The Spriggan Mirror

Chapter Twelve

Dwomor Keep had obviously not been built quickly or recently. It occupied the center of a small plateau, surrounded by a double handful of thatched cottages that presumably constituted the capital city, but the castle itself was quite large—easily as large as the Fortress back in Ethshar of the Rocks, at least if measured by any surface dimension. The interior volume of the solidly compact Fortress might well exceed the space enclosed within the keep’s sprawling tangle of wings, towers, and turrets, though.

Every wing or tower of Dwomor Keep seemed to have been constructed in a different architectural style. Some walls were smooth, unadorned stone, while others were rough, or decorated with elaborate carvings. Windows ranged from narrow arrow-slits to grand mullioned or tracery affairs with hundreds of leaded panes, and were made variously of clear glass, stained glass, and wooden shutters over unglazed openings.

There were two unifying features, however—every exterior wall was constructed of the same gray-brown stone, and every roof, whether tile, thatch, or slate, seemed to need repair.

As they approached close enough to see into the courtyards, Gresh discovered the inner structures to be even more varied than the outside, as these walls did not need to be good defensible stone. Some were brick, or wood, or half-timbered plaster, or even wattle-and-daub, while others were that same gray-brown stone.

The courtyards themselves all appeared to be mud, though, untroubled by any pavement or boardwalk.

The carpet swept down toward this castle, and Tobas and both his wives began to shout and wave. People appeared in windows and on battlements, waving in response. The carpet flew a long loop around the castle so its passengers could greet everyone, but finally came soaring in toward a railed wooden platform that looked newer than any of the other structures. It stood atop an old slate roof, next to a tower where a new door appeared to have been cut into an old wall, and had no recognizable purpose for any ordinary castle.

It was, however, just the right size for landing this particular flying carpet.

The rug settled gently onto the platform, stopping when the luggage first lightly touched the wooden surface. Tobas then climbed off the front of the carpet, then stepped around the side to help his wives and child off. Gresh was left to his own devices and clambered awkwardly off, pulling his bag up and heaving it over one shoulder.

A moment later Tobas had the door open, and the entire party stepped into the tower, into a good-sized sitting room. Faded tapestries hung on several walls, and a few rather worn settees were arranged below them. Assorted tables, chairs, and cushions were scattered about, and three rugs covered portions of the plank floor, leaving a good-sized bare area in the center—one that Gresh recognized as a convenient place for the flying carpet. A spiral stair rose in one corner, and in the far wall two carved wooden doors stood solidly shut.

Gresh had barely had time to look around at the chamber within when a knock sounded on one of the carved doors. “Come in!” Tobas called.

The door swung inward, and a thin old man in an elaborately embroidered tunic leaned in. “Lord Tobas?” he asked.

“Yes. All of us, and a guest.”

“His Majesty the king wishes to invite you all to dine with him tonight.”

“Convey my best wishes to His Majesty, and we would be delighted.”

“Is there anything we can do for you in the meanwhile?”

“If you could give us a hand with the luggage, it would be welcome.”

“Of course. I’ll send footmen.” Then the door closed again.

“It’s good to be home!” Alorria said, smiling broadly and looking around happily, gently bouncing the baby in her arms.

“It is good to be back,” Karanissa agreed. “Home or not.”

“They seem to have kept it clean,” Tobas said. “I hope no one’s disturbed my workshop.”

“I thought you took everything dangerous with you,” Alorria said.

“I did. I still hope no one disturbed it—I want to be able to find things.”

“I didn’t think you left anything worth finding,” Karanissa said.

“This is your home?” Gresh asked.

All three of the other adults tried to answer simultaneously, Alorria saying “Yes,” Karanissa saying “No,” and Tobas saying, “When we’re in Dwomor.” The two women exchanged looks, and Karanissa added, “It used to be, before we bought the house in Ethshar of the Sands.”

“It still is,” Alorria said, with happy assurance. “We just don’t live here all the time.”

“It will be again,” Tobas said. “If we find the spriggan mirror and deal with it successfully.”

That sounded interesting. “Oh?” Gresh said.

Tobas grimaced. “I’m not as smart as you, Gresh—when the Wizards’ Guild ordered me to stop the spriggans, I demanded payment, and they agreed, but I didn’t think of asking for eternal youth. I asked for another Transporting Tapestry, one that comes out here in Dwomor Keep, so we could come back here permanently. I like being my father-in-law’s court wizard and don’t really want to live in a big city. They agreed to make one for us—though of course it will take a year or so, and no one’s even started on it yet. There aren’t very many wizards who can make one, and most of them aren’t willing to put in the time.”

“But when it’s made, you’ll live here again.”

“Yes.” Tobas sighed. “Eternal youth for Alorria and myself would have been clever, but I just didn’t think of it. I’ll just have to hope I can work my way up to doing it myself eventually.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage it,” Karanissa said.

“Plenty of wizards don’t,” Tobas said.

For a moment silence fell, as no one knew quite what to say, but then Alris awoke and began crying, and Alorria, cooing and rocking, carried her up the spiral staircase.

“We have the entire tower,” Tobas said. “The bedrooms are the next floor up, and my workshop above that.”

Gresh nodded. “Do you get many spriggans here?”

Tobas blinked foolishly at him for a moment. “What?”

“Are there many spriggans in Dwomor? Does your magic attract them to this tower?”

Tobas glanced upward. “It ought to, oughtn’t it?”

“Does it?”

“Not that I’ve noticed,” Tobas admitted.

“I’ve seen a few here and there in Dwomor,” Karanissa said. “But they’re no worse here than in the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars—perhaps not as bad.”

“But the mirror isn’t terribly far from here.”

“Well, we don’t know that...” Tobas began.

“I do,” Gresh interrupted. He was not ready to believe the spriggan he had interrogated had fooled him as completely as that.

“All right, then,” Tobas said, clearly nettled. “I don’t know why there aren’t more of them here; there just aren’t.”

Before Gresh could reply there was a knock at the door. Karanissa reached over to open it, revealing half a dozen young men in green-and-white uniforms.

There were several minutes of bustle and confusion as the footmen brought the luggage in from the landing platform and stowed it where Tobas and his wives directed them. Gresh tried to stay out of the way.

“I’m going to dress for dinner,” Alorria announced from the stairs, where she was blocking a footman’s way. He was balanced precariously, holding an immense leather trunk he had been carrying upstairs.

“Good,” Tobas said. “So will I.”

A moment later, when the luggage had all been dealt with, the six footmen brought in the carpet itself and spread it on the floor, exactly where Gresh had thought it should go. Then one of them bowed to Tobas and asked, “Will there be anything else?”

“No, thank you,” Tobas said. “Very good work, all of you.”

The footman bowed again, and the entire half-dozen quickly exited the suite.

“Pardon me a moment, Gresh,” Tobas said. Karanissa was already climbing the spiral stair, and Tobas followed her, leaving Gresh alone in the sitting room.

He glanced around, then shrugged and sank onto one of the settees. He had no intention of trying to unpack anything here; his most appropriate change of clothing for dining with a king was well down the bottomless bag. His Majesty Derneth II would just have to put up with a guest in traveling clothes.

He looked around the room again, but saw nothing of particular interest. No spriggans were in sight.

That was curious, really. If the mirror was generating spriggans somewhere within a few leagues, and the spriggans just wandered randomly, then their population density here should be several times what it was anywhere in the Hegemony, and it plainly wasn’t.

That meant that their wanderings weren’t random. It wasn’t simply an attraction to wizardry that motivated them, because if it were, then Tobas’s workshop would have been overrun with them when he was working as Dwomor’s court wizard.

Gresh wondered just what was really going on. Were spriggans more organized and more intelligent than they appeared? Was there some pattern to their behavior over the past few years? He felt a slight chill at the thought. What if they were not just an infestation, but an actual deliberate invasion? Was it really just a botched casting of Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm that had brought them into the World?

Then Karanissa came back down the stairs in a white silk gown that made Gresh forget about spriggans and mirrors and spells, not to mention the inconvenient fact that she was married to someone else. He rose quickly and bowed to her.

“You know, after so long in your company on the carpet, I can hear your thoughts,” she said, pausing at the foot of the stair. “Especially when they’re as clear as they are just now.”

For an instant Gresh hesitated. He did not want to offend a wizard’s wife.

On the other hand, Karanissa could have easily ignored his reaction. She had chosen not to, and that gave Gresh some latitude.

“Then you know there’s nothing I can do to control them,” he replied with a smile.

“I know you aren’t even trying. Really, do you feel no shame at all at lusting so blatantly for another man’s wife?”

“None,” Gresh replied. “For three reasons.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. First, you call it blatant, but you’re a witch—would an ordinary woman know what I am thinking? Look at my face, rather than the thoughts behind it, and I think you’ll see my expression is well within the bounds of mere polite admiration.”

“Ah. You’re right—and you do have a dozen years of practice, don’t you? And the advice of your sisters, as well.”

“Indeed. Second, lust is a natural and healthy response to a sight such as the one before me now. While it is the custom to disguise it in polite company, I know that it is the disguise that is unnatural, not the desire.”

“Most men are not as certain of that as you are.”

He nodded an acknowledgment. “You would know that better than I.”

“And your third reason?”

This was the one that had convinced him to be honest. “With all due respect, lady, you would not have put that dress on if you did not want to provoke lust. The angled neckline, the fit at the hips—that dress is designed to inflame men’s hearts, and as a witch you surely know it and chose it for that purpose.”

“Ah, one of your sisters is a seamstress, isn’t she? I hadn’t known that.”

“Ekava, the next-to-youngest,” Gresh agreed. “Still a journeyman, but she knows her profession well enough.”

Karanissa glanced upward and stepped away from the stairs as Tobas appeared, hurrying down the spiral. He wore a loose black robe and a pointed velvet cap, looking every inch a wizard save for the fact that he held a sleeping baby in his arms. “Alorria will be down in a moment,” he said, shifting Alris from one elbow to the other and straightening the lush crimson blanket that now wrapped her.

Until now Gresh had always seen Alris bundled in white or gray or yellow, if one didn’t count the usual stains and discolorations. It appeared that tonight even she was dressed up for their dinner with the king. Gresh looked down at his own brown wool tunic and black leather breeches and decided they would do well enough—he was a traveler, after all, and could not be blamed if he looked the part. If they stayed in Dwomor for any length of time, and royal suppers were the norm, he might eventually take the time to dress up, but not tonight.

The three of them stood silently for an awkward moment,; then Tobas said, “I’ll see what’s keeping Alorria.” He handed Alris to Karanissa, then hurried back up the stairs.

Karanissa watched him go, then looked down at the baby and smiled. She glanced at Gresh.

“She’ll be down soon enough, once she realizes I’m holding her child,” Karanissa said. “You look fine just as you are; don’t worry about it.”

“You look... well, ‘fine’ isn’t strong enough,” Gresh replied.

“Thank you.”

Gresh started to form a question, but Karanissa answered before he started to speak.

“Ali is a princess here,” she said. “Alris is the king’s grandchild. I prefer not to fade completely into the background. I hope this dress will work to compete with the two of them.”

“I can’t imagine you fading into the background anywhere,” Gresh replied.

She smiled at him, much as she had at the baby a moment before. “Many men consider me too tall and thin and dark; they prefer their women a little fairer and more rounded, like Ali.”

Gresh’s immediate thought would never, ever have been spoken aloud, but Karanissa was a witch; it didn’t need to be audible.

“Tobas has no fixed preference,” she said softly. “He tries very hard not to favor one of us over the other. Anything beyond that is none of your business; I say this much only so that I will not be troubled by your curious thoughts any further.”

“I’m sorry,” Gresh said. “If I could have prevented that thought, I would have.”

“Of course. And if I could have avoided hearing it—well, actually, I could have and should have; I was careless.” She sighed. “I was trying to hurry the conversation, so... Ah! There they are!”

Gresh looked up to see Tobas leading a smiling Alorria down the stairs. Tobas was still in his robe and cap; Alorria wore a green-and-white dress elaborately embroidered in green, black, and gold. Where Karanissa’s white silk was unadorned and simple, clearly designed to draw attention to its wearer rather than itself, Alorria’s gown seemed intended as an exercise in ostentation, with fancywork at collar and cuffs, intricate lace ruffles across the bodice and around the hem, velvet puffs at the shoulders, and gold-edged slashes in either upper sleeve. Her hair had been brushed out and arranged so that the sides were swept back into two wings, then secured with the familiar golden coronet.

To Gresh, she looked old-fashioned and faintly ridiculous—no one would wear such a dress in present-day Ethshar—but he knew that this was the semi-formal attire of a princess in the Small Kingdoms. Whatever her garb, she was an attractive young woman, and judging by her expression very pleased with her appearance, so he tried to look appropriately admiring.

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.”