“Twilfa,” Gresh said. “Would you see if any of our guest’s escort would care for a mug of beer while they wait?”
Twilfa dropped a quick curtsey, and said, “Or I can make tea.”
“Beer will do for now.”
She nodded, then hurried to the kitchen to find a tray and fill a pitcher.
Kaligir watched her depart, then turned back to Gresh. “I am not sure,” he said, “that you understand the situation.”
“I think I do,” Gresh replied. “You want me to retrieve the mirror that Tobas of Telven lost six and a half years ago. The mirror has a botched form of Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm on it—one that was botched in a completely new way, unlike any previous casting of the spell. It’s the source of all the spriggans in the World, and you want to put an end to the production of spriggans before they become a real danger. They’re already a serious nuisance, and the Guild has realized that they don’t die of natural causes and that their number is increasing steadily. Do I have that much correct?”
“You do.”
“You have come to me because all previous attempts to locate the mirror have failed, and I have a reputation for being able to find anything.”
“Not exactly. Tobas and his wives came to you because of this; the Guild did not, and I did not. We merely ordered Tobas to deal with the problem and agreed to fund his efforts.”
“And he dealt with it by coming to me, for the reasons I stated.”
“Yes.”
“And because of this, because I appear to be your last hope to find the mirror without sending hundreds of treasure-hunters searching through the Small Kingdoms for it and possibly making matters even worse, you told Tobas that you would pay any fee I might ask, but when I asked for eternal youth, you balked.”
“No.”
Gresh blinked. “No?”
“No. We did not balk. However, the price you set has changed the situation. We agreed to provide Tobas with funding, not unlimited magic, and your price is not mere money. Tobas cannot pay it. While he has a suitable spell in his book of spells, he is not yet capable of casting it and won’t be for years. It’s far too complex for him.”
“Very well, then, Tobas balked, not you.”
“No, Tobas did not. He came to me, in my role as the Guild’s representative in Ethshar of the Rocks, and explained the situation and asked if the Guild could pay the fee you had set, since we had said we would finance him.”
“And the Guild declined to do so?”
“No. The Guild has agreed. Your fee will be a successful casting of Enral’s Eternal Youth, to be paid as soon as we are convinced that the mirror will never again produce spriggans. You may need to provide the ingredients for the spell, however—some of them are difficult.”
“Of course,” Gresh said, unable to repress a smile. “I’m sure I can do that.”
“If not, your reputation is undeserved,” Kaligir said dryly.
“But if you agree to my terms—why are you here? Why not just send Tobas back with a contract?”
“Because you are not going to be acting for Tobas. We have decided, given your terms, that if you accept this commission you will indeed be acting for the Wizards’ Guild itself. That alters matters. We’ve agreed to your fee, but that doesn’t mean everything is settled.”
“It doesn’t? I’m in the business of selling things to wizards that they need in their spells. Tobas wanted this particular item, and I agreed to sell it to him, on certain conditions, and set my price. He may have turned his end of the agreement over to the Guild, but I don’t see how that changes anything. What else needs to be settled?”
“Several things. The Wizards’ Guild does not tolerate any sort of deception or insubordination in our hirelings.”
The last trace of Gresh’s smile vanished. “I’m not deceiving anyone, and I’m not subordinate to anyone, either.”
“You are now. You’re dealing with the Guild itself now, not an individual wizard—the Guild that sets rules kings and overlords obey if they wish to live, rules that every magician of every school of magic in the World must heed. We take a direct interest in anyone with a magically extended lifespan, just as we do rulers or magicians, since such people have the time to have a disproportionate influence on the World. By setting the price you have you have drawn our interest, and the Guild’s authority, once invoked, cannot be resisted.”
Gresh did not like the sound of that at all. “I’m just selling you a mirror; we’ve agreed on a price. What else does the Guild care about?”
“Times, for one thing. Penalties for non-performance, for another.”
“I’m not sure I understand. Perhaps you would like to sit down, so that we can discuss this?”
“I’ll stand, thank you,” Kaligir said. “What I believe you may have missed is the urgency of this task. The Wizards’ Guild is notoriously slow to act on many issues, but when we do act, we want immediate results.”
“Of course.”
“It has occurred to us that you might well agree to fetch the mirror and then find excuses to put it off—that one reason you demanded a youth spell is that you expect to spend a significant part of a human lifetime in planning and preparation. The possibility was also mentioned that once you have the mirror in your possession—if you ever do—you might decide to alter your price and demand more than a youth spell. I am here to make absolutely certain you understand that nothing of this sort will be acceptable.”
Gresh stared silently at the wizard. He had honestly not known he could still be so deeply offended by... well, anyone.
“Sir,” he said at last. “I am an honest tradesman, with a reputation to uphold. I will have your mirror for you as quickly as I can and at the agreed-upon price—eternal youth and payment in gold equal to a hundred and ten percent of my expenses, with one hundred rounds of gold as a down-payment. Not an iron bit more or less than that and with delivery as prompt as I can make it.”
“How prompt is that?”
“I can’t possibly know. I know it’s in a cave on the eastern slope of a mountain somewhere between Calimor and Vlagmor, within sight of a ruin, but that leaves a great deal of territory to search. I might find it the first day, or not for months.”
Kaligir blinked, and then it was his turn to stare silently. The silence was interrupted by Twilfa passing through the room with a tray of mugs and a pitcher of beer. The wizard watched her slip out the front door, then turned back to Gresh.
“You know that, do you?” His tone was much more conciliatory now. He had gotten rather strident in the course of the conversation, and that stridency had abruptly vanished.
“Yes, I do,” Gresh replied. “And that information cost me goods valued at five rounds of gold, which will be included in my bill for expenses, though of course the down payment will more than cover it. Did you think I wouldn’t have begun my investigation?”
Kaligir hesitated, then admitted, “To be honest, yes, I did. I suspected, in fact, that you had set your price on the assumption we wouldn’t meet it and that you had no intention of finding the mirror.”
“I believe you owe me an apology, then.”
“Yes, I believe I do, and you have it. I have apparently misjudged you; I apologize.”
“Thank you.” Gresh’s own voice, which had also crept up in volume, lowered a little.
“Nonetheless, I still need to explain the terms further.”
Gresh frowned. “Why?”
“Because I am speaking for the Wizards’ Guild as a whole. We agreed on terms in council, and I have no authority to modify them. Resentment of the spriggans has reached a remarkable level of ferocity, and it was impressed on me that despite our own years of dawdling, we want results quickly. We have therefore settled upon... well, I now wish we hadn’t, that we had trusted in your good faith, but alas, we did not. Your reputation for greed exceeded your reputation for honesty.”
This was sounding worse and worse; Gresh had begun to wish he had simply told
Karanissa the shop was closed the other morning, and refused to get involved with any of this. “And?” he said.
“And the Wizards’ Guild has declared your shop and your services to be forbidden to all wizards until such time as you find the mirror. You will sell not so much as a drop of virgin’s blood until the mirror has been dealt with.”
“By all the gods who hear! That’s outrageous!”
Kaligir turned up a palm. “Think of it as incentive.” +
“It’s insulting.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. I’m sorry. On the other hand, there is a reason I brought half a dozen other master wizards with me today.”
“Oh?”
“To speed you on your way and make certain of your success, we are volunteering, on behalf of the Guild, to equip your expedition with magic you may think would be useful—potions, powders, perhaps the loan of an enchanted jewel or dagger. Within reasonable limits, of course.”
That sounded like a bit of good news, finally, but Gresh was wary. “I had assumed that Tobas would accompany me and provide me with spells as needed,” he said.
“And he will, if you want—but Tobas’s apprenticeship had certain... irregularities, and his training is spotty. While he has access to a great many spells, many of them unique and remarkably powerful, he can’t always perform them reliably, and he hasn’t learned certain commonplace spells. Furthermore, as you know, some spells take hours or days, and we thought it might be useful to have them in more immediately accessible form.”
Gresh remembered his interrupted conversation with Dina. “It would indeed,” he said.
“Well, we are here to supply that—each wizard here, myself included, knows how to prepare powders and potions. Choose what spells you want—given your line of work I’m sure you know much of what we have available—and we’ll prepare them for you.”
That was good news—though the bit about Tobas being improperly trained wasn’t, and there were still some things that needed explanation. “Ah... why so many wizards? Why not just one good one?”
“Because each spell takes time, and we will be preparing them simultaneously, one per wizard. Depending just what you request, having one wizard do them all might take sixnights, or even months. Besides, we are unpaid volunteers, doing this on the Guild’s behalf for the general good, and no one of us is that generous with his time and energy. We’re all eager to get back to our own concerns.”
That made sense. Gresh nodded. “You said powders and potions, or loans? What about making talismans for me?”
Kaligir frowned. “Don’t ask too much, Gresh,” he said. “Tolnor’s Forging is not undertaken lightly and takes a sixnight or more for every spell—the slightest slip, and a day’s work has to be repeated until it’s perfect. You can’t stop partway through. There have been wizards who spent years trying to get a single enchantment right, having to snatch naps when they could, being fed quick bites by their apprentices or families because they couldn’t leave the work area. No one is volunteering for that; most of us aren’t even capable of it.”
“Oh.” Gresh had never actually known just what was involved in creating enchanted objects that carried reusable spells, but given the rarity of such artifacts it made sense that the spell would be difficult and expensive. He just hadn’t realized how difficult and expensive.
“And as soon as you have the magical preparations, we trust you and Tobas will depart for the Small Kingdoms.”
“Indeed.” He glanced at Dina. “And might one wizard answer questions for me, instead? A wizard who is very familiar with Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm?”
“An excellent suggestion. Then you agree to our terms?”
“Do I really have a choice?”
“No. The Guild has decided you don’t. You will find the enchanted mirror and deliver it promptly to Tobas or another representative of the Wizards’ Guild, and the Guild will pay you the agreed-upon price. Now, have you given any thought to the spells you want to have available?”
“A little.” He glanced at Dina again. “The Spell of Reversal would be useful, and Javan’s Restorative...”
An hour later all the volunteers but one had been sent home to their workshops to begin work on spells Gresh had requested—using ingredients he had provided, of course; their altruism was not unlimited. One, a plump middle-aged woman named Heshka, had stayed to advise Gresh on the workings of Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm, flying carpets, Transporting Tapestries, and other relevant wizardry, as well as what little was known about spriggans themselves.
Gresh worded his questions carefully, never asking certain things outright, and concluded that his initial guess had been right—the wizards had tried divinations of every sort, but had never thought to seriously interrogate the spriggans themselves about where they came from, or backtrack them to the mirror. That was typical of wizards, especially city-bred ones—such ordinary, non-magical methods simply never occurred to most of them. A few had at least asked the spriggans about where they came from and had almost always gotten, “Don’t know. Don’t remember,” as the answer.
Gresh began to wonder whether that was actually true. Everyone always assumed that spriggans were too stupid to lie effectively, but Gresh had started to wonder whether they might not be quite as idiotic as they appeared.
As for the spell that created them, Gresh learned more of the mechanics, but Dina’s description had covered most of what he wanted, and Heshka confirmed Dina’s account. The Haunting Phantasm manifested a hideous little creature that only the chosen victim could see, but no one really knew whether the spell created an illusion, created a real creature, or summoned a pre-existing creature from somewhere.
“Illusions don’t trip people or knock bottles off shelves, so spriggans aren’t illusions,” Gresh said.
“They don’t look anything like the phantasm, either,” Heshka pointed out. “No fangs or fur. We have no idea just how wrong the spell went; it may not have resembled the Phantasm at all by the time Tobas finished it. For one thing, he performed it in a castle outside the World. How do we know that didn’t completely alter its nature? No one else has ever tried that. He may not even have made any mistakes other than choosing the wrong place to perform it!”
“Ordinarily, when the spell is complete, and the phantasm is haunting the chosen victim, how is the mirror involved? Does breaking it break the spell?”
Heshka looked startled. “No, of course not. Once the spell is done, it’s just an ordinary mirror; it has nothing to do with the phantasm. I told you, the spriggan mirror is different.”
“So I see,” Gresh said, stroking his beard. “And do you think that might be because the spell was never actually finished? Might it stop making spriggans if the curse were directed at its original intended target?”
“I don’t think so,” Heshka said. “It was directed at its original intended target—didn’t Tobas tell you? The target even held the mirror at one point. If that didn’t complete it, what would?”
“The trigger word?”
“I don’t think he was doing that version—though you might ask him.”
“I take it you’ve spoken with Tobas about this. Who was the original intended target?”
“Well, that might be why it went wrong, too. We’re fairly sure it was an Invisible Servitor. Something artificial, anyway, that Derithon had left running loose in his castle. You really aren’t supposed to cast the curse on anything but humans, but Tobas didn’t know that. He should have known he was in a magically created void because he had already found corridors that behaved unnaturally. Using the spell to curse a magical creature, something that’s effectively a spell incarnate, while you’re in an enchanted castle in a magically created void where space isn’t the same shape was foolish. It’s amazing the spell didn’t do something even worse than a plague of spriggans. I think we can all be grateful that the Haunting Phantasm is a simple, low-order spell.”
“I see,” Gresh said thoughtfully.
Th
e Wizards’ Guild generally tended to be very conservative, and cases like this were a major reason why. Wizardry was absurdly powerful, dangerous stuff that tapped into the raw chaos that underlay ordinary reality. Even simple spells could go spectacularly wrong. That was why wizards screened their apprentices carefully and imposed draconian rules on each other. Mistakes that would be harmless in any sane enterprise could be fatal to everyone in the area when wizardry was involved. It was theoretically possible for a single wizard to destroy the entire World, and while a portion of the Guild might actually survive that, no one cared to put it to the test. The Guild and individual wizards therefore did everything they could to prevent the careless use of wizardry.
This was often a self-solving problem, actually—sloppy or untalented apprentices didn’t survive to become journeymen. The death rate wasn’t as discouraging as it was for demonologists, but it wasn’t zero, either. Even non-fatal mistakes might leave an apprentice with four legs and fur, or trapped in an unbreakable bottle, or otherwise incapacitated.
Tobas appeared to be that rare and fortunate thing, a wizard who had done something very stupid when he was young and survived it unscathed. Gresh would want to watch him very closely. Tobas should have learned from his mistakes, but that didn’t mean he had, and someone who did something stupendously stupid once might well do something stupid again.
At last he could think of no more questions to ask. He thanked Heshka and Dina and sent them both home, noticing as he did that the sun was down and the lamps were lit. Weary, he stretched, and headed to the kitchen, where he discovered that Twilfa had found Akka, the family’s ritual dancer, as he had asked, and had brought her back to the shop. The sisters were chatting over empty plates while a third plate, holding a supper of cold salt ham and honeyed pears, waited for him.
He sat down to eat, but before he could pick up his fork Akka turned and asked, “What sort of dance do you need?”
“A blessing on travelers, I think,” he said, as he cut a bite of ham. “I’m going to the Small Kingdoms on an errand.” He popped the ham in his mouth. “And if you can do anything to make spriggans more cooperative, that would help.”
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