Tobas had been idly turning a cat's skull over in his hands; now he flung it down on the table in disgust, cracking the jaw and loosening a fang.
"You're mad," he said.
Telurinon drew himself up, obviously seriously affronted. "I do not think," he began, "that there is any call for insults…"
"And that's just more evidence that you're mad," Tobas said, a little surprised at his own daring even as he said it. He had never before spoken to any other wizard, let alone a Guildmaster, so bluntly.
"Might I remind you…" Telurinon began.
Tobas interrupted again. "Might I remind you," he said, "that this Black Dagger is the cause of all the trouble we've seen in this city, trouble enough to bring me here all the way from Dwomor and to drag all of the rest of you away from your own affairs to attend these meetings. It's prevented us from killing someone that Guild law says must die. And you want to make another one?"
"I think we should at least consider the possibility," Telurinon said. "After all, this artifact is, by its very nature, utterly immune to all other wizardry, and protects its wielder from wizardry as well. Our spells, as we have demonstrated repeatedly over these past few days, cannot touch its bearer. That being so, how else are we to defeat this Tabaea and destroy her utterly, as we must, except by creating another Black Dagger to counter the first?"
"If the esteemed Guildmaster will permit me," Tobas said, with thinly veiled sarcasm, "how are we to defeat whoever wields this second Black Dagger you propose to create?"
"Why, we'll have no need to defeat him," Telurinon said, honestly startled. "That's the entire point. We'll choose someone we can trust."
" Will we," Tobas replied. "Need I point out to the esteemed Guildmaster that whoever creates this dagger cannot be a wizard? The Spell of the Black Dagger is a perversion of the Spell of Athamezation and cannot be performed by anyone who has ever owned an athame-and therefore, since the athame is the mark of the true wizard and the sole token of membership in our Guild, whoever creates the new dagger must be an outsider. Has the Wizards' Guild ever trusted an outsider in anything, let alone something as important as this? How are we to explain to this outsider why he must perform this spell, rather than one of us? How are we to explain how this spell was ever discovered in the first place, if no wizard can perform it? And how can we trust anyone with a weapon like this, when by creating it in the first place we're admitting that we can't defeat it? Even if our hypothetical hero doesn't decide to make himself emperor in Tabaea's stead and doesn't go about murdering magicians, do we really want someone wandering the World with such a weapon? Even supposing we find some noble and innocent soul to serve as our warrior, and this trusting fellow builds himself up to be Tabaea's equal or superior and slays her, leaving himself in possession of two Black Daggers and the knowledge of how to make more, yet is so good and pure and wholesome that he never even thinks of turning those daggers against his sponsors in the Guild-even supposing all that, what happens when our original recruit dies, and passes the daggers on to his heirs, who might not be quite so cooperative?"
"We won't allow that," Telurinon said, rather huffily. "When Tabaea is defeated, both daggers will become the property of the Guild."
"Says who?"
" We say it, damn your insolence!" Telurinon shouted. "And who are we, that the bearer of a Black Dagger need listen to us?"
Telurinon glared at Tobas, mustache thrust out angrily. Before he could argue further, Mereth spoke up.
"And how would we build up our man?" she asked. "Tabaea killed people, half a dozen of them. She killed a warlock and a witch. For our dagger-wielder to match her, he would have to kill a warlock and a witch. I don't think that's a good idea at all."
"Of course not!" Telurinon yelled. Then he repeated, more quietly, "Of course not." He frowned. Reluctantly, he admitted, "I see that there are difficulties with the scheme. While I am not convinced that these difficulties are insuperable, they are, I fear, undeniable. In which case I must ask if, bluntly, anyone has a better idea."
It was at that moment that Lirrin, who was acting as doorkeeper, appeared at the railing above the chamber and made the sign of requesting recognition. "What is it?" Telurinon demanded. "It's Lady Sarai," Lirrin replied. "She's at the front door and says she wants to talk to Mereth, or whoever's available."
"Tell her to come back later," Telurinon answered. Lirrin bowed and ascended the stairs, out of sight. "There must be something better than another Black Dagger," Mereth said, when Lirrin was gone.
"There are any number of incredibly powerful magicks we could use," Tobas remarked. "Can that dagger really stop all of them?"
"Apparently so," Telurinon said. "We’ve been throwing death spells at her ever since we first heard her name, after all, and what the dagger doesn't stop, Tabaea can probably handle by herself. Remember, she has the speed and eyesight of a cat, a dog's sense of smell, the strength of a dozen men, and multiple lives-she must be killed repeatedly, not just once, to be destroyed. Even if we got the dagger away from her, she would be a threat."
"If we got the dagger away from her, we could dispose of her in any number of ways," Heremon the Mage pointed out. "She wouldn't be protected against wizardry anymore."
"She would still have some protection," Mereth replied. "She would still be both witch and warlock, and wizardry is unreliable against either one. We would want to use something really drastic, to be sure."
"We have plenty of drastic magic at our disposal," Tobas pointed out. "We have spells all the way up to the Seething Death-it's hard to imagine anything much more drastic than that."
"I don't know if we need to be so drastic as all that," Telurinon muttered.
"What's the Seething Death?" Mereth asked.
"Never mind," Tobas said, "we don't want to use it."
"You're supposed to be an expert on countermagicks, aren't you, Tobas?" Heremon asked.
"Well, not exactly," Tobas said. "I happen to have a castle in a place where wizardry doesn't work, that's all."
"You do?" Mereth eyed him curiously. "A place where magic doesn't work?"
"Wizardry, anyway; witchcraft still works there, and I don't know about the others," Tobas explained. "I'm not inclined to invite a bunch of theurgists and sorcerers out there to experiment."
"But it's really a place that wizardry doesn't work? I thought those were just legends." Mereth said.
"Oh, no," Tobas said. "It's real. And it appears to have been created on purpose, by a wizard-apparently there's a spell that will do that, will make a place permanently dead to wizardry."
"Do you know it?"
"By the gods, no," Tobas said, "and I wouldn't want to use it if I did. Think about it, Mereth-it makes a place permanently dead to wizardry. The one I know about has been there for centuries, and it covers half a mountain and part of a valley. We're powerless there, just ordinary people. We don't want any more places like that around, and certainly not in a city like Ethshar!"
"I suppose not," Mereth agreed.
"If we could get Tabaea into a place like that, though," Heremon suggested, "then wouldn't her magic stop working? Wouldn't she be just another vicious young woman?"
"I don't know," Tobas said. "It's very hard to say just what magical effects are permanent and which are only maintained by magic. I mean, if you had cast a perpetual youth spell on yourself a hundred years ago, you wouldn't instantly age a century in the no-wizardry area-but you would start aging at a normal rate. So perhaps Tabaea would lose all her acquired abilities, and perhaps she wouldn't."
"Besides, how would we get her there?" Mereth asked. "A Transporting Tapestry, perhaps?" Heremon suggested. "One of those that a person can step into and emerge wherever the picture showed? I believe you've said you own such a thing, Tobas?"
"Two of them," Tobas admitted. "A set. One of them goes into the dead area, all right, but I need it-I mean, it's absolutely essential." He paused, and then added, "Besides, I can't get it here."
"Can’t? "Telurinon snorted. "Tobas, are you sure you aren't putting your own convenience before the welfare of an entire city, perhaps the entire World? Where in the World is this tapestry, that you cannot bring it hither?"
"Well, that's the thing, Guildmaster," Tobas said. "It isn't in the World-it's somewhere else, somewhere that can only be reached with the other tapestry. And I can't bring the tapestry out because the tapestry itself is the only way out."
"Oh," Telurinon said. He frowned and stroked his beard. "Is that possible?" Heremon asked. "I never heard of such a thing!"
"Oh, I don't doubt it," Telurinon said. "Tobas would scarcely lie about that, and the Transporting Tapestries have always been quirky and untrustworthy things. That's why we don't use them more."
"I thought it was the cost," Mereth muttered.
"Oh, that, too," Telurinon agreed. "But during the Great War cost and reliability weren't as important as we consider them now, and they made a great many of those damnable tapestries, and a good many of them went wrong. About half of them would only deliver people at certain times of day, or when the weather was right-if you stepped in at the wrong time, you just wouldn't be anywhere until the light or whatever it was matched the picture. There was one fool who got the stars wrong, outside a window; it took the astrologers months to figure out what had gone wrong with that one, and meanwhile the people who stepped into it have been gone for three hundred years and they still aren't going to step out again for decades yet-and that's assuming that the room in the tapestry is still there when the stars are right!"
"I've had some experience with that sort of thing," Tobas remarked. "They're tricky devices, all right."
"Yet you trust one to get you safely out of this nowhere of yours?" Heremon asked.
Tobas shrugged.
"What if," Mereth suggested, "we gave Tobas another Transporting Tapestry that he could take into this wherever-it-is, and then he could hang it there and bring the one that shows the no-magic place out through it?"
"Where would we get another one?" Heremon asked. "Doesn't it take a year or more to make one?"
"Telurinon said there were many of them made during the Great War," Mereth said. "What happened to them all?"
Telurinon blinked. "Um," he said.
A sudden smile spread across Tobas' face. "You know, I’ve wondered sometimes about how some of the elder Guildmasters seem to be able to travel so quickly, yet I never see them flying."
"Well, there might still be a few old tapestries in use," Telurinon admitted. "But not so many as all that; some of the old ones show places that aren't there anymore, and therefore they don't work."
"You don't appear somewhere in the past, when the place did exist?" Heremon asked.
"Oh, no," Telurinon said. "Transporting Tapestries can never move anyone back in time. They aren't that powerful or eccentric. If the place did exist, but doesn't anymore, they just don't work."
"But you have some that still work," Mereth said. "Why don't you give one to Tobas, in exchange for his to the no-wizardry place?"
"Well, I suppose we might," Telurinon said uneasily, "but they're all Guild property; I'd have to consult with, um, the others…"
"And will the Guild put their own convenience ahead of the welfare of an entire city?" Tobas said, grinning.
"We'll just have to see about that," Telurinon said angrily. "And besides, even if we get this tapestry of yours here to Ethshar, Tobas, how would we get Tabaea to step into it?"
"Will she be able to step into it if she's carrying the Black Dagger?" Heremon asked.
"And if we're going to get her to step into a Transporting Tapestry," Tobas asked, "do we need all the rigamarole about the dead area? What happened to that one that had the stars wrong, Guildmaster? If we could get her to step into that, we'd have however many decades you said it would be until she came out again…"
"I don't think a tapestry will work on the Black Dagger," Heremon said. "You might wind up permanently ruining the tapestry."
"And I don't think Tabaea's likely to step into one in the first place," Mereth said.
"I think we'd better come up with something else," Tobas said.
"Why don't we all take a little time to think about it?" Heremon suggested. "We can meet back here in a few hours, after we've had a chance to come up with more ideas."
"And meanwhile," Mereth said, "I can see what Lady Sarai wants."
With that, the wizards arose and scattered, the meeting adjourned.