“Now, the first spriggan,” he called. “The first one I drew on-run forward and look in the mirror, just once!”
After a moment of confused hesitation, the creature obeyed.
“Next!” Gresh called.
One by one, he sent all six to look into the mirror; then, satisfied, he carefully laid his pack over the mirror so that no one else could look in it before the Spell of Reversal wore off.
“Tickle again?” a spriggan asked, sidling up to him.
Gresh looked down at the creature. It was smiling up at him, trying to look endearing-and it was succeeding.
Besides, the thing had helped him with his scheme and deserved some reward. “All right,” he said. He picked it up and began tickling.
After all, he had nothing more urgent to do. There was no need to draw any more pictures. He had sent his message.
Or at least, he hoped he had; success all depended on the assumption that his guess about the mirror’s nature was right. If he was wrong about how it worked, he had just wasted a spell and a good bit of time and effort.
If his theory was correct, though, he had just created six spriggan images in the real spriggans’ world, each of the first five with a picture drawn on its belly, and the sixth with a message in Ethsharitic runes.
The pictures were each numbered in the upper left corner-not with numerals, but with tally marks from | to |||||. The drawings, stick figures done in scratchy charcoal, were intended to convey instructions to the inhabitants of that other world.
The first drawing showed two huge scary people threatening a crowd of spriggans; one of the two giants was still in the process of emerging from an oval intended to represent a mirror.
The second showed two spriggans carrying the mirror between them.
The third showed them placing the mirror in an open box.
The fourth showed them closing the box.
The fifth drawing was the most complicated, showing two scenes-at the top two scary giants coming out of a mirror were heavily crossed out with a big black X that had sent the canvas-spriggan into hysterical screams of laughter, while below that four happy, smiling spriggans stood around the safely closed box. He had had trouble with that one; fitting all of it on a single spriggan had been difficult, and he had used his finest bit of charcoal-tipped twig for the job.
Those five were intended to convey his message to illiterate spriggans, but he hoped they wouldn’t be needed. The sixth spriggan’s belly had a message written on it: “SHUT THE MIRROR IN A SOLID BOX, AND NOTHING ELSE WILL COME OUT OF IT.”
That hadn’t been easy to fit, either. He had debated whether to write the runes forward or backward and had settled on forward-yes, they would probably be reversed on arrival, but so would the images of Karanissa and himself.
Now, if the message got through, and someone in the other world heeded it, then that should solve the spriggan population problem-if the other mirror was safely sealed away where no true spriggans could look in it, then no spriggan images would emerge in the World.
Assuming, of course, that he had correctly deduced the spell’s workings.
The only way to test it was to wait and see. If anything else came out of the mirror, then he would need to try something else.
Even if it all worked perfectly, that only solved half the problem. The other half was that he had promised he would deliver the mirror to Tobas, and right now there were several thousand spriggans who did not want him removing the mirror from this cave. He was fairly certain that there was no magic he could use to force them-if a sixty-foot dragon wasn’t enough to chase them away, then he had no idea what would do the job.
But he might not need to use force.
When he had spent several minutes tickling spriggans, reducing half a dozen of them to helpless laughter, he set the last one on the ground and said, “All you spriggans! Every one who can hear me! Come here-I need to talk to you.”
Two or three dozen more emerged from the shadows.
“Karanissa,” he said. “Would you go tell your husband to let some spriggans through, to talk to me? Perhaps a hundred or so?”
Karanissa frowned at him, then turned up a hand. “As you say,” she replied. She clambered out through the hole in the cave wall, out onto the meadow beside the dragon’s tail.
He glanced down at his pack, covering the mirror. That seemed secure enough for the moment, but he put a foot on a corner of the pack, just in case. Then he waited.
A moment later a good-sized group of spriggans came swarming into the cave, and Gresh found himself surrounded by several dozen pop-eyed little creatures, all staring at him in the gathering gloom. None of them seemed inclined to charge him, or to try to grab the mirror-he had half-expected such a maneuver, and had been ready for it.
When the crowd had quieted he looked around. “Oh, good,” he said. “You look as if you’re ready to listen.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Listen.”
“Spriggans listen.”
Gresh nodded. “Here’s the situation, then. Under my pack there is the enchanted mirror you all came from, and that protects you from harm. If it’s broken into pieces, each of you is multiplied into however many pieces there are, and there may be other connections, as well. Most of you know about that-maybe all of you. You don’t want it to be harmed, or to be taken into the places where wizardry doesn’t work, and you hid it away in this cave to prevent anything like that from happening. You’re all still here, instead of out in the World having fun, because you’re guarding the mirror. Am I right?”
“Right!”
“Yes yes yes!”
“That right.”
“We got in here anyway, Karanissa and me, and meddled with the mirror, and our dragon kept you from stopping us-but you kept us from taking the mirror away by getting between us and our flying carpet, where the dragon couldn’t chase you away safely for fear he might harm either the carpet, or the woman and baby sitting on it. So we have something of a stand-off.”
“Right!”
“Yes!”
“You’re hoping we’ll give up and go away eventually-but that isn’t going to work. First off, I’m as stubborn as you are. Second, if we do give up, that isn’t the end of it-the Wizards’ Guild sent us to get the mirror, and if we don’t bring it back they’ll send someone else, and then someone else, until they do get the mirror away from you. They have lots of magic, and they’ll use it. They want the mirror destroyed, and sooner or later they’ll find a way to get it.”
“No!”
“Bad wizards!”
“No no no no!”
“Yes, that’s how it is.” Even in the gathering gloom, Gresh could see the concern and dismay on all those inhuman little faces and the puzzled interest on the reflected Karanissa’s visage. He also saw the real Karanissa climbing back into the cave; he sensed that she was listening carefully, both with her ears and her witchcraft. “But I’ve been studying the mirror, trying spells on it, and I think I’ve figured out how it works. I’ve decided that I don’t want it destroyed, either. If I leave it here with you, though, sooner or later the Wizards’ Guild is going to find it and destroy it. So what I want to do is give it to the wizards, but make sure that instead of destroying it, they lock it away somewhere safe. If I can do that, it won’t be destroyed, and you don’t need to stay on this mountain to guard it anymore-you can go out in the World and have fun, like the other spriggans! What about that idea?”
Several spriggans began cheering and applauding, but others were calling protests and questions, obviously
