Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spriggan Mirror

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.