Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spriggan Mirror

He wondered whether Karanissa was still listening to his thoughts and detecting his faint scorn for Alorria. He risked a glance at her and thought he saw a faint nod.

“Shall we go?” Alorria said, flouncing cheerfully off the bottom stair and snatching the baby from Karanissa’s arms.

Gresh made no comment as he was led through a veritable maze of corridors and stairwells; he was trying to take in as much of his surroundings as possible. He was also keeping an eye out for lurking spriggans. There ought to be some around here. Why didn’t he see any?

He accompanied the wizard’s family into a good-sized dining hall where a few dozen people were milling about; places were set at the long table, but no one had been seated yet.

His party was greeted with shouts of greeting and much shaking of hands and slapping of backs, but Gresh could not follow any of the happy conversation-it was all in an unfamiliar language he took to be Dwomoritic. Alorria was smiling and laughing, clearly in her element. Gresh thought he understood now what Tobas saw in her beyond a pretty face.

He heard his own name spoken a few times, and then suddenly he was shaking hands with a young man with silky white hair, red eyes, and unnaturally pale skin.

“A pleasure to meet you, Gresh,” he said, in perfect Ethsharitic. “I am Peren the White-Lord Peren the Dragonslayer, they call me here, but that’s just Small Kingdoms pomposity.”

“Dragon slayer?” Gresh said, as he eyed the man’s strange hair.

“I didn’t slay it, of course,” Peren said. “Tobas did. He blew its head off with a single spell. But I was there, trying to help, and before that I was the one who got him out of his castle when he was trapped there, so he’s always shared the credit with me, and I got a share of the reward.” He pulled forward a young woman who was unmistakably related to Alorria, and who wore a green dress that was also clearly akin to Alorria’s. “This is my wife, Her Highness Princess Tinira of Dwomor-she and her dowry were my share.”

“I am honored to meet you,” the princess said with a curtsey. Her Ethsharitic was heavily accented, but intelligible.

“The honor is mine,” Gresh said with a bow, thinking as he did how odd it was that princesses, nominally people of high rank, were treated as mere property, to be handed out as rewards for heroism. He knew the reasoning behind it-princesses were too good to marry mere ordinary men, but at the same time the Small Kingdoms produced a surplus that had to be dealt with somehow-but it still seemed slightly perverse.

“I know you have met my sister Alorria,” Tinira said. “Have you met any of my other siblings?”

Gresh turned up an empty palm. “I have only just arrived…”

“I will fetch them! Wait here!” She turned and bustled away, leaving Gresh and Peren together.

“A lovely young woman,” Gresh remarked.

“I’m a lucky man,” Peren agreed, watching his wife.

“You are an unusual man,” Gresh said. “If you will pardon my impertinence, might you be interested in selling some of your hair?”

“What?” His gaze whipped back to Gresh.

“Your hair. I believe it might be quite valuable in my business.”

Peren frowned. “Aren’t you…well, some sort of adventurer? How would my hair be of any value?”

“No, no,” Gresh said. “I’m not an adventurer; I’m a wizards’ supplier. I sell the wizards of Ethshar of the Rocks their dragon’s blood and virgin’s tears-and if I’m not mistaken, pure white hair such as yours is useful in certain obscure spells. I’ve never found a reliable source. Fortunately, demand has been so slight that I haven’t needed a source, but it’s best to be prepared.”

“You’re…a supplier? A merchant?”

“Yes, exactly. A merchant, like my father before me, save that he trades in more ordinary goods-exotic woods, perfumes, that sort of thing.” As he said that, it occurred to Gresh to wonder whether his father had ever done any business here; he mostly traded with Tintallion and the other northern lands, but there had been a few expeditions to the Small Kingdoms…

“And you have a market for albino hair?” Peren asked.

“I believe so, yes. Not a huge quantity of it, but I could certainly use a few locks.”

Peren stared at him for a moment, then said, “I have two questions, and I’m not sure which to ask first.”

“If one of them is ‘How much will you pay?,’ I’ll need to…”

“No,” Peren interrupted. “That’s later. The first one is, if you’re just a merchant, why has Tobas brought you halfway across the World?”

“Oh-has he told you why he’s here?”

Peren grimaced. “He has half a dozen reasons to be here, beginning with showing his daughter off to her grandparents, but I assume you mean that he’s running some mysterious errand for the Wizards’ Guild. He said you were helping him with it, but not the nature of it.”

“Then I shan’t say too much either, but I will say that I have a reputation back home as a man who can always find what his customers want, if the price is right. I have agreed to obtain a certain object for Tobas and the Guild, and I believe it to be somewhere in the mountains to the northeast of this castle. It’s not adventuring; it’s just a hunting expedition. Just business.”

“Not a dragon?”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

“And your other question?”

“Simple enough. I’ve dealt with wizards’ suppliers before-I was the one who sold off the blood and scales and teeth and all the rest of it when we killed the dragon seven years ago. I’ve sold them a few other things since then-as I’m sure you know, there are certain spells that call for ingredients that are best obtained by someone with an intimate relationship with a royal family.”

“Yes, I know. Your question?”

“Why is it that in all these seven years, none of those suppliers ever asked about my hair?”

Gresh smiled and turned up a palm.

“Amateurs,” he said. “You were dealing with amateurs. I, Lord Peren, am a professional.”

By the time dinner was served Gresh had made the acquaintance of a significant portion of the royal family of Dwomor-King Derneth II, Queen Alris, the king’s brother Prince Debrel, the king’s unmarried sisters Princess Sadra and Princess Shasha, and half a dozen of the king’s nine children, the others having been married off to the royal families of other kingdoms. Three grandchildren were also present, counting little Alris-known here, understandably, as Alris the Younger. One prince had a wife, recently brought from Yorbethon, and still clearly not entirely adjusted to her new surroundings.

Two of the absent daughters also reportedly had children, but those children, like their mothers, were elsewhere.

If nothing else, it was clear that there was no danger that the current dynasty would run out of heirs any time soon.

Unfortunately, only about half the royal family and a handful of retainers spoke any Ethsharitic, and not all of them were anything close to fluent, leaving Gresh unable to communicate with most of the company. He still tried to make the best impression he could, especially when he was presented to the king and queen.

He had to explain repeatedly that he was not a wizard nor an adventurer, merely a businessman.

All in all, he did not consider the evening a great social success; his unfamiliarity with the language put a damper on any attempt to strike up an intimate acquaintance with one of the local women, since he was not stupid enough to attempt to seduce a princess or anyone with a husband in evidence, and his other conversations all seemed to follow the same route while going nowhere.