Emboldened by his first success, Vandor took on a second such challenge, then a third. The fourth brought him to the then-impressive abode of the great black mage Mendel. Mendel’s citadel was a slightly more time-consuming affair, but in the end Grizt made his way out undetected. . so he supposed.
When but a few weeks later, a hooded black robe of more than attractive female features offered him a sizable ransom to steal from Mendel again, Vandor Grizt at first hesitated. The prime rule of any good thief is never to strike too soon again at the same place. However, he learned that Mendel intended to be away for two weeks. Unable to resist both the challenge and the feminine allure of the one offering to pay for the job, the daring thief took the assignment. He even chose a different mode of entry, knowing that the wizard might have discovered traces of the last trespass. Entering Mendel’s inner sanctum proved to be a little more difficult the second time, but finding the artifact in question, now that caused inordinate trouble. It was small and rumored to be hidden in an unusual place, the female black robe had said. Vandor had cautiously searched everywhere in the sanctum, behind paintings and wall hangings, before finally coming to the covered mirror.
There he made his fatal mistake.
At first he remained wary of the mirror, studying its intricate framework but unwilling to approach. Then, curiosity got the better of him, and Vandor lifted the black curtain a bit. Seeing his own hand reflected in the mirror, the thief raised the curtain more.
At this point, vanity took over. Vandor paused too long to take an admiring glance at himself, a glance that became a lingering look at the handsome thief who had dared not once but twice to steal from a deadly black-robed wizard. How clever, how handsome he looked.
Before Vandor could realize what was happening. . he was drawn into the mirror. Instead of looking into the mirror, he now found himself looking out. . out at his own limp, sprawled body.
“Always think yourself so clever, dandy!” Mendel mocked now as he listened to Vandor plead from behind the mirror. “The very next day after you’d first had the audacity to steal from me, I brought the mirror into play!
I then searched around, and it wasn’t too difficult to find some bauble that a petty thief as arrogant and foolish as yourself might be tempted to steal! I already knew your great weakness, your love for yourself! Ha! I knew that you would not be able to resist gazing at yourself in the covered mirror, and so with the willing aid of one of my own order, a most delectable associate, I set about preparing your doom!”
Mendel had not returned to his citadel for an entire day. In that time Vandor had grown frantic and very cold. He was trapped in the mirror and continued to stare at the body from which his-spirit? — had become separated. In every way he still looked like himself, even down to the clothes he was wearing before the mirror captured him, but his true corporeal form was abandoned on the other side, dying.
“For your crimes against me,” the mage reminded him, “I commanded you to a lifetime of servitude. When-and only when-I’m satisfied that you’ve served your punishment, I’ll return spirit to body and make you whole again-but not before you find me the Arcyan Crest!”
“My body!” Vandor gasped. “Is it still well? The spell you cast over it keeps it intact?” It was his only hope. “You doubt me?” Mendel’s hand rose to the medallion. “No! No!” The thief sank back.
His gnarled master seemed mollified. “Better, then! All right, Grizt! You’ve failed me once, but you’ve brought back this other prize, so I cannot complain too much. Tonight, though, you will return to Prester’s sanctum and search it again! This time you must not fail. I am losing patience!”
“But if he doesn’t-”
“He has it! Do not doubt me!” Again the staff came up and rattled the frame of the mirror.
Grizt remained silent as his foul prison trembled. He knew he could not convince the damned mage otherwise. He feared the medallion’s tortures. Even the medallion’s worst could not compare with his fear that some day he might not have a body to which to return. “I will find it,” he promised. “See that you do.”
The great hall. A banquet room. The kitchen. Prester’s bed in which Prester himself slept. The room in which his only child rested, a small girl not even ten years of age. The spell that bound Vandor to Mendel’s special mirror allowed him to travel anywhere there was a reflection, be it glass, metal, or a bowl of purest water. The spell permitted the thief of mirrors to reach out as far as the length of his arms, sometimes even the upper half of his torso if he struggled.
Moonlight shining through a partially open window glittered on a polished breastplate once worn by Prester’s grandfather, a Knight of Solamnia. Through the breastplate Vandor Grizt emerged, glancing about the room, Prester’s personal library, counting the seconds before the growing heat would consume him. He had been in the library before and noticed nothing. However, libraries were often the location of wall vaults, hollowed-out books, and hidden drawers in desks.
Vandor sank back into the breastplate, only to emerge a moment later from the tiny, metallic surface of a desk drawer handle. Slim hands with tapering fingers reached into the real world and drew open another drawer. Grizt felt under the top, looking for a secret hiding place.
Nothing. He returned to the breastplate, which offered him a better view, and studied the chamber again. Assuming Prester had the Arcyan Crest, which Vandor doubted, he might not even realize its significance. Even some of the former wizards from whom Mendel had forced him to steal had not always recognized the prizes in their own possession. That had sometimes made his task more easy, but just as often it made things more frustrating, for victims with no idea as to the true worth of a treasure were wont to store it anywhere.
On a hunch-and hunches had, for the most part, served him well in the past-Vandor Grizt returned to the bedroom of Prester’s daughter.
He had not searched the room as thoroughly as he should, feeling some guilt about rifling through the young child’s belongings. The girl’s mother had died when she was but five, the victim of some malady. Unlike her husband, the mother had had no taste for magic, but she did boast a noble lineage encompassing not one but several great houses through the centuries. Little money had come with that lineage, but her noble station had given her husband a status that aided his ambitions, going from red-robed mage to landowner.
Vandor studied the slumbering child, guessing that she would never wake from so deep a sleep. Slipping out of the small mirror in her chamber, he reached into a nearby chest and quietly but quickly searched the contents. Clothes, pins, toys. . all the things of a well-born child. Vandor recalled his own early childhood, a kitchen brat in a lord’s castle. He had gained a hunger for fine things from that existence, ever watchful as the nobles wasted what he so coveted.
Across the room he spotted a cabinet, but at first a useful reflective surface near it resisted his searching eyes. Vandor’s gaze drifted to a small stand by the child’s bed. On the stand stood a mug of water, only partially emptied. Enough of a reflective surface for his needs. With careful planning, it would enable him to search the cabinet.
He had to make this a most thorough search, even more so than the last. If the Arcyan Crest was hidden anywhere in this castle, Vandor had to find it. He had no doubt Mendel would keep his promise to punish him for failing.