“But everything’s packed up, Kara,” Alorria said.”
“We can be ready in an hour,” Tobas said. “We’ll be in Ethshar of the Sands by nightfall.”
“But we’re going to Dwomor,” Gresh said.
“Not today,” Tobas said. “We’ll spend the night at my home in Grandgate, and tomorrow we’ll head for Dwomor. It’s a long day’s flight from Ethshar of the Sands to Dwomor. We’ll want to start bright and early. It’s not much fun flying in the dark.”
That, Gresh was forced to admit to himself, made sense, probably far more sense than trying to sleep on a grossly overcrowded carpet. “An hour, then,” he said.
“We’ll be here.” With that, Tobas and his wives climbed aboard the carpet and settled down cross-legged on the worn wooclass="underline" Tobas at the front, Karanissa at the rear, and Alorria in the center with Alris clutched in her arms. From the smooth efficiency with which they took their places, Gresh judged they had done this several times before.
The wizard made a sound and a gesture, and the carpet rose smoothly upward, to rooftop level, before turning and heading east down the street.
Gresh watched it go, then sighed and went back into the shop, wondering whether he could stuff his other luggage directly into the bottomless bag, or whether he would need to unpack it and shove everything in piece by piece.
When it came time to try, most of his bags fit just as they were, but the single largest had to be unpacked and fed in piecemeal. Gresh was glad that he had asked Dina to make sure his bottomless bag had a good wide mouth and wished it had been just a little bit larger-that big bag, containing a bedroll and pillow and his formal robes, among other things, had almost fit.
He would need to take all that stuff back out, item by item, before he could retrieve the bag of tools and snares, or the precious box of powders and potions, or the bag of magical ingredients, or the sack of non-perishable food, or the case of wine, or all his other clothing and toiletries. He thought he might want to take the time to arrange things in a better order at some point on the journey, but for now he would make do. The important thing was that he had packed all the supplies he wanted to bring into the one magical bag, the apparent size of a very large watermelon, and the apparent weight of the heaviest single item in it. He was not entirely sure what that item was, though; he just knew how the spell operated and that when he hefted the bag it seemed to weigh fifteen or twenty pounds.
That was quite manageable. He could easily sling the bag over one shoulder and carry it for as far as necessary.
When Tobas’s carpet once again swooped down from the rooftops to hover in front of the shop, Gresh was ready, the bottomless bag at his heel, and five of his sisters-Twilfa, Dina, Chira, Tira, and Akka-standing beside him to say their farewells.
The carpet looked rather different now; instead of a simple flat cloth surface it had taken on the appearance of a miniature caravan, laden with baggage. On either side hung an assortment of bags, valises, traveling cases, and other luggage, suspended from a network of ropes and cords that crisscrossed the carpet itself. These bags didn’t seem to interfere with the carpet’s ability to fly, and the ropes barely indented the carpet’s surface at all-in fact, some appeared to be stretched above the fabric, between edges that curled slightly upward. The passengers were once again seated cross-legged in a row down the center, with the two women crowded together to create a cramped fourth space, carefully kept open, between Tobas and Alorria. Gresh noticed that Alorria now wore a slender gold coronet, and Karanissa had her hair tightly bound into a long, thick braid.
The carpet fluttered in from the east and wheeled just above head-height, setting the dangling luggage swinging, then settled down toward Tobas’s door, stopping the instant the lowest-hanging bundle brushed the dirt of the street. This meant the carpet stayed a good three feet up, perhaps four, rather than the single foot it had managed on the previous visit.
“Hai! Gresh!” Tobas called from his position at the front of the rug, waving. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Gresh said, picking up his bag with one hand and giving Twilfa a quick final hug with the other. He stepped forward.
“Just the one bag?” Tobas asked.
“It’s bottomless,” Gresh explained, carefully not expressing his surprise that Tobas had apparently not used anything of the sort himself.
“Hallin’s spell?” Tobas turned up a palm. “I have the instructions for that one, but I could never make it work. Half a day or more!”
“But you have a flying carpet,” Dina said, startled. “Varrin’s Lesser Propulsion takes a day and a half and is at least an order or two higher than Hallin’s Bottomless Bag!”
“Oh, I didn’t make this,” Tobas said. “I bought it. We used to need to do a lot of traveling around Dwomor, so I had some friends find me one I could just barely afford. It must be about a century old-it’s about thirty years into its eighty-year cycle.”
“What?” Gresh said, suddenly worried about the carpet’s reliability. He much preferred dealing with wizards who used their own magic, rather than borrowed or bought devices. They knew how to fix it if something went wrong.
“Varrin’s Lesser Propulsion needs to be renewed every so often,” Dina explained. “When it’s first cast it only lasts for one cycle of the greater moon, from one full moon to the next. But every time the spell is renewed it lasts twice as long, so after a few cycles it’s good for years at a time. What he calls the eighty-year cycle is… let me see… the tenth renewal. It’s really a little less than seventy-nine years.”
“Is that good?” Gresh asked.
“Well, if he’s right, you won’t need to worry about renewing the spell-old flying carpets are worth more than new, because of that; by the tenth renewal they last longer than most owners will live. The thing is, each renewal is more difficult-you need to use certain elements of the original spell, and they tend to get lost after a few cycles.”
“One reason I could afford this carpet,” Tobas said, “is that the original maker’s heirs have mislaid one of the seven white stones, so the spell can’t be renewed forty or fifty years from now.”
“But you’re sure it’s good for years yet?” Gresh asked.
“Mereth of the Golden Door says it is. Do you know a better diviner?”
Gresh looked at Dina.
“She’s not local, but I’ve heard of Mereth,” Dina admitted.
“She lives in Ethshar of the Sands,” Tobas said. “Near the palace.”
“She’s supposed to be good,” Dina acknowledged. She turned back to Tobas. “You can’t do Hallin’s Bottomless Bag?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘can’t,’” Tobas replied. “Let’s just say I haven’t done Hallin’s spell.”
“The Bottomless Bag,” Dina corrected him. “Hallin invented more than one spell, you know.”
Tobas blinked at her. “He did?”
“Yes, he did! The other important one is Hallin’s Transporting Fissure. Seventh- or eighth-order. You never heard of it?”
“Um… no,” Tobas admitted. “I haven’t. But I probably couldn’t use it in any case-I can’t work seventh-order spells with any sort of reliability at all. And I’ve always just heard the Bottomless Bag referred to as Hallin’s spell-after all, it works on things besides bags.”
“I’m sure this is all very interesting for you wizards,” Alorria interrupted. “But some of us would like to get home before dark. If Gresh has all his things in that one little bag, so much the better. He can climb on the carpet, and we can go.”
“Yes, of course.” Gresh handed his bag to Tobas. “Hold this for a moment, would you?”