The Spell of the Black Dagger loe-6

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “No,” Sarai interrupted. “We aren’t going to find out anything about the Black Dagger.”

  “We aren’t?” Tobas stared down at her. “Why not?”

  Sarai hesitated, and before she could say anything, Teneria cried out, “Oh, no!”

  Tobas whirled back to the witch. “What happened?” he demanded.

  “She spilled it! She knocked it aside and spilled it on the floor, and now she’s grabbed Thurin and...” Teneria winced. “... and she’s stabbed him, and it hurts really bad...” She closed her eyes and leaned against the wagon.

  Sarai bit her lip and watched as the witch tried to continue. She had worried that something might go wrong, ever since she had used the Black Dagger herself and discovered how Tabaea saw the World—or rather, how she sensed it. She could smell danger. She could move inhumanly fast. The slightest movement could alert her. She could hear a whisper from across a room. None of the magicians would realize that—at least, Sarai didn’t see how they could. The witches might have sensed something, but would even they have really appreciated just how fast and how sensitive Tabaea was?

  Well, either they hadn’t, or they hadn’t been consulted in setting this up.

  “Now what?” Sarai asked.

  “Now she’s trying to get Thurin to talk, but he can’t; he’s dying, he’s bleeding to death, and she doesn’t know how to heal him. She’s sent her chancellor for a healer, and Karanissa wants to know whether we should send a volunteer—she’ll try it herself, if you want, but she isn’t sure she can heal a wound that bad; a warlock would be better—Tobas, warlocks have trouble at healing, they don’t have the subtlety of touch, but if I did it, with a warlock helping, I know how to draw on a warlock’s strength...” She looked up. “Who’s the Council got nearby?” Tobas asked. “Vengar is in the antechamber...” “All right, then, you go find Vengar, and the two of you help Thurin, but you be careful around Tabaea! And send Karanissa out here, so we can stay in touch!”

  Teneria nodded, then turned and ran into the palace.

  As she did, the first of those who had fled the throne room in panic began to emerge, shoving the young witch aside as they hurried out into the sun. She fought her way past and in.

  Tobas sighed as he watched her go.

  “It all went wrong, didn’t it?” Sarai said.

  Tobas nodded.

  “So how was it supposed to go?” she asked. “How does the Seething Death work?”

  Tobas sighed. He climbed down off the wagon, patted the ox, and turned to stare at the door to the palace.

  “The Seething Death,” he said, “creates a drop of... well, it’s more or less liquid chaos. It’s the raw stuff that wizardry is made of, I think; the descriptions aren’t very clear. But whatever it is, once it’s activated, it spreads. It expands, and as it expands, it consumes everything it touches. Anything that comes into contact with it dissolves away—the book says that first it loses solidity, and then all the different elements that make it up blend together into a sort of boiling slime, and then it all becomes more of the Death itself, more pure chaos.”

  He was interrupted by the screams of three women who came running out the door just then. When they had passed, Sarai remarked, “Sounds nasty.”

  “It is,” Tobas agreed. “It hasn’t been used in centuries because it’s too dangerous, but Telurinon was desperate to find something that could get at Tabaea despite the Black Dagger, so he tried it.”

  “Someone was supposed to get it on Tabaea and dissolve her?”

  “That was the idea,” Tobas agreed. “A warlock named Thurin of Northbeach volunteered—but he missed, I guess, and Tabaea caught him and stabbed him. I don’t know why he’s still alive; I thought the Black Dagger stole the souls of anyone it cut.”

  Sarai started to say something, to explain that Tabaea didn’t have the Black Dagger anymore and that that wasn’t how it worked anyway, but then she stopped. There would be plenty of time for that later. “So the spell didn’t work?” she asked.

  “Well, it didn’t work on Tabaea” Tobas said. “If the stuff landed on the floor, then right now it’s dissolving away the floor of your throne room, and there’s no way to stop it.”

  Sarai had been watching the people emerging from the palace; now, startled, she turned back to Tobas. “No way to stop it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No way we know of,” he said. “If it had been confined to Tabaea’s body, we could have transported her to a place where magic doesn’t work—that’s what’s in the wagon here, a magic tapestry that would send her there. But I don’t see how we can send an entire floor through the tapestry.” “There isn’t any countercharm?” Tobas shook his head.

  “So how much is it going to dissolve, then?” Sarai asked. “I mean, it won’t ruin the whole palace, will it?”

  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 this Seething 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 t
he 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 o
ut 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?”