The soldiers could even still be in the two immense barracks towers here at Grandgate itself, or in the six towers that guarded the city’s main landward entrance; just because the doors were closed and no soldiers were in sight, that didn’t mean there were no soldiers inside. Sarai wandered northward across the square, toward the gate, the towers, and the barracks.
The tower doors were unmistakably closed and barred; the windows were shuttered, those that had shutters. From her vantage point in the market she could see no signs of life anywhere in the entire elaborate complex that guarded the entrance to Ethshar of the Sands.
Idly, she wandered on northward, out of the market and into the Wall Street Field.
And in the Field she finally found a place that did not appear normal in the least.
Most of the shacks and hovels were still there, though some had been knocked down or had simply collapsed; the stones that some of those who dwelt there had used as boundary markers or weights to keep blankets in place were still scattered about, indicating rough paths between bedsites. The charred remnants of cookfires could still be seen here and there.
The hundreds of Ethsharites who had lived there, though, were gone.
Normally, Lady Sarai would not have dared to enter the Field without an escort of well-armed guardsmen. Normally, the place would be constantly abuzz with conversation, shouts, arguments, the cries of children, the rattle of crockery. Babies would be wailing, youngsters laughing and chasing one another through the chaos.
The only sounds now were the flapping of unfastened door-cloths, the snuffling of dogs and other animals scavenging in the ruins, and the distant hum of Grandgate Market and the rest of the city going about its business.
The effect was eerie and utterly unsettling; despite the growing heat of the day, Sarai shivered and pulled her loose tunic a little more closely about her. Even that didn’t help much, as it reminded her that this was the third day that she had been wearing this same tunic, this same skirt.
Her uneasiness was such that she almost screamed when a spriggan giggled nearby, leapt down from atop a ramshackle lean-to, and ran shrieking past her feet. Cursing, she watched the little nuisance scurry away.
When she had regained her composure, she forced herself to think.
Where had everyone gone?
She knew that some of the people here had followed Tabaea in her march to the Palace, but surely, not all of them had! The mob that the magicians had reported had hardly been large enough to account for the entire population of the Field!
Where were the rest of them, then? Had Tabaea done something terrible to those who had refused to follow her? Old tales Sarai had heard from her mother as a child came back to her, stories about how Northern demonologists, during the Great War, would sacrifice entire villages to appease their patron demons, or to pay for horrible services those demons might perform. Sarai had long since decided that those tales were just left-over lies, wartime propaganda, but now she wondered whether there might be some truth to the legends, and whether Tabaea might have made some ghastly bargain with creatures no sane demonologist would dare approach.
Of course, she told herself, she might be jumping to conclusions. She didn’t even know for certain how much of the Wall Street Field really was abandoned; it could just be a block or two here by the barracks. Perhaps the city guard, before disbanding or fleeing or whatever they had done, had cleared this area for some obscure reason.
She walked on, past huts constructed of broken furniture and collapsed tents made of scavenged draperies, and sure enough, as she rounded the corner from Grandgate into Northangle, she saw the smoke of a small fire sliding up the summer sky.
“Hello!” she called. “Who’s there?”
No one answered; cautiously, almost timidly, Sarai inched closer, until she could see the little cookfire and the old woman sitting beside it.
“Hello!” she called again.
The woman turned, this time, and spotted Sarai.
“Hello yourself,” she said.
“May I talk to you?” Sarai asked nervously.
“Don’t see how I can very well stop you,” the old woman replied. “I’m not planning to go anywhere if I can help it, and I doubt I have the strength to chase you away if you don’t care to go.” She poked at her fire with what looked to Sarai like an old curtain rod.
Sarai could hardly argue with this. She crept forward, then squatted beside the fire, at right angles to the old woman. To remain standing seemed rude, but she could not quite bring herself to sit on the dirt here, and there were no chairs, no blankets within easy reach.
“My name’s Sarai,” she said.
“Pretty,” the old woman remarked. She poked the fire again, then added, “I don’t usually give my name out to strangers. Most of the folks who used to live here called me Mama Kilina, though, and you can call me that if you need a name.”
“Thank you,” Sarai said, a little uncertainly.
For a moment the two sat silently; Sarai was unsure how to phrase her question, whether there was anything she should say to lead up to it, and Mama Kilina clearly had nothing that she particularly cared to say.
Finally, however, Sarai asked, “Where did everybody go?”
Mama Kilina glanced at her, a look that was not hostile, exactly, but which made it clear that the old woman didn’t think much of the question. “Most folks,” she said, “didn’t go anywhere special. I’d suppose that everyone in the Small Kingdoms or the mountains of Sardiron must be going about all the usual business in the usual way, without paying any mind to what we’ve been doing here in Ethshar. And for that, I doubt the fifth part of the city knows anything’s out of the ordinary, even here.”
“I mean...” Sarai began.
Mama Kilina did not let her say any more; she raised a hand and said, “I know what you meant,” she said. “I’m no dotard. You mean, where did most of the folks that ordinarily stay here in the Field for lack of anywhere better to go, go? And if you think, Sarai, as you name yourself, you might see that that question’s got half its own answer in it, when it’s asked right, just like most questions.”
Sarai blinked. “I’m not sure I ... oh. You mean they had somewhere better to go?”
“Well, they thought so, anyway. I didn’t agree, and that’s why I’m still here.”
“Where did they go, then? What’s this better place?”
“What’s the best place in Ethshar, to most ways of thinking?”
“I don’t know, I ... oh.” Sarai finally saw the connection. “The Palace, you mean. They’ve all gone to the Palace.”
“You have a little wit to you, I see.” Mama Kilina’s tone was one of mild satisfaction.
“But they can’t all live there!” Sarai said. “It’s not big enough! I mean, the Palace is ... well, it’s huge, but...”
Mama Kilina nodded. “Now, you think that’s a better place?” she asked. “I don’t, not with all that riff-raff bedding down in the corridors, as I suppose they’ll be doing.”
“Oh, but that’s ... I mean...” Sarai groped for words, and finally asked, “Is this Tabaea’s idea?”
Mama Kilina nodded. “That young woman’s got no sense at all, if you ask me,” she said. “What she wants to be empress for in the first place I don’t know, and how she can call herself an empress when all she rules is one city, and everyone knows an empress rules more than one people...” She shook her head. “I suppose she heard about that Vond calling himself an emperor, out in the Small Kingdoms, and she liked the sound of it, but Vond conquered half a dozen kingdoms before he called it an empire.”
“What exactly did she say? Did she come out here herself to invite everybody?”
“She sent messengers,” Mama Kilina explained. “A bunch of prissy fools got up in clothes that wouldn’t look decent even on someone who knew how to wear them came out here and told us all that from now on, the Palace belonged to all the people of Ethshar of the Sands, and we were all free to come
and go as we pleased, and to live there if we wanted to until we could find homes of our own. And all those eager young idiots went galloping off down Wall Street to take her up on it and get a roof over their empty heads.” She shook her head and spat in disgust into the fire, where the gob of expectorate sizzled loudly.
“That whole mob living in the Palace...” Sarai said. The idea was horrifying—all those stone corridors jammed with people, with ragged beggars and belligerent thieves, strangers crowding into the rooms, into her office, into the family apartment—somehow the idea of Tabaea invading was nowhere near as upsetting as the notion of that entire indiscriminate mob. She wanted to get up and run back down there to save her family’s possessions, to chase the squatters out of her old room, but of course she couldn’t, she didn’t dare show her face in the Palace...
Or did she?
With all those strangers wandering in and out, who would recognize her? Who would stop her? She could just walk right in and see what Tabaea was up to, she could search out Tabaea’s weaknesses—if she had any.
Of course, some people might recognize her, people who had seen her at her father’s side. If she wore a disguise of some sort, though, no one would ask her who she was or what business she had in the Palace.
This was just too good an opportunity to miss. She had been wondering where she could live, and here, it seemed, was the answer.
She could live in the Palace, just as she always had!
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tobas had been idly turning a cat’s skull over in his hands; now he flung it down on the table in disgust, cracking the jaw and loosening a fang.
“You’re mad,” he said.
Telurinon drew himself up, obviously seriously affronted. “I do not think,” he began, “that there is any call for insults...”
“And that’s just more evidence that you’re mad,” Tobas said, a little surprised at his own daring even as he said it. He had never before spoken to any other wizard, let alone a Guildmaster, so bluntly.
“Might I remind you...” Telurinon began.
Tobas interrupted again. “Might I remind you,” he said, “that this black dagger is the cause of all the trouble we’ve seen in this city, trouble enough to bring me here all the way from Dwomor and to drag all of the rest of you away from your own affairs to attend these meetings. It’s prevented us from killing someone that Guild law says must die. And you want to make another one?”
“I think we should at least consider the possibility,” Telurinon said. “After all, this artifact is, by its very nature, utterly immune to all other wizardry, and protects its wielder from wizardry as well. Our spells, as we have demonstrated repeatedly over these past few days, cannot touch its bearer. That being so, how else are we to defeat this Tabaea and destroy her utterly, as we must, except by creating another Black Dagger to counter the first?”
“If the esteemed Guildmaster will permit me,” Tobas said, with thinly-veiled sarcasm, “how are we to defeat whoever wields this second Black Dagger you propose to create?”
“Why, we’ll have no need to defeat him,” Telurinon said, honestly startled. “That’s the entire point. We’ll choose someone we can trust.”
“Will we,” Tobas replied. “Need I point out to the esteemed Guildmaster that whoever creates this dagger cannot be a wizard? The Spell of the Black Dagger is a perversion of the Spell of Athamezation, and cannot be performed by anyone who has ever owned an athame—and therefore, since the athame is the mark of the true wizard and the sole token of membership in our Guild, whoever creates the new dagger must be an outsider. Has the Wizards’ Guild ever trusted an outsider in anything, let alone something as important as this? How are we to explain to this outsider why he must perform this spell, rather than one of us? How are we to explain how this spell was ever discovered in the first place, if no wizard can perform it? And how can we trust anyone with a weapon like this, when by creating it in the first place we’re admitting that we can’t defeat it? Even if our hypothetical hero doesn’t decide to make himself emperor in Tabaea’s stead, and doesn’t go about murdering magicians, do we really want someone wandering the World with such a weapon? Even supposing we find some noble and innocent soul to serve as our warrior, and this trusting fellow builds himself up to be Tabaea’s equal or superior and slays her, leaving himself in possession of two Black Daggers and the knowledge of how to make more, yet is so good and pure and wholesome that he never even thinks of turning those daggers against his sponsors in the Guild—even supposing all that, what happens when our original recruit dies, and passes the daggers on to his heirs, who might not be quite so cooperative?”
“We won’t allow that,” Telurinon said, rather huffily. “When Tabaea is defeated, both daggers will become the property of the Guild.”
“Says who?”
“We say it, damn your insolence!” Telurinon shouted.
“And who are we, that the bearer of a Black Dagger need listen to us?”
Telurinon glared at Tobas, mustache thrust out angrily. Before he could argue further, Mereth spoke up.
“And how would we build up our man?” she asked. “Tabaea killed people, half a dozen of them. She killed a warlock and a witch. For our dagger-wielder to match her, he would have to kill a warlock and a witch. I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.”
“Of course not!” Telurinon yelled. Then he repeated, more quietly, “Of course not.” He frowned. Reluctantly, he admitted, “I see that there are difficulties with the scheme. While I am not convinced that these difficulties are insuperable, they are, I fear, undeniable. In which case I must ask if, bluntly, anyone has a better idea.”
It was at that moment that Lirrin, who was acting as doorkeeper, appeared at the railing above the chamber and made the sign of requesting recognition.
“What is it?” Telurinon demanded.
“It’s Lady Sarai,” Lirrin replied. “She’s at the front door, and says she wants to talk to Mereth, or whoever’s available.”
“Tell her to come back later,” Telurinon answered.
Lirrin bowed, and ascended the stairs, out of sight.
“There must be something better than another Black Dagger,” Mereth said, when Lirrin was gone.
“There are any number of incredibly powerful magicks we could use,” Tobas remarked. “Can that dagger really stop all of them?”
“Apparently so,” Telurinon said. “We’ve been throwing death spells at her ever since we first heard her name, after all, and what the dagger doesn’t stop, Tabaea can probably handle by herself. Remember, she has the speed and eyesight of a cat, a dog’s sense of smell, the strength of a dozen men, and multiple lives—she must be killed repeatedly, not just once, to be destroyed. Even if we got the dagger away from her, she would be a threat.”
“If we got the dagger away from her, we could dispose of her in any number of ways,” Heremon the Mage pointed out. “She wouldn’t be protected against wizardry any more.”
“She would still have some protection,” Mereth replied. “She would still be both witch and warlock, and wizardry is unreliable against either one. We would want to use something really drastic, to be sure.”
“We have plenty of drastic magic at our disposal,” Tobas pointed out. “We have spells all the way up to the Seething Death—it’s hard to imagine anything much more drastic than that.”
“I don’t know if we need to be so drastic as all that,” Telurinon muttered.
“What’s the Seething Death?” Mereth asked.
“Never mind,” Tobas said. “We don’t want to use it.”
“You’re supposed to be an expert on counter-magicks, aren’t you, Tobas?” Heremon asked.
“Well, not exactly,” Tobas said. “I happen to have a castle in a place where wizardry doesn’t work, that’s all.”
“You do?” Mereth eyed him curiously. “A place where magic doesn’t work?”
“Wizardry, anyway; witchcraft still works there, and I don’t
know about the others,” Tobas explained. “I’m not inclined to invite a bunch of theurgists and sorcerers out there to experiment.”
“But it’s really a place that wizardry doesn’t work? I thought those were just legends.” Mereth said.
“Oh, no,” Tobas said. “It’s real. And it appears to have been created on purpose, by a wizard—apparently there’s a spell that will do that, will make a place permanently dead to wizardry.”
“Do you know it?”
“By the gods, no,” Tobas said. “And I wouldn’t want to use it if I did. Think about it, Mereth—it makes a place permanently dead to wizardry. The one I know about has been there for centuries, and it covers half a mountain and part of a valley. We’re powerless there, just ordinary people. We don’t want any more places like that around, and certainly not in a city like Ethshar!”
“I suppose not,” Mereth agreed.
“If we could get Tabaea into a place like that, though,” Heremon suggested, “then wouldn’t her magic stop working? Wouldn’t she be just another vicious young woman?”
“I don’t know,” Tobas said. “It’s very hard to say just what magical effects are permanent and which are only maintained by magic. I mean, if you had cast a perpetual youth spell on yourself a hundred years ago, you wouldn’t instantly age a century in the no-wizardry area—but you would start aging at a normal rate. So perhaps Tabaea would lose all her acquired abilities, and perhaps she wouldn’t.”
“Besides, how would we get her there?” Mereth asked.
“A Transporting Tapestry, perhaps?” Heremon suggested. “One of those that a person can step into and emerge wherever the picture showed? I believe you’ve said you own such a thing, Tobas?”
“Two of them,” Tobas admitted. “A set. One of them goes into the dead area, all right, but I need it—I mean, it’s absolutely essential.” He paused, and then added, “Besides, I can’t get it here.”
“Can’t?” Telurinon snorted. “Tobas, are you sure you aren’t putting your own convenience before the welfare of an entire city, perhaps the entire World? Where in the World is this tapestry, that you cannot bring it hither?”
The Spell of the Black Dagger Page 26