“It’s Tabaea!” Karanissa told her, reaching down to help her up. “She took the dagger!”
Sarai blinked, then got to her feet as quickly as she could. “I thought you said she was gone,” she said.
“She’s back,” Karanissa answered.
“Why haven’t the wizards killed her?” Sarai asked, still slightly dazed. “They were so hot for vengeance...”
“They hadn’t got around to it yet,” Karanissa answered. “They were too busy worrying about the Seething Death. And what difference does it make why? They didn ’t kill her, and she’s back. Come on!” As Sarai moved uncertainly toward the palace door, Karanissa cupped her hands around her mouth and called to a pair of guards nearby, “Tabaea! Tabaea’s back! Get help! Bring torches!”
Then she and Sarai stepped cautiously into the palace.
Tabaea ran into the dark corridors, dagger held out before her, hurrying toward the throne room. Had Sarai already stopped the Seething Death? That would ruin her plan to become the city’s savior—but on the other hand, she could still resume her role as empress, now that she had the dagger back.
She wondered how big the Seething Death was now—had it kept spreading? Was it still sixty feet across, as Heremon had reported, or had it grown even larger?
Then she heard the hissing and came skidding to a stop.
Full night had fallen outside; the passageway ahead was utterly dark, even to Tabaea’s enhanced vision, but she could hear the Death hissing and bubbling, and she could smell its foul reek. She needed light; guided by smell, she groped on the floor and found a fragment of greasy cotton rag. She wrapped it around a broken table leg and knotted it; then she held this makeshift torch up over her head and felt for the whisper that gave a warlock power.
She knew how to use warlockry to light fires, but she was too nervous to concentrate properly; she had no more than warmed her makeshift torch when a golden light sprang up behind her. She whirled and saw the tall witch holding up a glowing hand— witch-light, Tabaea realized. Lady Sarai was at the witch’s side.
“Stay back!” Tabaea shrieked, brandishing the dagger and backing a few steps down a side-passage.
The other two followed her. “What are you doing in here?” Sarai called. “I thought you had abdicated!”
“That was conditional!” Tabaea shouted back. “That was if you people stopped the Seething Death, but you didn’t! I will, and then I’ll resume my rightful throne!”
Sarai and Karanissa looked at each other.
“You can’t,” Sarai said.
“Yes I can!” Tabaea screamed. “I have the Black Dagger back, and it can cut any wizardry!”
“Not that it can’t,” Sarai said. “Just look at it, Your Majesty!”
Karanissa added, “If you just wait, we have a way to stop it— my husband should be here soon, with the spell.”
“No!” Tabaea shouted. “I’ll stop it! Not you! I will!” She looked past the two women at the sound of approaching steps, heavy boots on marble—soldiers, not magicians.
That was all right; she wanted witnesses, wanted all the soldiers to side with her this time. Torchlight gleamed from stone walls. She waited.
A moment later, a band of torch-bearing guards trotted around the corner and stopped, startled, at the sight of their former empress, clad in black rags, holding off Lady Sarai with a knife.
“Don’t get too close,” Karanissa warned, as she extinguished her witch-light. “She’s got her magic dagger back.”
“That’s right,” Tabaea said, “I have my dagger back, the one I made with a piece of my own soul, and I’m going to use it to save the city from the evil magic these two, and their magician helpers, loosed on us.”
“All right, then,” Sarai said, “if you’re going to do it, do it.”
“I will,” Tabaea retorted. She turned and marched toward the center of the palace, toward the Great Hall, toward the Seething Death. Behind her came Lady Sarai, Karanissa, and half a dozen soldiers, Captain Tikri commanding, Deran Wuller’s son among them.
Then Sarai stumbled and tugged at Deran’s sleeve; he stepped aside to steady her, while the others moved on past. Quickly, she stood on her toes and whispered in his ear, “Go find Tobas of Ifelven, the wizard; if he can work his spell while Tabaea’s still in the palace, she’ll lose all her magic, just be an ordinary girl with an ordinary dagger. Tell Tobas to hurry.” She spoke in as low a tone as she could manage; she well remembered, from her own experience, that dogs and cats would hear best in the higher registers. She would have preferred to have sent Captain Tikri, whom she knew better, but his absence would have been too noticeable; she at least knew Deran as a familiar face, and hoped he was up to the task.
Tabaea whirled at the sound of whispering, but over the growling and hissing ahead she couldn’t make out the words. She saw Lady Sarai hanging back, though, and called, “Come on, Pharea, or Sarai, whichever it really is—come on and see why I deserve to rule Ethshar!”
Sarai came, trotting to catch up—and Deran, moving as silently and quickly as he could, trotted in the other direction, to start a search for Tobas.
A moment later the party reached the point where the Seething Death blocked the way, a wall of greenish boiling ooze across the corridor. At the sight of it Tabaea hesitated, but then she stepped resolutely closer.
“Watch!” she called. She stepped up and slashed at the stuff with the Black Dagger.
The Seething Death erupted in a gout of white steam and a roaring, boiling hiss, and for a moment the watchers were deafened, the vapor blocking their view.
When they could see again, they saw the Seething Death still blocking the passage, unmarked by the dagger’s cut. Tabaea stood before it, holding up the Black Dagger’s hilt.
The blade was gone, dissolved away down to an inch or so from the crossguard.
Tabaea screamed, and Sarai remembered what she had said about putting a part of her soul into the knife. Sarai started forward to help, Karanissa beside her.
“No!” Tabaea shrieked. “Stay back!” She whirled and waved the ruined stump of the Black Dagger at them, and Sarai and Karanissa stopped short. Then the empress of Ethshar turned back to the Seething Death and cried, “It must work,” and thrust her hand at it, stabbing into the ooze.
Her hand went in clear to the wrist.
She screamed again and drew back the stump of her arm, blood spraying. Clutching at it with her left hand, she staggered and toppled...
Into the Seething Death.
Her scream was abruptly cut short, but again, a roar of magical dissolution and a gout of stinking vapor erupted; the two women and the five soldiers backed away.
When the scene quieted, all that remained of Tabaea the Thief was one bloody, severed bare foot, lying on the marble floor of the corridor, inches from the Seething Death.
“Gods,” Captain Tikri muttered under his breath. For a long moment, they all simply stared. And then, abruptly, the hissing of the Death faded away, and the wall of magical chaos puffed outward and vanished like mist that blows in a doorway. The close confines of the corridor were suddenly at the edge of a great open space, a vast bowl-shaped hole in the palace, beneath the soaring central dome.
The Seething Death was gone. Not so much as a single drop of corrosive slime remained; the cut edges of walls and floors shone clean and sharp. Sarai and her companions could see the fragment of wall that had once been one end of the throne room, could see into rooms and passageways on six levels, from the lower dungeons to the overlord’s private apartments. Sarai imagined that the Arena might look like that, if all the seats and floors were removed.