And as she walked, a thought struck her.
Ordinary swords and knives and arrows could not kill Tabaea, as long as she had extra lives saved up-but what if she were stabbed with the Black Dagger? Wouldn't that steal all her lives at once?
Maybe not; it would certainly be a risky thing to try. Most particularly, it would be risky for an ordinary person, with an ordinary person's strength, to attempt to stab Tabaea, with all her stolen power.
But what if someone used the Black Dagger to build herself up to be Tabaea's equal, or her superior, and then stabbed Tabaea?
Whoever it was couldn't go about murdering magicians, of course, or even just ordinary people, but perhaps if there were condemned criminals…
Did the dagger's magic work on animals? Sarai remembered that dogs, cats, and even a pigeon had been found with their throats cut; Tabaea had, at the very least, experimented with animals. Someone with the strength of a dozen oxen might be a match for her.
Of course, if anyone tried that, then the knife's new wielder would be a threat to the peace of the city-unless it was someone completely trustworthy, someone who would simply never want to disrupt the normal flow of events.
Someone, for example, like Sarai herself.
She glanced briefly toward the Guildhouse as she crossed Wizard Street, but walked on toward the Wall Street Field without even slowing.
In the Guildhouse, Tobas watched uneasily from the landing.
"I know that I sort of suggested some of this," he said, "but I'm not sure it's really a good idea."
Mereth glanced at him uneasily, then turned her attention back to Telurinon. The Guildmaster was seated cross-legged on a small carpet, his athame held out before him, its point directly over a shallow silver bowl supported on a low iron tripod; he was chanting intently. Fluid bubbled and steamed in the silver dish. A sword lay on the floor beneath the bowl, and an old and worn noose encircled the tripod, the sword's blade passing under it on one side and atop it on the other.
"Well," Mereth said, "if any kind of wizardry can kill Tabaea, this can-can't it?"
"I don't know," Tobas said. "I just hope it doesn't kill everybody.'"
"Oh, it won't do that," Mereth said, not anywhere near as certainly as she would have liked.
"It might," Tobas replied. "The original countercharm is lost, has been lost for four or five hundred years now, and in all that time no one's been foolish enough to risk trying it. The spell book I found it in had a note at the bottom in big red runes, saying, 'Don't try it!,' but here we are, trying it."
"But we've got it all figured out," Mereth insisted. "As soon as Tabaea's dead, the warlocks pick it up and push it through that tapestry of yours, to the no-magic place, and it'll be gone!"
"That assumes," Tobas pointed out, "that the warlocks really can pick it up and that the tapestry really will transport it. For the former we have only the warlocks' word that they can lift anything that isn't too immense, and for the latter, all we have is assumptions and guesses. What if, instead of the tapestry transporting the Seething Death, the Seething Death destroys the Transporting Tapestry?"
Mereth went pale.
"Oh, gods," she said. "What if it does destroy the tapestry? Tobas, why didn't you say anything sooner?"
"I did," Tobas replied. "I argued until my throat was sore and my lungs wouldn't hold air, and Telurinon promised to think it all over carefully, and when I came back he'd started the ritual."
"Oh, but… but it's so dangerous… How could he?"
Tobas turned up an empty palm. "He's frustrated," he said. "We've all been throwing spells at Tabaea for a sixnight now, and they've had even less effect than Lord Torrut's archers and booby traps-by the way, did you hear about the tripwire and razor-wheels? The spies said it took Tabaea almost five minutes to heal."
Mereth shuddered.
"Well, anyway," Tobas continued, "all his life Telurinon has had these spells too terrible to use, he's heard about how wizardry is more powerful than anything, and now there's someone who just absorbs anything we throw at her-I can see why he'd want to try some of the real World-wrecker spells on her. He'll probably never have another opportunity to use any of them. But I don't think he should use the Seething Death."
"Then why don't you stop him?"
"Oh, now, you know better than that," Tobas chided her. "Have you ever interrupted a wizard in the middle of a spell?"
"Um… once." Mereth winced at the memory. "When I was an apprentice. Nobody died, but it was close."
"Low-order magic, I assume?"
"Very."
Tobas nodded. "Ever see the Tower of Flame?"
Mereth turned to him, startled. "No, have you? I wasn't even sure it was real!"
"Oh, it's real, all right," Tobas replied. "It's in the mountains southeast of Dwomor. You can see it for a dozen leagues in every direction; it lights up the whole area at night. It just keeps going and going and going, spewing fire upward out of a field of bare rock. The best records say it's been burning for eight hundred years now, and the story is-I can't swear it's true-the story is that it was only about a second- or third-order spell that went wrong, some ordinary little spell, meant to sharpen a sword or something."
"Yes, but…"
"And for myself," Tobas said, interrupting her protest, "I'm not about to forget that every spriggan in the World, and there must be hundreds of them by now, maybe thousands, but every single one of them is out there running around, causing trouble, because I got a gesture wrong doing Lugwiler's Haunting Phantasm."
"But…"
"Not to mention," Tobas added forcefully, "that all our problems with Tabaea and the Black Dagger are the result of a mistake during an athamezation."
"So you aren't going to stop him," Mereth said.
"That's right," Tobas said. "That's got to be tenth-, maybe twelfth-order magic he's doing down there; I can't handle anything like that, hardly anyone can, even among Guildmasters, and I'm not about to risk seeing a spell like that go wrong. It's bad enough if it goes right."
"What happens if it doesn't?" Mereth asked. "I mean, Telurinon could make a mistake even if we don't disturb him."
Tobas shrugged. "Who knows? Dragon's blood, serpent's venom, a rope that's hanged a man, and a sword that's slain a woman… there's some potent stuff in there."
"How is it supposed to work?"
Tobas sighed. "Well," he said, "when he's finished, that brew in the silver bowl there is supposed to yield a single drop of fluid that's decanted into a golden thimble. It's almost stable at that point; it won't do anything to the thimble as long as the drop stays entirely within it. But when the drop is tipped over the edge of the thimble, whether it's deliberately poured, or spilled, or whatever, the spell will be activated, and whatever it falls upon will be consumed by the Seething Death, which will then slowly spread, destroying everything it touches, until something stops it."
"And we don't know of anything that will stop it," Mereth said.
"Right. Unless Telurinon's scheme to transport it to the dead area works."
"What if the Black Dagger stops it? "
Tobas shrugged. "Who knows?" he said.
Mereth blinked. "I'm not sure I understand exactly," she said. "The way I understand it, the Seething Death forms a sort of pool of this stuff, right? A pool that gradually spreads?"
"That's right."
"How will that stop Tabaea? Are we planning to push her into the pool?"
Tobas grimaced.