The Spell of the Black Dagger loe-6

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Suddenly nervous, Tabaea hurried down the last few steps. The guards couldn’t have anything to do with her, of course-nobody except the innkeeper and a few strangers knew she was here, no one would have any reason to connect her with any recent disturbances—but still, she didn’t care to be caught in her room upstairs if there was trouble.

  Now the soldiers were at the door, five of them, in addition to the person in slippers, and one soldier was lifting the latch. Now even Beren heard them; she straightened and leaned her broom in the chimney corner as Tabaea slipped back into the little alcove under the stairs. The table there was usually occupied at meals by young lovers, as it was the most private spot in the dining room; there was nothing suspicious about it if Tabaea should happen to sit there on a quiet evening, just minding her own business.

  And it would scarcely be her feult that she could hear everything that went on in the main room. “Can I help you?” Beren asked.

  “We’re looking for a woman named Tabaea,” an unfamiliar man’s voice said. “We don’t know what she’s calling herself. A little below average height, thin, black hair—probably alone.” Tabaea could almost hear Beren frowning. “Let me get my master,” the serving wench said. “Is she here?” a different voice asked. “I don’t know,” Beren replied, “I’ll ask.” Tabaea watched through the archway as Beren vanished into the kitchen.

  Tabaea bit her lip, worrying and wondering. Why were these men—these soldiers—looking for her? How did they know her name, or what she looked like? And what should she do about it?

  It registered that the alcove was a dead end, that she could be trapped in it. True, she could hold off a small army, as they wouldn’t be able to get at her more than two or perhaps three at a time, and she could use the table as a shield, but they could besiege her there and wait her out. That would not do. Better to get out now, while she could! But the soldiers were in the front door, while Beren and the innkeeper might be emerging from the kitchen at any moment, blocking that route. That left the window.

  Tavern windows varied greatly in Ethshar, in number, size, placement, and nature. The Blue Dancer gloried in a single great bow window, a long, graceful curve made up of several hundred small panes, framed not in lead, but in imported hardwood, an exotic touch that added to the inn’s expensive atmosphere. Three small casements were built into this structure, for ventilation; none of them looked large enough for even a person of Tabaea’s size to fit through.

  Tabaea knew that appearances could be deceiving, though. Moving as quietly as she could—which was very quietly indeed—she rose and crept to the edge of the sheltering arch.

  There, she reached out with her poorly developed and ill-understood abilities, the witch-sight and warlock sense, and dimly perceived the intruders.

  She could distinguish their scents, as well, but identity was not what interested her now. She wanted to know where they were looking, to be sure that she was somewhere else. One was watching up the stairs, very carefully. Another was guarding the door. The one in slippers... that one was a woman, and she smelled of magic. That was bad. She was looking about the room with interest, not focusing on anything in particular.

  One of the soldiers was watching the magician; he was no threat to anyone just now.

  That left two soldiers and a magician who were looking out into the dining room; one soldier was watching the kitchen door, the other was peering into the dimly lit farther recesses—including the one where Tabaea stood.

  She nudged the one in the door, ever so slightly, with a little warlock push; he started, and made a surprised noise.

  The others turned to look at him, and Tabaea made her run, fast and smooth and silent, across the room and up onto the broad sill. She was almost there when she was spotted; her distraction had only held for a fraction of a second.

  She swung open the nearest casement and thrust her head through; her ears scraped the frame on either side, her hair snagged on the latch. “Damn,” she whispered. She wouldn’t fit out that way. “Hey!” a guardsman called, and Tabaea, desperate, pushed at the wooden frame with the heel of her hand.

  She had never really tried her accumulated strength; she had never had any reason to. Most of her killings had been for skill, more than strength. She knew she was strong—she had flung that demonologist, Karitha, around like a doll. But she had not realized until this very moment just how strong she had become. Her hand punched through the polished window frame as if it were paper, spraying splinters of wood and glass into the street beyond.

  “Stop her!” someone shouted, and the guards started for her. Frightened, Tabaea kicked at the window.

  Debris burst out into Grand Street like spray from a wave-struck rock; the casement itself hung for an instant by one corner, then tumbled onto the street with a shattering of glass.

  Tabaea dove through the hole and landed, catlike, on her feet; she leaped up and ran, eastward, without thinking.

  Behind her, men were shouting.

  Run, hide, run, hide—her years as a thief had drummed that into her. When anything goes wrong, you run; when you have run the pursuit out of sight, you hide. If they find you, run again. No need to think or plan; just run and hide.

  And the best places to hide weren’t empty attics or dark alleys; the best places were in crowds and busy streets, where there was always another escape route, were always other faces to distract the pursuers.

  And the very best place of all was the Wall Street Field, where the clutter of destitute humanity lay down an obstacle course of ramshackle shelters and stolen stewpots, where most of the people would be on her side, where the soldiers felt outnumbered.

  She ran east on Grand Street, straight toward Grandgate Market and access to Wall Street.

  Behind her, the soldiers poured out the door of the Blue Dancer; a raised sword whacked the signboard and set it swinging, and even through the shouting Tabaea could hear the metal links creaking. Booted feet ran after her.

  The woman, the magician, did not run; Tabaea could vaguely sense her presence, far back and growing farther with every step. She was working a spell, Tabaea was certain, some land of spell that would flatten her, steal her powers, turn her to a statue or a mouse. She ran, expecting to be felled at any instant, by spell or sword.

  She was not felled; she ran headlong into Grandgate Market, not even panting, and spun to her left, turning north toward the part of the Wall Street Field she knew best. Late-night shoppers on their way home, the last merchants in the midst of packing up for the night, and a few strolling lovers, turned to stare after her.

  The guards were shouting, but they were farther behind than ever; she was outrunning them. Other soldiers were emerging from the towers by the gate, but not in time to cut her off. She was into the Field, into the strip that ran alongside the barracks towers, and no one had touched her yet. Then a man, his red kilt and yellow tunic visible in the light of a nearby torch but his face in shadow, stepped out in front of her, reaching out to grab her; she thrust out an arm and knocked him aside without slowing.

  She rounded the corner of the North lower into the wider part of the Field and promptly tripped over a sleeping figure.

  She stumbled, but caught herself, arms outflung, balanced like a cat, then was up and running again.

  There were no torches here, no lanterns; yellow light leaked from the distant windows of Wall Street; the orange glow of the greater moon limned the top of the city wall above her, and the scattered remnants of the evening’s cookfires made pools of lesser shadow here and there, but most of the Field was in darkness. Its inhabitants, asleep or awake, were but shadowy lumps in the gloom; her cat-eyes, still not yet fully adjusted from the cozy light of the Blue Dancer’s dining room, let her see movement, but not colors or details. She danced through the dark, avoiding bodies and shelters at the final fraction of a second.

  Then, abruptly, fire bloomed above her, orange light a thousand times brighter than any moon. She stumbled, stopped, and looked up.<
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  A warlock hung in the air, glowing impossibly bright, like an olf-color piece of the sun itself. She knew he was a warlock, but she couldn’t have said how she knew; the light simply felt like warlockry.

  Without thinking, she reached her own warlockry up to counter him, to extinguish the glow, but his power was greater than hers; it was like fighting the tide. She could stop anything he did from reaching her, but she couldn’t put out the light or drive him away.

  Around her, she realized as she pressed her power upward, were people, dozens of people, the people of Wall Street Field— the poor and dispossessed, the downtrodden, the homeless, the outlawed.

  “Help me!” she called.

  No one answered, and she could hear soldiers coming, she could smell leather and steel and sweat. Someone tossed a rock in the general direction of the flying figure, but it never even came close.

  It gave her an idea, though.

  She could not fight him with warlockry, she was outmatched that way, but warlockry was not all she had. She knelt and snatched up a chunk of brick, still warm from a cookfire, and flung it upward—not with magic, but with the strength of her arm, the strength she had stolen from Inza and Deru and the rest.

  The warlock shied away, and the light dimmed somewhat.

  The soldiers were coming; Tabaea snatched out her belt knife, intent on giving them a fight.

  The knife was like a sliver of darkness in the warlock’s glow; Tabaea held the Black Dagger ready in her hand.

  Above her, the warlock still hovered, glowing, but she had his measure now; he could hold himself up, suppress her own warlockry, and provide light, but that left him no magic to spare for anything else.

  Someone else shied a stone at the warlock; he turned it away, but Tabaea could sense that it distracted him slightly.

  Further, he was beginning to worry, she knew—probably about the Calling. How close was he to the threshold, to the first nightmares? He could draw upon all the power he wanted, and because he had started with more than she Tabaea could never match him, but if he drew too much...

  She decided the warlock was not really the major threat.

  The first soldier paused a few feet away, watching the knife.

  “Tabaea the Thief,” he called, “in the name of Ederd the Fourth, Overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, I order you to surrender!”

  “Go to Hell, bloody-skirt!” she shouted back.

  Other soldiers were surrounding her, forming a fifteen-foot circle with her at the center; the Field’s usual inhabitants had Mien back into the darkness. Tabaea tried to pick up something with warlockry, but the magician in the air above her wouldn’t allow it.

  There were a dozen guardsmen encircling her; at a cautious signal from the one in front of her, they all began closing in slowly.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Tabaea said. She lunged forward, with inhuman speed, and thrust the Black Dagger’s blade under the ribs of the man before her.

  His eyes widened, and he slashed belatedly with his sword, cutting her arm. Blood spilled, black in the orange light, black across her black sleeve.

  It really didn’t hurt very much at all, to Tabaea’s surprise, and what pain there was was lost in the hot surge of strength she was receiving from the man she had stabbed. Then one of the other soldiers, one of the men behind her, struck.

  That hurt, and the wave of strength she had just felt vanished; the blow to her back was a shock, a burst of pain, and her head jerked backward. Then it snapped forward again, involuntarily, and she found herself looking down at her own chest.

  Something projected from her tunic, something dark that had cut its way out through the fabric, stretching it out and then cutting through, something dark and hard and smeared with thick liquid.

  Then she realized what it was. She was looking at the point of a sword that had been thrust right through her, a sword covered with her heart’s blood.

  She was dead. She had to be.

  But she didn’t feel dead. Shouldn’t she already be losing consciousness, be falling lifeless to the ground?

  She pulled her own blade from the soldier’s body; dark blood spilled down his pale tunic, and he crumpled to the earth. He was dead, no doubt about that. But she wasn’t. She reached down, grabbed the blade that protruded from her chest, and shoved it back, hard. She felt it slide through her, back out, and she whirled swiftly, before whoever held it could strike again.

  She could feel a prickling, a tingling, and she suddenly realized that she probably had a gaping wound in her, that she might yet bleed to death. She felt no blood, though.

  Tabaea looked quickly down at her chest, and sensed that the wound was closing of its own accord. That was magic—it had to be. It wasn’t anything she was doing consciously, though, and she didn’t think it was witchcraft or warlockry. It didn’t feel like those.

  It felt like the sensation she got when the Black Dagger cut flesh. Whatever was happening, she was sure it was the Black Dagger’s spell at work. Whether it would truly heal her, or at least keep her going until she could do it by other means, she didn’t know. It had to be the dagger that was keeping her alive, and she didn’t understand how or why, but she had no time to worry about that now. She looked up.

  The soldiers were staring at her, eyes wide; no one was moving against her. One man held a bloody sword, its tip just an inch or two from her chin.

  Tabaea realized, with astonishment, that they were afraid of her.

  And then she further realized, with a deep sense of surprised satisfaction, that they had very good reasons to be afraid.

  She knocked the sword aside, held up the Black Dagger, and smiled a very unpleasant smile.

  “It’s not going to be that easy,” she announced, grinning. “If I were you, I would throw down my weapons and run.”

  “Elner, call the magicians,” a guardsman said. Tabaea turned and smiled at him.

  “I am a magician,” she said. Then, moving faster than any human being could without magical assistance, she slashed the soldier across the chest—not fatally, just a nasty gash that would weaken him, and in so doing would strengthen her. He gasped, and stepped back, his hands flying up to stop the blood, his sword falling to the dirt at his feet.

  She thought she understood, now, what had happened. That sword thrust should have killed her, obviously, but it hadn’t—or rather, not completely. She was fairly sure she had lost one life. But the Black Dagger had stolen a dozen for her—including dogs, cats, magicians, and the life of the man who had led this party to capture her.

  She didn’t know whether dogs and cats carried as much life as people, and she did not particularly want to find out; she wasn’t going to throw her lives away recklessly. Still, she was stronger and faster than anyone else in the World, and as long as she took a life for every one she lost, she could not die. She liked that idea very much.

  “I am the magician,” she said. “Not just a witch or a warlock or a wizard, but all of them!” She suddenly remembered what she had heard, listening to the Guildmasters at the Cap and Dagger; she laughed, and said, “Bow, you fools! Bow before labaea the First, Empress of Ethshar!” “She’s crazy,” someone said. The Black Dagger moved again, faster than any other human hand could move it, fast as a striking cat, and the guardsman who had impaled her fell back, bleeding. The bloody sword fell from his grasp.

  “You think I’m crazy?” she shouted. “Then just try to stop me! Didn’t you seel He put a sword right through me, and it didn’t hurt me!”

  “Call the magicians, Elner,” someone called mockingly from the crowd of civilians.

  More guardsmen were arriving, pushing through the crowd; behind them came the robed figures of magicians.

  “Magicians?” Tabaea stooped and snatched up the sword, left-handed, and flung it upward with all the speed and strength and skill of her dozen stolen lives.

  The warlock shrieked, and the light went out; the orange glow vanished like the flame of a snuffed candle, plunging
the Field into darkness.

  When the shriek ended, silence as sudden as the darkness fell. Cloth rustled as the warlock fell out of the sky, and then he landed with a sodden thud, off to one side, upon a mixed group of soldiers and bystanders.

  “You think I’m afraid of magicians’?” Tabaea screamed over the sudden tumult.

  In fact, magicians were about the only thing she was still afraid of—she had no idea whether she could defend herself against all the different kinds of magic. Warlockry, yes—she could hold off another warlock indefinitely. Witchcraft, absolutely—she had greater vitality, and therefore more power, than any other witch that had ever lived.

  Gods and demons and wizards, though—who knew? Sorcery, any of the subtler arts, she could not be sure of. She was bluffing—but she didn’t think anyone would dare to test her. She stood, dagger ready.

  Something came sweeping toward her out of the darkness, something Tabaea could not describe, with a shape and a color she couldn’t name; reflexively, she raised her knife, and the black blade flared blue for an instant. Then whatever it was was gone.

  Magic—it had been magic, certainly. Wizardry, probably. And the knife had stopped it. She was safe from magic other than witchcraft and warlockry—at least some of it.

  She could do anything—and she knew what she wanted. She had already said it.

  Tabaea the First, Empress of Ethshar! “Listen, you people!” Tabaea shouted, “you people who live here in the Wall Street Field, listen to me! Why are you here?” She paused dramatically and sensed half a hundred faces turned attentively toward her—soldiers and magicians and beggars and thieves.

  “You’re here because the fat old overlord of this stinking city, the man who claims to protect you, has sent you here!” Tabaea proclaimed. “He’s taken your homes with his taxes, stolen your food to feed his soldiers, and given you nothing in return but dungeons and slavery!” She pushed aside a soldier and stepped up atop a makeshift wooden shelter. “Haven’t you had enough of this? Haven’t you had enough of seeing the rich get richer, seeing them buy your friends, your neighbors, your sons and daughters from the slavers, when they’ve stolen a few coins in order to eat? Haven’t you heard enough of girls and boys tortured in the Nightside brothels to please the perverted tastes of some wealthy degenerate?” The words seemed to be coming from somewhere deep within her, of their own accord; one of her victims, she realized, someone she had killed, must have been skilled in oratory. And she could augment that, now that she had seen how; she warmed the air about her, then let a feint orange glow seep out.