A few seconds later he heard the distant sound of breaking glass as it shattered on stonework somewhere far below.
“Oops,” the spriggan on the platform said. It looked up at Gresh with an embarrassed grin.
Gresh stared at it, wanting to scream at it, but unable to think of any words that were even remotely appropriate. Then he marched forward to collect the jars before any more damage could be done and to see which spells he still had.
The two unharmed jars held Javan’s Restorative and the Spell of the Revealed Power.
The cracked jar contained the dark red powder for Javan’s Geas.
The jar of purple powder that could produce the Spell of Reversal was gone.
“Oh, blood, pain, and death!” Gresh cursed, as he hurried out on the platform and looked down, hoping that perhaps part of the jar had survived, intact enough to hold a dose of the powder. Perhaps if he used the potion for the Spell of Retarded Time he could climb down and collect enough of the powder and still get back before the half-hour was up...
“Jar broken,” the spriggan said sadly, as it stood beside Gresh and looked over the edge with him.
“Could fix it?” another spriggan said, coming up behind them.
“Fix how?” the first spriggan asked.
“With magic powder?”
That was a possibility Gresh had not yet considered; he started to say something, but before he could, the spriggan who had dropped the jar on the platform leaned over the edge and shouted, “Esku!” at the top of its squeaky little voice.
There was a red-gold flash, and a suddenly intact jar came sailing up at them; Gresh stepped back, startled, and narrowly missed being hit by it as it flung itself onto the platform and rolled to a stop at the spot where it had been dropped.
Gresh stared at it, astonished. He had not thought of that, and the spriggans had. They had recognized the powder by color and had known how to use it from watching him back in the cave. Furthermore, they had actually done it, and it had worked! He had not known spriggans could actually work that sort of magic—but then, it was the powder that really did it; all anyone else had to provide, once the powder was flung, was the trigger word.
“Jar fixed!” the spriggan said happily, pointing.
“Yes, it is,” Gresh agreed, as a horrible suspicion struck him. He reached down and picked up the jar and held it up to the light.
It was empty.
Words once again failed him; he bit down so hard he thought his teeth might crack. That spell had retrieved the jar, but it had used up all the powder! It had all been flung, and it had all been consumed in one flash—enough powder to work the tenth-order Spell of Reversal eight, or nine, or perhaps even ten more times, all of it gone to repair a cheap glass jar.
He stepped quickly in off the platform, before the spriggans could find a way to break any of the other jars.
“Don’t touch these!” he ordered emphatically, pointing at the three he held. “Ever!”
Then he tucked them all back into the box in his pack, hoping the cracked one wouldn’t shatter, put the lid on, pulled the drawstring tight, lifted the pack onto his shoulder, and hurried upstairs, hoping that Tobas was right about Javan’s Restorative being sufficient.
He was almost at the top when he heard the sitting room door open and Alorria’s voice call, “Tobas? Are you in here?”
“We’re up here,” he called over his shoulder as he turned the corner into the short corridor. He did not wait for Alorria to respond, but hurried to the bedroom.
Tobas and the two Karanissas were just as he had left them, save that all three looked worried.
“What was the shouting about?” Tobas asked.
“The spriggans spilled the powder for the Spell of Reversal,” Gresh explained. “We’ll have to use Javan’s Restorative. And Alorria’s here.” He set the pack on a bedside table and fumbled with the drawstring, which he now found he had pulled so tight it would not loosen.
“Didn’t you say you didn’t think that would work?” both Karanissas said.
“Tobas is the wizard here, and he thought it would—ow!—work,” Gresh said, as he struggled with the pack.
“It ought to,” Tobas said nervously.
“But what if it doesn’t?”
“Well, it can’t hurt you,” Tobas said. “It restores anyone or anything to its healthy normal state.”
The Karanissas looked at one another. “But what’s normal for a magical image?” they asked.
“What’s going on in here?” Alorria asked from the doorway, just as Gresh finally managed to unjam the cord and open the pack.
“We’re just trying a few things,” Gresh said, as he carefully pulled out the jar of orange powder.
“Might she entirely cease to exist?” the Karanissas asked.
Alorria stared at the two women on the bed. “What did you do?” she demanded. “I can’t tell them apart, and they’re both talking at once!”
“It’s possible,” Tobas told Karanissa.
“Tobas!” Alorria shouted. “I asked you a question!”
“A spell went wrong,” Gresh said, as he closed the pack and set it on the floor. “We’re trying to fix it, but the spriggans have been making it difficult.”
“What kind of a spell?”
“Fifth-order,” Gresh said unhelpfully, as he opened the jar.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” the Karanissas said, eyeing Gresh as he approached, orange powder in the palm of his hand.
“I’m not, either,” Tobas said. “Gresh, I know what I said earlier, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“We have to do something,” Gresh said. “What kind of a life can she have like that?”
“How can you tell which one is which?” Alorria asked.
Gresh had been about to fling the powder at the Karanissa on the right, on the assumption that she was the rectified reflection and the spell would restore her to either her former state as a solidified image, or to nonexistence, but he suddenly stopped.
“She might just disappear,” Tobas said. “That would be murder.”
“She might,” Gresh agreed, staring at the right-hand Karanissa.
“She isn’t real!” Alorria protested.
“This one is the copy, isn’t it?” Gresh asked, gesturing at the right-hand woman.
“Yes, it is,” Tobas said. “They didn’t switch while you were away. But really, Gresh, shouldn’t we...”
He stopped as Gresh flung the powder—on the left-hand Karanissa.
“It can’t hurt her,” he explained. “Esku!”
There was a golden flash.
For a moment, no one moved; then the two Karanissas turned to look at one another, but Gresh could see that it wasn’t the same inhumanly synchronized motion they had displayed before. Both were still full-sized, however; the right-hand one had not been shrunk back to her original size.
“That was...” they both began—but their voices were not perfectly matched anymore. They both fell silent; then the right-hand one pointed at the other.
“I think it worked,” the left-hand Karanissa said.
“I’m still rectified, still human,” the right-hand one said. “But we’re separate.”
“I’m just me again,” the left-hand one—the original—said. “I don’t have her memories anymore.”
“But I still have hers,” the right-hand one said. She frowned. “I suppose that means she’s Karanissa and I’m... someone else, a blend of the two.”
“Fine,” Alorria said. “Then you can go back to Ethshar with Gresh. One witch-wife around here is plenty!”