The Spell of the Black Dagger loe-6

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Lord Kalthon stared at her, smiling slightly. “Speak, then,” he said.

  “Really, it’s not as difficult as all that,” Sarai said, stalling for time as her nerve suddenly failed her for a moment. What if she was wrong? Her father’s smile had vanished, she saw, replaced with a puzzled frown.

  She took a deep breath and continued. “Kallia swears that she saw Heremon commit the crime, and every indication is that she speaks the truth, that that’s exactly what she saw. Furthermore, Heremon swears that he did not commit the crime, and chamber, and then ran for it. One of the warlocks burst his heart.” He glanced at Kalthon the Younger, who was listening intently, and then added, “I told her to.”

  “What happened to the demon?” little Kalthon asked. “The one he conjured in the chamber.”

  “The guards killed it,” the Minister of Justice replied. “Cut it to pieces with their swords, and eventually it stopped struggling.” He sighed. “I’m afraid that Irith isn’t very happy about it.”

  “Who’s Irith?” Sarai asked.

  “She’s the servant who cleans the justice chamber every night,” Lord Kalthon explained. “I told her that if she couldn’t get the stain out, not to worry, we’d hire a magician to do it.”

  “Will you really?”

  “Maybe,” Kalthon said. “We’ve certainly used plenty of magic already on this case.” He sighed. “More than I like. There are too damn many magicians in this city.”

  Sarai nodded.

  “And that reminds me, Sarai,” her father said, picking up the last drumstick. “Have you been dabbling in magic, perhaps?”

  Sarai blinked, astonished. “No, sir,” she said. “Of course not.”

  “So you really figured out that it was this Katherian all by yourself, then? Just using your own good sense?”

  Sarai nodded. “Yes, Father,” she said.

  Kalthon bit into the drumstick, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. “That was good thinking, then,” he said at last. “Very good.” “Thank you,” Sarai said, looking down at her plate.

  “You know,” her father continued, “we use Okko and the other magicians to solve most of the puzzles we get. I mean, the cases where it’s a question of what the facts are, rather than just settling an argument where the facts are known.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sarai said, “I’d noticed that.”

  “Every so often, though, we do get cases like this one, with Kallia and Heremon and Katherian, and sometimes they’re real tangles. They usually seem to involve magicians, which doesn’t help any—such as the one where a man who’d been turned to stone a hundred years ago was brought back to life, and we had to find out who enchanted him, and then decide who owned his old house, and whether he could prosecute the heirs of the wizard who enchanted him, and for that matter we couldn’t be sure the wizard himself was really dead...”He shook his head. “Or all the mess after the Night of Madness, before you were bom—your grandfather handled most of that, but I helped out.” He gestured at Kalthon the Younger. “Yjur brother will probably be the next Minister of Justice, you know—it’s traditional for the heir to be the eldest son, skipping daughters, and I don’t think Ederd’s going to change that. But I think we could use you—after today, I think it would be a shame not to use wits like yours.”

  “Use me how?” Sarai asked warily.

  “As an investigator,” her father said. “Someone who goes out and finds out what’s going on in the difficult cases. Someone who knows about different kinds of magic, but isn’t a magician herself. I’d like to ask the overlord to name you as the first Lord—or rather, the first Lady of Investigation for Ethshar of the Sands. With a salary and an office here in the palace.”

  Sarai thought it over for a moment, then asked, “But what would I actually do?”

  “Usually, nothing,” the Minister of Justice replied. “Like the Lord Executioner. But if there’s ever anything that needs to be studied and explained, something where we can’t just ask Okko or some other magician, it would be your job to study it and then explain it to the rest of us.”

  Sarai frowned. “But I can’t know everything,” she said.

  “Of course not,” her father agreed. “But you can learn as much as you can. The overlord doesn’t expect his officers to be perfect.”

  Sarai, remembering what she had heard of Ederd IV, overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, wasn’t any too sure of that. “What would I do when I can’t...”

  “You would do the best you can,” her father interrupted. “Like any of the city’s officials.” “I’d need help sometimes,” Sarai said. “You’d be given the authority to call on the guard for help— I’ll ask Lord Torrut to assign you a regular assistant. And you could hire others.”

  “Father, if we need someone to figure out these things, why hasn’t anyone already been given the job?”

  Lord Kalthon smiled wryly. “Because we never thought of it. We’ve always improvised, done it all new every time.” “Have you talked to the overlord yet?”

  “No,” Lord Kalthon admitted. “I wanted to see whether you wanted the job first.”

  “I don’t know,” Sarai admitted.

  There they left the matter for a sixnight; then one evening Lord Kalthon mentioned, “I spoke to the overlord today.”

  “Oh?” Sarai asked, nervously.

  Her father nodded. “He wants you to be his investigator, as I suggested. And I think he’d like the job to include more than I originally intended—he was talking about gathering information from other lands, as well, to help him keep up with events. He doesn’t like surprises, you know; he wasn’t at all happy that he had no warning about the rise of the Empire of Vond, in the Small Kingdoms, two years ago.”

  “But I don’t know anything about...” Sarai began.

  “You could learn,” Kalthon replied.

  “I don’t know,” Sarai said. “I don’t like it. I need time to think about it.”

  “So think about it,” her father answered.

  In truth, she found the idea of being paid to study foreign lands fascinating—but the responsibilities and the fact that she would be reporting to the overlord himself were frightening.

  Still, a sixnight later, she agreed to take the job.

  CHAPTER 5

  “We’ll go on to the next step tomorrow,” the wizard said, putting the dagger aside. The apprentice nodded, and Tabaea, watching from the landing, got quickly and silently to her feet and padded swiftly up the stairs. Her candle had gone out, and she dared not light another, so she moved by feel and memory. She knew she had to be out of the house before the two came upstairs and found her, so she wasted no time in the thefts she had originally planned. Her sack still hung empty at her belt as she made her way back through the workshop, the hallway, and the parlor.

  It was in the parlor that she stumbled over something in the dark and almost fell. Light glinted from the hallway; the wizard and his apprentice were in the workroom. Frightened, Tabaea dropped to her knees and crept on all fours through the dining salon, and finally out to the mudroom. There she got to her feet and escaped into the darkness of the alley beyond.

  It was later than she had realized; most of the torches and lanterns over the doors had been allowed to burn out for the night, and Grandgate Market’s glow and murmur had faded to almost nothing. Grand Street was empty.

  She hesitated. She had come down to Grandgate Market in unfulfilled hopes of filching a few choice items from the buyers and sellers there; the wizard’s house had caught her eye as she passed on her way to the square, and she had turned down the alley on her way home. All she should do now was to go on the rest of the way, north and west, back to her family’s house in Northangle. But it was so very dark in that direction, and the streets of Ethshar weren’t safe at night. There were robbers and slavers and, she thought with a glance eastward at Wizard Street, quite possibly other, less natural, dangers. But what choice did she have?

  Life didn’t give her very many choices, she
thought bitterly. It was no more than a mile to her home, and most of it would be along two major avenues, Grand Street and Midway Street; it would only be the last two blocks that would take her into the real depths of the city. One of those blocks was along Wall Street, beside Wall Street Field, where all the thieves and beggars lived. That was not safe at night. But what choice did she have?

  She shuddered and set out on her way, thinking as she walked how pleasant it would be to be a wizard, and to be able to go fearlessly wherever one pleased, always knowing that magic protected one. Or to be rich or powerful and have guards—but that had its drawbacks, of course; the guards would find out your secrets, would always know where you had been, and when.

  No, magic was better. If she were a wizard, like the one whose house she had been in...

  She frowned. Would he know someone had been in the house? She hadn’t taken anything, hadn’t even broken anything—the lock on the alley door had a few scratches, and a few things might be out of place, but she hadn’t taken anything, and really, it had been that weird little green creature that had disturbed the papers and so forth.

  Even if the wizard knew she had been there, he probably wouldn’t bother to do anything about it.

  As long, that is, as he didn’t realize she’d been spying on him while he taught his apprentice about the athame thing. That was obviously a deep, dark Wizards’ Guild secret; if anyone found out she had heard so much about it she was probably as good as dead.

  Which meant that so far, no one had found out. And even with his magic, how could the wizard find out? She hadn’t left any evidence, and he wouldn’t know what questions to ask.

  She wished she had heard even more, of course; she had heard a little about what an athame could do and the instructions for preparing to perform the ritual to work the spell to create an athame, but not much more than that. It was obviously a long, complicated procedure to make an athame, and she didn’t really know just what one was.

  It had to be a magic knife of some kind, obviously a powerful and important one, but beyond that she really wasn’t very clear on what it was for. The wizard had described several side effects, little extras, but she’d come in too late to hear the more basic parts.

  If she had one with her, though, she was sure she would feel much, much safer on Wall Street. It was a shame she hadn’t heard all of the instructions for making one. She had only heard the beginning. To get the rest she would have to go back the next night.

  She stopped abruptly and stood motionless for a long moment, there in the middle of Grand Street, about four blocks west of Wizard Street. The new-risen lesser moon glowed pink above her, tinting the shadows, while a few late torches and lit windows spilled a brighter light across her path, but nothing moved, and the night was eerily silent.

  If she went back the next night, she could hear the rest.

  And if she learned the procedure, or ceremony, or spell, or whatever it was, she could make herself an athame.

  And why not go back?

  Oh, certainly there was some risk involved; she might be spotted at any time. But the reward would be worth the risk, wouldn’t it?

  She threw a glance back over her shoulder, then started running onward, back toward home.

  She made it without incident, other than dodging around drunkards and cripples on Wall Street and briefly glimpsing a party of slavers in the distance, their nets held loose and ready.

  She got home safely. And all the way, she was planning.

  And the next night, when darkness had fallen, she again crept into the alley behind the wizard’s house, listening intently, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. This time, though, she carried a small shuttered lantern that she had appropriated from a neighbor in Northangle. Entering on a whim was all very well, but it was better to be prepared.

  If she found any sign at all that her earlier visit had been detected, she promised herself that she would turn and flee.

  The lock was just as she remembered; she opened one lantern-shutter enough to get a look at it and saw no scratches or other marks from her previous entry. Unlocking it again took only a moment.

  The mudroom beyond was just as she remembered, and, as she glanced around, she realized that she had, in fact, stolen something—the candle she had burned for light. In a household as rich as this, though, she was reasonably confident that the loss of a single candle would go unnoticed.

  The dining salon was also undisturbed; when she shined her lantern about, however, the teapot raided in its cabinet and turned away in annoyance.

  The plant in the parlor was still waving; the mantel where the little creature had sat was empty.

  A few things had been moved around in the workroom, but she assumed that was just a result of normal use. Nothing seemed to be any more seriously disarrayed than before.

  At the entrance to the cellars she encountered her first real obstacle: the door was locked.

  She put her ear to it and listened intently and heard the wizard’s voice. He was beginning the night’s lesson—his voice had that droning, lecturing tone to it.

  Frantically, she set to work on the lock, and discovered, to her relief, that it was no better than the one on the alley door. Really, it was disgraceful the way the wizard was so careless about these things! If she ever became a rich and powerful wizard, she would make sure that she had better locks than these. Relying entirely on magic couldn’t be wise.

  And she hadn’t even seen any sign of magic; really, the wizard appeared to be relying entirely on his reputation, and that was just plain foolish.

  The door swung open, and she slipped through, closing it carefully behind her, making sure it neither latched nor locked. With the lantern shuttered tight she crept down, step by step, to the landing.

  And just as the night before, there sat the wizard and his apprentice, facing each other across the center of that rug. The wizard was holding a silver dagger and discussing the qualities important in a knife—not magical qualities, but basics like balance, sharpening, and what metals would hold an edge. Tabaea placed her lantern to one side and settled down, stretched out on her belly with her chin on her hands, to listen.

  It was scarcely ten minutes later that the wizard finished his disquisition on blades and began explaining the purification rituals that would prepare a knife for athamezation. Tabaea watched, fascinated. Night after night, she crept in and watched. Until finally, there came the night, after studying this one ritual, this one spell, for over a month, when the apprentice— her name, Tabaea had learned, was Lirrin—at last attempted to perform it herself.

  Tabaea returned for the conclusion of the ceremony, the grand finale in which the apprentice would trap a part of her own soul in the enchanted dagger that the wizards called an athame. She settled down, once again, on her belly and lay on the stone landing, staring down at the two figures below.

  Lirrin had been at it for more than twenty-three hours, Tabaea knew, without food or rest. Her master, Serem the Wise, had sat by her side, watching and calling what advice he could the entire time.

  Tabaea, the uninvited observer, had not done anything of the sort. She had watched the beginning of the spell, then slipped away and gone about her business. Throughout the day she had sometimes paused and thought, “Now she’s raising the blade over her head for the long chant,” or “It must be time for the third ritual cleaning,” but she had not let it distract her from the more urgent matter of finding food and appropriating any money left sufficiently unguarded. When she at last returned, the silver knife was glittering white, and Tabaea really didn’t think it was just a trick of the light. The spell was doing something, certainly.

  She could hear fatigue in the master’s voice as he murmured encouragement; the apprentice was far too busy concentrating on the spell to say anything, but surely she, too, must be exhausted.

  Perhaps it was the certainty that the objects of her scrutiny were tired, or fascination with this climax, or just overconfi-denc
e acquired in her many undetected visits, but Tabaea had crept further forward than ever before, her face pressed right against the iron railing. The black metal was cool against her cheek as she stared.

  Lirrin finished her chant and placed her bloody hands on the shining dagger’s hilt; blood was smeared on her face, as well, her own blood mixed with ash and sweat and other things. It seemed to Tabaea that the girl had to force her hands down, as if something were trying to push them back, away from the weapon.

  Then Lirrin’s hands closed on the leather-wrapped grip, and her entire body spasmed suddenly. She made a thick grunting noise; the dagger leaped up, not as if she were lifting it, but as if it were pulling her hands upward.

  Something flashed; Tabaea could not say what it was, or just where, or what color it was. She was not sure it was actually light at all, but “flash” was the only word that seemed to fit. For an instant she couldn’t see.

  She blinked. Her vision cleared, and she saw Lirrin rising to her feet, the new-made athame in her right hand, any unnatural glow vanished. The dagger looked like an ordinary belt knife— of better quality than most, perhaps, but nothing unreasonable. The girl’s face was still smeared with black and red, her hair was a tangled mess, her apprentice’s robe was wrinkled, stained, and dusty, but she was no longer transfigured or trembling; she was just a dirty young girl holding a knife. She looked up, straight at Tabaea. Tabaea froze.

  “Master,” Lirrin said, tired and puzzled, “who’s that?” She pointed.

  Serem turned to look, startled.

  When the wizard’s eyes met her own, Tabaea unfroze. She leaped to her feet and spun on her heel, then dashed up the short flight of steps. She ran out through the wizard’s workroom as fast as she could and careened out into the utter darkness of the hallway. Moving by feel, no longer worrying about making noise or knocking things over, she charged down the hall, through the parlor and dining salon, banging a shin against the animated fanning plant’s pot in the parlor, sending one of the ornately carved dining chairs to the floor.