"Put it down somewhere," Tobas called. "Somewhere out of the way. It didn't work."
The cylinder wobbled, then glided to the side and settled to the floor.
Tobas stared at it for a second, then turned his attention to the Seething Death. It was hard to see clearly through the swirling vapor, but at last Tobas convinced himself that he was not imagining it.
The Death was hanging there, totally unsupported, exactly where it had been before, in the center of a ring of empty air. It was a perfect half sphere, flat side up.
Not that the flat side was truly flat; it bubbled and, just as the name said, seethed.
"It's dripping all over now!" Telurinon wailed from below. "You people aren't holding it, are you?" Tobas asked the nearest warlock.
"No," the woman assured him, smothering a cough. "We couldn't if we wanted to."
"I was afraid of that." Tobas stared at the Death. This was not a possibility he had considered. This meant that his back-up plan, of having relays of warlocks transport the entire thing to Aigoa, was totally impossible, not just incredibly difficult and impractical. The only way to get it to the dead area would be through the tapestry.
Well, if he couldn't move the Seething Death to the tapestry, he would just have to bring the tapestry to the Seething Death. "All right," he said, "time to try it another way." It took another half hour to cut away more of the floor, so that the tapestry could be suspended flat beside the expanding hemisphere; the first faint light of dawn was beginning to show in the dome's skylights, high overhead, as Tobas and Teneria maneuvered the hanging into position. In the interim, Telurinon had established that Kandir's Impregnable Sphere did not live up to its name; the Seething Death had burst it, popping it like a soap bubble.
And afterward, the Seething Death had still touched nothing but air.
The circle had grown at least an inch in diameter, though; Tobas was certain of that. He and Teneria had to approach it much more closely than he liked; he moved with exaggerated caution, dreading the possibility that he might lean out too far and touch that stuff, or worse, lose his balance and fall into it. Finally, though, the tapestry was in position, hung through the floor, its lower edge dangling into the meeting room below, its supporting bar in Tobas' and Teneria's hands. Several of the warlocks had left to escape the fumes; those who remained, though no longer involved now that they had cleared away the chunks of marble flooring, watched from the sidelines with interest.
"Now what?" the young witch asked.
Tobas had maneuvered the tapestry as close as he dared, without touching the stuff; whatever was to be transported had to come to the tapestry, not the other way around, to be certain the spell would work.
"Now we wait," he said. "When it expands far enough, it'll touch the cloth, and then poof! It's gone!" He smiled; then the smile vanished, and he added, "If we're lucky."
They waited, seated cross-legged on either side of the hole, the tapestry between them.
At last, after a quarter-hour of growing nervousness and worsening sore throats from breathing the foul air, the Death touched the tapestry-and did not vanish. Instead, stinking white smoke billowed up from the point of contact.
Teneria looked up and stared across at Tobas, looking for some sign as to what she should do.
Tobas stared in horror.
"My tapestry," he said weakly. He could see the fabric dissolving, the threads unraveling, where the Seething Death had touched it.
"What should…" Teneria began.
"Pull it out!" Tobas shouted, before she could finish her sentence, but he knew it was already too late.
They pulled the tapestry back, away from the Death, then lifted it out and spread it out on the floor; Tobas studied the semicircular hole, six inches across, and the blackened, frayed edges around it.
"It's ruined," he said. "A four-hundred-year-old Transporting Tapestry, ruined."
"You're sure?" Teneria asked. "It won't still work? It can't be repaired?"
"I'm sure," Tobas said. "The tapestry has to be perfect, or the spell is broken, and you can't put it back without reweaving the entire thing." He looked up from the hanging and glared angrily at the Seething Death.
"There must be some way to stop that thing!" he growled.
"Maybe the dagger Tabaea had," Teneria said. "It stopped all the other wizardry."
"Maybe," Tobas agreed, "but that's in Dwomor with Lady Sarai right now."
"Tobas," Teneria asked, "what about Sarai and Karanissa? How will they get back, without the tapestry?"
Startled, Tobas looked at her. "Oh, they couldn't come back through that anyway," he said. "The tapestries are only oneway. They'll have to walk to Dwomor Keep, and then they can come through the other castle and the new tapestry the Guild-masters gave me to replace this one. They should be back here in a couple of days."
"Is it safe?"
Tobas shrugged. "Pretty safe. Karanissa's walked that route a few times before; she knows the way." He glowered at the Seething Death again. "I suppose we might as well keep trying things until they get here, though. And what we're going to do if the Black Dagger doesn't work…"
He never finished his sentence.
CHAPTER 42
Whoever occupied the house on the corner of Grand Street and Wizard Street now was more careful than old Serem had ever been; Tabaea had found every door locked, front, back, or side-alley, with warding spells protecting them. The Black Dagger could have cut through the wards as if they weren't there, but the Black Dagger was gone.
Whoever the wizard was who had placed the wards had been more careful than Serem, but he hadn't been ridiculous about it. He hadn't put wards on the roof. The idea that somebody might climb up on the roof and pry the tiles up with her bare fingers, one by one so they wouldn't clatter, in the middle of the night so she wouldn't be seen-well, no one had worried about anything as unlikely as that.
Even with a cat's eyesight and the strength of a dozen men, the job took hours. The sky was pale pink in the east by the time Tabaea lowered herself, slowly and carefully, through the hole into the attic.
She didn't know who lived here, or what the house had become, but she had seen the magicians going in and out, the messengers hurrying to and from the front door, and she knew that this place was somehow important. She guessed that her enemies had made it their headquarters.
Why they weren't operating out of the palace, now that she was gone, she wasn't quite sure. Maybe they were waiting until me overlord came back-one of the messengers had said his ship was on the way; Tabaea had heard it quite clearly from her place on the rooftop.
The city guard was back, even if the overlord wasn't; from atop the house Tabaea could see the uniforms in Grandgate Market, the formations of men marching back and forth as they resumed their duties and "restored order." Much as she hated to admit it, the sight was somehow comforting.
Less comforting was the knowledge that the guard was clearing out the palace, room by room and corridor by corridor, but oddly, even the processions of the homeless finding their way back to the Wall Street Field were almost reassuring; Tabaea was relieved that her people weren't being sent to the dungeons, or slaughtered. Everything was to be returned to what it had been before, it seemed.
Everything, that is, except herself. There was no way they could turn her back to the harmless little thief she had once been. They would have to kill her-if they could.
And it seemed to her that the best chance of making sure that they couldn't would be to find out just what the wizards had planned. And since the wizards seemed to hold their meetings here, in Serem's house…