Besides, he and Karanissa still hadn’t retrieved the mirror, and if they didn’t get it out of the cave soon, the spriggans would almost certainly carry it off and hide it somewhere else, now that they knew that Gresh and his comrades were trying to take it.
This was all very annoying, and Gresh was irritated with himself for not having prepared for this situation. When he had thought about how they would retrieve the mirror he had somehow not expected to find this great horde of spriggans guarding the confounded thing, and in retrospect he wondered why he hadn’t considered the possibility. He supposed it was because he hadn’t thought of the little nuisances as intelligent enough to do anything so organized, but he now saw that this had been foolish of him. They could talk, they could use tools, and even a family of birds can organize well enough to guard a nest. Spriggans were stupid, but they weren’t that stupid.
Right now a hundred or so were watching him intently.
“Did you want something?” he asked the encircling spriggans.
“You go away!”
“Leave mirror alone!”
“Not touch!”
“Why?” Gresh asked. “It seems like an interesting thing. Why shouldn’t I look at it?”
“Might break!”
“Spriggans need it!”
“Could die!”
“Well, if it’s that important,” Gresh asked, “why do you have it out here in a dirty old cave, where some animal might get in and break it, instead of safely locked away in a castle somewhere?”
Too many tried to reply simultaneously for Gresh to make any sense of the response to his question. He held up both hands in a calming gesture.
“Now, now,” he said. “There’s no need to shout.” He pointed to one especially excited-looking spriggan. “Can you explain it to me?”
“Not trust castles,” the spriggan said. “Full of people. Some people not like spriggans, might break mirror on purpose!”
“Well, what about a deserted castle?” He did not actually point at the mountain to the east, but there could be no question of what he meant.
“Not safe! Mirror not work there!”
“Well, how safe is it here? What if a wolf got into that cave?”
“Mirror works here, and spriggans guard cave, keep animals out.”
“You guard it? Is that why you’re all here?”
“Yes, yes! Not like it here, but guard mirror, keep safe!”
“You don’t like it here?”
“No! But spriggans stay and guard.”
“Some spriggans didn’t stay, though-I’ve seen them all the way on the far side of the World, in Ethshar of the Rocks.”
“Spriggans take turns. Enough stay here to fill cave, and others go, then come back.”
Enough to fill the cave? Gresh glanced into the darkness of the opening and tried to guess how many that actually was. A great many, certainly. There was another obvious question. “They come back?” he asked.
The spriggan looked uncertain and glanced at its companions.
“Someday, maybe,” one squeaked.
“That the idea,” added another.
“So they’re out having fun, while you’re stuck here guarding the mirror. That doesn’t seem very fair.”
“Life not fair,” a spriggan agreed.
“Must guard mirror,” said another.
That didn’t seem to be getting anywhere; Gresh glanced at Karanissa, who seemed to be largely but not completely recovered. He decided he needed to keep the conversation going a little longer. “Why is the mirror so very important?” he asked. “Aren’t there already enough spriggans in the World?”
“Oh, yes,” one spriggan said brightly.
“Maybe.”
“Not know.”
“Not matter.”
“You go now,” said a larger-than-average one.
Karanissa leaned over and whispered into his ear, “Some of them don’t much like that question-I could feel their dismay when you asked it.”
That was the closest Karanissa had yet come to him, and Gresh tried not to be distracted by the scent of her, or her hair brushing his shoulder. He concentrated on her words.
They didn’t want to tell him why the mirror was important-but it apparently was not for making more spriggans; that was interesting and unexpected. Why did they care about it, then? He had taken it for granted that they wanted to reproduce, like any living creature, and that the mirror was important to them for that reason, but perhaps that was not the case at all. Magical creatures did not always follow the usual rules.
But what else did the spriggan mirror do?
If he could get it to a properly equipped wizard’s laboratory back in the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, the Guild’s experts might be able to figure that out, but out here on the mountainside, with a few feet of rock between him and the mirror, the only way to determine it seemed to be to ask the questions the spriggans didn’t want asked and to coax honest answers out of the little pests.
“What does the mirror do that’s so important?” he asked.
“You go now,” the big spriggan said. “No more questions.”
“But I…”
“You go now.” The threat was now unmistakable, despite the creature’s squeaky, high-pitched voice.
Gresh looked around and saw that the ring of spriggans had thickened and solidified as new arrivals filled in gaps and pushed their comrades closer together. Spriggans were now peering out at him from the mouth of the cave, as well. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them in all.
Enough to fill the cave, that one had said-and none of them were smiling. They didn’t look worried or confused anymore; they looked determined.
“If we go now…” he began, then stopped. He had been planning to ask whether they would move the mirror, but he did not want to give them any ideas that hadn’t yet occurred to them. He turned to Karanissa and said, “Can you…?”
“No,” she interrupted. “Don’t even ask. With all of them in there?”
“We need to get into the cave somehow.”
“No! You stay out of cave!” shrieked a spriggan.
“What we need is to chase them away,” Karanissa said.
“Any ideas on that?”
She turned up an empty palm. “Nothing comes to mind.”
“No witchcraft you can use?”
“Not with so many.”
“No chase spriggans! You go!”
“Go away! Go away!”
“Maybe a spell? Wizardry, or some sorcery from your pack?”
Gresh looked at the couple on the carpet, still happily playing with the baby, oblivious to what was happening to their companions. He tried to think what spells might be useful, and how he might get Tobas’s attention. Why didn’t the wizard look up? Was that baby of his that fascinating? He was supposed to be helping Gresh get the mirror, not counting his daughter’s toes for the hundredth time.
Or there were the powders and potions in his own pack; would any of those help? He reviewed what he had brought.
Lirrim’s Rectification and Javan’s Restorative were counterspells and would be of no use here-though they might be very important once he had the mirror. Javan’s Geas would force someone not to do something; if it worked on spriggans he could command at least a dozen of them not to interfere with him and Karanissa while they retrieved the mirror, but he didn’t have anywhere near enough powder to affect a mob of this size.
And that assumed it worked on spriggans at all, which was by no means a certainty.
The Spell of Reversal had no obvious application, and its exact effects could sometimes be hard to predict.