Margaret Weis - Heroes And Fools

As ever, it took some gentle forcing to make the object pass through the mirror. Once it was done, Vandor Grizt folded his arms, cradling his prize, and turned around to stare at the chamber from which he had stolen the statuette. Here, inside the mirror, everything lay bathed in cold, blue light. The statuette, which had been brightly colored, almost lifelike, now resembled some frost-covered miniature corpse.

Vandor shivered and, turning from the mirror surface that separated reality from reflection, returned to Mendel.

The journey took but a thought. Where, before, the dark-haired thief had stared into a room of rich furnishings and elegant appointments, he now looked into an old, decrepit chamber lined with row upon row of dusty bookshelves. Once those shelves had been lined with scrolls, tomes, and artifacts, the envy of almost any mage, whatever color his robes, but necessity had, over the past few decades, obliged its aging master to utilize much of the collection. What remained were only the vestiges of greatness, just as what remained of Mendel was only a shadow of the black-robed terror who had dominated this region for more than a lifetime.

Mendel’s power might be dwindling, yet over Vandor it remained absolute, even some thirty years or so after the Chaos War.

Looking around, Vandor could see no sign of the cadaverous little man, the foul rodent who had kept him in absolute servitude since that fateful day some ten years after the War of the Lance. In the past, Mendel had precisely scheduled his every waking moment. He could be counted on to know how long Vandor’s errands took and when he would return. Mendel was beginning to slip. Where was he now?

In his hands, the figurine grew colder, even colder than usual. Knowing what would happen if he waited much longer, the thief pushed the prize against the mirror before him. The mirror resisted at first, as it always did, but then both Vandor’s hands and the statuette came through. He quickly stood the dryad on the small wooden table on the other side of the mirror, the one that Mendel had placed there years ago to ensure that his slave would never again have an excuse for losing one of the treasures.

As Vandor’s hands pulled back into the pale, cold world behind the mirror, the once-great Mendel stalked into the room. He had lived more than two normal life spans, and it had been during the second half of that overly lengthy existence that so many changes in the man had occurred. Where once he had stood taller than Vandor, who was six feet, Mendel had somehow shrunk to barely more than five. He moved hunched over, which accounted for some of that height loss, but Vandor often wondered if the man’s deep ties to the old magic of the gods had had something to do with what had happened. Magic had all but vanished from Krynn, and Mendel was clearly shrinking.

The flowing brown hair, broad, sharp nose, and strong chin had given way to a vulturelike head with heavy brows, under which peered bitter black orbs. Mendel still wore the black robes of his office, but they were worn and not of the best quality. He could replace the robes readily enough, thanks to the precious objects Vandor stole for him, but never the power those robes had once represented.

“So, returned at last!” rasped the mage, leaning on his formerly magical staff. “You’ve kept me waiting too long, dandy!”

As Mendel’s appearance had changed he had become increasingly prone to making disparaging remarks about the thief’s time-frozen features. Vandor’s handsome, patrician face, his piercing emerald eyes, coal-black, shoulder-length hair, elegant mustache, and expensive gentleman’s garments had served him well during his life, garnering him entrance to both a superior class of maidens and an even more superior class of valuables. However, to be envious of Vandor’s good looks hardly seemed fair. Vandor did not change because he could not change. He remained the reflection of what he had been that day when, fool of fools, greediness and, especially, vanity, had made him linger to inspect Mendel’s intricate and bewitching mirror. Not until too late did he discover that the mirror had been set as a trap for just such a one as he.

“I came as quickly as I could. The Lady Elspeth remained far longer at her table than we’d thought, Mendel.”

“A vain crone!” the black robe snapped, referring to a woman whose beauty any other man would have admired. “So in love with herself is she that she failed even to notice the rarity of such an artifact under her very nose!”

“I doubt she has any sense of magic, Mendel. To her, the figurine seemed only an exquisite work of-”

Mendel waved him to silence. “When I want your opinions, Grizt, I’ll wring them from you!” The wizened man clutched a large, diabolical-looking medallion dangling on his chest. “Quit wasting my time with your prattle!”

Vandor clamped his mouth shut. One thing could affect him here in the world of mirrors, and Mendel held it in his hand now. Not only did the medallion keep Vandor under control, but the mage could use it to punish the thief. The cold, cold world Vandor inhabited would seem a blessing in comparison to that punishment, he knew.

Seeing that his slave had quieted, Mendel nodded. “All right, then, dandy! What of more important matters? What of the Arcyan Crest? Did you find it? Did Prester have it, as my stone indicated?”

Of the few artifacts the once-great wizard still possessed, the onyx scrying stone remained the most useful, if only because it aided Mendel in hunting down the magical items so desperately needed by mages these days. When the gods departed after the Chaos War, they took with them much of the magic of the world, but a little magic remained in once-powerful artifacts. If a mage could locate an artifact and channel its latent power, he could still cast spells of a potentially great magnitude. Inevitably, the magical object would be drained of power, but few spellcasters gave thought to that.

This was the course Mendel had dedicated himself to, soon after the departure of the gods. Over the years he had forced Vandor to scour many places in search of the artifacts whose existence was hinted at by his scrying stone. One such piece was legendary, and it had eluded the black robe’s grasp. The Arcyan Crest was said to be the size of a medallion with the symbol of the House of Arcya set upon it. Its creator, Hanis Arcya, had used the crest to augment his formidable powers until his death. Unfortunately, as Vandor had heard too often from his master, the first great Cataclysm had ended the House of Arcya, and since then the crest had been a thing of rumors, glimpsed here, reported there, never proven to be anywhere.

Now Mendel’s stone had indicated to him that the crest might be somewhere in the vicinity of the palatial abode of Thorin Prester, a former red robe who still seemed adept at having matters turn out to his benefit. The stone’s murky directions plus his own driving envy had made Mendel adamant on this point-Prester had to have the artifact, and if Grizt could not find it that was because he was not searching hard enough.

Even knowing the possible fury his response might unleash, the thief in the mirror replied, “I have searched his place from top to bottom, Mendel, from side to side, comer to corner-wherever I can find a reflection from which to spy, even from puddles in the rain. I’ve haunted his entire sanctum again and again, and I can state categorically that he does not have-”

“Lies! Lies!” The vulture face blossomed crimson. Mendel’s eyes fairly bulged out of their sockets. The mage raised his staff high and with surprising speed, considering his withered appearance, struck out at the jeweled and gilded frame of the mirror.

Vandor’s world rocked, an earthquake of titanic proportions. Mendel had, in times past, told him that if the mage completely shattered the looking glass, his ungrateful wretch of a slave would cease to exist. As futile as his existence was, Grizt still clung to the hope that some day. .