Tabaea. The details of exactly what had become of Tabaea had not been made public. Apparently the Wizards’ Guild had employed some extremely dangerous magic, and rumor had it that all that had remained of the self- proclaimed empress was her left foot. The overlord’s palace in Ethshar of the Sands had reportedly been gutted in the process, as well. Had it been Tobas who did that?
Gresh glanced at the wizard, who gave every appearance of being a rather ordinary young man. It was hard to imagine him flinging around that sort of high-powered spell.
Even if it had, though, that couldn’t have been what qualified him as a hero in Dwomor. The timing was wrong, as little Alris had certainly been conceived well before Tabaea’s downfall.
Karanissa had said that Tobas rescued her from an other-worldly castle and had accidentally created the first spriggans, but neither of those really seemed the sort of thing that Small Kingdoms royalty would consider adequate heroism. If he had rescued Alorria, or one of her parents-well, perhaps he had.
Gresh pushed the matter aside; maybe he would find out later. Neither of the women seemed particularly reticent.
“Well, Tobas,” Gresh said. “I understand you want me to find a mirror for you.”
“That’s right.” The wizard held up his hands. “About this big. Silvered glass. The sort wizards like to use, but glass, not alloy.”
Gresh knew, of course, exactly what he meant-a great many spells required mirrors, so he provided them for his customers. Wizards sometimes preferred to use mirrors that weren’t as breakable as glass, but they were willing to pay for something better than polished copper, and silversmiths had long since settled on a standard form for a silver-alloy “wizard’s mirror.” The exact mix of metals was a trade secret and varied somewhat from one workshop to the next, but the basic design was fairly consistent.
Other wizards, or the same wizards on other occasions, used glass mirrors, breakable or not; sometimes the image quality was more important than fragility, and glass did not need as much polishing.
Gresh stocked both varieties, of course.
“Like this,” he said, picking one from a nearby shelf.
Tobas took the mirror and looked at it critically. “Slightly larger,” he said. “And with a simple edge, not this beveled fancywork.”
Gresh nodded. “And you last saw it somewhere in the mountains near Dwomor,” he said.
“I last saw it-well, I last saw it in my own hand as I fell through a Transporting Tapestry, but a spriggan snatched it away a few seconds later and ran off with it. I haven’t seen it since.”
“Yes, of course. Now, I have an idea where it is-the general area, not the exact spot-and I believe I can obtain it for you, but there are certain things we must settle before I agree to get it.”
“Anything you want.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Tobas hesitated, looking as if he intended to argue, then sighed, his shoulders slumping. “You’re right, I don’t. I mean anything I can give you without utterly ruining myself. Let us hear your terms, then, so we can discuss them.”
“Well, first off, your wife said that the Wizards’ Guild was financing this and would pay any price. Did she mean that literally?”
“Not any price,” Tobas said, with a sour glance at Karanissa. “We won’t give you Alris, for example, or make you master of the World. But the Guild can be very generous if it means eliminating spriggans.”
“Forgive me for being blunt, but I’m a businessman, not a diplomat-how much is that?”
Tobas sighed again. “Name your price, and I’ll tell you whether we can meet it.”
“All expenses, of course-I don’t know just how long it will take me to obtain the mirror, nor what resources I’ll need-plus ten percent interest. To start.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll want a deposit of one hundred rounds of gold toward those expenses.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
That brought them to the moment of truth, the moment Gresh had been anticipating and dreading ever since Karanissa’s earlier visit. It was a moment that he had dreamed of ever since he first began working as a wizards’ supplier; he was in a position to demand anything he wanted of the Wizards’ Guild.
He could ask for money, for gold by the ton, but that seemed so pedestrian-and besides, if he did, he might well unbalance the local economy, since it was scarcity that gave gold its value. He could ask for, not the World, but a kingdom-Dwomor, perhaps-but then he would have the responsibility of ruling it, of overseeing the welfare of its inhabitants, and he would have to be careful about using magic, or antagonizing neighboring kingdoms into starting a war. He could ask for his own little world, like the castle that Karanissa had been trapped in-but there were risks there; he might become trapped in it, as she had been, or there might be…complications. Wizardry could be a tricky, unreliable thing. He had heard stories about people opening portals into realities that were already inhabited by creatures that did not appreciate the intrusion, or realities that were so distorted, so strange, that they seemed like an endless series of traps, or even some that were not inhabitable by human beings at all-they lacked air or other necessities, or occupied time or space so alien that hearts could not beat and blood could not flow.
He could have made up a whole list of spells he wanted cast for him-love spells, blessings, transformations, animations, Transporting Tapestries, flying carpets, the bloodstone spell, and so on-but that lacked elegance.
But there was something simple that wizards could do for him, something priceless, something that could not go wrong once the spell was cast properly in the first place-though it could be lost through carelessness or by choice. He had dreamed about this since childhood and long ago settled on what he would demand.
“And as my payment I want eternal youth and perfect health,” he said. “I won’t insist on a specific spell, but it must be permanent youth. I do not want to ever be older than I am now.”
“Um,” Tobas said. He glanced at Karanissa.
“That’s my price,” Gresh said. He nodded at Karanissa. “If she’s told me the truth, exactly such a spell was cast on her centuries ago, so please don’t tell me it isn’t possible.”
“I can’t do that,” Tobas said. “I haven’t been able to provide it for myself or Alorria yet, let alone anyone else.”
Alorria made an unhappy noise in agreement.
“Someone provided it for her,” Gresh said with another nod toward Karanissa.
“Derithon the Mage,” Tobas said. “He’s been dead for centuries. It isn’t immortality, you know; Karanissa can still die, just like anyone else. It just won’t be of old age.”
“I know. That’s good enough.”
“And there are other loopholes.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to explain them to me.”
Tobas grimaced.
“You said the Guild would pay any price; well, that’s my price.”
“I’ll need to talk to Kaligir.”
“You do that, then.”
“I’ll see him as soon as I can, and we’ll get an answer for you. I think he’ll agree, but I can’t promise.”
“Well, that’s good enough for now. So that’s the first point.”
“There are others?”
“One more that I know of; others may arise in our discussions.”
Tobas sighed yet again. “What is it?”
“I need to know why you want the mirror. I will not be a party to seriously destructive spells.”
“We want to smash it, of course!” Alorria said before either of the others could reply. “I’m sick of these spriggans!”
Gresh nodded. That was what he wanted to hear. He looked at Tobas.
“She’s right,” he said. “We want to smash it-if that will stop it from producing spriggans. Or destroy it by some other means, or neutralize it somehow. We won’t know for certain until I get a good look at it.”
“No? Why wouldn’t you just smash it?”
Tobas grimaced. “Because we don’t know what that would do. If every fragment then starts spewing out spriggans, or some new sort of creature, that would be even worse, of course.”
“Could that happen?” Gresh asked, startled. He had not thought of that possibility.
