When Wigglefingers took Spider out for his morning dives, the wizard knew well where they were going and how deep the water would be.
Donnola looked up from the map to regard the mage then, as he stood to the side passively, having obviously already received Pericolo’s big announcement, and when Donnola shifted her gaze to consider her Grandfather, she found there the most contented and satisfied grin she had ever seen from the man.
And then she understood. “You found it,” she said breathlessly. Pericolo just kept grinning.
“The Lichwreck,” Donnola whispered, looking back to the pointing finger, settled just south of Aglarond.
“Ebonsoul,” Pericolo added, referring to a powerful lich, reputedly sealed inside a silver coffin aboard his boat, Thepurl’s Diamond. According to legend, the ship had been sunk by pirates around the time of the Spellplague. It was rumored to hold crates stuffed with the great magical treasure hoard of Ebonsoul, taken from his lair led them at a great pace o profoundlyon in the Chondalwood.
All around the southeastern stretches of the Sea of Fallen Stars, mariners whispered about the Lichwreck; it had been a topic of conversation at many of the parties Donnola had attended. She had always thought of it as rumor and legend, a source of intrigue and daydreams, and fantasies of great power and wealth. She had always considered the stories greatly exaggerated, a way for idle noblemen to puff up their peacock feathers with feigned adventure, but Donnola knew well that Pericolo truly believed in the stories of Thepurl’s Diamond’s treasure hoard. He hadn’t pursued his search for any gain of power or wealth even, but because he considered this to be his ultimate adventure.
He would be the man who salvaged Ebonsoul’s treasures, and in doing so, Pericolo Topolino would forever etch his name among the legends of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
“How do you know it’s …?” Donnola started to ask.
“It is there,” Pericolo answered flatly. “Settled in a trench twelve leagues southwest of Aglarond’s southwestern-most point.”
Donnola swallowed hard and stared back at the map. “How do you know?”
“I have suspected it for a long time,” Pericolo answered.
“I have summoned water elementals around the area to investigate for us,” Wigglefingers added. He stepped to the side of the room, to a hutch covered with astrolabes and rolled charts and a pair of spyglasses. From a drawer he produced an item covered in a black cloth and returned to the table.
Donnola and Wigglefingers stared each other in the eye as the mage slowly removed the cloth, revealing a daggerlike shard of glass-no, not glass, Donnola realized, but a piece of a broken mirror. She tilted her head not sure what to make of the curious item.
“Go ahead and look into it,” Pericolo said. “You are too large for the shard’s magic to activate in any substantive way.”
Donnola took the glass from Wigglefingers and peered at her reflection, or what part of it she could see in the shard, which was not more than three fingers’ breadth at its thickest point.
She saw half her smile and one brown eye … no, half her frown and a bloodshot brown eye. Perplexed, she drew back and looked at her companions.
Wigglefingers, smiling, held out his hand for the shard and Donnola handed it over.
“Were it the complete mirror and not just a sliver, I would never have allowed you to peer into it,” Pericolo said.
Donnola shrugged, growing more curious still as she looked to the wizard, who produced from one of the many pockets in his grand robe a small rat. The creature climbed around his hand as he rolled it over for Donnola to see. Wigglefingers bent to the floor at the side of the table, rat in one hand, mirror shard in the other, and placed both down so that the rat could get a look at itself.
Donnola gasped and nearly jumped out of her shoes as a second rat, identical to the first, ran out of the mirror, rushing wildly right for the first, who responded in kind. With sudden, seemingly insane ferocity, the rodents attacked each other, biting and rolling in a confused ball that quickly became bloody. Rat screeches filled the air.
“Stop it!” Donnola pleaded, horrified by the sight. She looked to Wigglefingers, who was already living up to his nickname, his hand waving in the air. themselvesI ‘on
He cast a spell, a dispel actually, and the air shimmered with magical energy and one of the rats simply disappeared.
“What?” the young halfling woman asked with a gasp.
“A Mirror of Opposition,” Pericolo explained. “Any who look into it will find a replica of themselves stepping forth, and to do battle.”
“And it teems still with considerable magic, though it has obviously been shattered and has lain at the bottom of the sea for a hundred years,” Wigglefingers explained.
“Ebonsoul had one, so say the tales,” Pericolo remarked.
“And you found this …?” Donnola paused and poked her finger down on the spot on the nautical map.
Pericolo nodded somberly. “It is the Lichwreck. I have suspected it for some time. And now I have the means to get to it.”
Donnola nodded as she digested the words, then her eyes went wide as she came to understand them, as the end of that statement, “the means to get to it,” rang clear in her mind.
“You have come to love him as a son,” she protested, barely able to find her voice.
Pericolo looked at her, at first seeming surprised by her remark, but then with a clever smile. “And you more than that?” he retorted.
Donnola laughed it off, but her grandfather didn’t stop grinning.
“Do you deny that you love Spider?” Donnola asked.
“Why would I? I brought him into our family as truly as if he were my own chil-grandchild,” Pericolo replied. “His father resides in a house I purchased and survives on funds I deliver.”
“Yet you mean to send him to do this,” Donnola said dryly. “You will send him to the depths in search of this shipwreck.”
“Danger is a part of life, my girl, and an important part. Never forget that!”
“You will send him to his death!”
“I deny your description! For years, I have searched for Ebonsoul’s lost treasure, and now it is mine, within my grasp.”
“Because of Spider.”
“Yes.”
“So you value this treasure more than you value-” Donnola started to accuse, but a flash of anger in Pericolo’s eyes stopped her short.
“It is precisely my love of the boy that leads me to offer this to him,” the Grandfather argued. “Oh, but that I had his gift of the genasi! Of all the adventures I have known, of all the victories and the plunder, this would eclipse them as surely as a giant moon could block the sun!”
“And eclipse them in danger?”
Pericolo snorted at the thought. “I send you into the lair of sand jackals every tenday and I love you more dearly than any other.”
“That is different,” Donnola replied. “I am older and more worldly.”
“Not when you started,” Pericolo shot back. “Think back, my pretty granddaughter. How old were you when you attended your first ball in Delthuntle? It was before your sixteenth birthday, I believe, and Spider is nearly two years beyond that mark. Alpirs and UntarisI ‘onBy the time you had reached his age, you had attended scores of such festivities in the pits of intrigue, and more than one of those balls ended with a body found in a nearby alleyway, yes? And by your eighteenth birthday, you had, with my blessing and encouragement, robbed a dozen palaces, pickpocketed half the lords of Aglarond, and killed a trio of assassins, including two in one fight! Should I have hidden Donnola in a room as we do Spider?”
She sputtered but had no real response.
“Or do you now believe that I did not care for you, and was reckless?”
“That was different,” she said softly and without much conviction. “He is ready to earn his way, to step up to a position of authority and responsibility.”