The Spell of the Black Dagger (2nd Edition)

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Tobas sighed. "Lady Sarai," he said, "For all I know, in time it will dissolve the whole World.

  " She stared at him. "That's ridiculous," she said.

  He turned up an empty palm. "Nonetheless," he said, "that's what may happen. It's what the old books say will happen; every text that mentions the Seething Death agrees that unchecked, it will indeed spread until it has reduced all the World to primordial chaos."

  "But that's absurd!"

  "I wish it were," Tobas replied, and Sarai realized for the first time that despite his calm answers, the wizard was seriously frightened. He was almost trembling.

  "But there must be a countercharm," she said. "If the spell was written down, then someone must have performed it, right?"

  Tobas nodded. "I can't see any other way it could have been," he agreed.

  "Well, the World's still here," Sarai pointed out. "Something must have stopped the spell, mustn't it?"

  "Yes," Tobas admitted, "something must have. Someone must have tried the spell at least once, at least four hundred years ago, so it must have been stopped, or it would have dissolved the World by now. But we don't know how it was stopped."

  "Well, find out!" Sarai snapped. "Isn't that one of the things magic is good at?"

  "Sometimes," Tobas said, "but not always. Spying on wizards, even dead ones, isn't easy, Lady Sarai; we tend to use warding spells, since we don't like being spied on; we're a secretive bunch. And even if we don't use warding spells, learning a spell by watching a vision of it being performed is not always reliable."

  "Well, has anyone tried to find the countercharm for thisSeething Death?"

  Tobas laughed hollowly. "Oh, yes, Lady Sarai," he said. "Of course they have. A spell that destructive has been a temptation for generations of wizards. But no one's ever found that lost counterspell."

  Sarai sputtered. "Then how could Telurinon… Why didn't… What kind of idiot ever wrote the spell down in the first place without including the countercharm?"

  Tobas turned up an empty palm. "Who knows?" he said. "Lady Sarai, we wizards do a good many things that don't make much sense; it's been our policy for a thousand years to record everything, but to keep it all secret, and that means we have situations like this one. It doesn't surprise me at all, I'm sorry to say."

  Sarai was too worried and angry to correct him for calling her by her right name; she turned and stared at the palace.

  "What's happening in there?" she asked.

  Tobas shrugged again. "How would I know? I'm not a seer, and Teneria isn't here."

  "I'm going in to see."

  "I don't… well, be careful, Sar… Pharea. Don't go near the Seething Death. And Tabaea's still in there, you know, still the empress."

  "I know, I know," Sarai said. She waved a distracted goodbye to Tobas, then marched on into the palace.

  CHAPTER 38

  Tabaea stepped back as the witch knelt by the assassin's side, giving her room to work. She glanced quickly at the wooden bowl that someone had placed upside down atop the puddle of magical gunk; it still looked secure enough, but the nasty odor of the stuff lingered, making it unpleasant for someone with the empress' superhuman sense of smell to breathe.

  Whatever that fluid was, Tabaea was very glad she hadn't touched it, or gotten any on her. She had tried moving it by warlockry and had found that as far as a warlock's or witch's special senses and abilities were concerned, it didn't exist; she couldn't affect it in any way, with any of the limited magic at her command.

  What's more, everything she had dropped or poked into it had dissolved. Wood, cloth, metal—anything at all, it didn't matter, whatever touched the stuff would dissolve like ice shards dropped in boiling water. At least the goo didn't splash.

  She wished the spell would hurry up and burn out; it was beginning to worry her. Maybe there was more to it than she had thought at first.

  She would have to ask the assassin, if he lived. She turned back to him and to the witch tending to him. Tabaea could feel the witch's energy gathering in her hands, then transferring out through her fingers into the assassin's belly, knitting together the ruined tissues…

  And she could feel something else, too; something was strange about the flow of power. It wasn't witchcraft; something else was at work, as well. The witch was drawing power from somewhere else.

  Tabaea had heard that witches could share energy; was there another witch nearby, then, who was helping this Teneria? If so, why didn't the other witch step forward and help openly?

  The empress turned and nervously looked over the people in sight. Arl was there, of course; it was he who had brought the witch. There were half a dozen others on the stairs behind him, watching from what they presumably thought was a safe distance. As Tabaea watched, another woman came up and peered into the room.

  There was something familiar about this new arrival; not her face, which Tabaea was fairly sure she hadn't seen before, but something. Perhaps her scent was one that Tabaea had smelled somewhere.

  Whatever it was, she couldn't place the woman immediately. She wasn't a witch, though, Tabaea could sense that, and it was magicians who worried the empress just now. With the Black Dagger gone she was not at all sure of her ability to fend off hostile magic.

  One of the other women, the tall dark one with the long hair, was a witch, but she wasn't sending Teneria any power. She was doing something, but it wasn't helping Teneria.

  Then the tall woman noticed Tabaea's interest and instantly stopped whatever she had been doing. That was annoying of her. Tabaea wished she hadn't been so careless in her investigation; that witch was on her guard, now.

  But that wasn't where the power was coming from, anyway; Tabaea tried her best to see where this not-quite-witchcraft was coming from, and suddenly something dropped into place.

  It wasn't witchcraft; it was warlockry. It was coming from a man on the stair. Teneria was taking the warlock energy and using it for witchcraft.

  That was interesting and a little frightening; Tabaea had not known that that was possible. She had discovered for herself that the two varieties of magic were surprisingly similar, but she hadn't realized that anyone else knew it, since no one else was both a witch and a warlock, and it had never even occurred to her that anyone might have learned how to use the two in combination.

  Magicians, it seemed, were just full of unpleasant surprises today—a warlock had used wizardry against her, and now a witch was using another warlock's power to heal the attacker.

  They were joining forces.

  They were joining forces against her.

  And the Black Dagger was gone.

  Just then something hissed; everyone but Teneria and the unconscious assassin turned at the sound, to see the cloud of noxious grayish smoke that rose from the pool of whatever-it-was as the bowl sank down into it, dissolving away as it went.

  "By the gods," someone muttered.

  Tabaea, shaken, stared at the puddle. It was almost a foot across now, still a perfect circle.

  How large would it get? It had only been there perhaps half an hour, starting from a single drop.

  She turned back to Teneria and demanded, "Hurry up! I need him conscious!"

  "I'm hurrying," Teneria said quietly, in an odd, distracted tone; an ordinary woman wouldn't have heard her, but Tabaea, Empress of Ethshar, did. She heard everything, saw everything, smelled everything; she had the strength of a dozen men and the speed of a cat. She was a witch and a warlock both.

  But she wasn't a wizard anymore, with the Black Dagger gone, and her enemies were working together.

  And this Teneria was one of them, wasn't she? She was working with a warlock, and the warlocks had sent the assassin. When the man was healed, what was to keep him and the other warlock and the two witches from turning all their power on her, their common foe?

  Tabaea could counter a warlock and fight off a witch, but she wasn't sure about the combination, and two of each; the dagger had always helped her, had blocked part
of any magic. And witches were subtle.

  She took a step backward, away from Teneria, and then caught a whiff of the fumes from the wizard-stuff. Without thinking, she took a sniff and almost choked; the stuff was unbelievably foul. It covered other scents, as well—but not completely; Tabaea realized that she could still smell the blood from the assassin's wound, the nervous sweat on Teneria's skin, the distinct odors of the people on the stairs, some familiar, some strange.

  There was another odor there as well, a very faint trace, that somehow seemed important. The fumes were making her dizzy, and she had too much to think about, with the assassin and all the magicians working together; if she still had the Black Dagger…

  When had it disappeared, anyway? How had they taken it? Magic wouldn't work on it, so it couldn't have been taken magically; someone must have slipped it away while Tabaea was asleep—but she had always kept the knife close at hand, even when she slept, she only took it off to bathe.

  It must have been one of the servants. It was not Lethe or Ista. She could trust them; she knew by the smell. And they had still been here when she came down to the throne room.

  Pharea.

  That woman who had only been there once, who had helped her clean off the blood, then disappeared. She must have taken it.

  And that's who that was on the stairs, Tabaea realized, the woman with the familiar scent. That smell was the peculiar odor the woman had had that Tabaea had thought was just some odd sort of perfume—but it was too faint for perfume, an ordinary human probably couldn't smell it at all.

  Her face was different, but that must have just been a disguise of some sort, probably magical. There was no mistaking the scent. That was Pharea, and she was in it, too—in the plot against Tabaea, against the empress.

  Tabaea whirled and stared at the group on the stairs. "Arl," she said, "bring those people in here."

  Arl blinked; he had been staring at that horrible puddle. "What people, Your Majesty?" he asked.

  "Those people on the stairs. You, all of you—come closer." Tabaea beckoned. With varying degrees of reluctance and much glancing at one another, the little group stepped up into the throne room. Arl stepped in behind them, herding them forward.

  "Line up," Tabaea ordered. Something drew her attention; she turned to see Teneria looking up. "Go on healing him!" Tabaea snapped.

  "Yes, Your Majesty," the witch said, turning back to her work.

  The people formed a ragged line, and Tabaea looked them over. "You," she said, pointing at the tall witch, "get over there." She gestured toward the dais.

  The woman glanced at the others, then obeyed.

  "You, too," Tabaea ordered the warlock. He hesitated, then went.

  "And you, Pharea."

  "I don't think so," the woman replied; her hand dropped to the hilt of the knife she carried on her belt, concealed by a fold of her skirt. She never questioned how Tabaea had recognized her, never tried to deny her identity; the empress thought she knew what that meant. "The rest of you, get out of here," Pharea said. She waved at the others still in the line.

  The three of them looked at Tabaea.

  "She's right," the empress said. "Get out of here. Now."

  "Your Majesty…" Arl began.

  "Shut up," Tabaea commanded. She was watching Pharea's hand closely, the hand that was on the hilt of a knife.

  Tabaea knew that knife well. She had carried it herself for four years. Witchcraft couldn't sense it; warlockry couldn't touch it; although she had no spells to test it with, Tabaea knew that wizardry would not work on the person who held it.

  That meant that it would have dispelled a magical disguise, didn't it? So this was Pharea's real face, and the other had been an illusion.

  The bystanders departed, and now the sides were clear, the stage set, Tabaea thought; she and Arl on one side, Pharea and the four magicians on the other. When the footsteps had reached the bottom of the stairs, and her enhanced senses assured the empress that there were no other intruders around, Tabaea demanded, "Do you know what you've got there, Pharea?"

  "I think so," Pharea said warily; something about the way she stood, the way her eyes moved, told Tabaea that she had already used the Black Dagger herself, had killed at least one cat, and perhaps other animals.

  A movement on the dais attracted Tabaea's attention for an instant; the older witch had moved, had taken a step toward Pharea, and was staring at her.

  "I don't think your friends know," Tabaea said. "You are working with the magicians, aren't you? They're all working together, now."

  Pharea smiled crookedly. "We haven't always been as coordinated as we might be," she said. "But yes, we're all on the same side."

  Behind Pharea, Arl was moving up slowly and quietly, clearly planning to grab her from behind; the tall witch was about to say something, and Tabaea did not want Pharea warned. She turned to the witch and demanded, "And who are you, anyway? I can see that you're a witch, but you didn't volunteer to help heal this killer you people sent. Who are you?"

  Startled, the woman answered, "My name is Karanissa of the Mountains," she said.

  "And you aren't helping Teneria; why not?"

  "Because she doesn't need help," Karanissa said. "I would if she wanted me to; I was going to try it myself, but Teneria thought…"

  She was interrupted by Arl's lunge—and his falling headlong on the marble floor, as Pharea dodged neatly and drew the Black Dagger. Before anyone else could react, the false servant grabbed Arl by the hair and stood over him with the knife to his throat.

  "It's not that easy," Pharea said to Tabaea. "I've got the dagger, and I'm keeping it. And I'll use it to defend myself if I need to."

  Tabaea frowned. "You think you can handle all my followers so easily?"

  Pharea smiled grimly. "Why not?" she asked. "You handled the city guard. And they're on our side, too, by the way—Lord Torrut is still in command, and only a few dozen men deserted or went over to you."

  Tabaea stared at Pharea, trying to decide if that was a bluff. Hadn't Lord Torrut fled with the others, sailed off to wherever they all went? "Who are you, anyway?" she demanded, stalling for time to think. "You're no magician, so far as I can see, and you don't look like a soldier."

  The woman Tabaea called Pharea smiled an unpleasant smile. "I'm Lady Sarai," she said. "Minister of Investigation and Acting Minister of Justice to Ederd the Fourth, overlord of Ethshar."

  "Ederd's not the overlord anymore," Tabaea replied angrily. "I'm empress!" She tried to hide how much she was shaken by the discovery that she was facing Lord Kalthon's daughter; for all her life until the last few sixnights, Tabaea had lived in terror of the Minister of Justice, and for the last few months of that time Lady Sarai had been feared, as well. Tabaea had tried to dismiss her as a harmless girl, but here was that harmless girl, in her own throne room, holding the Black Dagger.

  "You're Tabaea the Thief," Sarai said. "Four years ago you stole a spell from Serem the Wise, but it came out wrong and made this dagger I'm holding. For a long time you didn't do anything with it—maybe you didn't know what it did—but then you killed Inza the Apprentice, and Serem the Wise, and Kelder of Quarter Street, and others. And when the guards came to arrest you for those murders, you declared yourself empress, and used the knife's magic to occupy the palace."

  "I am the empress!" Tabaea insisted. "I rule the city—the old guards don't dare show their faces, and the overlord and his family all fled before me!"

  "But that," Sarai said, holding up the dagger, "was when you had this."

  "And I'll have it again! Give it back to me!"

  Outrageously, mockingly, Sarai laughed. She dared to laugh at the empress of Ethshar!

  Moving faster than humanly possible, Tabaea lunged for Sarai, intending to snatch the knife away from her.

  Moving faster than humanly possible, Sarai dodged, flinging Arl aside, and spun to face Tabaea again, with the enchanted knife raised and ready.

  "Think a minute, Tabaea,"
the noblewoman said. "We both have stolen lives and stolen talents—but I have the dagger. If you stab me, I lose a life—but if I stab you, you not only lose a life, I gain one. And maybe, you know, maybe this dagger will take more than one at a time. Maybe I only have to kill you once."

  Tabaea, hearing this, started to turn, then stopped herself. No ordinary enemy would have seen the tiny little twitch, but Sarai saw it.

  "And yes, you're right; I'm not a witch nor a warlock," the overlord's Minister of Investigation said. Then she pointed with the dagger to her companions, and added, "But they are, over there, and they're on my side."

  Tabaea glanced at Arl—but there was no need for Sarai to say a word about the rat-faced little chancellor; he was crawling away from both women, heading for the stairs, obviously wanting only to be out of sight.

  But Sarai hadn't cut his throat when she had the chance, when Tabaea had attacked; Lord Kalthon's daughter was apparently not as bloodthirsty as her father was said to be.

  "Are you planning to kill me?" Tabaea demanded.

  Sarai blinked, catlike and quick. "I suppose we ought to," she said. Tabaea thought she sounded almost startled, not at the question, but at her own reply. "After all, you're a murderer. But there were some exceptional circumstances here, and I think my father and I, acting in the overlord's behalf, would accept a plea for mercy and commute the sentence to exile from the city—if you surrender now and don't force us to do any more damage to depose you."

  "You think," Tabaea said. "And what if I don't surrender, then? I've seen you move—you're fast, all right, and yes, you have the dagger, but I think I'm still faster and stronger. Your magicians and I cancel each other out. Are you ready to take me on and try to kill me, here and now?"

  "Oh, no," Sarai said, smiling again. "I don't have to. All I have to do is get us all out of here alive, and I think I can manage that much. And after that, we'll let the wizards and the demonologists try out their spells on you—now that you don't have the Black Dagger. Or maybe we'll just wait."

  "Wait for what?" Tabaea demanded, shaken by the woman's confidence and the threat of demons and wizardry. She could still counter witchcraft, since she had the talent and more raw vitality than any three normal witches; she could still counter warlockry because of the inherent limits on every warlock; but without the dagger she had no defense against other magicks.