The Spriggan Mirror

Gresh stared at her, considering this, keeping his face expressionless.

Spriggans had started appearing a few years ago, without explanation; they had just suddenly been there, getting underfoot, poking into everything, babbling nonsense. It was just one or two at first, but they had gradually been growing more common. Divinations had not, so far as he knew, been able to determine their origin, although everyone was fairly certain they were a product of wizardry. He had never before heard anything about spriggans coming from an enchanted mirror. They were, as Dina had said, drawn to magic in general, and wizardry in particular-but, a

That was typical of wizardry; other spells almost never worked properly on something that was already enchanted.

And here was this person, claiming that someone named Derry-no, someone named Tobas-had created them accidentally, by miscasting Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm.

Gresh knew a good deal about how the Phantasm worked. It was his business, as a wizards’ supplier, to know as much as possible about all wizardry, so he made a point of coaxing as much information as he could from not just Dina, but every other wizard he sold to. He did not think he had actually picked up any Guild secrets yet, but he certainly knew more about wizardry than the vast majority of people.

The Phantasm was an easy spell, one many wizards had learned before they had finished the third year of apprenticeship. Who was this Tobas who had botched it so spectacularly?

But that wasn’t entirely fair, he told himself. Dina had told him that if a spell went wrong, there was no way to predict what it would do. It might just do nothing, like her ruined spell of the night before, or it might do a variant of the intended spell, or it might do something completely different, and the effect might be utterly out of proportion. The famous Tower of Flame in the Small Kingdoms had supposedly been created when someone sneezed while performing a simple fire-lighting spell, after all. Perhaps this spriggan-generating mirror was the result of just as i

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“5221,” Karanissa replied. “Some time in Leafcolor, or possibly at the very end of Harvest.”

“Six and a half years ago, going on seven.” That was well before Gresh had ever heard of spriggans, so that fit the facts. “Why are you only looking for the mirror now?”

“We were busy.” She turned up an empty palm. “And we thought the spriggans were harmless. And we didn’t know the mirror would produce so many. At first we didn’t think it would produce any, once it was out of the castle.”

“Just who is ‘we’? You and your husband, or are others involved?”

“My husband and his other wife and I.”

Other wife? The husband staying with the baby while Karanissa saw to business suddenly made sense. “And your husband is this wizard named Tobas of Telven, then?”

“That’s right.”

“You hadn’t mentioned that he had another wife.”

“It wasn’t relevant.”

“She wasn’t involved in creating the mirror?”

“No. She’s not a magician.”

Gresh nodded and inquired no further about that, although he was curious. Other people’s family arrangements were not his business.

Magical objects sometimes were, though. “And you want me to find this spriggan- generating mirror for you.”

“Yes. You come highly recommended; Telurinon and Kaligir both spoke well of you.”

Once again Gresh found himself staring silently at the woman for a moment before he spoke. Telurinon was one of the most powerful wizards in Ethshar of the Sands and was rumored to be a high official in the Wizards’ Guild. He had reportedly supervised the Guild’s efforts to remove a usurper from the overlord’s throne last year, though of course no one would admit to telling Gresh anything of the sort. And Kaligir, here in Ethshar of the Rocks, was definitely a high official in the Guild-when his name and the question of his status came up a year or so back Dina had admitted he was a Guildmaster and had hinted that he was perhaps the city’s senior Guildmaster.

“You know them?” he asked.

“We know Telurinon. We helped him dispose of poor Tabaea. We’ve met Kaligir once or twice; he was the one who directed us here, at Telurinon’s suggestion.”

The mere fact that this woman knew those two names made it much less likely that she was mad, but her story was more outlandish than ever. She and her husband had helped defeat the self-proclaimed Empress of Ethshar who had briefly taken power in Ethshar of the Sands last year? And it seemed she and her husband got their shopping suggestions from the upper echelons of the Wizards’ Guild.

Add that to a magic castle, eternal youth, the accidental creation of the spriggans that plagued the World, and it was a little much to accept.

“How did you come to be asking their advice?”

Karanissa frowned-the first time Gresh had seen her do so. “They weren’t advising us as much as ordering us,” she said.

“Oh?”

“The Wizards’ Guild holds my husband responsible for the spriggans,” Karanissa explained. “They summoned us to a meeting, back in Snowfall, and told us as much. A good many wizards have been complaining about the silly things and demanding the Guild do something. They’ve caused a lot of trouble. There’s a man named Ithanalin who got turned to stone or something when he tripped over a spriggan, and was petrified until his apprentice taught herself enough magic to cure him…”

“Kilisha,” Gresh said. “I know Ithanalin and Kilisha.” That was a mild exaggeration; he had met them, even sold them a few things, but no more than that. He remembered the fuss about Ithanalin’s accident; he hadn’t been petrified, exactly, but Gresh supposed the exact details didn’t matter.

“Yes, well, that was one instance,” Karanissa said. “Ithanalin has been very persistent in demanding Kaligir do something about the spriggans. There have been any number of other ruined spells and spilled potions and wasted ingredients…”

Gresh remembered Dina’s precious blood, spilled on her cat. “Yes,” he said.

“No one’s been killed yet, so far as we know, but it seems almost as if it’s just a matter of time, and the Guild wants Tobas to do something about the spriggans before it comes to that. He created them, Telurinon says, so it’s his responsibility to stop them. And that starts with destroying the mirror-if we don’t do that, it’ll just make more.”

“But first you need to find it.”

“Yes. The spriggans hid it, and we need to find it.”

“So you came to me.”

“When nothing else worked, yes.”

Gresh did not like the sound of that-but then, if the Guild had ordered them to do something about the spriggans back in Snowfall of last year, and they had already been working on the problem for five months, then coming to him had clearly not been their first idea. “What else did you try?” he asked.

“Well, since the Guild wanted us to do it, we thought it was only fair to ask them to help us, so we did. We had Mereth of the Golden Door use every divination in her book, and half a dozen other wizards, as well, but none of them could locate the mirror. We consulted three or four theurgists and even a demonologist, to no avail-the gods apparently can’t even perceive spriggans, let alone identify their source, no matter how roundabout you make the questions, and there don’t seem to be any demons who deal with this sort of thing. Witches don’t have the range-I could have told them that, but Tobas talked to a couple of others just to be sure no one had found a way during the four hundred years I was gone. Warlocks had no idea of how to even begin looking, and the scientists and ritual dancers didn’t do much better.” She sighed wearily at the memory. “So when magic failed us, we decided to try other methods. Lady Sarai can’t leave her duties as the overlord’s investigator and didn’t have any clever ideas, but Telurinon said you were the best in the World at finding hard-to-find things without magic-so here I am.”