Then at any rate, the mirror had not been in there when that particular spriggan emerged from it, and it wasn’t likely it had gotten there since.
“Thank you.” Gresh gave the tapestry a final look, then turned away and headed back down the stairs to rejoin the others. Karanissa came close behind.
Alorria looked up from playing with Alris’s fingers. “Showing off the castle, Kara?”
“Just explaining where we’re going tonight, Ali.”
Alorria made a face. “The baby and I may just wait out here,” she said. “I hate crossing that bridge.”
Tobas exchanged glances with Karanissa, and Gresh thought that the two of them were not entirely displeased by Alorria’s words. “I thought you didn’t want to be alone,” Tobas said.
“I won’t be-I’ll have Gresh to protect me.”
That prompted an awkward silence that was finally broken by Alorria saying, “I assume we can trust him well enough. He doesn’t want to antagonize the Guild, after all. He won’t let anything happen to us.”
“Of course I won’t,” Gresh said.
“And I can manage the baby by myself for one night, Tobas.”
“Of course you can,” Tobas agreed.
“It’s not as if we’re in any danger of being eaten by a dragon or attacked by Vondish assassins here in the city.”
“You aren’t in any danger from them back in Dwomor, either,” Karanissa said.
“Well, you never know,” Alorria said.
It was plain from Karanissa’s expression that she thought you did know, but she didn’t say anything further on the subject.
“You can always change your mind, Ali,” Tobas said. “We’ll leave the door unlocked.”
“I’ll be fine here with Gresh.”
“All right, then. Let us see about finding some supper, shall we? Kara? I’d rather not deal with a crowded inn, if we have any food here.”
“We have wine and cheese in the kitchen and half a salted ham, but there’s no bread.”
“I saw a baker just across the street,” Gresh offered. “I could buy a loaf.”
“And bill the Guild for it, I suppose,” Tobas said.
“Of course!”
“I’ll see what I can do, then,” Karanissa said, heading for one of the two doors at the back.
Half an hour later the four adults sat down around the little table in the kitchen, where Karanissa had set out a simple but satisfactory meal. Gresh had purchased a few sweet cakes, as well as a loaf of good bread; Karanissa had boiled generous slices of ham; and Tobas had found the butter, cheese, and wine. During supper’s preparation the conversation had been casual and fragmented, but now Gresh turned to Tobas and said, “Tell me how you came to enchant the mirror in the first place, in as much detail as you can. You never know what information might turn out to be useful, and I’d like to have the story now, just to be sure that I don’t need to look around inside that haunted castle of yours before we go on to Dwomor.”
Tobas tore off a chunk of bread and buttered it thoughtfully, then began his story. “I grew up in the village of Telven, near the eastern end of what you’d call the Pirate Towns, and I didn’t bother with an apprenticeship when I was twelve because I was my father’s only acknowledged child, and I expected to inherit his ship, Retribution. When a demonologist sank it and left me orphaned at the age of fifteen, I had to change my plans, but of course by then I was too old for any respectable apprenticeship.”
He took a bite of bread, then continued. “Fortunately for me, there was an old wizard named Roggit who lived in the marshes just outside of Telven. I used to think he was too senile to see that I was obviously too old, but now I’m fairly sure he took pity on me. Either way, he took me on despite my age. Unfortunately, he wasn’t much of a wizard, and he was even less of a teacher, and his health was terrible. I lived with him for a year and a half, or maybe it was closer to two years, and while he did get through all the essential initiations in that time, by the time he died peacefully in his sleep he had only taught me one useful spell-Thrindle’s Combustion.”
“Unfortunate,” Gresh said. “But presumably you inherited his business, as his apprentice at the time of his death-did his family contest that because of your age?”
“He didn’t have any family, any more than I did,” Tobas said. “But as for his business, such as it was, he had put an explosive seal on his book of spells, and I didn’t know any better than to open it. The whole house burned to the ground, book and all, and I was left with nothing.” He took another bite. “So I set out to seek my fortune-not that I had much choice, after losing two separate inheritances.”
He went on to describe making his way to Ethshar of the Spices, where he had discovered no one had any use for a wizard who hadn’t finished his apprenticeship and knew just one spell. In desperation he had signed up to slay a dragon in the Small Kingdoms, more or less accidentally, as much to stay out of the hands of slavers as because he thought it was a good idea. He told Gresh about his first visit to Dwomor, sparing no details, to Alorria’s dismay. She tried to defend her homeland, but Tobas refused to retract his negative comments. He explained about the terms on which the dragon-hunters had been hired and how they had been divided up into teams.
By the time he finished his account of wandering in the hills northeast of Dwomor Keep, finding Derithon’s fallen flying castle, salvaging the Transporting Tapestry, and stumbling through it to join Karanissa in her captivity, supper had been eaten, a bottle of wine had been drunk, the daylight had faded away, and the candles had been lit.
Tobas explained how he had begun working his way through Derithon’s massive collection of spells, trying as many of the easy ones as he could to gain enough practice that he might have a chance of surviving attempts to use higher-order wizardry to get Karanissa and himself out of the castle and back to the World. He described every detail he could remember of his failed attempt at Lugwiler’s Haunting Phantasm.
Gresh listened closely and had him review several portions before permitting him to continue the story.
The spriggans had stolen the mirror just as he carried it through the revitalized Transporting Tapestry, back out in the World, and he had not seen it since. He had married Karanissa, and then more or less accidentally slain the dragon after all. In order to collect the promised reward he had been required to marry Alorria, as well-which, he was quick to note, was no hardship. He had never planned on having two wives, but he certainly didn’t mind.
He glanced from one woman to the other at that point, but no one else commented.
There were parts of the story that did not seem to make sense, Gresh thought-the account of removing the Transporting Tapestry from the fallen flying castle, for example. How and why had Tobas removed it without going through it?
And for that matter, why had the castle fallen in the first place? Presumably Varrin’s Greater Propulsion had failed, but why? A wizard of Derithon’s obvious accomplishments wouldn’t have been careless with something so important as the enchantment holding up his home. Was there some inherent flaw in the spell?
And there was the way Tobas had simply let the spriggans run off with the mirror without pursuing them, and how it had been years before spriggans started turning up in any numbers.
There was something Tobas wasn’t telling him. Gresh suspected that it was related to the wizard’s plans for disposing of the mirror.
“We should go,” Karanissa said, as Gresh asked a few more leading questions, hoping for some further hint. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and you need to pack up things from your workshop.”
“A long day, but not a strenuous one,” Gresh pointed out. “You’ll just be sitting on a carpet all day.”