Tobas accepted it warily. “It won’t explode, away from its true owner, or anything?”
“No, of course not!” Dina said. “I made that bag properly!”
Tobas turned, startled. “You made it?”
Gresh was trying to judge the best way to mount the carpet, whether to climb up the dangling luggage or simply vault onto the carpet. He decided on the vault; he grabbed two of the ropes and jumped.
“Yes, I made it! Did you think Gresh did it? He’s no wizard…”
The carpet felt rather like an oversized feather bed, Gresh discovered as he landed. He rolled forward awkwardly as his eldest sister shouted angrily at Tobas. “Dina,” he said, as he tried to untangle himself from the cords and hoist himself into a sitting position. “Could you please not argue with my other customers?” He put out a hand to right himself and found he was leaning on Alorria’s knee. He quickly snatched his hand away and murmured, “My apologies, lady.”
“Be careful, Gresh!” Twilfa called.
Gresh finally managed to right himself, and smiled. He called back, “Why? If I get myself killed you inherit the business!”
“I’d rather not just yet, thank you,” Twilfa retorted.
“Be careful, Gresh,” Dina said, with a significant glance at Tobas.
“I will, Dina.”
“Good luck, brother,” Akka said. “We’ll dance for you every sixnight.”
“Thank you.”
“Take care,” Tira said.
“Good fortune and a swift return!” Chira called. She waved, and as she did Tobas did something with the fingers of his right hand, and the carpet began to rise, rotating very slowly.
Then all five women on the ground were waving, and Gresh was clinging to a rope with one hand and waving back with the other, ignoring Tobas’s attempt to hand him his bag. He turned his head to keep watching his sisters and saw that Alorria was holding up one of Alris’s chubby little hands and waving that, as well.
Then the rotation was complete, the carpet pointing east. It began to rise again, and to move forward, gaining speed as it went. In a moment Gresh could no longer see any of his sisters. He turned around to face forward and finally accepted the bag Tobas had been trying to hand him. “Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” Tobas replied. He glanced back past Gresh’s shoulder. “And people say I’m mad, to have two wives! I heard the one on the end call you brother, and the young one’s your assistant, but that still leaves three.”
“They aren’t my wives,” Gresh protested, as he watched the buildings flash by on either side. The carpet was still rising, so they were now even with third-floor windows or the rooftops and gutters of the lower structures.
“They’re still three women.”
Gresh hesitated, then admitted, “They’re all my sisters.” He looked forward, past Tobas, and saw the towers of Eastgate approaching with frightening speed.
“What, all four of them?”
“All five of them. My assistant Twilfa is the baby of the family.” They were passing over the broad hexagon of New Eastgate Market; the merchants and shoppers were looking up in surprise as the carpet’s shadow swept over them. The wind of their passage whipped at Gresh’s hair, and just as Alorria had warned, an insect of some sort bounced off his cheek.
“The wizard, too?” Tobas asked.
“Dina’s the oldest.” They were past the market and soaring along far enough above East Road that it no longer mattered whether they actually stayed above the street-they would clear most of the rooftops in any case. Gresh had to shout to be heard over the rush of wind. He realized they were passing over the intersection with Wizard Street, and he pointed to the north. “Her shop’s over there.”
When he turned his gaze forward again, Gresh saw that the towers ahead were… well, they were straight ahead, and the carpet was rushing directly at them.
Then they zoomed over Old Eastgate Market, and between the two towers of the gates, clearing the city wall by four or five feet, and they were outside Ethshar of the Rocks and flying east at a phenomenal speed, on their way to Ethshar of the Sands.
The Spriggan Mirror
A Legend of Ethshar
Chapter Nine
“My home village of Telven is somewhere over that way, on the coast,” Tobas shouted over his shoulder, waving his right arm vaguely.
Gresh glanced to the south, then frowned. “Isn’t that still the Pirate Towns?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Tobas said. “The Free Lands of the Coasts, they call themselves. I grew up there. My father was a pirate, Dabran the Pirate, captain of Retribution. A demonologist out of Ethshar of the Spices sent the whole ship to the bottom, with all hands, when I was fifteen.”
Gresh nodded but did not reply. He was unsure whether Tobas was serious or not, and besides, conversation was difficult over the constant roar of the wind as the carpet sped through the air.
They were about four hours out of Ethshar of the Rocks, and Gresh had discovered that while riding the carpet didn’t seem particularly dangerous, Alorria had been right that it wasn’t exactly fun. There were frequently bugs splattering against their chests and faces, at least at lower altitudes; the luggage piled around Tobas was speckled with their remains. Birds hadn’t been a problem, but the unrelenting wind of their passage was tiring and annoying and made it impossible to talk comfortably. Gresh also now understood why Alorria wore a coronet and why Karanissa had gone to the trouble to braid her waist-length locks. His own hair was long enough to whip about uncomfortably, flicking across his eyes at inopportune moments. He was sure he looked positively dreadful, with his hair awry and dead gnats smeared everywhere.
The worst part of flying was that it was boring. A day earlier Gresh would not have believed that soaring through the air at fantastic speeds on a magic carpet could become tedious so quickly, but it had. They had passed over a hundred miles of farms and fields and forests. After the first hour or so they all looked very much the same.
If he had been able to talk freely with his companions it might not have been bad, but the wind prevented that-the wind, and his uncertainty as to how much he could believe of what Tobas and Alorria told him. Alorria had said that Tobas slew a dragon to win her hand and that he had served for a time as the court wizard to her father, Derneth II, king of Dwomor. However, Tobas had already been married to Karanissa at the time and had been spending most of his time in another world, so it had been complicated. Tobas claimed to have inherited Derithon the Mage’s book of spells, rather than compiling his own, which was undoubtedly a violation of custom and probably of Wizards’ Guild rules but which explained why his training was so uneven. Tobas had served only a partial apprenticeship under a senile and dying master, but the old book allowed him to teach himself much more.
Now Tobas claimed to be a pirate captain’s son. How would a pirate’s son have wound up apprenticed to a wizard at all? Gresh was beginning to think he wouldn’t have believed any of this if Kaligir hadn’t shown up with those other wizards to provide him with magic. Pirates and princesses, dragons and castles and centuries-old witches and all, sounded like far too much adventure to have jammed into Tobas’s one short lifetime. Good honest magic Gresh understood, and spells gone wrong, so the flying carpet and the spriggan mirror were easy to accept, but the rest of it…
But four-hundred-year-old Karanissa was there behind him on the carpet, and Tira had said she spoke the truth. Alorria, princess of Dwomor, was there, as well, and no one back in the city had expressed any reservations about her claimed heritage. Kaligir had believed enough of Tobas’s story to agree to pay Gresh’s fee, and to provide him with all those lovely vials and jars, safely tucked away in Gresh’s bag.