The Spriggan Mirror loe-9

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  That didn’t include the husbands or children his sisters had acquired over the years—nine of the twelve were married, and three of them had offspring old enough to have begun their apprenticeships. His nephews, nieces, and brothers-in-law were not as usefully diverse as his sisters, but they did add to the mix.

  “So do you want to talk to Chira?” Twilfa asked, when Tira was out of sight. Chira was the family sorcerer, and Karanissa had not mentioned trying sorcery.

  Gresh considered that, then nodded. “I think that’s a good place to start, and she definitely owes me one.” He had located several sorcerous items for Chira over the past few years and had been generous in pricing them. Karanissa’s omission of sorcery from her list was probably just an oversight, and Gresh did not see how any sorcery he was familiar with might help, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

  “I’ll fetch her,” Twilfa said, rising.

  “And if you see any spriggans on the way, try to catch one,” Gresh said.

  Twilfa paused. “You want to have one here for Chira to try her talismans on?”

  “I want to ask one a few questions,” Gresh answered. “For all I know, we may not need any magic to find this mirror.”

  Twilfa blinked. “You think it might just tell you where the mirror is?”

  Gresh turned up a palm. “Why not?” he asked. “Spriggans are stupid little creatures, and they seem to want to be cooperative—why wouldn’t it tell me?”

  “If it’s that easy, wouldn’t this Karanissa have already tried that? Or her husband?”

  “They’re magicians, at least in theory. She’s a witch; he’s a wizard—they’re accustomed to doing things magically. It may have never occurred to them just to ask.”

  Twilfa started to say something, then stopped and thought for a moment. “You could be right,” she admitted.

  Gresh smiled at her. “You’re learning,” he said. “Magicians are just as fallibly human as anyone else.”

  Twilfa stuck her tongue out at him and turned away.

  Gresh watched her go, then leaned back and began planning.

  The mirror was probably still somewhere in the Small Kingdoms—why would the spriggans have taken it anywhere else? He could accept Karanissa’s offer of transport by flying carpet, but how big a carpet was it? How much could it carry? It might be better to travel on the ground.

  Although his customers were nominally buying the mirror, what they really wanted was its destruction; should he bring tools for breaking it? An ordinary mirror could be smashed readily enough, but enchanted items had a tendency to be uncooperative in unexpected ways.

  Of course, depending on just what he did to locate it, he didn’t necessarily want Tobas and Karanissa to know how he found it; if customers found out how simple some of his methods actually were it could hurt his business.

  He needed to talk to a spriggan, no question about it, to find out as much about the mirror as he could. He glanced down the passage toward the shop; naturally, no spriggans were in sight. When he was busy and had no use for the little pests they were everywhere, getting underfoot and making a mess, but now that he wanted one, there were none to be found.

  Well, Twilfa might have better luck in apprehending one. Or he could stroll down Wizard Street later and listen for outbursts of profanity or the sound of falling crockery.

  Then the doorbell jingled, and he rose hurriedly to attend to his customer.

  Ordinary trade filled the remainder of the morning. Twilfa returned shortly before lunch with word that Chira was busy at the moment but would be along later and that all the spriggans seemed to be hiding.

  “Of course,” Gresh said.

  They had finished a meal of salt ham and cornbread, and Twilfa was clearing the table when Gresh heard a thump. “What was that?” he said.

  “What was what?” Twilfa asked, stacking the pewter plates.

  A loud crash sounded from the front of the shop.

  “That,” Gresh said, as he leapt up and dashed down the passage.

  As he had expected, he found a spriggan sitting on the floor below a high shelf, surrounded by broken glass and drying blood. The creature looked up at him as he entered, then sprang to its feet and ran for the door.

  Gresh darted in front of it, cutting off its escape. It stopped dead and looked up at him, crestfallen. Its big pointed ears drooped.

  “Sorry sorry sorry,” it said, in a high-pitched squeak of a voice.

  Gresh smiled. “Of course you are,” he said. “I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm at all, did you?”

  The spriggan stared up at him uncertainly, its bulging round eyes fixed on his face.

  “You were just curious about what was in the bottle, right?”

  Hesitantly, the spriggan nodded, never taking its eyes from Gresh’s face.

  “And you certainly didn’t mean to spill dragon’s blood worth five rounds of gold all over my carpet, did you?”

  The ears drooped even further. “Sorry,” the spriggan said.

  “Do you know how much five rounds of gold is?”

  The spriggan blinked once, its thin, pale eyelids seeming to appear out of nowhere. “No?”

  “It’s a very great deal of money. You now owe me a very great deal of money.”

  The creature looked panic-stricken. “Spriggan doesn’t have money,” it squealed.

  “I can see that,” Gresh said. The spriggan was naked and only about eight inches high; there was nowhere it could hide a purse, or even a single coin.

  Gresh had never bothered to take a good hard look at a spriggan. The first few he had encountered had been glimpsed from afar, or in the process of fleeing, and by the time he saw one close up and relatively still he had lost any interest in the little pests. Now, though, he stared down at the creature that crouched before his feet, studying it.

  It was roughly human in shape—but it also looked a good bit like a frog, an impression aided by its lipless, oversized mouth and bulging pop-eyes. Its shiny, hairless skin was a dull green—Gresh thought he had seen a few that were more of a brown color, but this one was definitely an ugly shade of drab green. It came no more than halfway up his shin; if it stood straight and stretched its bony arms, those long-fingered little hands could probably reach his knee.

  This one apparently had no fingernails; some of them did, though. He remembered hearing that some could use their fingernails to pick locks.

  Why did some have nails, and some not? Was there any significance to the different colors? There were plenty of unanswered questions about spriggans. No one knew whether they had one sex or two—or, Gresh supposed, more. No one knew why they all seemed to speak the same sort of broken Ethsharitic, or whether they had names. Not one had ever, so far as Gresh knew, admitted to having any name but “spriggan.” They generally spoke of themselves in the third person, but Gresh wasn’t sure if that was universal.

  One thing he discovered, having one this close, was that they did not seem to have any odor at all. He was fairly sure he would have been able to smell a person at this distance, but all he could smell right now was the spilled dragon’s blood.

  He was going to need to clean that up, but right now dealing with the spriggan seemed more urgent; the blood and broken glass could wait. He supposed he probably should have kept that in the vault, with the other expensive materials, but wizards used so much dragon’s blood that he had never bothered—he and Twilfa would have spent half the day locking and unlocking the iron door. It seemed as if half the spells used in Ethshar of the Rocks required dragon’s blood.

  The stuff had a sharp, metallic odor, and Gresh’s nose could detect nothing else. On a whim, he leaned forward and sniffed at the spriggan.

  It backed away a step, startled. “No money,” it said. “You let spriggan go now?”

  The creature had no scent at all, so far as Gresh could discern. He could smell the blood and the carpet and a dozen other normal shop odors, but nothing at all that might be the spriggan. That was odd, like s
o many things about the little pests. “You’ll just have to pay me with something other than money,” he said.

  “But spriggan not have anything,” the spriggan wailed woefully.

  “You can pay me with answers,” Gresh said.

  The spriggan calmed down slightly. It blinked up at him, then looked from side to side, as if hoping to see an explanation standing nearby.

  Twilfa was standing in the passageway, watching the conversation, but there were no explanations in sight.

  “What answers?” it asked warily.

  “You owe me five rounds of gold,” Gresh said. “That’s forty bits. Let’s say each answer is worth, oh, two bits—which I’m sure you’ll agree is very generous of me. Then you owe me twenty answers.”

  “What kind of answers?”

  “Answers to my questions.”

  The spriggan considered that carefully, then brightened visibly, its immense ears straightening. “Yes, yes!” it said. “Answer questions! Then you let spriggan go, yes?”

  “Yes,” Gresh said.

  “Good, good! Have answers, have fun!” It ventured a tentative smile.

  “Don’t get too happy,” Gresh warned. “You still have to give me those twenty answers.”

  “Will! Will! Ask questions!”

  “Indeed I will. First off, did you come out of a mirror, as I’ve heard?”

  “Not know what you heard. That one answer.” It blinked up at him.

  Gresh grimaced. Obviously, he would need to be more careful about his phrasing. “Fair enough,” he said. “Did you come out of an enchanted mirror?”

  “Yes. That two answers.”

  “You’re counting... Can you even count to twenty?”

  The spriggan hesitated. “Not sure,” it admitted. “Can try. Can count to twelve for sure. Twenty is more than twelve, might not get all the way. Try, though.” It smiled happily. “That three answers!”

  Gresh sighed. “I suppose it is. Now, do you know where the mirror you came from is?”

  “No. Not know. That four.”

  “No, it isn’t!” Gresh protested. “That’s not an answer!”

  “Is, too. ‘Not know’ is answer. Just isn’t good answer. You not say good answers!”

  Gresh put a hand to his forehead. “I’m being outwitted by a spriggan,” he said. “I don’t believe this.” Then he lowered his hand and said, “Where was the mirror when you last saw it?”

  The spriggan turned up empty hands. “Not know,” it said. “Five.”

  “You have to give me honest answers, you know.”

  “Did. Have. Will.”

  “How can you not know where it was?”

  “Not good with places. Not good with names. Not remember well. Six.”

  “Well, how did you get here from wherever the mirror was?”

  “Walked, mostly. Ran some. Got thrown once by pretty woman who found spriggan in her skirt—maybe eight, nine feet? Rolled down slope once. Is seven? Yes, seven.”

  “Seven down.” Gresh sighed again, and rubbed his forehead. “Which direction did you walk?”

  “Not know names of directions. Walked away from sun. Not like light in eyes. Eight.”

  “But the sun moves!”

  “Sun moves, yes. Spriggan know that. Spriggan is not that stupid.”

  “But then you’d walk west in the morning, and east in the afternoon, and you’d wind up in the same place—was the mirror here in the city?”

  “No, mirror not here! Silly. Walked in mornings, had fun in afternoons—talked to people, played games. Nine.”

  “So you went west.”

  “Away from sun in morning.”

  “That’s west.”

  The spriggan turned up an empty palm. “You say is west; spriggan not argue.”

  “So you came from the east—which makes sense, since we’re on the west coast. You didn’t turn aside, go north or south?”

  “Went other direction when water got in the way. Ten.”

  “Water? You mean the ocean?”

  “Mean big, big water, great big huge water. Is ocean? Ocean’s eleven.”

  “So when you got to the coast you turned aside and walked up the coast to the city.”

  “Turned aside twice. First time long ago, then not so long at all. Twelve.”

  Gresh struggled to remember his geography. The second time would be when the spriggan reached the west coast, of course, but the first time...

  That would have been the Gulf of the East, the water between the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars and the Small Kingdoms.

  “The first time you turned aside—you walked around the very big water and crossed a long bridge across more water, and then headed west again?”

  “Yes, yes! Long bridge with guards.”

  “Across the Great River.”

  “What comes after twelve? Thirty?”

  “Thirteen,” Gresh said automatically, as he tried to choose his next question.

  Chapter Four

  “Thirteen,” the spriggan said.

  Gresh frowned. He was using up his twenty questions faster than he liked.

  He had made progress, though; knowing that the spriggan had turned aside at the Gulf of the East and crossed the toll bridge on the Great River meant that it had, indeed, come from the Small Kingdoms.

  But how far had it come? Where in the Small Kingdoms had it started? Gresh couldn’t very well search all of the two hundred or more little principalities for one little hand-mirror.

  “How long did it take you to walk from the mirror to the first big water? How many mornings?”

  The spriggan turned up empty palms. “Don’t know,” it said. “Didn’t count. Is fourteen?”

  “Yes,” Gresh admitted, annoyed with himself for wasting a question. He knew the spriggan couldn’t count, and the stupid little thing probably hadn’t maintained anything like a steady pace in its journeying.

  A thought struck him. Had it started in the Small Kingdoms? What if it had started east of the Small Kingdoms, in the Great Eastern Desert?

  “Have you ever seen a desert?” he asked. “A big sandy place, where no one lives and there are no trees or farms?”

  “No,” the spriggan said. “Would be no fun, huh?” It hesitated. “Fiveteen?”

  “Fifteen.”

  So the mirror was definitely in the Small Kingdoms. He had five questions left to narrow it down.

  “Do you know which kingdom the mirror is in?”

  “No. Not good with names. Or kingdoms. Sixteen, yes?”

  That was no surprise. “Is the mirror in the mountains, or on the plain, or in the forests?”

  “Um...” The spriggan was clearly struggling to think. “Yes,” it said. “Seventeen. That almost twenty?”

  “Getting close,” Gresh said. “But you didn’t answer the question—which is it, in the mountains or on the plain or in the forest?”

  “Mirror is in mountain,” the spriggan said. “Eighteen.”

  “No, that’s just seventeen! You didn’t answer the question the first time.”

  “Wasn’t same question! Did answer!”

  “It was the same question! You just didn’t hear it right the first time.”

  “Was two questions!”

  Gresh glared at the spriggan, and the spriggan glared back. Then something registered.

  “Wait a minute,” Gresh said. “Did you say the mirror is in a mountain? You mean inside a mountain?”

  “Yes,” the spriggan said, folding its spindly arms across its narrow chest. “Said that, meant that. Nineteen.”

  “It’s in a cave?” Gresh said, before realizing that he might have just thrown away his last question.

  “Yes. Tenteen.”

  Gresh caught himself, closed his lips tight, closed his eyes, and did not correct the spriggan. Instead he tried to think what else he could ask.

  He opened his eyes and glanced at Twilfa, who had obviously been listening and had, just like him, barely caught herself before cal
ling out a correction. He could see her biting her lip as she turned away and hurried down the passageway to the kitchen, out of sight.

  Gresh had no idea how many more questions he could get away with; it could be just one, or it could be a dozen before the spriggan caught on. He couldn’t afford to waste any.

  “What time of day does the sun first shine in the mouth of the cave?” he asked.

  The spriggan considered that for a moment, then said, “Middle of morning, maybe? Not sure. Um... eleventeen?”

  Then the cave mouth faced more east than west and was probably on the eastern slope of a mountain.

  “From the mouth of the cave, what buildings could you see? Castles, towers, farmhouses, villages, anything?”

  “Only building was broken one. Castle or tower or something. Don’t know names of buildings.” The spriggan looked puzzled. “Is eleventeen? Said that before?”

  “No, you didn’t say it before,” Gresh lied as he considered that. “Eleventeen is right.”

  A ruin. Nothing else. That made sense; if there were inhabitants in the area they might have noticed the steady stream of spriggans coming down from the cave. Word would have gotten around.

  Or up from the cave, he reminded himself. Caves could occur at the bottoms of mountains as well as the tops.

  This one, wherever it was, was in sight of a ruined fortification in otherwise uninhabited terrain, far enough from civilization that no one had recognized it as the source of spriggans.

  Unfortunately, to the best of Gresh’s knowledge, that described a good-sized portion of the mountainous central Small Kingdoms, from Zedmor in the northwest to Lumeth of the Towers in the southeast.

  Lumeth of the Towers... could the cave be in sight of those towers, the gigantic ancient ruins rumored to be older than humanity itself?

  But there were three of those, not just one, according to the travelers Gresh had spoken with.

  “When you came out of the cave and went west over the mountains, what did you find?”

  The spriggan blinked at him. It hesitated.