A fanner's wagon was sitting by the palace door in plain sight in the morning sun, Sarai noticed. It looked incongruous; when the overlord was in power, deliveries had been made as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, over at the southeast entrance.
People were milling about, some in rags, some in commonplace attire, some in finery-though most of the last seemed uncomfortable in their obviously stolen clothes, and sometimes combined their finery with familiar rags. Those who were just emerging from the dim interior of the palace blinked in the bright sunlight; hands shading eyes were common. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the wagon or its driver.
The mix of clothing was familiar to Sarai from her stay in Tabaea's palace, but she had never noticed wagons at the northeast entry before. She took a good look at it as she approached- and then stopped dead in her tracks.
The wagon's driver was Tobas, the wizard. He was dressed in rough brown wool instead of his usual wizard's robe, but it was unmistakably him. He was leaning down from his seat talking to someone, and Sarai recognized the young woman in the black dress as Teneria, the witch.
Sarai took a second to gather her wits, then hurried forward again; a moment later she hailed Tobas. She had to shout twice before he looked up, startled. Even then, he didn't answer at first; he stared blankly at Lady Sarai until Teneria said, "Oh, it's Sarai!"
Two or three passersby looked up at that and glanced curiously at Sarai. Sarai hurried up to the wagon, not at all pleased by this attention; she didn't want to be recognized, and with her disguise gone, it was entirely possible that someone would know her face.
Well, it was her own fault for calling out. "Pharea," Sarai said. "I'm called Pharea. What's happening?"
"Well, right at the moment, there's a warlock in the throne room, waiting for Tabaea to make her entrance, and when she does, he's going to try a spell of Telurinon's on her," Tobas explained. "Karanissa is in there, too, keeping an eye on everything."
"That's the Seething Death?" Sarai asked. "Now, how…" Tobas began.
Teneria said, "She talked to Alorria. Excuse me, Sar… Pharea, but Tabaea's coming up the steps right now, she's at the top."
"So you know about this?" Tobas asked.
Sarai nodded.
"And you know about the Black Dagger."
"Yes," Sarai said.
Tobas sighed uneasily and said, "Well, in a moment we should find out if the Black Dagger can stop the Seething Death. And if…"
"No," Sarai interrupted. "We aren't going to find out anything about the Black Dagger."
"We aren't?" Tobas stared down at her. "Why not?"
Sarai hesitated, and before she could say anything, Teneria cried out, "Oh, no!"
Tobas whirled back to the witch. "What happened?" he demanded.
"She spilled it! She knocked it aside and spilled it on the floor, and now she's grabbed Thurin and…" Teneria winced. "… and she's stabbed him, and it hurts really bad…" She closed her eyes and leaned against the wagon.
Sarai bit her lip and watched as the witch tried to continue. She had worried that something might go wrong, ever since she had used the Black Dagger herself and discovered how Tabaea saw the World-or rather, how she sensed it. She could smell danger. She could move inhumanly fast. The slightest movement could alert her. She could hear a whisper from across a room. None of the magicians would realize that-at least, Sarai didn't see how they could. The witches might have sensed something, but would even they have really appreciated just how fast and how sensitive Tabaea was?
Well, either they hadn't, or they hadn't been consulted in setting this up.
"Now what?" Sarai asked.
"Now she's trying to get Thurin to talk, but he can't; he's dying, he's bleeding to death, and she doesn't know how to heal him. She's sent her chancellor for a healer, and Karanissa wants to know whether we should send a volunteer-she'll try it herself, if you want, but she isn't sure she can heal a wound that bad; a warlock would be better-Tobas, warlocks have trouble at healing, they don't have the subtlety of touch, but if I did it, with a warlock helping, I know how to draw on a warlock's strength…" She looked up. "Who's the Council got nearby?" Tobas asked. "Vengar is in the antechamber…"
"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.