The Spriggan Mirror loe-9

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “I’m still not sure I understand,” Karanissa said. “How did you figure this out? Why is this copy of me here?”

  “She’s what gave it away,” Gresh said. “When I saw she was smaller than you. The reflections in a mirror are smaller than the originals because of perspective—they’re reduced in size, the amount depending on how far from the mirror the original is. She’s smaller than you because she’s a reflection—or really, a reflection of a reflection. It’s that second step that’s why she isn’t reversed.”

  Karanissa stared at him in annoyance, while the imitation appeared politely interested. “Gresh, what are you talking about?” the original demanded.

  He sighed; it was all so obvious to him now he didn’t see why Karanissa hadn’t grasped it. “When I used the Spell of Reversal,” he said, “the direction of the spell reversed. Instead of creating solid images of creatures from the spriggans’ world in our World, the magic began creating solid images from our World in the spriggans’ world. Every living thing that looked in our mirror during that half-hour or so had a mirror-image copy climb out of the other mirror, the mirror in the spriggans’ world. I looked in the mirror, you looked in it, that spriggan we tried to toss back in—copies of us all must have climbed out in the spriggans’ world. A copy of you was still there in the spriggans’ world when the reversal wore off, and it looked in the mirror, so a copy of the copy climbed out here.” He pointed at the duplicate Karanissa. “That’s her—a mirror image of a mirror image. She doesn’t have a name or any memory because she really didn’t exist until the mirror reflected her into being. She and the spriggans have no odor because smells don’t reflect.” He considered for a moment, then said, “I’m a little surprised that there’s no image of me appearing. I must have been reflected into the other world, too. Maybe my duplicate—or duplicates, since I looked in the mirror more than once while it was reversed...” He stopped, and looked down at the mirror, but nothing was trying to climb out of it; that was a relief. He had been momentarily concerned that half a dozen copies of Karanissa and himself might appear.

  According to his theory, in some alien world where spriggans were apparently the dominant form of life, images of Karanissa and himself had climbed out of a mirror. He wondered what was happening to those images, what they were doing, what the real spriggans thought of them. Would they be pests, the way the spriggan images were? They were almost certainly indestructible, like spriggans—after all, you can’t hurt an image; it isn’t really there, it’s in the mirror, and only appears to be anywhere else. Spriggans were indestructible because a reflection can’t be harmed by striking the reflection itself. A reflection is destroyed when the mirror it’s in is destroyed. That’s why the spriggans thought they would die if the mirror was destroyed. The mirror’s enchantment somehow made the reflections seem solid and able to interact with the real world when the original was no longer looking in the mirror, but they were still just images.

  When the spell had been suspended but not broken, when the mirror had been in the sphere where wizardry didn’t work, that had changed, and the reflected spriggans had somehow had their own independent and vulnerable existence. That was one part of the spell that Gresh didn’t entirely understand, but then, wizardry was a chaotic and complex thing. In any case, the magic was working properly now, and the mirror’s creations, whether spriggan or human, were all part of the mirror itself, and therefore couldn’t be harmed as long as the mirror wasn’t harmed.

  That would make those reflected people in the other world harder to manage.

  The reflections of Karanissa and himself were presumably much larger than spriggans, unless there were some weird factor he hadn’t thought of involved. Even if they weren’t playfully troublesome, like spriggans—and the Karanissa-image standing a few feet away didn’t seem to be—they must be a nuisance just because of their size. It seemed that he and Karanissa had inadvertently unleashed a brief plague of giants on that unsuspecting other world.

  That mirror in the other world was presumably indoors somewhere—mirrors generally were, and if it had been out in the open, wouldn’t they have occasionally had creatures other than spriggans climbing out of it, during these past few years? The rooms and corridors would have been built with spriggans in mind. Real spriggans were presumably somewhat larger than their Ethsharitic images, but not that much larger. Those duplicates of Karanissa and himself must have been jammed into spaces far too small for them, much as the spriggans had been when Tobas shut the mirror up in a box.

  The spriggans had eventually burst that box. Those reflected Greshes and Karanissas had probably exploded an entire building. The real spriggans were probably pretty upset about that.

  The reason only one Karanissa had been reflected back might be that she was still wedged against the mirror somehow; she hadn’t yet climbed out of the wreckage and was blocking the others.

  That would also explain why no more spriggans had emerged yet.

  Assuming, of course, that his theory was right, and he wasn’t just building up nonsense. Maybe what had really happened was that throwing all those spells at the mirror had finally changed the nature of the enchantment completely, into something unrelated to spriggans.

  “Karanissa,” he said. “You said you can sense changes in the spell?”

  “Sometimes,” she said.

  “Is it back to its original form now?”

  “As far as I can tell, yes.”

  That fit with his theory—but he could still be wrong. He didn’t think he was, but he had to keep the possibility in mind.

  If he was right, he still had to figure out what to do about it. The Wizards’ Guild wanted the mirror destroyed, but the spriggans didn’t. It appeared that destroying the mirror wasn’t as simple as he might have hoped. Breaking it into pieces made matters worse, and dragonfire hadn’t harmed it, but at least it wasn’t as indestructible as the images it created.

  If it were smashed to the point that it ceased to function as a mirror and no longer reflected anything, that would probably do the job—grinding it to dust might to be sufficient, and if they could get it to the wizardry-dead area and grind it to dust there, that would almost certainly do it. Getting it to the dead area was the challenge, with thousands of spriggans determined to prevent it.

  Grinding it to dust anywhere other than the dead area did not seem like a good idea; there would inevitably be intermediate stages when the spriggans would be multiplied, and he could not ignore the hideous possibility that every single glittering grain might still serve as a functional mirror as far as the spell was concerned.

  If they ground it to dust in the dead area, what was to prevent spriggans or other creatures from someday bringing out those still-enchanted specks, each of which might function as a mirror? That was a nightmarish possibility. Tracking down a particle of dust and dealing with it would be far more difficult than locating an intact hand-mirror.

  And they wouldn’t know whether the destruction was adequate and permanent; there would be no way to test it in the dead area, or to reverse it there if it somehow made matters worse.

  Melting the thing down so that it was no longer a mirror might put an end to the enchantment. Gresh tried to think how else one could destroy a mirror, besides smashing and melting.

  Nothing came immediately to mind.

  There was the question of whether this mirror was really the one they wanted destroyed. If he was right, and it was linked to another mirror in another world, then wouldn’t it be better to destroy that mirror, so that it could no longer cast reflections into this World?

  How could he do that? He had no way to transport himself to that other reality, wherever and whatever it might be.

  If he could somehow get to that other world, he wouldn’t even need to destroy the other mirror. If it were merely covered, so that no one could look into it, that would be enough to prevent any more spriggans or imitation Karanissas from appearing.

  That wouldn’t do anything
to the reflected spriggans that already existed, but somehow, Gresh did not find that such a terrible thought. He looked around the gloomy interior of the cave at the dozens of pop-eyes watching him from the various nooks and crannies.

  The spriggans weren’t really so very bad. Yes, they got into things and made trouble, but they didn’t mean any harm. They just wanted to survive—and to have fun. Since they really were just solidified reflections, destroying the mirror might very well destroy them all.

  Slaughtering half a million well-intentioned little creatures and wiping them from existence did not appeal to Gresh. As mere reflections the poor little things presumably had no souls—it took a specific sort of enchantment to make a mirror that captured souls, and he did not think Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm, no matter how altered, would do it. If they were killed, they would be gone utterly, with no chance at any sort of afterlife—there would be no spriggan ghosts, no spriggans in Heaven or the Nethervoid. Spriggans weren’t human, but they were bright enough to talk and to have figured out that the mirror was essential to their survival.

  He didn’t want to kill them all, he realized. Send them somewhere else, perhaps, but not kill them.

  He did want to stop the mirror from generating any more. If he could just cover the mirror in the real spriggans’ world, perhaps seal it away in a box...

  Sealing away the receiving mirror hadn’t done any good, of course, but sealing away the sending mirror, so that there were no reflections to send, should work.

  He could use the Spell of Reversal to send images of himself into the spriggans’ world, but judging by the pseudo-Karanissa they would arrive with no memory of who they were. The copy of Karanissa didn’t even know whether or not she was a witch. Gresh-images wouldn’t remember that the mirror had to be covered up or hidden away.

  If there were some way to get a message to the spriggans themselves, surely they would cooperate—the reflected humans must have done a great deal of damage, and they wouldn’t want a repetition. He couldn’t send a reflected spriggan or human with instructions, since the new arrival would have no memory.

  Well, he thought, looking at the imitation Karanissa, he couldn’t send spoken instructions that way. Karanissa’s dress had reflected, though...

  “Hai,” he called. “Can any of you spriggans read?”

  No one answered. He looked at the copy of Karanissa. “Can you read?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I think so.”

  Gresh frowned, then reached into the box of magical powders and pulled out a jar. “Read that label,” he said.

  The reflection of Karanissa looked at the original, then at the jar. She peered at the label. “It says ‘Lirrim’s Rectification,’” she told Gresh.

  “So you can read.”

  “Yes, I apparently can,” she agreed.

  That meant it was possible for a reflected image to have the ability to read. Gresh hesitated, however, at the thought of setting another immortal giant loose among the real spriggans just to send them a message.

  But then he realized he didn’t need to send another; the giants who were already there, however many there were, could undoubtedly read just fine—after all, this copy of Karanissa was a reflection of a reflection, not of the original. If she could read, then so could the copies already there.

  But could spriggans?

  “What’s going on in there?” asked a deep rumble. Gresh looked up to see the dragon that had been Tobas of Telven looking down at him. “How much longer are we going to be here? The sun is down, and even if you turn me human again, and we take off right now, it’ll probably be dark by the time we reach the keep. Why aren’t we doing... Who is that?”

  The final question was spoken in an earth-shaking bellow, as the dragon noticed the presence of a second Karanissa. Spriggans squealed in terror.

  “What did you do?” the dragon roared. “Where did it come from?”

  “We were experimenting with the mirror,” Gresh said calmly. “I’ve figured out how it works and how to make it stop producing spriggans.”

  As if to contradict his statement, a spriggan popped out of the mirror just then—the first one since he had first cast the Spell of Reversal. That fit his theory well enough; some brave spriggan had presumably finally ventured into the neighborhood of the other mirror. The new arrival looked up at the man, the two women, and the dragon, then shrieked and ran away into the darkness of the cave’s depths. Gresh heard other spriggans calling comfortingly to it.

  “You have?” the dragon asked suspiciously. “What was that I just saw, then?”

  “I said I know how to stop them, not that I’ve done it yet,” Gresh said.

  “Of course. You did say that. There’s something else you haven’t done yet—you haven’t explained why there are two of my wife there.”

  “That was an accident,” Gresh said. He pointed. “That’s Karanissa.” His finger moved. “And that’s a magical image of her that doesn’t have a name yet.”

  “An image?” The dragon cocked his head and glared at the reflection with one baleful red eye. “Is it solid, or just an illusion?”

  “I’m solid enough,” the image replied.

  “It talks.”

  “Oh, yes,” Gresh said. “In fact, it’s indestructible, just like a spriggan. I told you, we found out how the mirror works, and we did it by accidentally creating... well, her.”

  “It’s permanent?”

  “Very much so, yes.”

  “Kara, what’s going on? What is that thing?”

  Before the real Karanissa could reply, the copy shouted, “I’m a person! Stop calling me ‘it’ and talking about me as if I weren’t here!”

  This outburst startled Gresh; until now the reflection had been calm and quiet and cooperative. Like Tobas, he hadn’t been thinking of it as entirely human—he had just been more tactful than the dragon. It seemed there was more to it than he had thought, though.

  The dragon stared at the image for a moment; she stared angrily back. Gresh and Karanissa waited.

  Finally the dragon said, “I’m sorry, whoever you are. I didn’t realize you were, well, real.”

  “That’s better,” the reflection said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  The dragon peered at her for a few seconds more, then asked, “But can someone explain to me what’s going on? Do we have the mirror? Can we take it with us and get out of here before it gets dark? How much longer do I need to be a dragon? Ali is getting upset.”

  Gresh thought Alorria had been upset for quite some time now, but was not stupid enough to say so.

  “I’m not sure what the situation is myself,” Karanissa answered.

  “I don’t know what’s going on at all,” the reflection said.

  “I do know what’s going on, but I’m not sure how to explain it,” Gresh said. “I know that in, oh, an hour or so I ought to be able to put an end to the production of new spriggans. I don’t know any safe way to destroy the mirror, though, and I’m not sure there is one, or that we should use it if there is.”

  That was more or less a lie; Gresh was quite sure there were several ways to destroy the mirror. At least one of them was probably safe. There were spells that could do virtually anything, after all. The problem was that he doubted anyone knew which ones were safe, and he suspected the Guild might try a few that weren’t.

  Simply destroying it, given enough magic, couldn’t really be that hard. The trick was to not leave any residue at all, and there were definitely spells that could do that, even if Gresh didn’t know what they were.

  He suspected that Tobas didn’t know any of them, either. After all, Tobas might be a wizard, but Gresh was a wizards’ supplier; they were both familiar, at least in theory, with all the common spells. If Gresh couldn’t think of a safe way to destroy the mirror, he doubted Tobas could, either.

  There were a few methods that might work—throwing it through a Transporting Tapestry to a place outside the World, le
tting a warlock destroy it, stuffing it face-down into a bottomless bag, feeding it to a demon. Gresh was not going to suggest any of those. It was all too likely that there were unforeseen flaws in them all.

  “If there’s a safe way to destroy it, why shouldn’t we use it?” Tobas demanded.

  Gresh’s real reason was simply that he decided he did not want to wipe out half a million semi-intelligent beings, but he did not think Tobas would accept that immediately—especially not when he was in dragon form. The wizard had already acknowledged that his shape was influencing his thoughts and behavior. Gresh doubted a real dragon would hesitate for a second before exterminating the spriggans.

  Instead of admitting his unwillingness to play exterminator, Gresh said, “Because it might wipe all the spriggans out of existence, or it might turn them mortal, or it might multiply them infinitely —remember when we multiplied them by four? Destroying the mirror might do the same thing a hundred times over—or a thousand.”

  The dragon stared at him for a moment, then said, “That would be bad.”

  “I think so, yes,” Gresh agreed.

  “So what are we going to do, then, if we can’t destroy the mirror safely?”

  “Well, what I intend to do is ensure that the mirror won’t produce any more spriggans. Next, if possible—and I’m not entirely sure about this part—I’ll give it to you, with the understanding that you will not attempt to destroy it. I think I can convince the spriggans to allow that. What I contracted to do was to deliver the mirror to you, the Guild’s representative, so after that I’ve done my job—more than my job, since preventing it from generating new spriggans wasn’t anything I’d promised. If you like I’ll be happy, as yet another bonus, to try to help you convince the Guild that this is an adequate solution to the spriggan problem. I think that’s more than fair.”

  “But the Guild...” The dragon hesitated.

  “Oh, and I’m perfectly willing to leave you in either human or dragon form, if you think one might be more useful in negotiating with Kaligir and his friends.”