The Spriggan Mirror loe-9

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Who, Alorria? She’s not a wizard...”

  “No, your other wife. Karanissa. She’s a witch, and she can levitate. I saw her do it in Ethshar of the Spices.”

  “Oh! Oh, of course. I don’t know—she probably could. But I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “Well, you have some time to think of a better one on the flight back to the castle.”

  Tobas considered that, looked down at the meadow, then asked, “What if the spriggans move the mirror again, now that they know we’re looking for it? What if they hide it somewhere even worse?”

  “If we’re quick we can be back here by mid-afternoon. I don’t think they’re organized enough to move it that fast. Besides, where would they find a better hiding place than that cave?”

  “You’re probably right,” Tobas agreed. He looked up at the sun, only just past its zenith, then down at the meadow, where there were no signs of organized activity of any kind, but merely dozens of silly little creatures running about aimlessly. “You’re right. If we’re quick.”

  “And?..”

  “And we should go.” He gestured, and the carpet surged forward, picking up speed. As the wind whipped Gresh’s hair back, the carpet curved its path to the southwest, toward Dwomor Keep, leaving the spriggans, the meadow, the cave, and the mirror behind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You are not going anywhere with her without us,” Alorria said, sitting herself down on the carpet, Alris the Younger in her arms. She was wearing a white tunic and green skirt that did not go well with the rich reds and blues of the carpet, and the baby was wrapped in white bunting and a green blanket.

  “Ali, you’re being silly,” Tobas said, hands on his hips. “This is magician business, and we’ll have Gresh with us...”

  “You two are not going anywhere without us!” Alorria insisted.

  “There are three of us, and we need Karanissa because she’s a witch, not because she’s my wife! We’ll be back by nightfall...”

  “Find another witch, then.”

  “There isn’t time!”

  “Then take Alris and me along!”

  “It isn’t safe for a baby!”

  “It’s safe enough for the three of you.”

  “We’re not babies!”

  “I’m not, either, and I can look after Alris while you two do your magic!”

  “Ali, get off the carpet.”

  “No. Before you try to force me, remember who my father is and where we are.”

  “I am not likely to ever forget,” Tobas said.

  “Tobas, let her come,” Gresh said. “What are the spriggans going to do? They wouldn’t hurt a baby. We’re wasting time arguing.”

  “Kara?” Tobas turned to his other wife, who was standing ready in a simple red dress, holding a bag she had hastily filled with things she thought might be useful in dealing with the spriggans and their enchanted mirror.

  “I don’t care, so long as she stays out of the way when I’m working,” the witch replied.

  “Fine, then,” Tobas said. “We’ll all go, and Ali and Alris can play with the spriggans while we steal their most precious possession and destroy it.”

  “That might actually be a useful distraction,” Gresh said mildly.

  “Oh, get on the carpet.”

  Moments later all four of the adults were seated, each holding one bag nearby—Gresh had his powders and potions and tools in his small shoulder-pack, Tobas had his grimoire and the ingredients for various spells in a leather valise, Karanissa had assorted herbs and crystals to aid her witchcraft, and Alorria had a large collection of diapers, rags, and other baby supplies, and of course Alris was in her arms. At Tobas’s command the carpet rose smoothly into the air and sailed northeastward from Dwomor Keep.

  “We need to do something about these bugs,” Alorria said, as she sheltered her daughter from a swarm of gnats.

  “Ali, it’s a flying carpet,” Tobas said, exasperated. “We’ll be above them soon enough.”

  Gresh resisted the temptation to say something. He agreed with Alorria, actually, that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to add some sort of protective cover, but he did not want to take sides in a marital squabble—at least, no more than he already had in advising Tobas to let Alorria accompany them. Besides, he did not want to antagonize the wizard who was supposed to be helping him, nor his nominal employer, nor the representative of the Wizards’ Guild, and Tobas happened to be all three of those things.

  Finally, he didn’t want to suggest anything because he saw a marketing opportunity and did not want to throw it away. It should be easy to make money selling enclosed flying machines that would be safer and more comfortable than carpets, and he wanted to keep that money in his family. He would build the craft, or maybe hire Akka’s husband Tresen to do it, and then have Dina cast Varrin’s Lesser Propulsion on them. He didn’t want to involve Tobas, as either partner or competitor.

  That would all have to wait, though. First they had to get the mirror out of the cave, then smash it. They might need to take it to the no-wizardry area around the ruined village and fallen castle to break it, but that shouldn’t be difficult—it was just across a narrow valley.

  So he kept silent and watched the countryside flashing by below them as they swept through the mountains, covering a three-day hike in less than an hour.

  Despite the delays caused by gathering Karanissa and her supplies and by Alorria’s insistence on coming, it was not much past mid-afternoon when the carpet settled back onto the grass in the mountain meadow beside the peculiar little cave where the spriggans had hidden the mirror.

  Tobas had set it down in the exact spot it had rested in before; the grass was still pressed down from the previous visit. Gresh frowned slightly, as he saw no reason not to have landed right next to the cave, but decided it wasn’t worth arguing about, not with the entire family along. He was afraid that Alorria and Karanissa might take offense at criticism of their husband, or find an excuse to start bickering.

  Dozens of spriggans were visible from where Gresh sat, scattered around the meadow and the surrounding terrain, but most were making at least a pretense of hiding, and none made any threatening moves or showed any signs of approaching the carpet.

  “It’s over there,” Gresh told Karanissa, pointing, as he got to his feet and slung his pack on his shoulder. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “We’ll wait here,” Tobas said, staying seated cross-legged where he was. “To watch the carpet.”

  Gresh glanced at Alorria, who smiled up at him without moving. “You two go ahead,” she said.

  Gresh had thought that Alorria would stay with Tobas—after all, the wizard was the prize for whom the two women were competing. He was reassured to see that he was right and had not misjudged the situation. “As you please,” he said, nodding his head in a faint intimation of a bow. He beckoned to Karanissa. “If you would, please?”

  “Of course.” She was already on her feet and followed gracefully as Gresh crossed the meadow.

  The two did not hurry; they still had hours before sunset. Gresh was conserving his energy and making contingency plans, while Karanissa was enjoying the gentle breeze and the scattering of wildflowers.

  The crack in the rock wall was half-hidden by shadows, and Gresh was not sure he would have found it again immediately if not for the trampled weeds in front of the opening. As it was, he had no trouble in locating it, but he quickly realized that the torch inside had long since burned out, leaving the interior dark and the mirror invisible; all that was left was a faint whiff of smoke.

  “It’s in there,” he said. “I can make a light and throw it in...”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Karanissa said.

  “What you do?” a spriggan squeaked up at them, as Karanissa raised a hand to the opening in the stones. Gresh turned, intending to shoo the creature away, but then saw that it was not alone—a few dozen spriggans had gathered around and were looking up at the two humans
worriedly.

  “Nothing terrible,” Gresh said. “We just wanted a look at the mirror in the cave.”

  “Leave mirror alone!” shrieked a spriggan, one that was an unusually bright shade of green and had noticeable fingernails.

  “We won’t...”

  “You don’t take mirror!” squeaked another.

  “Listen, we don’t...”

  “Not touch mirror!”

  Gresh looked to Karanissa for aid, but the witch was staring intently into the crevice. Gresh realized something inside was glowing and turned to see what was happening.

  A faint pale glow was coming from the mirror itself; as Gresh watched, it started to rise into the air.

  But then several spriggans leapt onto it, dragging it back down, and as Gresh watched dozens more piled on, until the glass disk was completely hidden beneath a pile of squirming little green-brown creatures.

  The glow vanished, plunging cave, mirror, and spriggans into utter blackness, and Karanissa gasped, then slumped, catching herself against the rocks.

  “Are you all right?” Gresh asked her, worried. He glanced at her, then turned his attention to the spriggans.

  They had formed a half-ring around the witch and himself, about three feet away and about four spriggans deep, and more were peering down from atop the rocks above the cave opening. So far they weren’t moving, but just standing, watching the two humans intently.

  It occurred to Gresh that where one spriggan was harmless, a few hundred of them would not be; in fact, they might be unstoppable. If they just kept flinging themselves at a person, they could probably smother him to death, or crush him under their weight—and if Karanissa was right about their indestructibility, they wouldn’t be hurt in the process.

  This errand, fetching the mirror, might be far more dangerous than he had thought.

  “Karanissa?” Gresh asked.

  “I’m all right,” she whispered. “Just tired. All those spriggans—I kept trying, I thought I might be able to snatch it out from under them, and they must have weighed a hundred pounds at the very least...”

  “I understand,” Gresh said.

  He knew that unlike most magicks, witchcraft drew all its energy from the user’s own body. What Karanissa had done had tired her just as much as if she had reached that far into the cave with her hand and tried to lift the mirror with all those spriggans on it, not to mention the energy used in creating that faint light. That must have taken a good bit of strength, and she was a slender woman. Naturally, she would need to catch her breath after such an exertion.

  He looked out over the ring of spriggans, across the meadow, at the carpet fifty yards away. Tobas and Alorria were seated on the little rug, facing each other and bent over, heads almost colliding, as they played with the baby. Gresh could see a pudgy hand waving in the air. Several spriggans were watching the baby, as well, but all from a respectful distance of several feet. They had not formed the sort of encirclement that he and Karanissa faced.

  And why would they? The baby and her parents weren’t doing anything, weren’t trying to steal their precious mirror.

  Even a baby not yet half a year old was far larger than a spriggan—but there was only one baby, and there were hundreds of spriggans.

  Gresh debated calling out to Tobas, asking for help, but so far the spriggans crowding around were not doing anything aggressive or making any demands, and he did not want the wizard to over-react and start throwing spells around carelessly. He also did not want to do anything that might prompt the spriggans to attack.

  Besides, he and Karanissa still hadn’t retrieved the mirror, and if they didn’t get it out of the cave soon, the spriggans would almost certainly carry it off and hide it somewhere else, now that they knew that Gresh and his comrades were trying to take it.

  This was all very annoying, and Gresh was irritated with himself for not having prepared for this situation. When he had thought about how they would retrieve the mirror he had somehow not expected to find this great horde of spriggans guarding the confounded thing, and in retrospect he wondered why he hadn’t considered the possibility. He supposed it was because he hadn’t thought of the little nuisances as intelligent enough to do anything so organized, but he now saw that this had been foolish of him. They could talk, they could use tools, and even a family of birds can organize well enough to guard a nest. Spriggans were stupid, but they weren’t that stupid.

  Right now a hundred or so were watching him intently.

  “Did you want something?” he asked the encircling spriggans.

  “You go away!”

  “Leave mirror alone!”

  “Not touch!”

  “Why?” Gresh asked. “It seems like an interesting thing. Why shouldn’t I look at it?”

  “Might break!”

  “Spriggans need it!”

  “Could die!”

  “Well, if it’s that important,” Gresh asked, “why do you have it out here in a dirty old cave, where some animal might get in and break it, instead of safely locked away in a castle somewhere?”

  Too many tried to reply simultaneously for Gresh to make any sense of the response to his question. He held up both hands in a calming gesture.

  “Now, now,” he said. “There’s no need to shout.” He pointed to one especially excited-looking spriggan. “Can you explain it to me?”

  “Not trust castles,” the spriggan said. “Full of people. Some people not like spriggans, might break mirror on purpose!”

  “Well, what about a deserted castle?” He did not actually point at the mountain to the east, but there could be no question of what he meant.

  “Not safe! Mirror not work there!”

  “Well, how safe is it here? What if a wolf got into that cave?”

  “Mirror works here, and spriggans guard cave, keep animals out.”

  “You guard it? Is that why you’re all here?”

  “Yes, yes! Not like it here, but guard mirror, keep safe!”

  “You don’t like it here?”

  “No! But spriggans stay and guard.”

  “Some spriggans didn’t stay, though—I’ve seen them all the way on the far side of the World, in Ethshar of the Rocks.”

  “Spriggans take turns. Enough stay here to fill cave, and others go, then come back.”

  Enough to fill the cave? Gresh glanced into the darkness of the opening and tried to guess how many that actually was. A great many, certainly. There was another obvious question. “They come back?” he asked.

  The spriggan looked uncertain and glanced at its companions.

  “Someday, maybe,” one squeaked.

  “That the idea,” added another.

  “So they’re out having fun, while you’re stuck here guarding the mirror. That doesn’t seem very fair.”

  “Life not fair,” a spriggan agreed.

  “Must guard mirror,” said another.

  That didn’t seem to be getting anywhere; Gresh glanced at Karanissa, who seemed to be largely but not completely recovered. He decided he needed to keep the conversation going a little longer. “Why is the mirror so very important?” he asked. “Aren’t there already enough spriggans in the World?”

  “Oh, yes,” one spriggan said brightly.

  “Maybe.”

  “Not know.”

  “Not matter.”

  “You go now,” said a larger-than-average one.

  Karanissa leaned over and whispered into his ear, “Some of them don’t much like that question—I could feel their dismay when you asked it.”

  That was the closest Karanissa had yet come to him, and Gresh tried not to be distracted by the scent of her, or her hair brushing his shoulder. He concentrated on her words.

  They didn’t want to tell him why the mirror was important—but it apparently was not for making more spriggans; that was interesting and unexpected. Why did they care about it, then? He had taken it for granted that they wanted to reproduce, like any living creature, and that the mir
ror was important to them for that reason, but perhaps that was not the case at all. Magical creatures did not always follow the usual rules.

  But what else did the spriggan mirror do?

  If he could get it to a properly equipped wizard’s laboratory back in the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, the Guild’s experts might be able to figure that out, but out here on the mountainside, with a few feet of rock between him and the mirror, the only way to determine it seemed to be to ask the questions the spriggans didn’t want asked and to coax honest answers out of the little pests.

  “What does the mirror do that’s so important?” he asked.

  “You go now,” the big spriggan said. “No more questions.”

  “But I...”

  “You go now.” The threat was now unmistakable, despite the creature’s squeaky, high-pitched voice.

  Gresh looked around and saw that the ring of spriggans had thickened and solidified as new arrivals filled in gaps and pushed their comrades closer together. Spriggans were now peering out at him from the mouth of the cave, as well. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them in all.

  Enough to fill the cave, that one had said—and none of them were smiling. They didn’t look worried or confused anymore; they looked determined.

  “If we go now...” he began, then stopped. He had been planning to ask whether they would move the mirror, but he did not want to give them any ideas that hadn’t yet occurred to them. He turned to Karanissa and said, “Can you...?”

  “No,” she interrupted. “Don’t even ask. With all of them in there?”

  “We need to get into the cave somehow.”

  “No! You stay out of cave!” shrieked a spriggan.

  “What we need is to chase them away,” Karanissa said.

  “Any ideas on that?”

  She turned up an empty palm. “Nothing comes to mind.”

  “No witchcraft you can use?”

  “Not with so many.”

  “No chase spriggans! You go!”

  “Go away! Go away!”

  “Maybe a spell? Wizardry, or some sorcery from your pack?”

  Gresh looked at the couple on the carpet, still happily playing with the baby, oblivious to what was happening to their companions. He tried to think what spells might be useful, and how he might get Tobas’s attention. Why didn’t the wizard look up? Was that baby of his that fascinating? He was supposed to be helping Gresh get the mirror, not counting his daughter’s toes for the hundredth time.