“No way to stop it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No way we know of,” he said. “If it had been confined to Tabaea’s body, we could have transported her to a place where magic doesn’t work—that’s what’s in the wagon here, a magic tapestry that would send her there. But I don’t see how we can send an entire floor through the tapestry.” “There isn’t any countercharm?” Tobas shook his head.
“So how much is it going to dissolve, then?” Sarai asked. “I mean, it won’t ruin the whole palace, will it?”
Tobas sighed. “Lady Sarai,” he said, “For all I know, in time it will dissolve the whole World.” She stared at him. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. He turned up an empty palm. “Nonetheless,” he said, “that’s what may happen. It’s what the old books say will happen; every text that mentions the Seething Death agrees that unchecked, it will indeed spread until it has reduced all the World to primordial chaos.” “But that’s absurd!”
“I wish it were,” Tobas replied, and Sarai realized for the first time that despite his calm answers, the wizard was seriously frightened. He was almost trembling.
“But there must be a countercharm,” she said. “If the spell was written down, then someone must have performed it, right?”
Tobas nodded. “I can’t see any other way it could have been,” he agreed.
“Well, the World’s still here,” Sarai pointed out. “Something must have stopped the spell, mustn’t it?” “Yes,” Tobas admitted, “something must have. Someone must have tried the spell at least once, at least four hundred years ago, so it must have been stopped, or it would have dissolved the World by now. But we don’t know how it was stopped.”
“Well, find out!” Sarai snapped. “Isn’t that one of the things magic is good at?”
“Sometimes,” Tobas said, “but not always. Spying on wizards, even dead ones, isn’t easy, Lady Sarai; we tend to use warding spells, since we don’t like being spied on; we’re a secretive bunch. And even if we don’t use warding spells, learning a spell by watching a vision of it being performed is not always reliable.” “Well, has anyone tried to find the countercharm for this Seething Death?”
Tobas laughed hollowly. “Oh, yes, Lady Sarai,” he said. “Of course they have. A spell that destructive has been a temptation for generations of wizards. But no one’s ever found that lost counterspell.”
Sarai sputtered. “Then how could Telurinon... Why didn’t... What kind of idiot ever wrote the spell down in the first place without including the countercharm?”
Tobas turned up an empty palm. “Who knows?” he said. “Lady Sarai, we wizards do a good many things that don’t make much sense; it’s been our policy for a thousand years to record everything, but to keep it all secret, and that means we have situations like this one. It doesn’t surprise me at all, I’m sorry to say.”
Sarai was too worried and angry to correct him for calling her by her right name; she turned and stared at the palace.
“What’s happening in there?” she asked.
Tobas shrugged again. “How would I know? I’m not a seer, and Teneria isn’t here.”
“I’m going in to see.”
“I don’t... well, be careful, Sar... Pharea. Don’t go near the Seething Death. And Tabaea’s still in there, you know, still the empress.”
“I know, I know,” Sarai said. She waved a distracted goodbye to Tobas, then marched on into the palace.
CHAPTER 38
Tabaea stepped back as the witch knelt by the assassin’s side, giving her room to work. She glanced quickly at the wooden bowl that someone had placed upside down atop the puddle of magical gunk; it still looked secure enough, but the nasty odor of the stuff lingered, making it unpleasant for someone with the empress’ superhuman sense of smell to breathe.
Whatever that fluid was, Tabaea was very glad she hadn’t touched it, or gotten any on her. She had tried moving it by warlockry and had found that as far as a warlock’s or witch’s special senses and abilities were concerned, it didn’t exist; she couldn’t affect it in any way, with any of the limited magic at her command.
What’s more, everything she had dropped or poked into it had dissolved. Wood, cloth, metal—anything at all, it didn’t matter, whatever touched the stuff would dissolve like ice shards dropped in boiling water. At least the goo didn’t splash.
She wished the spell would hurry up and burn out; it was beginning to worry her. Maybe there was more to it than she had thought at first.
She would have to ask the assassin, if he lived. She turned back to him and to the witch tending to him. Tabaea could feel the witch’s energy gathering in her hands, then transferring out through her fingers into the assassin’s belly, knitting together the ruined tissues...
And she could feel something else, too; something was strange about the flow of power. It wasn’t witchcraft; something else was at work, as well. The witch was drawing power from somewhere else.
Tabaea had heard that witches could share energy; was there another witch nearby, then, who was helping this Teneria? If so, why didn’t the other witch step forward and help openly?
The empress turned and nervously looked over the people in sight. Arl was there, of course; it was he who had brought the witch. There were half a dozen others on the stairs behind him, watching from what they presumably thought was a safe distance. As Tabaea watched, another woman came up and peered into the room.
There was something familiar about this new arrival; not her face, which Tabaea was fairly sure she hadn’t seen before, but something. Perhaps her scent was one that Tabaea had smelled somewhere.
Whatever it was, she couldn’t place the woman immediately. She wasn’t a witch, though, Tabaea could sense that, and it was magicians who worried the empress just now. With the Black Dagger gone she was not at all sure of her ability to fend off hostile magic.
One of the other women, the tall dark one with the long hair, was a witch, but she wasn’t sending Teneria any power. She was doing something, but it wasn’t helping Teneria.
Then the tall woman noticed Tabaea’s interest and instantly stopped whatever she had been doing. That was annoying of her. Tabaea wished she hadn’t been so careless in her investigation; that witch was on her guard, now.
But that wasn’t where the power was coming from, anyway; Tabaea tried her best to see where this not-quite-witchcraft was coming from, and suddenly something dropped into place.
It wasn’t witchcraft; it was warlockry. It was coming from a man on the stair. Teneria was taking the warlock energy and using it for witchcraft.
That was interesting and a little frightening; Tabaea had not known that that was possible. She had discovered for herself that the two varieties of magic were surprisingly similar, but she hadn’t realized that anyone else knew it, since no one else was both a witch and a warlock, and it had never even occurred to her that anyone might have learned how to use the two in combination. Magicians, it seemed, were just full of unpleasant surprises today—a warlock had used wizardry against her, and now a witch was using another warlock’s power to heal the attacker.
They were joining forces.
They were joining forces against her.
And the Black Dagger was gone.
Just then something hissed; everyone but Teneria and the unconscious assassin turned at the sound, to see the cloud of noxious grayish smoke that rose from the pool of whatever-it-was as the bowl sank down into it, dissolving away as it went.
“By the gods,” someone muttered.
Tabaea, shaken, stared at the puddle. It was almost a foot across now, still a perfect circle.
How large would it get? It had only been there perhaps half an hour, starting from a single drop.
She turned back to Teneria and demanded, “Hurry up! I need him conscious!”
