Margaret Weis - Heroes And Fools

“But if he doesn’t-”

“He has it! Do not doubt me!” Again the staff came up and rattled the frame of the mirror.

Grizt remained silent as his foul prison trembled. He knew he could not convince the damned mage otherwise. He feared the medallion’s tortures. Even the medallion’s worst could not compare with his fear that some day he might not have a body to which to return. “I will find it,” he promised. “See that you do.”

The great hall. A banquet room. The kitchen. Prester’s bed in which Prester himself slept. The room in which his only child rested, a small girl not even ten years of age. The spell that bound Vandor to Mendel’s special mirror allowed him to travel anywhere there was a reflection, be it glass, metal, or a bowl of purest water. The spell permitted the thief of mirrors to reach out as far as the length of his arms, sometimes even the upper half of his torso if he struggled.

Moonlight shining through a partially open window glittered on a polished breastplate once worn by Prester’s grandfather, a Knight of Solamnia. Through the breastplate Vandor Grizt emerged, glancing about the room, Prester’s personal library, counting the seconds before the growing heat would consume him. He had been in the library before and noticed nothing. However, libraries were often the location of wall vaults, hollowed-out books, and hidden drawers in desks.

Vandor sank back into the breastplate, only to emerge a moment later from the tiny, metallic surface of a desk drawer handle. Slim hands with tapering fingers reached into the real world and drew open another drawer. Grizt felt under the top, looking for a secret hiding place.

Nothing. He returned to the breastplate, which offered him a better view, and studied the chamber again. Assuming Prester had the Arcyan Crest, which Vandor doubted, he might not even realize its significance. Even some of the former wizards from whom Mendel had forced him to steal had not always recognized the prizes in their own possession. That had sometimes made his task more easy, but just as often it made things more frustrating, for victims with no idea as to the true worth of a treasure were wont to store it anywhere.

On a hunch-and hunches had, for the most part, served him well in the past-Vandor Grizt returned to the bedroom of Prester’s daughter.

He had not searched the room as thoroughly as he should, feeling some guilt about rifling through the young child’s belongings. The girl’s mother had died when she was but five, the victim of some malady. Unlike her husband, the mother had had no taste for magic, but she did boast a noble lineage encompassing not one but several great houses through the centuries. Little money had come with that lineage, but her noble station had given her husband a status that aided his ambitions, going from red-robed mage to landowner.

Vandor studied the slumbering child, guessing that she would never wake from so deep a sleep. Slipping out of the small mirror in her chamber, he reached into a nearby chest and quietly but quickly searched the contents. Clothes, pins, toys. . all the things of a well-born child. Vandor recalled his own early childhood, a kitchen brat in a lord’s castle. He had gained a hunger for fine things from that existence, ever watchful as the nobles wasted what he so coveted.

Across the room he spotted a cabinet, but at first a useful reflective surface near it resisted his searching eyes. Vandor’s gaze drifted to a small stand by the child’s bed. On the stand stood a mug of water, only partially emptied. Enough of a reflective surface for his needs. With careful planning, it would enable him to search the cabinet.

He had to make this a most thorough search, even more so than the last. If the Arcyan Crest was hidden anywhere in this castle, Vandor had to find it. He had no doubt Mendel would keep his promise to punish him for failing.

Transferring to the mug took but the blink of an eye, but from there the thief moved with caution. Not only might the mug wobble, but the child just might wake because of his nearness.

Slowly Vandor Grizt rose from the water. Head and arms floated above, a misty layer below them. Concentrating on maintaining his partially solid form, Vandor stretched his left hand forward, seizing the nearest drawer handle.

With some difficulty, he searched the first two drawers, returning quickly to the safety of his chill realm whenever the burning grew hot enough to threaten him. Unfortunately, Vandor found nothing in either drawer, and the time he had wasted irritated him. Determined, the spectral thief reached for the third.

A high squeak from the drawer made him freeze.

In her bed, the young girl turned over, mumbling. Vandor vanished into the reflection, then, when he felt the water rock, jumped swiftly into the mirror on the other side of the room. From there he watched as the child sat up and drank from the mug. The thief silently cursed; if she finished the water, he would have no method by which to reach the cabinet again.

At that moment he noticed the brooch in her hair.

That a child would wear a brooch in bed seemed odd enough, but the piece looked valuable, making Vandor all the more curious. He waited in frustration as the girl finally put the mug down and lay back on the bed. He waited until she had fallen asleep, then, with one last look at her face, shifted back to the container.

The remaining water barely covered the bottom of the cup, but it served for one with no corporeal form. Pushing himself, Vandor managed to get as much as half his torso above the mug. Gently he leaned over and studied the brooch as closely as he could. Eyes accustomed to darkness had little trouble making out the various details of the jewelry. A ruby sat in the midst of two warring griffons of gold, their diamond eyes glaring at one another. A kingfisher flew above, sword and shield in its talons. Tiny encrusted points thrust out from every edge of the item, which resembled a miniature sunburst. The brooch was valuable purely in terms of coin; Vandor knew it was invaluable to him. He stared at the child’s bauble with the eyes of one who has seen the culmination of a lifetime quest.

He had found the Arcyan Crest.

Why Prester would keep so valuable an object, even if he did not know its true nature, on the person of a small child, Vandor could not say. Sentiment, perhaps. Assuming that the former red robe did not know its magical history, he might have given it to the child as some heirloom from her mother. Had not Prester’s wife come from royal lineage. . possibly even descended from Arcya?

All that mattered to the thief of mirrors was that he now beheld the one object that might prompt Mendel to grant him his freedom. To walk again among men, to kiss a fair damsel, drink a little ale, and pick a pocket or two. . But first he had to steal the brooch from the child.

Already his body sweltered from heat. Wisps of smoke rose from his fingers. However, Vandor Grizt did not return to the water in the mug. He could not wait any longer for his freedom. His tapering fingers gently lifted the brooch so he could undo the clasp. Another second or two and he had the Arcyan Crest free. Child’s play! he thought to himself, admiring his own pun even as the pain, coursing through his body, began to overwhelm him.

Holding the crest close to him, he dove into the watery reflection, then from there to the mirror across the room. True mirrors gave him a swifter path back, and with a treasure of this nature Vandor desired the swiftest path possible. The longer the artifact remained with him in this chilling realm, the more peril there was. Real objects lasted only a little longer in the mirror realm than he could last outside the mirror, only they froze where he burned.

“Mama’s jewel. .”