The Spriggan Mirror

Chapter Twenty-Two

It only took a few minutes to collect several half-burned bits of grass and twig from the floor of the cave and to gather a few reasonably cooperative spriggans—one of them freshly emerged from the mirror.

“Now,” Gresh told the spriggans, “we are going to try a few things. If they work, then I want to make an offer to you and all the spriggans in the World that I think is very fair, and which I very much hope you’ll accept.”

“Can’t speak for all spriggans,” one of the larger spriggans said.

“Well, we’ll see what we can do,” Gresh said. “Now, first off, can any of you read?”

The spriggans exchanged glances. “No?” one of them ventured.

“Let’s just see,” Gresh said. He pulled out a jar and showed them the label. “Karanissa, could you provide a little extra light? It’s getting dim in here.”

The witch obliged by holding up a glowing hand. Her imitation stared up at this in obvious amazement, then began studying her own hand.

“Now, look at the jar,” Gresh said to the spriggans. “Can any of you tell me what that label says?”

No one replied. Some stared at the jar; some exchanged glances with one another, but none admitted to having any idea what the label said.

Gresh sighed and lowered the jar. “So you can’t read. I was afraid of that. Can any spriggans read?”

“Don’t think so,” the big one said.

“Well, we’ll just have to hope the human reflections cooperate, or that your originals can figure out pictograms,” Gresh said, as he slid the jar back into its place in the box. “Now, I need a volunteer to go first.”

“What first?” a brighter-green-than-usual spriggan asked warily.

“I’ll show you, as soon as one of you volunteers. It won’t hurt.” He certainly hoped it wouldn’t hurt. He didn’t see any reason it should.

“Fun?” asked a nondescript spriggan.

Gresh smiled, hoping he looked sincere. “Yes, I think it’ll be fun.”

“Have fun, then.” It stepped forward.

“Thank you!” Gresh picked up one of his improvised charcoals, caught up the spriggan in his other hand, and quickly began drawing on the spriggan’s bare belly.

A few of the other spriggans gasped in horror at Gresh’s apparent treachery. Some stepped back as the captive shrieked. A couple of them fled, vanishing into the shadows at the far end of the cave.

“Ack! Tickles!” the spriggan in Gresh’s hand squealed, as it began squirming.

“Just... hold still for a moment,” Gresh said, as he struggled to complete the sketch he was drawing.

The spriggan began giggling uncontrollably and thrashing its arms and legs and ears wildly, but Gresh refused to be distracted or release his hold until he had completed the job. Finally, though, he set the little creature down on a rock and released it.

It stood there gasping, hands waving, laughter gradually subsiding into panting. Then it smiled broadly up at him. “Lots of fun!” it squeaked. “Do it again?”

Gresh smiled back. “No, let someone else have a turn—and don’t smear the drawing! Don’t touch it! Not yet!” He looked around. “Who’s next?” he asked.

This time no one hesitated. “Next! Next!” shrieked another spriggan, beating its comrades in the rush to Gresh’s knee. Gresh picked it up with one hand while he reached for another bit of charcoal with the other.

As he worked on this second spriggan—who was less ticklish than the first, but still enjoyed the experience—he kept glancing at the first, to make sure the quick charcoal sketch wasn’t being ruined. Before starting the third, he set Karanissa and her reflection to guarding the finished ones, making certain they didn’t let anything disturb his crude drawings.

Finally, after decorating six spriggans, he felt he had done the best he could. He set the two women to stand guard over them while he pulled out the jar of purple powder. He sprinkled it over the mirror, then told everyone, “Stand back! Don’t look in the mirror!”

Both Karanissas stepped back, and the spriggans scampered after them.

“Esku!” Gresh shouted.

The powder flared up and was gone.

“Now, the first spriggan,” he called. “The first one I drew on—run forward and look in the mirror, just once!”

After a moment of confused hesitation, the creature obeyed.

“Next!” Gresh called.

One by one, he sent all six to look into the mirror; then, satisfied, he carefully laid his pack over the mirror so that no one else could look in it before the Spell of Reversal wore off.

“Tickle again?” a spriggan asked, sidling up to him.

Gresh looked down at the creature. It was smiling up at him, trying to look endearing—and it was succeeding.

Besides, the thing had helped him with his scheme and deserved some reward. “All right,” he said. He picked it up and began tickling.

After all, he had nothing more urgent to do. There was no need to draw any more pictures. He had sent his message.

Or at least, he hoped he had; success all depended on the assumption that his guess about the mirror’s nature was right. If he was wrong about how it worked, he had just wasted a spell and a good bit of time and effort.

If his theory was correct, though, he had just created six spriggan images in the real spriggans’ world, each of the first five with a picture drawn on its belly, and the sixth with a message in Ethsharitic runes.

The pictures were each numbered in the upper left corner—not with numerals, but with tally marks from | to |||||. The drawings, stick figures done in scratchy charcoal, were intended to convey instructions to the inhabitants of that other world.

The first drawing showed two huge scary people threatening a crowd of spriggans; one of the two giants was still in the process of emerging from an oval intended to represent a mirror.

The second showed two spriggans carrying the mirror between them.

The third showed them placing the mirror in an open box.

The fourth showed them closing the box.

The fifth drawing was the most complicated, showing two scenes—at the top two scary giants coming out of a mirror were heavily crossed out with a big black X that had sent the canvas-spriggan into hysterical screams of laughter, while below that four happy, smiling spriggans stood around the safely closed box. He had had trouble with that one; fitting all of it on a single spriggan had been difficult, and he had used his finest bit of charcoal-tipped twig for the job.

Those five were intended to convey his message to illiterate spriggans, but he hoped they wouldn’t be needed. The sixth spriggan’s belly had a message written on it: “SHUT THE MIRROR IN A SOLID BOX, AND NOTHING ELSE WILL COME OUT OF IT.”

That hadn’t been easy to fit, either. He had debated whether to write the runes forward or backward and had settled on forward—yes, they would probably be reversed on arrival, but so would the images of Karanissa and himself.

Now, if the message got through, and someone in the other world heeded it, then that should solve the spriggan population problem—if the other mirror was safely sealed away where no true spriggans could look in it, then no spriggan images would emerge in the World.

Assuming, of course, that he had correctly deduced the spell’s workings.

The only way to test it was to wait and see. If anything else came out of the mirror, then he would need to try something else.

Even if it all worked perfectly, that only solved half the problem. The other half was that he had promised he would deliver the mirror to Tobas, and right now there were several thousand spriggans who did not want him removing the mirror from this cave. He was fairly certain that there was no magic he could use to force them—if a sixty-foot dragon wasn’t enough to chase them away, then he had no idea what would do the job.

But he might not need to use force.

When he had spent several minutes tickling spriggans, reducing half a dozen of them to helpless laughter, he set the last one on the ground and said, “All you spriggans! Every one who can hear me! Come here—I need to talk to you.”

Two or three dozen more emerged from the shadows.

“Karanissa,” he said. “Would you go tell your husband to let some spriggans through, to talk to me? Perhaps a hundred or so?”

Karanissa frowned at him, then turned up a hand. “As you say,” she replied. She clambered out through the hole in the cave wall, out onto the meadow beside the dragon’s tail.

He glanced down at his pack, covering the mirror. That seemed secure enough for the moment, but he put a foot on a corner of the pack, just in case. Then he waited.

A moment later a good-sized group of spriggans came swarming into the cave, and Gresh found himself surrounded by several dozen pop-eyed little creatures, all staring at him in the gathering gloom. None of them seemed inclined to charge him, or to try to grab the mirror—he had half-expected such a maneuver, and had been ready for it.

When the crowd had quieted he looked around. “Oh, good,” he said. “You look as if you’re ready to listen.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Listen.”

“Spriggans listen.”

Gresh nodded. “Here’s the situation, then. Under my pack there is the enchanted mirror you all came from, and that protects you from harm. If it’s broken into pieces, each of you is multiplied into however many pieces there are, and there may be other connections, as well. Most of you know about that—maybe all of you. You don’t want it to be harmed, or to be taken into the places where wizardry doesn’t work, and you hid it away in this cave to prevent anything like that from happening. You’re all still here, instead of out in the World having fun, because you’re guarding the mirror. Am I right?”

“Right!”

“Yes yes yes!”

“That right.”

“We got in here anyway, Karanissa and me, and meddled with the mirror, and our dragon kept you from stopping us—but you kept us from taking the mirror away by getting between us and our flying carpet, where the dragon couldn’t chase you away safely for fear he might harm either the carpet, or the woman and baby sitting on it. So we have something of a stand-off.”

“Right!”

“Yes!”

“You’re hoping we’ll give up and go away eventually—but that isn’t going to work. First off, I’m as stubborn as you are. Second, if we do give up, that isn’t the end of it—the Wizards’ Guild sent us to get the mirror, and if we don’t bring it back they’ll send someone else, and then someone else, until they do get the mirror away from you. They have lots of magic, and they’ll use it. They want the mirror destroyed, and sooner or later they’ll find a way to get it.”

“No!”

“Bad wizards!”

“No no no no!”

“Yes, that’s how it is.” Even in the gathering gloom, Gresh could see the concern and dismay on all those inhuman little faces and the puzzled interest on the reflected Karanissa’s visage. He also saw the real Karanissa climbing back into the cave; he sensed that she was listening carefully, both with her ears and her witchcraft. “But I’ve been studying the mirror, trying spells on it, and I think I’ve figured out how it works. I’ve decided that I don’t want it destroyed, either. If I leave it here with you, though, sooner or later the Wizards’ Guild is going to find it and destroy it. So what I want to do is give it to the wizards, but make sure that instead of destroying it, they lock it away somewhere safe. If I can do that, it won’t be destroyed, and you don’t need to stay on this mountain to guard it anymore—you can go out in the World and have fun, like the other spriggans! What about that idea?”

Several spriggans began cheering and applauding, but others were calling protests and questions, obviously not convinced. Gresh held up his hands for silence, and with a little help from Karanissa’s witchcraft, silence descended once again over the unruly mob.

“How you do that?” a large spriggan called.

“Not trust you!” said another.

“Of course, of course,” Gresh said consolingly. “Why should you trust me? I’m just another big nasty human. But here’s what I’ll do, to prove I’m serious. I have here a box of magic powders that the wizards gave me to help me fetch the mirror. The red powder casts a spell called Javan’s Geas—do you know what a geas is?”

“No.” Several spriggans shook their heads or otherwise expressed ignorance.

“It’s a compulsion. What Javan’s Geas does is keep someone from doing something. It can’t make someone do something they don’t want to—it’s not that kind of geas. But it can prevent them from doing something they do want to. You understand?”

That elicited a mixed chorus of “yes” and “no” responses.

“What are you doing?” Karanissa’s voice said inside his head. He glanced at her and saw her frowning. She had not spoken aloud.

“Bear with me,” he told her silently.

“If I put a spell on someone with Javan’s Geas,” he told the spriggans, “and order him not to break the mirror, then he can’t break the mirror—the spell won’t let him. You see?”

“Yes yes!”

“No!”

“Spriggan see!”

“Spriggan not understand.”

Gresh sighed.

“What I’m going to do,” he said, “is turn the dragon back into a human wizard and give him the mirror. You understand that part?”

“Not let you!” one large spriggan squealed.

“What I want to do,” Gresh corrected himself, “is turn the dragon back into a human wizard and give him the mirror. Is that clear?”

The responses were a mix of affirmatives and mild puzzlement. Gresh pressed on.

“Then, when he has the mirror, I’m going to cast Javan’s Geas on him three times. The first time I will command him not to ever give the mirror to anyone else, at any price. The second time I will command him not to ever try to damage or destroy the mirror. And the third time I will command him not to ever take the mirror into any of the places where wizards’ magic doesn’t work. After that, he’ll want to keep the mirror safe. He’ll take it back to his castle and lock it up safely, where no one can ever harm it—and you won’t need to stay and guard it anymore; the wizard will guard it for you. You see?”

The spriggans considered that for a moment, while Karanissa silently asked him, “Have you gone completely mad?”

“Notice,” he told her mentally, “that I never said anything about not allowing other wizards to take the mirror from him, should they decide it to be necessary.”

“If you agree to this,” Gresh called to the spriggans, “then just say so. I’ll work the magic, and we can all go have fun—no more guarding caves!”

“You not hurt mirror?” a spriggan asked hesitantly.

“I swear to you, by my true name and all the gods, that I do not intend to damage the mirror.”

“Wizard not hurt mirror?”

“I swear to you, by my true name and all the gods, that if you let us take the mirror away, I will enchant the wizard Tobas of Telven with Javan’s Geas so that he cannot damage the mirror.”

For a moment, then, the cave was utterly silent, as Gresh looked out over the crowd of spriggans and they stared back.

Then one voice somewhere in the back said, “Fun!”

With that a chorus of squeaking and squealing erupted. Gresh could not make out most of what was being said, but after a moment he got the definite impression that he had convinced a majority of his listeners and that they were attempting to persuade the rest.

“What if Tobas doesn’t agree to go along with this?” Karanissa asked silently.

“I wasn’t planning to give him a choice,” Gresh replied.

With that he reached down and pulled two jars out of the battered wooden box, one of bright orange powder and the other of dark red. Then he asked Karanissa, “Is the magic still reversed?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll have to wait a few more minutes.” He sat down on a convenient rock, the two jars cradled in his lap.