Sarai ignored him, and recounted the other meetings she had held, with Okko and the witches and warlocks; Mereth confirmed what she said. The wizards seemed to be especially interested in the evidence that the Council of Warlocks knew nothing about the killings, and had no magic that could help.

  For their part, the wizards reported that they knew little about the actual killings beyond the fact that the murders had involved magic. A necromancer by the name of Thengor reported that his own studies indicated no theurgical or demonological involvement, and that the souls of the victims were nowhere in the World, while some of the others expressed doubts about the accuracy of any necromantic reports.

  “We did discover,” Heremon said, when Thengor had finished, “that whatever magic was involved is a sort of negative wizardry—it appeared to counteract any wizardry used in its presence. Guildmaster Serem did not come by his cognomen ‘the Wise’ entirely without earning it; while he was notoriously careless about the usual wards and warning spells, he had cast several personal protective spells upon himself. The murderer’s weapon seems to have instantaneously nullified all of them when it struck.”

  That was interesting, and something Sarai had not known; she leaned forward attentively.

  “That’s why we sent for Tobas,” Algarin said.

  Sarai looked at him questioningly, but it was Heremon who explained, “Tobas of Telven is a young wizard who has made a specialty of the study of counter-wizardries, of spells that prevent other spells from functioning. He lives in the Small Kingdoms, but Guildmaster Telurinon has invited him to join us here in Ethshar, to see if he can tell us anything about the magic this killer uses.”

  Sarai nodded.

  That seemed to conclude the exchange of information; the Guild had gotten no further in actually determining the identity of the killers than Sarai had. Accordingly, Sarai and Telurinon threw the meeting open to speculation.

  “Lady Sarai, you said it might be a cult,” a woman asked. “I know what Thengor told us, but do you think it might be demonologists after all? Maybe it’s the demons themselves using the other magicks—they can do that, can’t they?”

  “What kind of a cult?” another voice demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Sarai replied. “A cult of assassins, maybe...”

  “Demerchan!” The name was repeated by half a dozen voices.

  “No,” Sarai said, “I don’t think so.” She described her unexpected visit from Abran of Demerchan. Mereth confirmed her account.

  “Maybe it’s the Empire of Vond that’s behind the killings,” a woman suggested. “Wasn’t Vond himself supposed to be some sort of super-warlock?”

  �
��Call in the Vondish ambassador, Lady Sarai! Demand an explanation!”

  “No, it’s Demerchan!”

  Several voices chimed in with their opinions, and for a moment, chaos reigned.

  “What could Vond hope to gain by killing those six people?”

  “Fear!”

  “Magic!”

  “They knew too much!”

  “It’s a sacrifice to a demon!”

  “Not Demerchan, Vond! Vond is doing it to disrupt and weaken the Hegemony!”

  “Demerchan is killing them to prepare the way to take over the city!”

  “It’s a conspiracy that’s trying to overthrow the overlord!”

  The discussion deteriorated into several small arguments, and Sarai prepared to take her leave; she had made her point, and learned about as much as she could reasonably expect to learn.

  And while the wizards argued and Lady Sarai straightened her skirt, Tabaea the Thief crouched in the shadows a few yards away at the top of the staircase, safely out of sight, listening.

  Learning about this meeting had been easy; two different wizards had mentioned it in her hearing as she spied on them. Getting in to eavesdrop, however, had been more difficult. She had thought about trying to slip in under some false identity, perhaps as one of the inn’s maids, but had lost her nerve, and instead settled for breaking in through an attic window and hiding at the top of the stairs.

  She had been late in arriving, and had fled temporarily when all the soldiers marched in, but even when she abandoned her post in the shadows, Tabaea had the ears of a cat—or rather, several cats, and a bird, and several dogs. She had missed some of the discussion, and couldn’t see what was going on from her chosen place of concealment, but she heard most of it.

  They were blaming the Empire of Vond for the killings, which was crazy—that was way off at the other end of the World, wasn’t it? And they were blaming the cult of Demerchan, whatever that was. They were blaming demonologists, and the Council of Warlocks, and even each other. They were blaming Lady Sarai for not catching the killer. They were blaming demons and monsters and just about everything except the Northern Empire. Someone even suggested that spriggans, those squeaky little green creatures like the one that had startled her in Serem’s house so long ago, were not the harmless little nuisances they appeared to be, but diabolical killers working under the direction of some renegade archimage.

  Tabaea smiled broadly at that. Spriggans, killing people? The idea of spriggans as deliberate murderers was completely absurd.

  Lady Sarai was leaving, and someone named Teneria of Fishertown was going with her. Teneria had not said much of anything, but Tabaea had heard someone explain that she was a witch who knew about ways witchcraft and warlockry were related.

  Tabaea wished Teneria had spoken up more. After all, Tabaea had both the warlock talent and some witch’s skills, and would have liked learning more about them.

  Not that she was still as ignorant as she had been when she began. She had listened to warlocks and witches as they talked amongst themselves and as they lectured their apprentices. She knew that warlockry came down to two abilities, the ability to move things without touching them and the ability to create or remove heat, and that everything else was just applications of those. She knew that warlocks had infinite power available, that they drew on a mysterious source somewhere in the wilderness of southern Aldagmor, far to the northeast. She knew about the Calling—she didn’t know what it was, nobody did, but she knew that any warlock who used too much power was irresistibly drawn to the mysterious source of that power and never seen again. She knew that the first warning of the Call would be nightmares, and she had sworn that if she ever again had a nightmare she would give up warlockry.

  As for witchcraft, that drew its power from the witch’s heart and belly, which was why witches were so limited in what they could do. A witch could die of exhaustion doing tasks a warlock or wizard would find easy. Witches, therefore, had learned subtlety, had learned to use knowledge more than power—but Tabaea had only the power and not the knowledge, and she wasn’t sure she had the patience to learn.

  It did occur to her that thanks to the Black Dagger, she surely had more raw strength in her heart and gut than any other witch who had ever lived; still, she was not sure of how to use it. She wasn’t really sure how to use any of her stolen skills and strengths, though she was learning.

  Tabaea found it very amusing that the magicians all thought she was a conspiracy, rather than an individual; she giggled quietly into the palm of her hand. Little Tabaea the Thief, a World-spanning conspiracy of evil?

  Besides, she wasn’t evil, not really; she just wanted her share of the good things in life. She wanted to be on top, instead of on the bottom.

  One of the wizards had suggested that the conspirators intended to overthrow the overlord and take over the city. Tabaea hadn’t thought of that.

  Overthrow the overlord? Rule Ethshar of the Sands?

  She liked that idea. She liked it very much indeed. The entire city at her beck and call? Servants to fulfill her every whim? Her choice of the baubles and pretties on Luxury Street, or of the handsome men of Morningside? What a lovely thought—Tabaea the First, Overlord of Ethshar!

  No, not overlord—that wasn’t enough. The overlord ruled as part of the triumvirate and as first among the lords; she wanted to rule on her own, like the monarchs in the Small Kingdoms. Rather than overlord, she would be queen! Queen of Ethshar!

  And why stop with the city? Why not conquer the entire World, and be empress? She was not giggling any more; she was starting to take the idea seriously. Why not?

  Well, because she was just one woman, that was why. She had her magical powers, of course—she was stronger, more powerful than anyone. She knew, from her eavesdropping and some careful experimentation, that most magic could not work against her: The Black Dagger seemed to nullify any wizardry; she had warlockry of her own and the one thing a warlock’s power couldn’t seem to touch was another warlock; witchcraft could not directly defeat her because she was stronger than any other witch; theurgy was inherently non-violent, and therefore could not harm her.

  Sorcery was still an unknown, though; demonology and some of the minor arts were mysteries, too. And she was not at all sure what would happen if someone managed to get at her with an ordinary weapon. It was not likely that anyone ever could, given her stolen senses and strength and speed—but on the other hand, she still had to sleep sometimes.

  But who had to know any of that?

  Conquer the city...

  She would, she decided, have to think this over very carefully indeed.

  Moving as silently as a cat, she hurried away, back to the window she had left open, and then out to the open air.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sarai sat dejectedly in Captain Tikri’s office. She had spent the day taking Teneria the witch and Luralla the warlock to the scenes of the various murders, hoping that Teneria might be able to learn something useful with her unique understanding of how witchcraft and warlockry were related; Luralla had been along more as a power source for Teneria than anything else.

  The net result was nothing; Teneria could do no more than confirm what other witches had already learned. Wizardry and warlockry had been used, and the murderer had left no psychic traces.

  Sarai gathered from Teneria that this last was unusual, but just what it meant was not clear. Some witches could choose not to leave traces; warlocks often left no traces, but did not appear to have any voluntary control over it; some spells that wizards used could hide or erase traces. Which of those applied here, Teneria could not say.

  The witch was off to her room in the Palace now, to refresh herself a little, and Luralla had gone home, leaving Sarai and Tikri in the office. A spriggan had followed them back to the Palace; Sarai shooed it away with a shove of her toe, and the little creature backed away, but did not leave the room.

  “I hate this,” she muttered to herself. “I shoul
d be tending my father, or listening to his cases for him. There must be a sixnight’s backlog by now.”

  “Then why don’t you go handle some of them?” Captain Tikri asked from behind her. She turned, startled. “I couldn’t help hearing,” he said, not very apologetically at all.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “I should go—but I couldn’t concentrate on it.”

  “You might want to try, though—a distraction might help clear your thoughts on this whole mess.”

  Sarai stared at Tikri for a moment, then nodded. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I should...”

  “Excuse me,” an unfamiliar voice said.

  Startled, Sarai turned around and found a small man in a nondescript brown tunic and breeches standing in the doorway.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “I’m Kelder of Tazmor,” the man said, speaking with a curious accent. “I got your message.”

  Sarai paused to gather her wits somewhat before she asked, “What message?” The accent, she realized, was Sardironese.

  “Ah ... you are Lady Sarai, aren’t you?” Kelder asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Sarai admitted. “But I still...”

  “You sent messengers to Sardiron,” the little man said, “asking for help in solving a series of murders—didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, that message,” Sarai said. “Of course. And you... ?”

  “I’m a sorcerer,” Kelder explained. “A forensic sorcerer. When I got your message I came south as quickly as I could.”

  “Oh, I see; and you’ve just arrived? Do you need a place to stay? I’m sure a room...”

  “No, no,” Kelder assured her. “I have a very comfortable room at an inn out by Grandgate; I arrived in the city several days ago.”

  “Oh. And you’ve been seeing the city?” Sarai asked.

  Kelder nodded. “You might say that, Lady Sarai. You see, I’ve been investigating these murders independently—I didn’t want to allow myself to be influenced by any preconceived notions you might have. This is the sort of study where my specialty can really shine, Lady Sarai. I think that the use of forensic sorcery has been shamefully neglected in Ethshar, not just in this city, but throughout the entire Hegemony. To the best of my knowledge, you haven’t consulted any sorcerers on this case.”