“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.
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
