Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 9 - The Spriggan Mirror

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The Spriggan Mirror
A Legend of Ethshar
Chapter One
Gresh was yawning, still not entirely awake, when the bell jingled and the just-unlocked door of his shop
opened behind him, letting in a swirl of cold air. He blinked once more, flexed his shoulders, and started
to turn. “Don’t you ever sleep?” his eldest sister’s voice demanded.
Gresh finished his yawn, finished his stretching, finished his turn, and then replied, “Good
morning, Dina. I slept well, thank you—and you?”
“You certainly didn’t sleep very much,” Dina retorted. She was standing in the doorway, hands
on her hips, glaring at him. She wore her wizard’s robe, which generally meant she was on business. “I
was trying to reach you until at least an hour after midnight. Twilfa didn’t know where you were, but
wherever you were, you were still awake...”
“And having a lovely time, I might add,” he interrupted. He smiled broadly at her, then glanced at
the shop curtains he had been about to open and decided not to move them just yet. Dina’s presence in
her robe often implied a commission, and that might well mean traveling. If it required an immediate
departure he would just need to close up shop again. He leaned back against his counter.
“I’m sure you were,” Dina said. “Are you planning to see her again, whoever she was, or just
add her to the long list of pleasant memories?”
“Well, I don’t think you’ll be acquiring a new sister-in-law in the immediate future—but you
didn’t come here to inquire about my love life, Dina. I take it you were trying to use the Spell of Invaded
Dreams to contact me last night?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And it always leaves you in a foul temper when a spell doesn’t work, even if it’s not your fault. I
apologize for the inconvenience. What was it you wanted to tell me?”
“I need the blood of an unborn child,” Dina replied. “I thought I needed it urgently, since the spell
was already started when I discovered I’d run out, but it seems to have dissipated safely after all, since I
couldn’t find you to get more.”
“You didn’t check beforehand?” Gresh asked, shocked. “You didn’t make sure you had all the
ingredients ready? Gods, Dina...!”
“I checked,” she protested. “Of course I checked! I had one vial left.” She held up two fingers
perhaps an inch and a half apart, indicating the size of the vial in question. “Then a spriggan spilled it on
the cat.”“Oh.” Gresh grimaced as he pushed himself upright and began fishing in his belt-purse for
something. “My sympathies. Spriggans do get into everything, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do. The little monsters are attracted by magic, you know—especially wizardry. Locks
and spells can’t keep them out. I hate the stupid things!”
“I, for one, don’t blame you a bit,” Gresh said, pulling out the key he had sought. “They’re a
nuisance, no doubt about it.” He turned to look at the magically-sealed iron door of the vault room that
young Twilfa could not open unassisted. “How much did you need? And how were you planning to
pay?” Then he paused and looked at Dina. “Blood of an unborn child? Was that for the Greater Spell of
Transmutation?”
“Yes. Not that it’s any of your business.” She stepped into the shop, pushing the door partly
closed behind her, then crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’re sure it dissipated safely? Isn’t that a high-order spell?”
“Of course it is,” she said, marching forward. “You let me worry about it, Gresh. I’m just here
for the blood.”
“Yes, well, I have a reputation to maintain...”
“As a supplier of goods and ingredients, not as a confounded babysitter,” she said. “I’m ten
years older than you and a master wizard; I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t want anyone thinking I sold you anything that wasn’t exactly as described,” Gresh
protested. “If you turn yourself into a toad, then I don’t want a bunch of wizards whispering to each other
that it happened because I sold you a bad batch of baby’s blood.”
“The blood was bad?” a new voice asked, worried, and brother and sister turned to see Twilfa,
their youngest sister and Gresh’s assistant, emerging from the rear passageway with the freshly filled coal
bucket. She set it on the hearth, then looked at Dina. “I thought you said a spriggan spilled it on the cat.”
“No, the blood was not bad,” Gresh said, with a hint of a growl.
“Is the cat all right?” Twilfa asked, as she transferred coal from the bucket to the grate.
“Is anyone... Are you open?” an unfamiliar voice called from the still partially open front door.
Gresh sighed. “Why don’t you two discuss it all while I see to my customer?” he asked, dropping
the key back into his purse and heading for the door. “Come in, come in!” he called.
“I can’t open the vault!” Twilfa called after him. “I can’t open the explosive seal.”
“I’ll be right back,” Gresh told her, as he let in the tall, black-haired woman in a red dress. He
did not recognize her, and he was quite sure he would not have forgotten a face like hers.
“The door was open, and I heard voices,” the new arrival said uncertainly. She spoke with an
odd accent, one that struck Gresh as somehow old-fashioned.
“I was just preparing to open the shop, my dear,” Gresh said with a bow. “Do come in.” He
stepped aside and ushered her into the center of the room.
She obeyed and stood on the lush Sardironese carpet, looking around curiously.
Gresh was aware that Dina and Twilfa were both standing by the iron vault, staring silently at the
stranger, but he ignored them. “Now, what can I do for you?” he asked.
The stranger tore her gaze away from the endless shelves of boxes and jars and said, “We want
to hire you.”
“Hire me?” Gresh smiled indulgently. “I’m afraid I’m not for hire, my lady. I sell wizards’
supplies; I don’t run errands.”
“I’m not a lady,” the stranger said. “I’m a witch. We were told that if we wanted something hard
to find, something magical, something wizardly, then you were the man to see.”
Gresh considered her for a moment.
He had assumed she wasn’t a wizard, from her attitude toward him, toward his shop, and toward
her own belt-knife; she did not wear her knife quite the way wizards wore their magic daggers, though
Gresh could not have explained the difference coherently. Besides, he knew most of the wizards in
Ethshar of the Rocks by sight, if not always by name, and he was sure he had never seen her before.
It hadn’t occurred to him that she might be some other sort of magician. From her appearance
and slightly stilted pronunciation, he had assumed she was just another wealthy ninny, perhaps a princess
from the Small Kingdoms, looking for something exotic to impress someone, or trying to hire adventurers
for some foolish scheme.
But witches were rarely ninnies—and for that matter, rarely wealthy. They were also not
ordinarily his customers, but perhaps this person had her reasons for coming here. He decided she could
indeed be a witch, and telling the exact truth.
“Who is ‘we’?” he asked.
“My husband and I. Really, he’s the one who wants to hire you, but he’s busy with the baby, so I
came instead.”
The husband was busy with the baby, so the wife was running his errands? The beautiful young
wife who claimed to be a witch and whose slim figure showed no evidence of having recently borne a
child? Gresh glanced at his sisters. He wanted to hear this explained, but he had his business to attend to.
“I do not run errands,” he said.
“Fine,” the woman said calmly. “Then let me put it this way. My husband is a wizard, and he
wants to buy a specific magical item from you.”
Gresh could hardly deny that that was exactly his line of business. “Could you wait here for a
moment, please?” he said.
“Certainly.”
He turned and hurried to the vault door, where he fished out the key again, unlocked the lock,
then pried a large black wax seal off with a thumbnail, being careful not to mar the rune etched into the
wax. He set the seal aside, to be softened over a candle-flame and re-used later, and placed a glass bowl
over it to keep it safe from stray fingers. If anyone else touched that seal, anyone but himself, it would
explode violently, and Gresh did not particularly want to risk burning down the shop because Twilfa got
careless or a customer got curious.
“There,” he said, opening the vault. “Twilfa, find her blood for her, would you? I’ll help you in a
moment. And afterward, I want you to find Tira.”
“Tira?” Twilfa looked at the woman in red, then back at her brother. “What do you want her
for?” Gresh glared at her silently for a moment, then turned back to his waiting customer without
explaining. Twilfa ought to be able to figure it out for herself, and he did not care to say anything that the
customer might overhear. An ordinary person wouldn’t have heard a whispered explanation at that
distance, but a witch would—as Twilfa ought to know. Tira, another of their sisters, was a witch, and
Twilfa had certainly had plenty of opportunity to observe just how keen Tira’s senses were. One witch
could always tell another and could also evaluate the other witch’s honesty. Tira might be useful in
assessing the customer in the red dress.
Twilfa threw one final curious glance at the stranger, then stepped into the vault, Dina close
behind. “Now,” Gresh said, returning to the front of the shop, “what was it your husband wanted to
buy?” “A mirror,” the witch said. “A very specific mirror, about this big.” She held out her hands in a
rough circle perhaps five inches in diameter. “He last saw it in the Small Kingdoms, in the mountains near
the border between Dwomor and Aigoa.”
“The Small Kingdoms.” That was more or less the far side of the World, and explained her
accent. “Yes. In or near Dwomor.”
“And is this mirror still there?”
“We don’t know.”
Gresh suppressed a sigh. “My dear, the Small Kingdoms are almost a hundred leagues from
here, and my time...”
“We have a flying carpet to take you there,” she interrupted. “And we can pay you well.”
Gresh blinked. “A flying carpet?” He glanced at the vault; Dina and Twilfa were out of sight
behind the iron door.
“Yes.”
Flying carpets required high-order magic; not one wizard in twenty could produce one reliably.
And a wizard who had one, assuming he had made it himself, could generally find most of the ingredients
for his spells without assistance, rather than paying Gresh. Certainly finding a mirror should not be so very
difficult for such a wizard.
“What’s unique about this mirror?” he asked. “Why do you want me to find it for you?”
The self-proclaimed witch replied, “It’s where spriggans come from.”
Gresh considered that for a moment. On the face of it, it seemed preposterous—but then, a great
deal of what wizards did was preposterous. She looked calm and sincere, and why in the World would
anyone come to him with so absurd a story if it wasn’t true?
“Have a seat, my dear,” he said, gesturing to the maroon velvet chairs in one corner. “I’ll need to
hear the whole story, but let me finish with this other customer first.”
The Spriggan Mirror
A Legend of Ethshar
Chapter Two
Once Dina was safely on her way with a fresh bottle of blood, Gresh locked and re-sealed the vault,
closed the front door, and settled on the other velvet chair. He watched as Twilfa slipped out the back,
then turned to focus on his customer.
“Now, my dear, if you could explain to me what you know of this mirror, I will consider whether
or not I can obtain it for you.”
“Thank you.” The woman nodded an acknowledgment. “My name is Karanissa of the
Mountains. About four hundred and seventy years ago, in the course of my military service, I met a
powerful wizard named Derithon the Mage, or Derithon of Helde. He was much older than I, but we
thought each other to be good company, and before long I found myself living in his castle—a magical
castle floating in a void outside the World entirely. Are you familiar with such things?”
“I’ve heard of them,” Gresh said cautiously. He was wondering now whether he was dealing with
a witch or with a madwoman. Although nothing she had said was impossible, Gresh had never before
met anyone other than wizards who claimed to have lived more than a century, and as he understood it,
manufactured places outside the World were extremely scarce—not to mention notoriously dangerous to
create. “Well, Derry had made one, which could be reached through a Transporting Tapestry. We lived
there happily for a time, but one day Derry was called away, leaving me in the castle, and he never
returned. The tapestry leading out of the castle stopped working, stranding me there. I found out later
that Derry had died just on the other side of the tapestry, altering the appearance of the room—you
know how Transporting Tapestries work?”
“In theory,” Gresh said. He had heard them described, and of course he knew what ingredients
went into the spell to make one, but had never personally used one. Anyone could simply step into the
image on the tapestry and instantly find oneself in the actual place depicted, no matter how far away it
was—but the image had to be exact, or the tapestry would not work properly, if at all. “I don’t quite see
how his death would change anything, though.” Gresh knew there were spells that would stop working if
the wizard who had worked them died, but they were much less common than most people supposed,
and he was certain that the Transporting Tapestry wasn’t one of them.
Karanissa sighed. “The tapestry came out in a secret room, and Derry died there, and no one
found his body. The tapestry didn’t work as long as his bones were lying on what was depicted as empty
floor.” “Oh, I see.” He had not realized the tapestries were that specific, but it made sense.
“The point is,” Karanissa continued, “I was stranded in his castle for more than four and a half
centuries. I didn’t know it was that long—he’d put a spell of eternal youth on me, and the castle was
magically supplied with food and water. I used my own witchcraft to let me pass the time swiftly, so I lost
track of time, and had no idea it had been that long. At last, though, a young wizard named Tobas of
Telven happened to find the secret room and the Transporting Tapestry. He found his way into the castle,
and eventually he figured out how to get us both out again. While he was looking for a way out, though,
he went through Derry’s book of spells, studying the situation and learning more magic. One spell he
tried, Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm, went wrong, and instead of producing the phantasm, it produced a
spriggan.”
Gresh held up a hand. “What do you mean, ‘produced’?”
“Do you know how the spell works?”
“I think I’ve heard of it.” He had heard Dina and others describe it, but he wanted to hear his
would-be customer’s version.
“Well, it requires a mirror, and in this case, instead of creating the phantasm it was supposed to
create, the spell enchanted the mirror, and the spriggan climbed out of the mirror as if the glass were a
door. A minute or two later another spriggan did the same thing, and a moment after that a third, and they
kept coming. That’s where all the spriggans come from. By the time we got the tapestry working again
there were dozens of them running around loose in the castle, and some of them came through to the
World with us. They stole the mirror so we couldn’t break it and hid it somewhere, and it’s been popping
out spriggans ever since.”
Gresh stared at her, considering this, keeping his face expressionless.
Spriggans had started appearing a few years ago, without explanation; they had just suddenly
been there, getting underfoot, poking into everything, babbling nonsense. It was just one or two at first,
but they had gradually been growing more common. Divinations had not, so far as he knew, been able to
determine their origin, although everyone was fairly certain they were a product of wizardry. He had
never before heard anything about spriggans coming from an enchanted mirror. They were, as Dina had
said, drawn to magic in general, and wizardry in particular—but, annoyingly, most magic did not work on
them. That was typical of wizardry; other spells almost never worked properly on something that was
already enchanted.
And here was this person, claiming that someone named Derry—no, someone named
Tobas—had created them accidentally, by miscasting Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm.
Gresh knew a good deal about how the Phantasm worked. It was his business, as a wizards’
supplier, to know as much as possible about all wizardry, so he made a point of coaxing as much
information as he could from not just Dina, but every other wizard he sold to. He did not think he had
actually picked up any Guild secrets yet, but he certainly knew more about wizardry than the vast
majority of people.
The Phantasm was an easy spell, one many wizards had learned before they had finished the third
year of apprenticeship. Who was this Tobas who had botched it so spectacularly?
But that wasn’t entirely fair, he told himself. Dina had told him that if a spell went wrong, there
was no way to predict what it would do. It might just do nothing, like her ruined spell of the night before,
or it might do a variant of the intended spell, or it might do something completely different, and the effect
might be utterly out of proportion. The famous Tower of Flame in the Small Kingdoms had supposedly
been created when someone sneezed while performing a simple fire-lighting spell, after all. Perhaps this
spriggan-generating mirror was the result of just as innocent a mistake.
“When did this happen?” he asked.
“5221,” Karanissa replied. “Some time in Leafcolor, or possibly at the very end of Harvest.”
“Six and a half years ago, going on seven.” That was well before Gresh had ever heard of
spriggans, so that fit the facts. “Why are you only looking for the mirror now?”
“We were busy.” She turned up an empty palm. “And we thought the spriggans were harmless.
And we didn’t know the mirror would produce so many. At first we didn’t think it would produce any,
once it was out of the castle.”
“Just who is ‘we’? You and your husband, or are others involved?”
“My husband and his other wife and I.”
Other wife? The husband staying with the baby while Karanissa saw to business suddenly made
sense. “And your husband is this wizard named Tobas of Telven, then?”
“That’s right.”
“You hadn’t mentioned that he had another wife.”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“She wasn’t involved in creating the mirror?”
“No. She’s not a magician.”
Gresh nodded and inquired no further about that, although he was curious. Other people’s family
arrangements were not his business.
Magical objects sometimes were, though. “And you want me to find this spriggan- generating
mirror for you.”
“Yes. You come highly recommended; Telurinon and Kaligir both spoke well of you.”
Once again Gresh found himself staring silently at the woman for a moment before he spoke.
Telurinon was one of the most powerful wizards in Ethshar of the Sands and was rumored to be a high
official in the Wizards’ Guild. He had reportedly supervised the Guild’s efforts to remove a usurper from
the overlord’s throne last year, though of course no one would admit to telling Gresh anything of the sort.
And Kaligir, here in Ethshar of the Rocks, was definitely a high official in the Guild—when his name and
the question of his status came up a year or so back Dina had admitted he was a Guildmaster and had
hinted that he was perhaps the city’s senior Guildmaster.
“You know them?” he asked.
“We know Telurinon. We helped him dispose of poor Tabaea. We’ve met Kaligir once or twice;
he was the one who directed us here, at Telurinon’s suggestion.”
The mere fact that this woman knew those two names made it much less likely that she was mad,
but her story was more outlandish than ever. She and her husband had helped defeat the self-proclaimed
Empress of Ethshar who had briefly taken power in Ethshar of the Sands last year? And it seemed she
and her husband got their shopping suggestions from the upper echelons of the Wizards’ Guild.
Add that to a magic castle, eternal youth, the accidental creation of the spriggans that plagued the
World, and it was a little much to accept.
“How did you come to be asking their advice?”
Karanissa frowned—the first time Gresh had seen her do so. “They weren’t advising us as much
as ordering us,” she said.
“Oh?”
“The Wizards’ Guild holds my husband responsible for the spriggans,” Karanissa explained.
“They summoned us to a meeting, back in Snowfall, and told us as much. A good many wizards have
been complaining about the silly things and demanding the Guild do something. They’ve caused a lot of
trouble. There’s a man named Ithanalin who got turned to stone or something when he tripped over a
spriggan, and was petrified until his apprentice taught herself enough magic to cure him....”
“Kilisha,” Gresh said. “I know Ithanalin and Kilisha.” That was a mild exaggeration; he had met
them, even sold them a few things, but no more than that. He remembered the fuss about Ithanalin’s
accident; he hadn’t been petrified, exactly, but Gresh supposed the exact details didn’t matter.
“Yes, well, that was one instance,” Karanissa said. “Ithanalin has been very persistent in
demanding Kaligir do something about the spriggans. There have been any number of other ruined spells
and spilled potions and wasted ingredients....”
Gresh remembered Dina’s precious blood, spilled on her cat. “Yes,” he said.
“No one’s been killed yet, so far as we know, but it seems almost as if it’s just a matter of time,
and the Guild wants Tobas to do something about the spriggans before it comes to that. He created
them, Telurinon says, so it’s his responsibility to stop them. And that starts with destroying the mirror—if
we don’t do that, it’ll just make more.”
“But first you need to find it.”
“Yes. The spriggans hid it, and we need to find it.”
“So you came to me.”
“When nothing else worked, yes.”
Gresh did not like the sound of that—but then, if the Guild had ordered them to do something
about the spriggans back in Snowfall of last year, and they had already been working on the problem for
five months, then coming to him had clearly not been their first idea. “What else did you try?” he asked.
“Well, since the Guild wanted us to do it, we thought it was only fair to ask them to help us, so
we did. We had Mereth of the Golden Door use every divination in her book, and half a dozen other
wizards, as well, but none of them could locate the mirror. We consulted three or four theurgists and
even a demonologist, to no avail—the gods apparently can’t even perceive spriggans, let alone identify
their source, no matter how roundabout you make the questions, and there don’t seem to be any demons
who deal with this sort of thing. Witches don’t have the range—I could have told them that, but Tobas
talked to a couple of others just to be sure no one had found a way during the four hundred years I was
gone. Warlocks had no idea of how to even begin looking, and the scientists and ritual dancers didn’t do
much better.” She sighed wearily at the memory. “So when magic failed us, we decided to try other
methods. Lady Sarai can’t leave her duties as the overlord’s investigator and didn’t have any clever
ideas, but Telurinon said you were the best in the World at finding hard-to-find things without magic—so
here I am.”
“Indeed,” Gresh said. He leaned back, keeping his eyes on his guest.
This was, at least potentially, a problem—and an opportunity.
He made an excellent living supplying wizards with the ingredients for their spells; he had been
doing it since boyhood. He had started out running errands for his older sisters—mostly Dina, since
wizards used so many odd ingredients in their spells, but also occasionally Tira and Chira and Shesta.
Witches used herbs and other tools; sorcerers sometimes wanted particular metals or gems for their
talismans and were always looking for leftover bits of old sorcery; and demonologists sometimes needed
specific things to pay demons for their services. His business was never entirely for wizards, but wizards
certainly made up the bulk of his business.
He had started with his sisters, but then he had begun to fetch things for their friends, and then
friends of friends, and then people with no connection he knew of who had heard his name somewhere.
Word had spread; by the time he finished his apprenticeship and opened his own shop, he had
developed a reputation for being fast, efficient, honest, and discreet.
He had also developed a reputation for being able to get anything, given time.
This reputation let him charge high prices—higher, in fact, than any other supplier in the city. Even
so, he had never lacked for business. There were always people willing to pay more for the best.
The problem was that he had to stay the best. He had to maintain his reputation as the man who
could get anything a wizard needed. He could never admit that there was something he couldn’t find, or
couldn’t obtain once it was found.
So far, no such admission had been necessary; sooner or later he had gotten everything he went
after, or else had been able to give good, sound reasons why he would not seek certain things. As he
explained to anyone who asked: he would not kill or maim anyone to obtain an item; he would not violate
Wizards’ Guild rules, and he tried to obey the overlords’ laws; and some of the things people had
attempted to buy simply didn’t exist.
Or at least, he said they didn’t exist, and no one had ever proved him wrong.
This spriggan mirror, though, apparently did exist. If Karanissa was telling the truth, she knew it
existed. Fetching it would not break any Guild rules; in fact, the Guild wanted it found. He wouldn’t be
stealing it, or breaking any other laws so far as he could see, and he could see no reason anyone would
be killed or maimed if he acquired it. By his own rules, therefore, he should have no objection to going
after it. Unless he could find a new and convincing excuse, refusing the task would severely damage his
reputation.
Finding it, of course, would enhance his reputation. If he could become known as the man who
eliminated the nuisance of the spriggans once and for all, he could crank his prices up even higher. He
would be a minor hero throughout the Hegemony.
The problem was that if he agreed to get it and failed to do so, his reputation would be not
merely damaged, but ruined—and he had no idea how to find the thing! By Karanissa’s account, most of
his usual methods would not work.
Of course, no one outside the family knew what his usual methods were—and he liked it that
way. Keeping his trade secrets secret added to his aura of mystery and kept the competition down.
“Will you get it for us?” Karanissa asked, interrupting his train of thought.
He really had no choice. “Of course,” he said. “But it may take some time, and it will be very
expensive.”
“The Guild has agreed to cover the cost,” she replied. “We will pay any price.”
Gresh blinked at that. Any price?
He had thought he might scare her away; given his reputation for charging high prices, he had
thought that when he said “very expensive” she might reconsider and save him the trouble of actually
finding the mirror. But the Guild would pay?
When the Wizards’ Guild said “any price,” that meant rather more than when anyone else said it.
The Wizards’ Guild had entire worlds at their disposal.
But of course, the witch might not have meant it literally. She could not be a member of the Guild
herself and might have misinterpreted what the Guildmasters had actually said. There might be limitations
of which she was unaware.
Still, to have access to the Guild’s own coffers—he would be rich! Really rich, not just as well
off as he was now. Or perhaps he might be paid with more than money....
That assumed, of course, that Karanissa was telling the truth. Twilfa had not yet returned with
Tira, so he had no way of verifying the story.
It also assumed he could indeed retrieve the missing mirror, but he had confidence in his own
abilities—far more confidence than he had in Karanissa’s account of herself.
He considered trying to stall Karanissa, by asking her questions until Tira arrived—after all, he
would need more information from her before setting out to find this mirror—but he decided against it.
This was probably not going to be a quick and easy errand. He would undoubtedly talk to her a good
many times, with and without Tira.
He would probably need to talk to her husband, as well, but first he wanted to do a little
preliminary planning.
“It will take me some time to make preparations,” he said. “I will need to speak with your
husband and to do some research.”
“Of course,” Karanissa said. “Whatever is necessary.” She rose.
“Bring your husband and his other wife here this afternoon, and we will settle the details,” Gresh
said, rising as well.
She bowed an acknowledgment.
He showed her to the door, then stood in the doorway watching her walk away down the street
toward Eastgate Market.
She was a handsome woman, no question about it, and if her story was true, she was a woman
with an incredible history. The task she had set him was going to be a challenge—stupendously
profitable, he hoped,—but a challenge.
In fact, he had no idea at all, as yet, of how he would do it.
That did not worry him. He would find a way. Various possibilities were already stirring in the
back of his mind.
The Spriggan Mirror
A Legend of Ethshar
Chapter Three
Gresh sat at his kitchen table across from Twilfa and Tira, stroking his short-trimmed beard. “She said
they’d tried wizardry, theurgy, demonology, warlockry, science, and ritual dance. She didn’t mention
witchcraft, but since she’s a witch herself I think we can take that for granted.”
“Then why did you want me here?” Tira asked.
“To see whether she was telling the truth,” Gresh replied. “Whether she’s really a witch and really
as old as she claims.”
“But you let her go!”
“She’ll be back this afternoon.”
“You want me to stay here all day? Gresh, Dar and I have our own customers to attend to.”
Gresh sighed. “Are any of them coming today?”
“I’m not going to tell you my entire schedule.”
“I won’t keep you, then, but can you please come by this afternoon? Naturally, I will pay you for
your time.”
Tira frowned.
“Tira, I’m sorry I dragged you over here for nothing, but I didn’t know how the conversation
was going to go, and this way you’ll know what I want when you come back, and I won’t need to try to
signal you surreptitiously. And you can tell me if you’ve ever heard of this Karanissa of the Mountains, or
her husband Tobas of Telven, or a mirror that makes spriggans.”
Tira considered that for a moment, then relented. “Fine, I’ll be here this afternoon and will tell
you whether they’re lying,” she said. “And I never heard of Karanissa or Tobas, but didn’t you say they
were from the Small Kingdoms? I don’t know anyone there. The Sisterhood doesn’t operate openly
there.” “Thank you.”
“And you will indeed pay me my full consultation rate this afternoon.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t want you thinking you can get a discount just because you’re my brother, or because
you’re the famous Gresh the Supplier.”
“Of course not.”
“Good.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’ll be back this afternoon. If I have a
chance, I might talk to a few people about this Karanissa.”
“Thank you,” Gresh replied. He and Twilfa watched silently as Tira straightened her shawl and
marched out the back door. Except for Dina, his sisters almost always used the back door, at his
request. He didn’t want anyone wondering why all these non-wizards were coming to his shop.
And they did come fairly often. His sisters were his most important trade secret. Oh, he had
plenty of other sources and contacts, a network of agents scattered across the western half of the World,
but his family was at the heart of his unique ability to acquire the things his customers sought. He had
based his entire business on sisterly affection and sibling rivalry—what one sister could not find, another
could, and would, because to refuse would be to disappoint their only brother and miss a chance to
crow. Gresh was only eight when he first realized he could play off Dina, who was then a freshly
accredited journeyman wizard, against Difa, then an apprentice warlock, to his own benefit. He had
known all along that Difa had originally intended to be a wizard and had only become a warlock because
the possibility was new and exciting and as a warlock she would not be once again following in her older
sister’s footsteps. Still, it was not until Dina made journeyman that Gresh had discovered he could exploit
this rivalry, challenging each sister to show that she could do more with her magic than the other.
Warlockry was still relatively new and unfamiliar at the time, which had helped—questions of which sort
of magic was better at what had not yet all been settled.
Tira was already in her third year of apprenticeship then, and she, too, had joined the competition
quickly enough. Chira and Pyata and Shesta joined in their turn. No two of Keshan the Merchant’s
daughters chose the same school of magic—that would have been copying—but all were determined to
demonstrate that their magic was best.
Then Gresh had reached apprenticeship age himself and faced the prospect of learning his own
magic. Dina had not yet been ready for master’s rank, but she could have found him a place with a
wizard somewhere.
Or Difa could have found a master warlock. Tira could probably have found a witch. The others
were still apprentices themselves, but....
But it didn’t matter, because Gresh had decided he didn’t want to be a magician. It would have
meant choosing one sort of magic—and one of his sisters—over all the others. Whichever school of
magic he chose, the sister in that school would have deemed it a victory and the others a defeat; factional
lines within the family that had always been fluid would become fixed.
He might have chosen a variety of magic that none of them had studied, which would have
avoided choosing sides by rejecting all of them, but even at twelve he had been able to foresee a lifetime
of being told, “You chose your magic instead of mine, so I can see you won’t want my help!” Although
finding a magic none of his older sisters had chosen would have worked as far as not choosing sides at
first, it ignored the question of what might happen when his younger sisters began choosing their
apprenticeships.
No, there were too many potential complications with any school of magic. Appealing as learning
magic might have seemed, he did not want to alienate any of his sisters, or choose one over the others.
He liked being able to call on all of them.
So he had apprenticed to their father, which had made both their parents happy, and he had
learned the merchant’s trade, learned bookkeeping and bargaining, buying and bartering—and he had
made use of all his twelve sisters in his business, older and younger, from Dina the wizard to Ekava the
seamstress, and had eventually taken on Twilfa, the youngest, as his assistant. Because of the family’s
competitiveness no two had pursued exactly the same occupation, even after their contacts could no
longer find new varieties of magic, and he now had available for consultation representatives of eight
different schools of magic, as well as a seamstress, a sailor, and a guardswoman.
That didn’t include the husbands or children his sisters had acquired over the years—nine of the
twelve were married, and three of them had offspring old enough to have begun their apprenticeships. His
nephews, nieces, and brothers-in-law were not as usefully diverse as his sisters, but they did add to the
mix. “So do you want to talk to Chira?” Twilfa asked, when Tira was out of sight. Chira was the
family sorcerer, and Karanissa had not mentioned trying sorcery.
Gresh considered that, then nodded. “I think that’s a good place to start, and she definitely owes
me one.” He had located several sorcerous items for Chira over the past few years and had been
generous in pricing them. Karanissa’s omission of sorcery from her list was probably just an oversight,
and Gresh did not see how any sorcery he was familiar with might help, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
“I’ll fetch her,” Twilfa said, rising.
“And if you see any spriggans on the way, try to catch one,” Gresh said.
Twilfa paused. “You want to have one here for Chira to try her talismans on?”
“I want to ask one a few questions,” Gresh answered. “For all I know, we may not need any
magic to find this mirror.”
Twilfa blinked. “You think it might just tell you where the mirror is?”
Gresh turned up a palm. “Why not?” he asked. “Spriggans are stupid little creatures, and they
seem to want to be cooperative—why wouldn’t it tell me?”
“If it’s that easy, wouldn’t this Karanissa have already tried that? Or her husband?”
“They’re magicians, at least in theory. She’s a witch; he’s a wizard—they’re accustomed to
doing things magically. It may have never occurred to them just to ask.”
Twilfa started to say something, then stopped and thought for a moment. “You could be right,”
摘要：

TheSprigganMirrorALegendofEthsharChapterOneGreshwasyawning,stillnotentirelyawake,whenthebelljingledandthejust-unlockeddoorofhisshopopenedbehindhim,lettinginaswirlofcoldair.Heblinkedoncemore,flexedhisshoulders,andstartedtoturn.“Don’tyoueversleep?”hiseldestsister’svoicedemanded.Greshfinishedhisyawn,fi...

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