“We need to do something about these bugs,” Alorria said, as she sheltered her daughter from a swarm of gnats.
“Ali, it’s a flying carpet,” Tobas said, exasperated. “We’ll be above them soon enough.”
Gresh resisted the temptation to say something. He agreed with Alorria, actually, that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to add some sort of protective cover, but he did not want to take sides in a marital squabble-at least, no more than he already had in advising Tobas to let Alorria accompany them. Besides, he did not want to antagonize the wizard who was supposed to be helping him, nor his nominal employer, nor the representative of the Wizards’ Guild, and Tobas happened to be all three of those things.
Finally, he didn’t want to suggest anything because he saw a marketing opportunity and did not want to throw it away. It should be easy to make money selling enclosed flying machines that would be safer and more comfortable than carpets, and he wanted to keep that money in his family. He would build the craft, or maybe hire Akka’s husband Tresen to do it, and then have Dina cast Varrin’s Lesser Propulsion on them. He didn’t want to involve Tobas, as either partner or competitor.
That would all have to wait, though. First they had to get the mirror out of the cave, then smash it. They might need to take it to the no-wizardry area around the ruined village and fallen castle to break it, but that shouldn’t be difficult-it was just across a narrow valley.
So he kept silent and watched the countryside flashing by below them as they swept through the mountains, covering a three-day hike in less than an hour.
Despite the delays caused by gathering Karanissa and her supplies and by Alorria’s insistence on coming, it was not much past mid-afternoon when the carpet settled back onto the grass in the mountain meadow beside the peculiar little cave where the spriggans had hidden the mirror.
Tobas had set it down in the exact spot it had rested in before; the grass was still pressed down from the previous visit. Gresh frowned slightly, as he saw no reason not to have landed right next to the cave, but decided it wasn’t worth arguing about, not with the entire family along. He was afraid that Alorria and Karanissa might take offense at criticism of their husband, or find an excuse to start bickering.
Dozens of spriggans were visible from where Gresh sat, scattered around the meadow and the surrounding terrain, but most were making at least a pretense of hiding, and none made any threatening moves or showed any signs of approaching the carpet.
“It’s over there,” Gresh told Karanissa, pointing, as he got to his feet and slung his pack on his shoulder. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
“We’ll wait here,” Tobas said, staying seated cross-legged where he was. “To watch the carpet.”
Gresh glanced at Alorria, who smiled up at him without moving. “You two go ahead,” she said.
Gresh had thought that Alorria would stay with Tobas-after all, the wizard was the prize for whom the two women were competing. He was reassured to see that he was right and had not misjudged the situation. “As you please,” he said, nodding his head in a faint intimation of a bow. He beckoned to Karanissa. “If you would, please?”
“Of course.” She was already on her feet and followed gracefully as Gresh crossed the meadow.
The two did not hurry; they still had hours before sunset. Gresh was conserving his energy and making contingency plans, while Karanissa was enjoying the gentle breeze and the scattering of wildflowers.
The crack in the rock wall was half-hidden by shadows, and Gresh was not sure he would have found it again immediately if not for the trampled weeds in front of the opening. As it was, he had no trouble in locating it, but he quickly realized that the torch inside had long since burned out, leaving the interior dark and the mirror invisible; all that was left was a faint whiff of smoke.
“It’s in there,” he said. “I can make a light and throw it in…”
“That won’t be necessary,” Karanissa said.
“What you do?” a spriggan squeaked up at them, as Karanissa raised a hand to the opening in the stones. Gresh turned, intending to shoo the creature away, but then saw that it was not alone-a few dozen spriggans had gathered around and were looking up at the two humans worriedly.
“Nothing terrible,” Gresh said. “We just wanted a look at the mirror in the cave.”
“Leave mirror alone!” shrieked a spriggan, one that was an unusually bright shade of green and had noticeable fingernails.
“We won’t…”
“You don’t take mirror!” squeaked another.
“Listen, we don’t…”
“Not touch mirror!”
Gresh looked to Karanissa for aid, but the witch was staring intently into the crevice. Gresh realized something inside was glowing and turned to see what was happening.
A faint pale glow was coming from the mirror itself; as Gresh watched, it started to rise into the air.
But then several spriggans leapt onto it, dragging it back down, and as Gresh watched dozens more piled on, until the glass disk was completely hidden beneath a pile of squirming little green-brown creatures.
The glow vanished, plunging cave, mirror, and spriggans into utter blackness, and Karanissa gasped, then slumped, catching herself against the rocks.
“Are you all right?” Gresh asked her, worried. He glanced at her, then turned his attention to the spriggans.
They had formed a half-ring around the witch and himself, about three feet away and about four spriggans deep, and more were peering down from atop the rocks above the cave opening. So far they weren’t moving, but just standing, watching the two humans intently.
It occurred to Gresh that where one spriggan was harmless, a few hundred of them would not be; in fact, they might be unstoppable. If they just kept flinging themselves at a person, they could probably smother him to death, or crush him under their weight-and if Karanissa was right about their indestructibility, they wouldn’t be hurt in the process.
This errand, fetching the mirror, might be far more dangerous than he had thought.
“Karanissa?” Gresh asked.
“I’m all right,” she whispered. “Just tired. All those spriggans-I kept trying, I thought I might be able to snatch it out from under them, and they must have weighed a hundred pounds at the very least…”
“I understand,” Gresh said.
He knew that unlike most magicks, witchcraft drew all its energy from the user’s own body. What Karanissa had done had tired her just as much as if she had reached that far into the cave with her hand and tried to lift the mirror with all those spriggans on it, not to mention the energy used in creating that faint light. That must have taken a good bit of strength, and she was a slender woman. Naturally, she would need to catch her breath after such an exertion.
He looked out over the ring of spriggans, across the meadow, at the carpet fifty yards away. Tobas and Alorria were seated on the little rug, facing each other and bent over, heads almost colliding, as they played with the baby. Gresh could see a pudgy hand waving in the air. Several spriggans were watching the baby, as well, but all from a respectful distance of several feet. They had not formed the sort of encirclement that he and Karanissa faced.
And why would they? The baby and her parents weren’t doing anything, weren’t trying to steal their precious mirror.
Even a baby not yet half a year old was far larger than a spriggan-but there was only one baby, and there were hundreds of spriggans.
Gresh debated calling out to Tobas, asking for help, but so far the spriggans crowding around were not doing anything aggressive or making any demands, and he did not want the wizard to over-react and start throwing spells around carelessly. He also did not want to do anything that might prompt the spriggans to attack.