The Spell of the Black Dagger loe-6

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  She came to a wall, and followed it along for several feet, still sloping downward.

  And then she heard footsteps behind her—not approaching, just suddenly there, out of nowhere. She judged they were no more than a few feet away from where she had first fallen when she came through the magical tapestry.

  Sarai raised the Black Dagger, ready to defend herself.

  Then the newcomer said, “Sarai? Are you there? Damn it all, I forgot we’d need a light.”

  The voice was not Tabaea’s; it was a woman’s voice, and it sounded familiar, but Sarai couldn’t place it. She turned over into a sitting position, the knife still in her hand. “Are you in the passage? Did you find it?” the newcomer called, a bit louder. “Sarai, it’s me, Karanissa!”

  “I’m here,” Sarai said, lowering the knife; the voice was Karanissa’s.

  A faint orange witch-light appeared—but at first even that dim illumination seemed almost blinding in such deep gloom. By its glow, Sarai could see that she was in a stone corridor, just around a corner from a fair-sized room or chamber. The glow, and the voice, came from the room.

  She backed up far enough to see into the chamber and found Karanissa standing in the center of an utterly bare stone room, a simple rectangular box with straight sides and square corners—but the entire place was on a slant. The witch’s upraised hand was glowing, casting an eerie light on her arm and face, as well as the stone walls.

  “Karanissa,” Sarai asked, “where are we?”

  CHAPTER 40

  Tabaea saw the sunlight vanish ahead, plunging the corridor into gray dimness, and she slowed slightly; was this some new trick? Had Lady Sarai and her magician friends set a trap of some kind?

  And then Sarai dove toward the cloth and vanished, and Tabaea threw herself to the ground, rolling, to stop her forward motion.

  Wizardry! That had to be wizardry! It was a trap!

  Furious, growling, she got to her feet and stared at the fabric that blocked the door.

  It was a tapestry, one of fine workmanship—she could hardly see the stitches, and the depiction of the empty room was flawless. It was extraordinarily ugly, however; it showed only bare stone, in black and shades of gray, with no bright color, no graceful curves, nothing of any interest to it at all.

  A tapestry, a magical tapestry—she almost reached out to touch it, and then stopped herself.

  A Transporting Tapestry! That was what it must be! Shuddering, she drew back. She had spied on wizards as they spoke of such things. A Transporting Tapestry—and one that, by the look of it, would deliver her directly into a prison cell somewhere. The room in the picture had no doors, no windows; in one of the rear corners was an opening that might have been a passageway, or might just have been a niche, perhaps where a cot or privy might be.

  They had wanted her to plunge right into it, after Lady Sarai— and she almost had!

  If she had, of course, they would have had some way to get Lady Sarai out, leaving Tabaea trapped there forever as her punishment for killing their Guildmaster Serem. That would be their revenge—not merely death, but perpetual imprisonment. Perhaps they had other plans for her, as well.

  Well, she wasn’t going to fall for their tricks. She turned and marched away, back up the corridor.

  And then, as she remembered that Lady Sarai still had the Black Dagger, and that Lady Sarai had just dived headlong into a wizard’s tapestry and was therefore back in contact with the Wizards’ Guild, and that the Wizards’ Guild surely wanted to kill her for what she had done, she began to run.

  “I abdicate!” she called as she ran, hoping that someone was listening. “I abdicate! I give up!”

  Maybe, she thought, just maybe, if she escaped quickly enough by another door, she could still hide, could find somewhere even wizards couldn’t get her.

  But she doubted it.

  “I think they’re coming this way,” Karanissa shouted. “They’re still on the stairs, but Sarai wants to come here. And Tabaea’s gaining on her, she’s much faster. Quick, Tobas, do something!”

  “Do what!” the wizard asked. “I didn’t bring anything but the tapestry!” He looked around helplessly. Teneria and the warlocks were off to one side; Teneria and Vengar were once again working at repairing Thurin’s wound, but the situation was no longer desperate, and Thurin was conscious and watching.

  None of them were making any suggestions.

  “Well, then do something with the tapestry!” Karanissa called. “Set it up somewhere Tabaea will run into it!”

  Tobas hesitated, then said, “All right, give me a hand with it, will you?” He hurried to the wagon.

  A moment later, carefully holding the tapestry by the supporting bar and not allowing themselves to touch any part of the fabric, Tobas and Karanissa had the hanging unrolled, and up against the wall beside the door.

  Passersby were staring, but no one interfered. This was clearly either the work of magicians or Tabaea’s followers, and no one wanted trouble with either group.

  “How do we get her into it?” Tobas asked.

  “Put it across the door,” Teneria called. “Then she’ll run right into it.”

  “But Sarai will run into it first,” Karanissa objected.

  Teneria pointed out, “Well, at least she’ll get away, then— and with the dagger.” Karanissa looked at Tobas, who shrugged. “All right,” the witch said, “let’s do it.” She swung her end around, and a few seconds later they draped the tapestry across the open doorway.

  Vengar, using warlockry, helped them to raise it until it hung perfectly smooth and unwrinkled—the spell might not work if the fabric wasn’t smooth.

  “Now what?” Tobas said. “Do you think we could lift it while Sarai dives underneath, and then drop it back before Tabaea could stop?”

  “I don’t...” Karanissa began. Then, as the sound of desperately running footsteps suddenly became audible, drew near, and vanished, all in a few seconds, she said, “No.”

  “What happened?” Tobas asked.

  “Sarai hit the tapestry. She’s gone.” “What about Tabaea?”

  “Stopped in time.”

  “Then should we put it down?”

  “No!” Teneria called. “If we do, she might come out here and attack us!”

  Karanissa nodded confirmation, and for a long moment she and Tobas stood absolutely still, holding the tapestry up against the palace door.

  Then, at last, they heard retreating footsteps; cautiously, Tobas began to lower the rod, just in time to let them all hear Tabaea shrieking, “I abdicate! I abdicate! I give up! Just leave me alone!”

  Karanissa lowered her end, too. “Now what?” she asked.

  “Well, if she’s serious, we just forget about her for now,” Tobas said. “We have to deal with the Seething Death.”

  “What about Lady Sarai?”

  “Oh, damn.” Tobas frowned. “That’s right, she doesn’t know where she is. She’s probably terrified. Someone had better go after her and bring her home.”

  “I’ll go,” Karanissa said. “After all, I know the way.”

  Reluctantly, Tobas nodded. “You’re right. You go.” He beckoned for Vengar to come hold the other side of the tapestry while Karanissa stepped into it.

  Wizard and warlock supported the hanging, one on either side, while the witch stepped up and put her hand on it. Nothing happened.

  “She must still be in the room,” Karanissa said. “It won’t work while she’s in the part that’s in the picture.”

  “That’s it, of course,” Tobas agreed. “I guess we’ll just have to wait until she finds the passage, or wanders into one of the back corners.”

  He and Vengar stood patiently for a moment, while Karanissa kept her hand on the fabric. “I’m getting tired of holding this,” Tobas said. “Maybe we should put it aside for now and see if we can do something about the Seething Death, and then try again later.”

  Karanissa, her hand still on the tapestry, started to say somethin
g—and just then, she vanished.

  Karanissa found herself standing in complete darkness, and the silence was startling after the constant hum of the city. She stepped forward and peered into the gloom, trying to make out whether Sarai was anywhere nearby. “Sarai?” she called. “Are you there? Damn it all, I forgot we’d need a light.”

  No one answered; Karanissa frowned. Maybe Sarai had already found the corridor out to the rest of the castle.

  “Are you in the passage?” the witch called. “Did you find it? Sarai, it’s me, Karanissa!” “I’m here,” Sarai’s voice replied. Karanissa still couldn’t tell where it was coming from, though.

  Well, she was a witch; she could do something about that. She raised her hand and concentrated.

  The hand began to glow, a weak orange witch-light. At first, Karanissa saw only the bare stone walls of the arrival chamber, but then Lady Sarai, crawling on hands and knees, backed into the room from the passageway out, and turned to look up at her. “Karanissa,” the Ethsharitic noblewoman asked plaintively, “where ore we?”

  “In the mountains between Aigoa and Dwomor,” Karanissa answered. “In a secret room in a castle that Tobas and I own.” “What!? ” Sarai shrieked, as she turned to a sitting position. “We’re in the Small Kingdoms! A hundred leagues away?”

  “Not much more than eighty, by my best estimate,” Karanissa corrected her. “But yes, we’re in the Small Kingdoms. I came after you to show you the way back. Now, can we get out of here, please? This light’s very tiring, and there isn’t much to eat around here.”

  “Yes! Where? Where’s the door?” She was almost pathetically eager—but then, Karanissa could understand that.

  “That way,” she said. “Down the passage to the end, and out through the door.”

  Sarai stood and proceeded down the corridor, never more than a few feet ahead of Karanissa for fear of losing the light, until at last the two of them emerged into daylight in a room lit by a single high window.

  Sarai stopped and stared. The room was lined with bookshelves, but most were empty, many broken or rotted; a table had been shoved to one side. And like the dark room and the connecting corridor, everything was at a slant. It was as if the entire building, whatever it was, had tipped.

  She remembered what Karanissa had said; the words hadn’t really registered, as she had been more concerned with getting out of that horrible darkness. “A castle?” Sarai asked. “You two really have a castle?”

  “We have a couple of them, actually,” Karanissa said. “Both of them were built by Derithon the Mage, hundreds of years ago. This one used to fly, until it ran into a place where wizardry doesn’t work.”

  “Oh,” Sarai said. Understanding slowly dawned. “Oh. A place where wizardry doesn’t work? You wanted to send Tabaea here. That’s why I lost... why I’m back to just myself. And she would have been, too.”

  Karanissa nodded. “She dodged the tapestry, though; she wouldn’t touch it.”

  Sarai held out the Black Dagger, which she had not yet sheathed. “So this thing is useless, now? The spell on it is broken?”

  Karanissa frowned. “No,” she said, “it doesn’t work that way. As long as we’re in the no-wizardry area, that’s just an ordinary knife; but once we’re back out, it’ll be magical again. We’ve brought a magical tapestry and an enchanted mirror through this place, and neither one worked here, but they both worked just fine elsewhere.”

  “Oh.” Sarai looked at the dagger. “Maybe we should leave it here, then, where it can’t harm anyone.”

  “Not without a guard,” Karanissa said. “We tried that with the mirror. For one thing, there are spriggans around here, a lot of them, and they just love playing with magical things.” She hesitated, then added, “Besides, we might need it.”

  “Against Tabaea?”

  “Or against the Seething Death; I don’t know if that thing will do any good against the Death, but it certainly stopped every other spell Tobas and Telurinon sent against labaea.”

  Sarai looked at the knife, then nodded and tucked it into the sheath on her belt.

  “All right,” she said, “how do we get out of here, and back to Ethshar?”

  Karanissa considered that. “Well, we have to walk to the edge of the dead area, of course,” she said. “Usually, we have a flying carpet to take us from there, but I’m afraid we don’t have it with us—after shuffling the tapestries about I’m not sure whether it’s in Dwomor or Ethshar or somewhere else entirely, but it’s not here.” She sighed. “So unless Tobas or one of the other wizards has arranged something special, I think we’ll have to walk the entire distance to Dwomor Keep.”

  “Not all the way to Ethshar of the Sands?”

  “Oh, no!” Karanissa replied, startled. “Of course not! We have another tapestry down in Dwomor, even if the carpet isn’t there. Once we get to Dwomor Keep, we can be back in Ethshar in no more than a day, probably no more than an hour.”

  “Oh, good,” Sarai said, relieved. “And how far is it to Dwomor Keep?”

  “Three days,” Karanissa said. “Two, if we really hurry.”

  “Three days,” Sarai repeated, thinking of Tabaea roaming freely about the city, of the Seething Death spreading in the throne-room floor. She wondered what the Wizards’ Guild would do with those three days. Would anyone tell the exiled nobility that the Black Dagger was gone and Tabaea’s power lessened? Would Tabaea cling to her title of empress right up until someone killed her, or would she flee?

  What would Ethshar be like when she got back to it?

  Well, there was no use in wondering; she would see for herself soon enough.

  “Let’s get going, then,” she said.

  CHAPTER 41

  Tobas watched intently as the dozen volunteer warlocks went about their work, cutting deep grooves in the marble floor in a circle around the Seething Death. The lamps set on every side did not burn well, but smoked and flared—Teneria thought the fumes from the pool were responsible. Whatever the reason, the magicians worked in a dim and smoky light, surrounded by gigantic shadows, adding to the strangeness of the task at hand. Telurinon was still trying counterspells; he had brought three cartloads of raw materials from the Guildhouse and set up shop in the meeting room directly below, where a roiling bubble of the Seething Death now hung from the ceiling, hissing and smoking and dripping corrosive slime on the floor beneath—but not spilling through. The stuff remained a perfect hemisphere, demonstrating irrefutably that despite appearances, it was not a liquid in any normal sense of the word. It wasn’t a solid or a gas, either; it was magic. And it was, Tobas thought, damnably powerful and stubborn magic. It had already dissolved a bottomless bag when Mereth had attempted to scoop the goo into it, on the theory that Hallin’s Bottomless Bag could hold anything. It had been utterly unaffected by Thrindle’s Combustion, Javan’s Restorative, the Greater Spell of Temporal Stasis, Tranai’s Stasis Spell, the Spell of Intolerable Heat, the Spell of Intense Cold, Fendel’s Accelerated Corruption, and Javan’s Contraction. It had expanded unhindered through Verlian’s Spell of Protection, Fendel’s Invisible Cage, Cauthen’s Protective Cantrip, Fendel’s Elementary Protection, and the Rune of Holding. If Tobas had interpreted Telurinon’s latest efforts correctly, the Guildmaster was currently attempting the Spell of Reversal, but Tobas did not expect that to work, either—and even if it did, it would only shrink the Seething Death back to where it had been perhaps an hour before. The prospect of wizards endlessly working the Spell of Reversal to keep the Seething Death contained for the rest of time was not appealing.

  There were still more spells to be attempted, and Tobas expected Telurinon to attempt them—if his own scheme didn’t work.

  Marble dust sprayed up as the warlocks used their mysterious powers to slice through the stone of the floor, cutting out the chunk that held the Seething Death. It was perhaps twenty hours since that one fateful drop had been spilled, and the bubbling, boiling, smoking pool was more than a yard across, the outer edg
e expanding fast enough that if a person watched for a moment he could see the surrounding stone melting away.

  Tobas felt he had to work fast if his plan was to have any chance at all. Once the Seething Death was wider than the tapestry, it might not fit.

  He had hoped that the warlocks would be able to simply scoop the stuff up, out of its hole, but they reported that there wasn’t anything there that warlockry could touch. Whatever the stuff was, though, the floor could hold it, and the warlocks could touch the floor, so they were cutting a chunk free, intending to lift it up to the Transporting Tapestry. It meant doing serious and permanent damage to the overlord’s Great Hall, but the Seething Death would do that anyway—had already done that. The rest of the mess Tabaea had made could be cleaned up fairly easily, Tobas thought, but this might be difficult. He supposed a good stonemason could handle it, somehow.

  At the thought of Tabaea he glanced around nervously. The would-be empress had vanished without a trace that morning, after announcing her abdication—which meant she was still around someplace, and could spring out at them at any time, complicating matters.

  Once the Seething Death was dealt with, the Guild really would have to track down Tabaea and kill her. Maybe they should go ahead and throw a death-spell after her right now—but Tobas didn’t want to take the time and was reluctant to act on his own in any case. The Guild might want to use something especially horrible.

  “We almost have it, wizard,” one of the warlocks said—a tall, black-clad man whose name Tobas did not know.

  “Good,” Tobas said. He bent down and picked up the tapestry that lay at his feet. He hoped that Sarai and Karanissa were well clear; in theory the stuff would be completely harmless the instant it passed into the dead area around the fallen castle, but Tobas had his doubts about just how fast it would lose its virulence. The Seething Death was not just another spell.

  Teneria helped him unroll the tapestry, lift it, and smooth it.

  “It’s free,” another warlock announced.