The Spell of the Black Dagger

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Or did it? Tabaea was unsure; the Palace was far larger than any other building she had ever been in. Perhaps the corridor really was that long.

  The euphoria of her triumphant march from Grandgate faded quickly at the sight of the polished stone floor, the countless doors on either side, a gleaming staircase barely visible in the dim distance. This hardly seemed to her like a part of her own familiar city, or like anything human at all. She had thought old Serem’s house was almost offensively magnificent, yet this palace hall dwarfed anything in the wizard’s home.

  But it was hers now, she reminded herself. She sniffed the air, but that told her little; people had been through here recently, but were not here now. The faint familiar odors of furniture, of lamps and candles, and of polishing oil reached her, mingled both with the smells of her followers and the street outside, and with scents she could not identify. No longer feeling particularly bold, she nonetheless put on a bold front and marched forward. Her footsteps tapped loudly on the shining marble, and echoed eerily from the stone walls.

  Behind her came a score of the vagabonds and scoundrels who had followed her from the Wall Street Field; their feet, bare or slippered or wrapped in rags, did not make the sharp tapping her good new boots did, but slapped or scraped or shuffled. Like her, they were awed by what they saw; their shouting dropped to whispers that echoed from the stone, chasing each other back and forth along the passage.

  “Where is everybody?” someone hissed.

  “Who do you mean?” Tabaea demanded, turning. “Who did you expect here? We fought the city guard in the streets!”

  “I mean the people who live here,” the beggar said. “The overlord and his family, and all the others.”

  “Fled, probably,” someone said. “Or cowering in their beds.”

  “Did you think they’d be waiting by the door to welcome us?”

  Someone laughed.

  “Come on,” Tabaea said. She had intended to shout it, but somehow couldn’t bring herself to do it; instead she merely spoke loudly. She turned forward and marched on down the corridor.

  The doors on either side were mostly closed; a few stood ajar, but the rooms beyond were dark, and Tabaea did not bother to explore them. They passed arches opening into large dark rooms, and those, too, Tabaea hurried quickly by without further investigation. Three of her followers carried torches; they waved them in the open rooms to be sure no soldiers lurked in ambush there, but then hurried on after their leader.

  Ahead, that lone light spilled its golden glow across gray marble floor, walls of white marble veined with gray, and Tabaea hurried forward to see where it came from.

  The answer was a disappointment; a perfectly ordinary oil lamp, apparently forgotten by whoever had extinguished the others, burned atop a black iron bracket on the side of a pillar, lighting another passageway that ran crosswise to the one they were in. This other corridor, Tabaea saw, was not so inhumanly, perfectly straight, but instead curved away in the distance.

  And it gave her a choice, and therefore a problem; which way should she go?

  The left-hand passage curved to the right; the right-hand passage curved to the left. Whichever of the three she took, she would be proceeding deeper in toward the center of the Palace—in which case, there was no reason to prefer one over the other. She marched on straight ahead.

  Now that the light was all behind her, shining over her shoulders, she could see more clearly what lay ahead. The corridor continued another forty feet or so, then ended in a dark open space—she could not judge its extent, only that its walls and ceiling were out of sight. All she could see, beyond the corridor’s end, was a set of broad steps leading up into the darkness, steps of polished yellow marble.

  Where had the builders of this place gotten all this stone, Tabaea wondered; she hadn’t known there was so much marble in all the World.

  She marched on to the end of the passage; there she paused and looked around. She sniffed the air, but caught no suspicious odors.

  To either side walls began at right angles to the corridor, then curved away into darkness; ahead, under the great staircase, were walls and, she thought, doors. There were carvings in niches, and statues standing on pedestals here and there—one stood on either side of the bottommost step. Everything was of stone, in white and gold and maroon.

  She let her gaze drift up the staircase; she had expected the top to be utterly black, like the unlit hallway of an inn late at night, but instead there was a faint glow, and she thought she could make out vague shapes. There was a certain airiness about it, somehow, and a hint of the pastel colors of moonslight.

  She considered a warlock light, but decided against trying it; she hadn’t really learned how to do one properly yet, and she was very wary about overusing warlockry. Instead she waved the torchbearers back and let her eyes adjust. After all, she reminded herself, she could see as well as any cat.

  She blinked, and drew in her breath.

  “Come on,” she said, waving her little band forward and marching up the marble steps.

  At the top she paused. The sensible thing to do would be to use the torches, but she couldn’t resist the more dramatic gesture; she waved, and her warlock fire-lighting skill struck a hundred candle-wicks. Golden light flickered, then blazed forth, and Tabaea stepped forward into the Great Hall of the Overlord of Ethshar of the Sands.

  She stood on a broad floor paved in tesselated stone, a square floor a hundred feet across. Far above, the Palace’s immense dome curved gracefully through shadowed distance, too far up for the light of candles to illuminate it well; a hundred-foot ring of sixteen hexagonal skylights set into the dome gave a view of the stars.

  Three of the four walls were broken at the center by a broad stair; Tabaea and company had just mounted one of these, the others lying to their left and directly across. To the right, the fourth wall had no stair, but instead an elaborate display of carvings, gilt, and scarlet draperies, all centered around an ornate golden chair on a wide dais. Magnificent golden candelabra, wrought in a variety of shapes, lined the walls to either side of this display, and it was these that now provided the light.

  “The throne room,” someone murmured, as Tabaea’s followers emerged into this splendor.

  “And the overlord’s throne,” someone else added, pointing at the golden chair.

  Tabaea grinned, her enthusiasm suddenly returning.

  “Wrong,” she said, bounding gaily to the throne. She leapt up and stood for a moment on its scarlet velvet cushion, watching as the last few stragglers trickled into the room.

  “This is not the overlord’s throne,” she proclaimed. “Not any more!” She paused dramatically, then slid down and seated herself properly. “This is my throne now,” she said. “Mine! Tabaea the First, Empress of Ethshar!” She smiled—not at all a pleasant smile.

  After a second’s hesitation, the little crowd burst into wild applause.

  As they cheered, Tabaea ran her hands along the arms of the throne, enjoying the feel of it; the arms were of solid gold, she thought, worn smooth by centuries of use.

  Under one arm she found a loop; curious, she tugged at it. It yielded an inch or so, then stopped. She could have forced it, but decided not to; there was no point in breaking something before she even knew what it was.

  It occurred to her belatedly that the loop might have been a trap, something intended to dispose of usurpers like herself, but if so, it obviously wasn’t working.

  She sat and looked out at the room, at the people cheering for her, at the dim soaring dome above, the shining stone floor, the gold ornaments and silken tapestries, and an immense satisfaction settled over her.

  It was hers. All of it, hers.

  At least for the moment.

  She sniffed the air, sorting out the scents in the room. Nothing was very fresh; no one had been in here for at least an hour before her arrival. The throne smelled of an old man—Ederd IV, of course; wasn’t he seventy or eighty years old? Tabaea ha
d never paid much attention to politics.

  However old he might be, he was still the only one who had sat in this throne—until herself, of course.

  Others had come and gone, men and women of all ages. She could smell the cold stone, the dust on the tapestries, the lingering scents of the overlord’s courtiers. They had stood and knelt on that vast expanse of unfurnished floor. They had been there just that day, Tabaea was sure—but now it might as well have been a century ago, because they were gone, their overlord overthrown. It was all hers now.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs, and leapt down from the throne, snatching the Black Dagger from her belt.

  A woman was on the stairs; Tabaea could smell her. A woman was approaching, and she was frightened.

  Tabaea’s followers, the twenty or so that had made it this far, had heard nothing, sensed nothing, until they saw their leader jump from her throne and crouch, knife ready. Their babbling euphoria vanished; a few began to retreat toward the stairs they had entered by, while the others stared nervously in every direction.

  “What is it?” someone asked.

  Then the woman’s head came into sight as she ascended the staircase to the right, as seen from the throne—the side opposite where Tabaea had entered. By her expression, she was utterly terrified; she hesitated at her first glimpse of the new masters of the Palace, then continued up the steps.

  She wore a gold tunic and a skirt of dark red, almost maroon, with a white apron protecting the front; her long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was not particularly young, nor particularly attractive. She looked harmless; what’s more, she smelled harmless. Tabaea relaxed somewhat, rising up from her fighting stance, but keeping the dagger ready in her hand.

  At the top step the woman in the apron hesitated again, one hand on the rail. She looked over the ragged crew before her, then turned toward the empty throne and spotted Tabaea, in her fine embroidered tunic that was smeared with blood and pierced by holes and tears left by sword-thrusts, and her long black skirt stained with mud from the Field.

  The newcomer curtsied, catching her apron and skirt up and bobbing quickly.

  Tabaea blinked; she had hardly ever seen anyone curtsey before, and certainly never to her. That was reserved for the nobility.

  “Um ... your Majesty?” the woman said. “My Lady? I’m sorry, I don’t know how to address you.”

  Tabaea smiled. “‘Your Majesty’ will suit me quite well,” she said.

  “Very good, your Majesty. You rang for me?”

  “I did?” Tabaea remembered the loop on the throne. “Ah, yes, so I did.”

  “How may I serve you?”

  Tabaea sheathed her knife and stood as tall as she could on the dais. “You may begin,” she said, “by explaining how you know who I am, and by telling me who you are.”

  The woman in the apron curtsied again. “My name is Ista, your Majesty; I’m just a servant. I was on duty downstairs when you rang. As for knowing who you are, I don’t know for certain, but we were told that the old overlord was fleeing because a great magician had declared herself Empress, and he could not stop her. I assume you are she.”

  “That’s right,” Tabaea said. “Tabaea the First, Empress of Ethshar of the Sands!” She waved toward the others. “And these are my court!” She laughed, and stepped back to the throne. “So old Ederd’s fled?”

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  Tabaea settled onto the scarlet cushion, grinning broadly. “But you’re still here?”

  “Oh, yes, of course, your Majesty; the Palace is my home. Where else would I go?”

  “And you’ll serve me, as you served Ederd?”

  Ista bobbed her head. “If you’ll permit me, your Majesty.”

  “I will,” Tabaea said, gesturing magnanimously. “What about the other servants?”

  “I can’t speak for them all, your Majesty, but most of us are still here, and ready to obey you.”

  “Oh, excellent! And what about the others? Ederd had a family, didn’t he? And there are all the others, the so-called Minister of Justice and the rest—what of them?”

  “Fled, your Majesty. Lord Ederd the Heir, Lady Zarréa of the Spices, Lord Edarth of Ethshar, Lord Kalthon, all of them fled.”

  “Well, let them flee, then—maybe they can take shelter in the Wall Street Field!” She laughed. “So this palace is all mine, then?”

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  “Then show me my new domain, Ista—give us all the grand tour!” She stood again, and made a shooing gesture.

  Ista hesitated, then curtsied once more. “What would you like to see first, your Majesty?” she asked.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The three brocade armchairs were already occupied when Lady Sarai stepped into Mereth’s front room—Alorria sat in the green, sound asleep; Kelder of Tazmor was in the gold, awake but visibly weary; and an old man Sarai didn’t recognize dozed in the blue. Two soldiers leaned against the wall, one of them brushing his elbow against an ink painting; young Thar, who had admitted Sarai, eyed that nervously but said nothing. A few salvaged belongings were in battered knapsacks, stacked in odd corners, looking rather grubby and out of place. The little decorative boxes had all been shoved to one side of the table, making room for a plate covered with crumbs—whatever food had been provided, Sarai had clearly missed it.

  “Is Mereth here?” Sarai asked. “Or Tobas?”

  Thar shook his head. “No,” he said. “They’re over at the Guildhouse.”

  Lady Sarai blinked. “What Guildhouse?” she asked.

  “Guildmaster Serem’s house, on Grand Street,” Thar explained. “Lirrin turned it over to the Wizards’ Guild until Serem’s murderer is caught.” He shrugged. “She doesn’t need all that space, anyway.”

  Sarai nodded. That explained why there had been several other wizards there, as well as Lirrin, when she took Teneria and Luralla to see the murder scene. Naturally, the wizards hadn’t said anything about it to her. “Are they ... what’s happening there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Thar said. “I’m just an apprentice.”

  “Are they looking for a way to stop Tabaea?”

  “I don’t know—honestly, Lady Sarai, I don’t know.”

  “I’m going there,” Sarai said. She turned back toward the door.

  “No, Lady Sarai,” Thar protested, “not at this hour! In the morning we’ll all go, but right now everyone needs to rest. That’s what Guildmaster Telurinon said. I’ll be taking Princess Alorria myself.”

  “We don’t have time to rest,” Sarai objected. “Tabaea isn’t sleeping, is she?”

  “I don’t know, maybe she is, but whatever she’s doing, we should rest. Or at least, you should—I have to stay up in case anyone else comes.”

  Lady Sarai hesitated.

  “Tabaea isn’t going to come after us tonight, my lady. Honestly, she won’t.”

  Sarai studied Thar’s face, and saw a child trying hard to be grown up, a child on the very edge of complete exhaustion. She thought if she argued he would probably start crying.

  She didn’t want that, and besides, he was right; she was incredibly tired herself. It had been an abominably long day. Hard as it was to remember, when she had gotten up the morning before, about twenty hours ago, she had not yet heard the name “Tabaea the Thief,” she had never met Tolthar of Smallgate.

  “The chairs are all taken,” she said.

  Thar smiled with relief. “The guest beds are all taken, too,” he said, “but you can use mine. I have to stay up and watch the door, anyway.”

  Sarai nodded.

  The apprentice’s bed was lumpy and narrow, and she didn’t sleep well; it seemed as if she had only just managed to get comfortable, at long last, when a guard’s polite cough awakened her.

  “They’re getting ready to go to the Guildhouse, my lady,” he said. Then he ducked back beyond the curtain that separated Thar’s niche from Mereth’s kitchen, leaving her to her own devi
ces.

  Lady Sarai rose and brushed herself off, then straightened her clothes as best she could; there was no need to get dressed, since she had brought none of her clothing out of the Palace with her except the outfit she was wearing. She had packed a few things for her father and brother, but had not worried about her own needs.

  She made a quick trip to the privy in the courtyard behind the shop, then rinsed her face with water from the kitchen pump—Mereth was lucky, having a pump right there; or perhaps, since she had surely paid a good bit of money for it, “lucky” was not exactly the right word.

  Feeling a little more alert and socially acceptable, Sarai hurried back down the corridor to the consultation room.

  A crowd of people was gathered there—everyone who had been present the night before, and others as well. Sarai recognized some of them, but by no means all; there were magicians of various sorts, minor officials in the overlord’s government, and people who could have come from anywhere.

  And they were all arguing about something, but Sarai could make out nothing of what they were debating. She looked around for help.

  The two guards were both there, but this time, instead of standing to one side, they were among those arguing most intently. Thar, however, was leaning silently against the archway, looking distressed.

  “What’s happening?” Sarai asked him.

  The apprentice looked up at her unhappily. “They’re arguing about how to go to the Guildhouse.”

  Sarai blinked. “I had assumed we would walk,” she said.

  “Well, yes,” Thar agreed. He paused, considering, then added, “Except maybe some of the wizards and warlocks—I suppose they might fly.”

  “Wouldn’t that attract attention?”

  “Probably.”

  “So if we’re walking,” Lady Sarai asked, trying not to let her exasperation show, “what are they arguing about?”

  “Whether we should all go at once, or go separately. Some of them think we should go together, in one big group, but the others think that would be too noticeable.”