"All right, then, you go find Vengar, and the two of you help Thurin, but you be careful around Tabaea! And send Karanissa out here, so we can stay in touch!"
Teneria nodded, then turned and ran into the palace.
As she did, the first of those who had fled the throne room in panic began to emerge, shoving the young witch aside as they hurried out into the sun. She fought her way past and in.
Tobas sighed as he watched her go.
"It all went wrong, didn't it?" Sarai said.
Tobas nodded.
"So how was it supposed to go?" she asked. "How does the Seething Death work?"
Tobas sighed. He climbed down off the wagon, patted the ox, and turned to stare at the door to the palace.
"The Seething Death," he said, "creates a drop of… well, it's more or less liquid chaos. It's the raw stuff that wizardry is made of, I think; the descriptions aren't very clear. But whatever it is, once it's activated, it spreads. It expands, and as it expands, it consumes everything it touches. Anything that comes into contact with it dissolves away-the book says that first it loses solidity, and then all the different elements that make it up blend together into a sort of boiling slime, and then it all becomes more of the Death itself, more pure chaos."
He was interrupted by the screams of three women who came running out the door just then. When they had passed, Sarai remarked, "Sounds nasty."
"It is," Tobas agreed. "It hasn't been used in centuries because it's too dangerous, but Telurinon was desperate to find something that could get at Tabaea despite the Black Dagger, so he tried it."
"Someone was supposed to get it on Tabaea and dissolve her?"
"That was the idea," Tobas agreed. "A warlock named Thurin of Northbeach volunteered-but he missed, I guess, and Tabaea caught him and stabbed him. I don't know why he's still alive; I thought the Black Dagger stole the souls of anyone it cut."
Sarai started to say something, to explain that Tabaea didn't have the Black Dagger anymore and that that wasn't how it worked anyway, but then she stopped. There would be plenty of time for that later. "So the spell didn't work?" she asked.
"Well, it didn't work on Tabaea" Tobas said. "If the stuff landed on the floor, then right now it's dissolving away the floor of your throne room, and there's no way to stop it."
Sarai had been watching the people emerging from the palace; now, startled, she turned back to Tobas. "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 thisSeething 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…