Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spell of the Black Dagger

"What about my father?" Sarai demanded. "They say he's dying, my lady," Deran reluctantly admitted. "The sea journey was bad for him; they say he has a sixnight at most, even with that witch Theas tending him. But the overlord won't appoint a replacement, and we need a Minister of Justice right now, to sort out the mess. Lord Torrut's doing what he can, but… well, I wouldn't say everything's normal." He stopped in front of a door and knocked.

The door opened, and Captain Tikri glared out angrily. When he saw Sarai, though, the anger evaporated; he smiled.

"Lady Sarai!" he said. "You're back!" Belatedly, he added, "and you, Karanissa!"

The two women smiled and made polite noises, but then Tikri held up a hand. "We don't have any time to waste," he said. "We need to get you to the palace immediately; the wizards have been very emphatic about that. We can talk on the way; just let me get my sword."

A few minutes later, a party of four-Deran, Tikri, Sarai, and Karanissa-emerged from the barracks into the inner bailey of Grandgate, walking briskly; they passed through the immense inner gate into Grandgate Market, headed for the palace.

And atop the south inner tower Tabaea leaned over the battlement, glaring furiously. She could not see faces clearly from that distance, could not be sure of the scents, but two women in aristocratic garb, accompanied by two soldiers-that had to be Sarai! She had missed them! After all this time spent searching through the absurd complexities of Grandgate's many towers, she had missed them!

She ran for the stairs, berating herself for being overcautious. She had searched all six of the gate towers, and most of the South Barracks, but had left the North Barracks, with its hundreds of soldiers, for last.

But of course it would be the North Barracks-that was where everything important was. She should have checked there first, despite the soldiers.

Furious, she plunged down the stairs, in hot pursuit of the Black Dagger.

Lady Sarai stared in shock and dismay through the stinking, unnatural white mist at the bubbling, steaming, swirling mass of greenish slime before her. It blocked the entire corridor, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, at an oblique angle.

"It's slightly over a hundred feet in diameter now," Tobas told her. "It's down into the lower dungeons, and as you can see, it's consumed the rear half of the throne room, including the entire rear staircase and the corridor below. It's also eaten its way through into the passageway above, there, but hasn't reached the overlord's apartments yet."

"And you expect the Black Dagger to stop that!" Sarai demanded, turning to face the party of magicians and soldiers jamming the corridor behind her, and holding up the knife so that everyone could see just how small and harmless the enchanted weapon looked when compared with that gigantic mass of corrosive, all-consuming wizardry.

For a moment, no one answered; Sarai could see them judging, comparing, contrasting, considering.

Then one of the warlocks giggled nervously.

The giggle caught and spread, and in seconds several magicians-witches, warlocks, and even a wizard or two-were laughing hysterically. The soldiers were grinning, but not openly laughing.

Angrily, Telurinon shushed them all; after a few moments, with the soldiers' assistance, order was restored. Then the Guildmaster turned angrily on Lady Sarai.

"What do you know about wizardry?" he shouted. "Size is irrelevant! What matters is the strength and nature of the enchantment, nothing else!"

"And you think a dagger enchanted by accident, by a girl who knew almost nothing of wizardry, is going to stop a spell you say can destroy the entire World, Guildmaster?" Sarai shouted back.

"It might!" Telurinon answered, not as certainly as he would have liked.

"I don't mink so," Sarai replied. "I think that stuff will dissolve the dagger, just as it dissolved Tobas' tapestry and everything else, magical or mundane, that it's touched."

"And what would you suggest, then?" Telurinon sarcastically demanded. "Do you have some clever little counterspell that's somehow eluded the attention of the Wizards' Guild? We've tried everything we know; the warlocks, the witches, the sorcerers, they've all tried. The theurgists couldn't even find anything to try; the demonologists marched a score of demons and monsters in there, and it consumed them all. Nothing stops it."

"And the Black Dagger won't, either," Sarai retorted. "Look at it!"

"The dagger cuts all other wizardry," Telurinon insisted. "We've never found anything else that stops wizardry so completely."

Startled, Sarai glanced at Tobas and Karanissa, then announced, "That's not true, Guildmaster, and you know it."

Telurinon gaped. The rest of the party, soldiers and magicians alike, was suddenly absolutely silent, and Sarai could feel them all staring at her, giving her their full attention. Accusing a Guildmaster of lying, before such an audience as this…

"I saw it myself," Sarai insisted. "There's a place in the Small Kingdoms somewhere where wizardry doesn't work; it brought down a flying castle, by the gods! That could stop the Seething Death!"

Telurinon recovered quickly. "Oh, " he said. "Well, yes, there is such a place. We had hoped to transport the Seething Death there, in fact, but it turned out to be impossible."

"It dissolved the Transporting Tapestry," Tobas confirmed.

"It ate away the chunk of floor we tried to move," a warlock added.

"It can't be moved," Vengar agreed.

Sarai looked from face to face, trying to think. "You can't move the Seething Death," she said.

Several voices muttered affirmation.

"Can you move the dead area?" she asked. "As the saying has it, if the dragon won't come to the hunter, then the hunter must go to the dragon."

For a moment, silence descended, broken only by the hissing of the Death, as everyone considered this.

"I don't see how," Tobas said at last. "It's not a thing, it's a place. Certainly wizardry couldn't move it, since wizardry doesn't work there."

"Witchcraft does," Sarai pointed out. Karanissa had demonstrated as much.

"Yes, but Lady Sarai, it's a place," Tobas insisted. "Even if, say, moving that entire mountain would be enough to move it, how could you bring it eighty leagues to Ethshar? Witches couldn't do it, not unless you had thousands upon thousands of them, probably more witches than there are in the World. Warlocks could, perhaps-if they were all willing to accept the Calling. Sorcery, demons-I don't think so."

"Not sorcery," Kelder of Tazmor agreed.

"Nor demonology," Kallia confirmed.

"Then can you create a new one?" Sarai demanded. "A new dead area, here in the palace?"

Tobas hesitated and looked at Telurinon.

"No," the Guildmaster said, quite emphatically.

"The spell is lost," Tobas agreed.

Intending to make a point, Sarai turned to look at the Seething Death and involuntarily found herself backing away-the wall of seething ooze had drawn visibly nearer while she argued. Shaken, and after having moved several feet farther down the corridor, she turned back to Tobas and demanded, "You're sure of that?"

He nodded. "The only Book of Spells that ever held it was burned, over four hundred years ago-in 4763,1 think it was." He added helpfully, "They hanged the wizard who used it."

"But it was done by wizardry in the first place?" Sarai asked.

Telurinon glared at Tobas.

"Yes," Tobas said.

"And the spell was written down?" Sarai asked.

"By Ellran the Unfortunate, in 4680," Tobas said.' "That was when he discovered it." He smiled wryly. "By accident. Just the way Tabaea made the Black Dagger by accident. Ellran never used the spell again, but his apprentice did, and got hanged for it. And the book was burned."