The Spriggan Mirror loe-9

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “She’s right that the sun’s setting,” Karanissa said, once the dragon had completed his rotation.

  Gresh’s reply was drowned out by the dragon roaring across the meadow to Alorria, reassuring her that everything was fine, and that the other two were just experimenting with the mirror to see if they could remove the enchantment.

  Alorria called back, but Gresh and Karanissa could not make out her words. After a moment, by mutual consent, they decided to ignore the conversation between the princess and the dragon and turn their attention back to the mirror. Ordinarily making themselves heard over the dragon’s bellowing might have been difficult, but Karanissa’s witchcraft took care of that.

  “There still haven’t been any more spriggans,” Karanissa said. “It really does feel different. Before it felt as if it were directed away, somehow, and now it seems directed here.”

  “Well, the Spell of Reversal...” Gresh began; then he stopped. “Wait,” he said. “It was directed away before?”

  “Yes,” Karanissa said. “Definitely.”

  “Away where?”

  Karanissa hesitated, then turned up a palm. “I don’t know,” she said. “Not anywhere in the World.”

  “So it was pulling the spriggans from another world into ours?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you said now it’s aimed here.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it didn’t suck that spriggan into another world. And we looked into it, and it didn’t suck us in.”

  “I know. I never said I understood it. I’m a witch, not a wizard.”

  “Oh, I doubt a wizard would do any better,” Gresh assured her. “They rarely really know what they’re doing—it’s all rote formulas and instinct. They don’t actually understand their magic.”

  “I know most of them don’t; Tobas certainly doesn’t. Some of them seem to do a little better. I thought Derithon had a better grasp of what he was doing than most, but I was very young then, and that might have been my own naivete.”

  “Derithon was your first husband, four centuries ago?”

  “Well, we weren’t formally married. I was his mistress. Or technically, a lieutenant assigned special duties under his command.”

  Gresh blinked. “Lieutenant?”

  “In the military of Old Ethshar. The Great War was in progress, after all. I was serving in reconnaissance, using my witchcraft to locate enemy magicians, when we met.”

  “Of course.”

  Somehow, despite knowing she was four hundred years old, he had never connected her with the Great War that had ended more than two hundred years ago—but of course she had grown up during the War, and like all magicians of the time would have been conscripted into the military.

  The World had been so utterly different then—no wonder Karanissa had said she felt out of place now!

  Gresh wondered whether he, too, would feel out of place four hundred years from now, if he completed the job he had come here to do and received the payment he had been promised. That was an odd thought. Was that why so few openly ancient people were around? After all, wizards had been using eternal youth spells for centuries, and even if only a few in each generation ever managed to work them, undying wizards ought to be accumulating, but Gresh hadn’t met more than a handful, at most. Did they withdraw from human society because it was no longer familiar, because it was too different from what they had known when young?

  That didn’t really seem reasonable. Karanissa didn’t fit in well because she had spent four hundred years trapped in a castle, but she didn’t seem to want to give up human company, by any means. Most people would have lived through the changes as they happened and could have adapted.

  No, there must be some other explanation for the scarcity of ancients.

  Scarce or not, he had one here to advise him. “You think they understood wizardry better back then?” he asked.

  “Maybe. At least I think Derry did—but he was a couple of centuries old.”

  “Oh.” There it was again, the idea of living for hundreds of years and watching the World change around you—but Derithon hadn’t withdrawn from humanity.

  Or had he? He had kept his mistress in that weird castle in the tapestry and had flown around the World in another castle, rather than living among ordinary people.

  But he had met Karanissa and seduced her. He hadn’t been a hermit.

  Or had she seduced him, perhaps? Gresh suddenly wondered whether the Spell of the Revealed Power might turn Karanissa into the likeness of the long-dead Derithon the Mage and whether that might be useful.

  He was not about to test out that theory without some careful planning; he had had enough of throwing spells around recklessly. Tobas had been right to criticize him.

  “Still no new spriggans,” Karanissa said, interrupting his thoughts.

  Gresh glanced down at the mirror, and as he did he caught a glimpse of a pair of pop-eyes watching him from a corner of the cave. The spriggans did not seem upset by whatever the Spell of Reversal had done. There was no ongoing barrage of squeals, nor were there any wild dashes toward the mirror to protect it.

  It might be time to ask them a few questions, while waiting to see whether any spriggans emerged before the Spell of Reversal wore off—or after, for that matter. After all, interrogating spriggans had been more obviously useful than wizardry so far.

  “Karanissa, would you...” he began.

  He did not need to finish the request; she had heard his thoughts. Her hand flashed out and closed on the spriggan’s legs, and a moment later it was hanging upside-down from her fist, squealing. Several other spriggans were calling protests from elsewhere in the cave.

  “Shut up!” Gresh ordered.

  The captured spriggan’s complaints died down to terrified whimpering, and the others fell completely silent.

  “We aren’t going to hurt you,” Gresh told it. “If you answer all my questions truthfully for the next half-hour, we’ll let you go.”

  “Not fun,” the spriggan whined.

  “Sometimes life isn’t fun,” Gresh told it.

  It nodded desperately.

  “Good. Karanissa, why don’t you turn our guest the other way up, so it can talk more easily?”

  Karanissa righted the creature, but did not loosen her grip.

  “Now, my little friend, what do you know about this mirror?” Gresh asked, pointing.

  The spriggan looked down and gulped. “That where spriggans come from,” it said. “That what gives spriggans magic, protects spriggans from harm.”

  “It does?” Gresh’s gaze fell to the mirror for a moment, then flicked back to their captive. “How does it protect you?”

  “Not tell!” another spriggan called from a dozen feet away. Gresh threw a pebble at it, and it fled with a squeal.

  The captive saw its companion flee, then said, “Just does.” It tried to shrug, but the gesture was not entirely successful with Karanissa’s hand restricting its movement.

  “It didn’t protect you from being captured just now,” Gresh pointed out.

  “No, no. Doesn’t protect spriggan from everything. But spriggan can’t be killed, not while mirror is magic.”

  “What?” Gresh glanced down at the mirror; was that the source of the spriggans’ invulnerability? He knew that there was a powerful link between the mirror and the spriggans, or there could have been no fourfold population surge when the mirror was broken, but he had not connected the mirror with the creatures’ reported inability to die from any natural cause.

  The spriggan did not try to explain; it just looked unhappy and confused. Karanissa interjected a question. “How do you know it protects you?”

  “Didn’t always,” the spriggan said.

  “Explain!” Gresh demanded.

  The spriggan looked more miserable than ever. “When mirror first make spriggans, mirror was in big stone house in purple sky.” It pointed at Karanissa. “She was there.”

  “We know where you
mean,” Gresh said, noting silently that the spriggan seemed very sure the mirror made spriggans, rather than bringing them from somewhere else, even though Karanissa had sensed that the mirror was directed somewhere else. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “When mirror was in purple sky place, spriggans had magic, couldn’t be hurt—but wizard tried to lock up mirror, didn’t like spriggans, so spriggans took mirror to other place.”

  That accorded with what Gresh had been told by Tobas and his wives. “Yes. That was seven years ago.”

  “In dark other place, mirror had no magic, so spriggans had no magic. Some spriggans didn’t care, went wandering around, got in trouble, made people angry, and people cut spriggans! With big scary knives! Sharp ones! Spriggans died!”

  A chorus of dismayed squeaks came from other spriggans in earshot; the humans ignored them. “They died?” Gresh looked at Karanissa. “I thought you said they couldn’t be killed by natural means.”

  “They can’t,” Karanissa said.

  “Spriggans can’t,” the spriggan agreed. “Can’t now, because smart spriggans figured out mirror might be magic again someplace else and took mirror from dark stone house to cave—this cave! And mirror had magic again, and spriggans had magic again, and spriggans not die anymore, ever—well, unless spriggans go where no magic is; spriggans can be killed there. But only stupid spriggans go there; spriggans can feel magic and stay away from bad places.”

  Comprehension swept over Gresh. Tobas had not bothered retrieving the mirror originally because he had thought it would be harmless in the no-wizardry zone, and it was—but the spriggans had eventually hauled it out of the dead area, not because they wanted more spriggans loose in the World, but because of the magical link between themselves and the mirror that made them unkillable.

  That the spriggans had figured out that the link existed proved that spriggans weren’t as stupid as they looked. The connection certainly hadn’t been obvious to him. He supposed that hundreds of them had discussed the situation at length, and they had somehow worked it out collectively, but it was still impressive.

  The link might provide some of the other magical abilities the spriggans displayed, as well, such as their uncanny ability to open any lock—but it wasobviously the invulnerability that mattered most to them. “So that’s why you want to keep it safe?” he asked.

  The spriggan nodded wildly.

  “You were keeping this secret—why?”

  “Not want spriggan-killers to know how to kill spriggans! Not want spell broken, or mirror taken to no-magic place again.”

  That was reasonable. Furthermore, Gresh thought, in all likelihood, no one had ever asked them about any of this until he had begun his own investigations. The usual reaction to spriggans wasn’t to try to reason with them or determine their origins; it was simply to shoo them away as quickly as possible.

  But they could be reasoned with; Gresh saw that now. They wanted the mirror to preserve their indestructibility. “And you don’t care that it keeps making more spriggans?” he asked.

  “Not care much,” the spriggan agreed. “Enough spriggans now. Crowded here, with so many. We send extras off to find wizards—spriggans like magic. And have fun. But keep enough here to guard mirror.”

  “You send the extras away, on purpose?” Gresh demanded. “They don’t just wander off?”

  “Send them away, yes,” the spriggan said, nodding again. “That way, on easy old road.” It pointed to the north. “Some go off other ways, but most use road.”

  And that, it seemed, explained why so few wound up in Dwomor—the road the captive indicated led the opposite direction, north and west toward Ethshar, where most of the world’s wizards were.

  “Why didn’t one of you just tell us all this, instead of mobbing poor Alorria and making everything difficult?” Gresh asked. “We can work something out!”

  “Didn’t know you weren’t spriggan-killer, maybe?”

  “But I said we didn’t want to hurt you, didn’t I?” He looked at Karanissa.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Did you?”

  “I think maybe we were too busy with other things,” Gresh admitted. “I suppose the way we kept trying to get at the mirror couldn’t have looked very friendly.” Then he turned his attention back to the spriggan. “So right now, is the magic still working? We changed the spell on the mirror—does that matter?”

  “Still works,” the spriggan said. “No problem.”

  “So if we somehow made this change permanent, you spriggans would be happy?”

  “Would depend on other things. Not happy when it rains, or when spriggans all get really hungry. Hungry now—you have food?”

  “No,” Gresh lied. He had a few things to eat in his pack, but he had no intention of giving them to the spriggans. “I meant, you wouldn’t mind the change in the spell?”

  “Not mind. Magic still working.”

  Gresh nodded.

  That really seemed to explain everything. He tried to think of other things to ask the spriggan before releasing it, and nothing came to mind.

  Taking the mirror into the no-wizardry area and destroying it would put an end to the spriggans’ indestructibility. If the link was as strong as the quadrupling of the spriggan population when they broke the mirror implied, destroying it might destroy the spriggans, as well, wiping them from existence.

  He hadn’t really thought that was likely a few hours ago, but the population explosion had changed his mind, and the news about spriggan invulnerability also being connected to the mirror—well, there was clearly a very strong link. So destroying the mirror might destroy them all.

  Or it might not. They hadn’t ceased to exist when the mirror was in the no-wizardry zone before; they had merely lost their magic.

  Either way, the spriggans hated the idea of letting the mirror be destroyed or taken into the no-wizardry area and would fight furiously to prevent it. They had no objection to things that merely prevented the mirror from producing more spriggans. If there were some way to make the Spell of Reversal permanent...

  But Gresh was fairly certain there wasn’t. Besides, he had agreed to sell the mirror to Tobas and the Guild, he had not contracted to merely stop the production of spriggans.

  “Do you think the Guild would be satisfied if we just prevented the mirror from making more of them?” he asked Karanissa.

  “I have no idea,” she replied. “I’ve never known what to expect of the Wizards’ Guild. They might be.”

  “I had thought that anything that would stop it from producing spriggans would break the spell on it, or completely change it, but that doesn’t seem to be what happened here, with the Spell of Reversal. Not that I really know what did happen. You said it feels different; can you add anything? Has it changed any further?”

  “No.”

  Gresh sighed. This was all getting very complicated, whereas his original plan had seemed simple. “If we could just get it across the valley to the ruins, we could destroy it—smash it to powder, maybe.”

  “The spriggans would do everything they could to stop us.”

  “I know.” He grimaced. “But we do have a good-sized dragon on our side. Maybe Tobas could clear us a path.”

  “What about Alorria and the baby?”

  Gresh sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know whether the spriggans would really hurt them or not.”

  Karanissa glanced around at the dozens of little eyes watching them from various corners of the cave. “They would try,” she said. “I’m not sure what they could do, but they would try.”

  He did not doubt her; after all, she was a witch. “What if we took the mirror back to Ethshar? That wouldn’t block the magic they want. What would they do then?”

  “You know they want to keep it under their own control,” Karanissa said. “I don’t think they’d be as desperate as if we were heading to the ruins, but they’d still try to stop us. And how could we do it? They’re all over th
e flying carpet, and it would take months to get back to Ethshar on foot, and during those months they’d be constantly trying to steal the mirror back. Every time we slept, the spriggans would grab it.”

  “What if we got the carpet off the ground with all of us and a few hundred spriggans on it, then dumped all the spriggans off?”

  “This would be after you turned Tobas back to a human? How would we get to the carpet through that mob?” She pointed out at the meadow, still swarming with spriggans. “They might also fling so many of themselves on the carpet it couldn’t get off the ground.”

  Gresh sighed.

  “All we need to do,” he said, “is to get the mirror back to Ethshar and give it to the Guild—then it’s their problem. We don’t need to deal with it permanently ourselves.”

  “Well, you don’t,” Karanissa agreed. “Tobas and I—well, we made some promises. Our agreement with the Guild is to put an end to the problem of spriggans, not just to deliver the mirror.”

  “Just... put an end to the problem?” Gresh considered that. “So if we did make the Spell of Reversal permanent, would that be enough?”

  “It might be,” Karanissa said. “I’m not sure. There would still be half a million spriggans running around loose.”

  “But there would never be any more than that.”

  “That’s why it might be enough.”

  Gresh looked down at the mirror. “Stupid thing,” he said. Then he reached for the box of powders—the temptation to play with magic was still strong, and after all, this was what these spells were for.

  “I think I’ll try a few things,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Don’t turn back—esku!” Gresh shouted, as he sprinkled red powder on the mirror.

  It flashed gold.

  “How will you know whether that worked?” Karanissa asked.

  “The half-hour will be up in a few minutes,” Gresh said. “You should be able to sense whether the spell reverts, shouldn’t you?”

  “Probably,” the witch admitted.

  “If you can’t, we’ll know when spriggans start appearing, or when we’ve gone an hour or two without any.”