Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spriggan Mirror

“Promise?”

The spriggan wasn’t moving. “I promise.”

“You first.”

“All right, then. I’m going to step back out of the bushes, and then you’ll come out, and we’ll talk. No grabbing-as long as you talk. If you try to run away, you’ll make me very angry, and you wouldn’t like that.”

“You first.”

Carefully, with much snapping and scratching, Gresh backed out of the bushes until he stood in an open patch beside the carpet. He waited, hands on his hips.

A moment later a small green face peered out at him. “No grabbing?” it squeaked.

“No grabbing,” Gresh agreed.

“Talk?”

“Talk.”

“What talk?”

“I want you to tell me a few things.”

“Fun things?”

“Maybe.”

“What things?”

“Where did you come from?”

The spriggan blinked up at him. “Mirror,” it said.

That was exactly what Gresh wanted to hear. “Where is that mirror?” he asked.

The spriggan hesitated, looking around the clearing; then it stuck an arm out and pointed to the northwest. “That way.”

“How far?”

Spriggans might not be human, but there was no misunderstanding the expression on the creature’s face as it said, “Don’t know.” It obviously thought Gresh was an idiot for asking.

“How long ago did you come out of the mirror? Today? Yesterday? A sixnight ago? Longer?”

“Not today.”

“Yesterday?”

“No. How much more talk?”

“We’re almost done; I just want to find the mirror.”

“Why?”

“I promised I would.”

“Stupid promise.”

“Maybe,” Gresh admitted. “But I made it anyway.”

“You no fun.”

“I know. No fun at all. Where’s the mirror?”

“That way.” It pointed again. “Maybe four days ago.”

“In a cave?”

The spriggan frowned. “How you know that?”

“It’s still in the cave?” Gresh persisted.

“Done talking.” And with that, the spriggan ducked back into the bush and vanished.

Gresh reached for his talisman, then stopped. There was no point in harassing one particular spriggan. There would be more of them out there. Instead he brushed off the worst of the twigs and bits of leaf, then turned and marched back to his waiting companion.

“I heard that,” Tobas said.

“Yes, I would assume so,” Gresh said, as he settled cross-legged onto the carpet. “I didn’t think you were deaf.”

“You were interrogating that spriggan.”

“Well, yes. And you’re stating the obvious.”

“Is that how you plan to find the mirror? Is that how you know more or less where it is?”

“I questioned a spriggan back in Ethshar of the Rocks, yes.”

“But anyone could do that!”

Gresh looked at him. “But did anyone do it?” he asked. “I’m the one who actually thought of it and tried it, so it doesn’t really matter whether anyone else could have.”

“But that’s… You’re charging the Guild Enral’s Eternal Youth for that?”

“You and Karanissa told me the Guild would pay almost any price for the mirror. You never said anything about using esoteric methods to find it. Simple methods often work just as well.”

“But…just asking?”

“Do you have a better idea? You tried scrying spells and oracular deities and all the other possibilities offered by modern magic, and they didn’t work, as I recall. My method has at least gotten us close.”

“By asking spriggans.”

“Yes. After all, they’re the ones who know where the mirror is.”

“But you just… just asking…”

“Yes. You’d be surprised how often asking questions gets answers. Very few people-or creatures-are as obsessed with secrecy as you wizards are.”

Tobas stared at him for a moment, then said, “I was right. You are smarter than I am. It’s good common sense, and I didn’t think of it-though now I feel as if I should have. With wits like that, why didn’t you become a magician, or go to work for the overlord?”

“Because I didn’t want to; I didn’t like all the rules they have to worry about. I chose to be a merchant, like my father before me-and I’m glad I did. I’m good at it. Now, can we continue the search and still be back at Dwomor Keep before dark?”

Tobas glanced at the position of the sun, then nodded. “We have about an hour, I’d say.”

“Then let’s get this carpet moving.”

Tobas made a gesture, and the carpet rose gently. “Where to?” he asked.

Gresh pointed northwest, the same direction the spriggan had. “That way.” He grimaced. “I just wish I knew how far a spriggan wanders in four days.”

“Well, it’s about a three-day hike from here to Dwomor Keep for a human, if you aren’t particularly rushing.” The carpet started drifting forward, as well as up.

“Somehow I doubt a spriggan would get anywhere near that far.”

“So do I.”

Gresh looked around as the carpet reached treetop level, then protested, “I said that way!”

“We can’t,” Tobas replied. “That would take us through an edge of the dead place. The sphere.”

Gresh bit back a retort; he supposed the wizard had a point. The detour would make it that much harder to follow the spriggan’s direction, though.

But then, how sure was he that the spriggan had been right? It undoubtedly knew which way it had been walking when it reached that thicket, but it had probably wandered back and forth during those four days; the direction was at best an approximation. With a sigh, he picked up Chira’s talisman and began searching for more spriggans.

A pair skittered by briefly, at the edges of the device’s range-but then the carpet swooped around into a loop, spiraling upward to top a cliff and get over a rocky peak that intruded on their course, and Gresh lost contact with them.

They soared over the mountaintop and began descending the much gentler western slope. Suddenly the talisman sparkled and buzzed with the presence of spriggans ahead-but only briefly and unevenly.

“Slow down!” Gresh called.

Tobas gestured, and the rug slowed. “What is it?”

Gresh did not answer; instead he studied the talisman, trying to make sense of its responses. It took him a moment to remember that it did not detect spriggans as such; it detected motion. The creatures ahead had been moving, then stopped, but every so often one would shift position, and the talisman would flicker.

They were hiding, obviously.

Or perhaps the local squirrels sometimes sat up on their hind legs and looked around; that would probably show up in just the same manner. He sighed. “Keep going,” he said. “But not too fast.”

Tobas obeyed.

Gresh kept a close watch on the talisman, but looked up every so often to scan the surrounding countryside for caves. The spriggan he had questioned had said the mirror was inside a mountain, so the cave was in a mountainside, not down in the valley below. There were plenty of mountainsides in sight, but none had any obvious openings in them.

He had hoped that the cave would be the obvious place, in the cliff right next to the fallen castle, but if Tobas was right that was impossible-that was inside the dead-to-wizardry zone.

At least, unless the cave stretched back far enough into the mountain to reach beyond the sphere…

“Are you sure the dead area is a sphere?” he asked.

“Yes,” Tobas said.

Gresh was slightly startled that the wizard did not hesitate or qualify his response in any way, but gave a quick flat affirmative that left no room for argument. “What if there were a tunnel going back into the cliff?” he asked. “How far would it have to go to get out of the area?”

Tobas looked off to the left, toward the cliff and the castle’s towers showing above the trees, and considered the question carefully.