Tabaea control events now, that might ruin everything. Tabaea might take the dagger back, she might kill Thurin and Teneria and Karanissa and Vengar, and she might let the Seething Death spread unchecked; Sarai hoped that if it was dealt with while it was still small the spell could be stopped.
She didn’t dare let Tabaea tell her what to do—but what choice did she have?
She had to bluff. She had had four years of practice in talking information out of people; maybe she could talk Tabaea into giving herself up. And what choice did she have?
“I don’t think so,” Sarai said, as confidently as she could. She let her hand fall to the hilt of the Black Dagger.
It seemed to go well at first; she dodged Tabaea’s first attack, removing whatever threat Art might pose. A moment later, the distracted would-be empress let the four magicians escape.
And it all seemed to be working, right up until Tabaea dove at her.
Sarai just barely dodged; she had not been ready for it this time, as she had before. And the little empress looked so small and harmless—it was hard to remember that she had torn men apart with her bare hands.
Tabaea whirled and struck again, and again Sarai dodged. She couldn’t keep this up, though, and she didn’t dare actually fight; Tabaea was much faster, vastly more powerful, and had her magic, as well. Sarai had to escape, to get away—and even that would be difficult. She remembered the assassins Tabaea had run down and butchered. She had to do something they hadn’t, something unexpected—but what?
Lord Torrut had mentioned a trick once, when he and Captain Tikri had been joking with each other; Tabaea came at Sarai again, and she tried it, putting her hands on Tabaea’s shoulders and vaulting over her head.
If the throne room had had a normal ceiling, it would never have worked, but there under the great dome, with cat-reflexes and her augmented strength, the move sent Sarai sailing a dozen feet through the air. She landed, catlike, on her feet, and immediately sprinted for the stairs most nearly straight ahead, which happened to be the right-hand set as seen from the dais. Tabaea needed a second or two to whirl on one toe and set out in pursuit, but she closed much faster than Sarai liked. At the very brink, Sarai dodged sideways and ran along the throne-room wall toward the rear stairs.
Tabaea was unable to stop until she was four or five steps down; Sarai had gained at least a second this time.
As she ran along the side of the throne room, Sarai’s feet stirred through the trash that had accumulated during Tabaea’s reign; she took a fraction of a second from her narrow lead to stoop and scoop up a handful of garbage. She flung it over her shoulder, in Tabaea’s face. The empress screamed with anger as a chicken bone hit her in the eye, but she hardly slowed at all. As she neared the corner, wondering why Tabaea had not cut diagonally across the room to head her off, Sarai scooped up more debris; this time she tossed it, not at Tabaea, but at the Seething Death.
Trash rattled and skittered across the stone floor—and then some of it skidded into the Death, and dissolved with a loud hiss and a billow of stinking white vapor.
Startled, Tabaea turned, and stumbled, then caught herself— but by then Sarai was on the stairs, descending in four-step leaps, constantly on the verge of tumbling headlong.
At the foot of the stairs she turned left, ignoring the broad straightaway directly ahead; she wanted to get back to Tobas and his wagon, in hopes that he would be able to help. Besides, there were fewer people in the way by this route; that long southeast corridor had several dozen of Tabaea’s “guests” scattered along it, sprawled on the floor or seated against the wall, and any one of them might decide to trip her or try to grab her. Furthermore, Tabaea might not expect her to turn.
But that last hope was dashed almost instantly; she heard Tabaea’s steps on the stairs and knew that the empress had seen her make the turn. Running with all her might, not daring to look back, Sarai ran on, leaping over the one startled, rag-clad figure in her path.
Tabaea had stolen more strength and more speed, Sarai reminded herself, but her legs were still shorter, and her skirt longer; there was still a chance.
She cut toward the inner side of the curving passageway at first, then back toward the outside as she neared the next turn. She skidded around the corner so fast, making her right turn, that she almost collided with the left-hand wall of the passageway and with a frightened old woman who crouched on a ragged blanket there.
Tabaea made the turn more neatly—Sarai could tell by the sound. Her own breath was beginning to come hard, while Tabaea still seemed fresh.
Fifty yards ahead she could see the rectangle of sunlight that was the open door; she charged for it full tilt, trying to think of somewhere she could dodge aside, or some ruse she could use. Nothing came, and Tabaea was gaining, inch by inch, step by step—but Sarai judged she would reach the door first, and maybe if she dove aside...
And then, when she was less than a dozen yards away, the sunlight vanished; a drapery of some kind had fallen across the door.
Sarai’s heart sank, but she had no choice. She could only hope that Tabaea would become entangled in whatever the obstruction was. She dove forward, hoping to hit it low and crawl underneath.
As she crossed the last few feet, as her eyes adjusted, catlike, to the dimness, she could see that it was a tapestry, one that showed a very odd design, an amazingly realistic depiction of an empty room. Who would want something like that on his wall?
And then she dove, and her hand touched the tapestry, but there was nothing there—she felt no fabric at all, nothing that would slow her headlong plunge onto the pavement of the plaza. Magic, obviously, she thought, an illusion of some kind. She closed her eyes, anticipating the impact.
And sure enough, she struck hard stone—but not the warm, sun-drenched pavement of the plaza; instead, she sprawled on a sloping floor of cold smooth stone in chilly darkness.
She still managed to scrape one cheek raw and give herself several bumps and bruises, as well as banging her head. Dazed, she scrambled up on all fours, eyes open again, and started forward, down the slope, sure that Tabaea was right behind her.
Then she stopped and stared.
Tabaea was nowhere to be seen. In fact, there was nothing to be seen; she was in near-total darkness, a deeper and more complete darkness than any moonless midnight she had ever seen. The only place Sarai had ever before encountered anything so dark as this was in the deeper dungeons of the palace.
It was not perfect darkness, however; she could make out very faint differentiations around her, places that were tinged with the darkest of grays, rather than utter blackness.
But her eyes were unable to adjust. Even a cat, she decided, couldn’t see here.
She listened for Tabaea, but there was no sound of pursuit; in fact, there was no sound at all, of any description. Sarai had never before experienced such absolute silence, not even in the dungeons.
And she couldn’t smell anything.
That wasn’t right; at the very least, with her canine senses she should have smelled her own clothes, her own sweat, and the stone of the floor she had landed on. But she couldn’t.
Was she dead, then? Was this darkness part of an afterlife of some sort?
What sort of afterlife was built on a slant? But no, she could sti&feel perfectly well; she could see, however faintly, and she could hear the sound of her own hand slapping on the stone. She wasn’t dead, she had just lost her sense of smell.
Or rather, she had lost the sense of smell she had stolen; she realized that she could still detect odors, very slightly. She lifted her skirt and sniffed at the hem, and the familiar scent of wool was there, faint and muffled.
Maybe a cat could see here, after all, and she had lost that, as well.
Where was she, then? And why hadn’t Tabaea come after her, wherever it was? She crawled down the slope, feeling her way in the darkness.
She came to a wall, and followed it along for several feet, still sloping downward.
And then she heard footsteps behind her—not approaching, just suddenly there, out of nowhere. She judged they were no more than a few feet away from where she had first fallen when she came through the magical tapestry.
