“Oh, I don’t know, the spriggan, I guess. They are kind of cute.”
“A little while ago you were threatening to flash-fry the little monsters.”
“A little while ago I was frustrated and angry.”
“Well, I’m glad I was able to help with that; now, if I could get rid of the spriggans’ mirror and find us a way out of the castle, we’d be all set. Nuisance! Here, Nuisance!”
Wet footsteps pattered into the room, and something foul began dripping on the carpet. “Nuisance, I want you to find the mirror those spriggans took from the study and bring it to me; got that?”
Nuisance made a noise like a strangled cat and scampered away. Tobas sighed. “Do you think he understood?”
“Oh, probably,” Karanissa said. She turned and addressed empty air, giving the two sylphs the same instructions Tobas had given Nuisance. The air stirred slightly, and they were gone.
“You know,” Tobas said, “I wonder whether Derithon made Nuisance intentionally, or whether it was an accident like the spriggans. I can’t find any spell in the book that would produce something like that.”
Karanissa shrugged. “I really don’t know; it was in the castle when I first came here, and I never thought to ask. I just took it for granted, another little bit of wizardry, as incomprehensible as the rest.”
“Wizardry doesn’t all have to be incomprehensible — at least, I don’t think it does.”
“Compared to witchcraft, it’s all madness, if you ask me, remember, wizardry uses raw chaos.”
“Well, maybe, but it makes order out of it, sort of.”
“Oh, it does, does it? Like that jar-opening spell? That’s so orderly and efficient.”
Tobas grinned. “You argue well, witch.”
She punched him in the ribs; he retaliated by grabbing her around the waist and pulling her toward him, and the two of them rolled, giggling, across the carpet.
They ended up against a wall, Karanissa on her back and Tobas sitting astride her. “Aha, wench!” he said. “You’re in my power now!”
She laughed, then put the back of one hand to her forehead. “Oh, mercy, master! What will you have of me?”
“What have you got?” he asked wryly.
“Only my poor self, you fiend!” She burst out giggling.
“Oh, that’s good enough,” Tobas said. “I’ll take it.”
“You already have,” she pointed out.
“Oh, but I mean to keep it!” He turned serious, and asked, “Karanissa, would you marry me?”
Her giggling subsided. “I don’t know,” she said. “How do you mean that?”
“Is there more than one way?”
“There were in my time, civilian marriages were different from military marriages, and there were various more casual affairs as well.” She pushed him off and sat up. “That doesn’t matter, though. Tobas, I like you — maybe I love you, I’m not sure — but I am not going to marry anyone until we’re out of this castle.”
“Good enough,” he replied. “We don’t have the witness we need here, anyway.”
“Only one? In my day you needed three.”
“Well, more are better, but one will do.” Tobas got to his feet and retrieved his boot from the hallway, where it had landed when thrown at the spriggan.
“What do you want your boots for?”
“I don’t like walking around barefoot, especially not with the spriggans around, and Nuisance did something to my slippers so that they’re all sticky.”
“Well, tell it to clean it off! Or have one of the sylphs do it!”
“The sylphs won’t obey me, you never told them to. And it never occurred to me to tell Nuisance to wipe it up.” Since the incident of the spilled chamberpot he had avoided telling Nuisance to clean up anything.
“No wonder it gives you so much trouble! You let it get away with making a mess. If you made it clean up after itself, it would behave itself better.”
Tobas shrugged. “Maybe that’s it.” He settled in a chair and began pulling on the boots.
“You still haven’t told me why you need anything on your feet; where are you going?”
“Well, if you won’t marry me until I get us out of here, I thought I’d go check on the tapestry again and, if it’s still not working, try sending Peren another dream.”
“Wait a minute. I’ll come with you.” Karanissa stood up, straightening her crumpled skirt and pulling her bodice back into place.
Tobas waited, and a moment later the two of them were ambling slowly down the hall toward the tapestry, arms about one another. They paused while Tobas opened the door to the chamber, and he took advantage of the opportunity to kiss her lingeringly.
Their little interlude was interrupted by a furious chorus of squeaks and squeals, and the soggy sound of Nuisance running desperately toward them, gasping out hideous noises.
Tobas turned, and saw the spriggan mirror bouncing toward them, obviously carried by Nuisance, with a horde of spriggans in hot pursuit.
“Good boy!” he called, ignoring momentarily the fact that Nuisance’s gender, if any, was unknown. “Bring it here!”
Nuisance tried, but before it could reach its master, a pair of spriggans jumped it; the mirror fell to the floor and rolled free.
Tobas dived for it and snatched it up, but a spriggan was in the process of climbing out of it and let out an ear-piercing shriek of sheer terror. Tobas ignored the creature as he tried to dash the glass against the wall.
The spriggan wrapped itself around his hand, clinging for dear life and incidentally forming a very effective cushion. Tobas started to pry it loose with his other hand, but after a glance back down the hallway he thought better of it.
Every spriggan in the castle, three or four dozen of them, was charging directly toward him. Clawless and toothless they might be, but that many of them could still be formidable. He got to his feet and scrambled into the tapestry chamber, dragging Karanissa with him, and then slammed the door in the faces of the onrushing mob.
The latch did not engage, and an instant later he was swept off his feet by a wave of squirming, squeaking spriggans.
He rolled over, trying to force them to drop off to avoid being crushed; most of the little creatures panicked and jumped clear. Holding the mirror high, he tried to get to his feet once again.
A dozen spriggans jumped him. With others close underfoot, he lost his balance and staggered backward. He wobbled, then fell.
The lights went out, and he felt a sudden rush of cool air about him. When he hit the floor, it was at a steep angle, so that he rolled involuntarily. Startled, he loosened his grip and felt the spriggans pry the mirror from his grasp.
That goal achieved, they ran off in every direction, squeaking like an entire castle’s complement of rusty hinges, all swinging at once.
Tobas got slowly to his feet, discovering as he did so that the floor had tilted somehow. His eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, and he realized that Karanissa was not in the room; he was alone.
Only then did it register that he was not in the room he had been in, and, after a moment of wild fancies about secret doorways and trick walls, he realized that the tapestry was working again. He had gone through it! The sloping floor told him immediately where he had landed — the bare, empty chamber in the downed flying castle where his tapestry had once hung.
He had been afraid of that. He had hoped that the tapestries, being a pair, were somehow linked, so that he would emerge in the little cottage a good distance closer to Dwomor Keep; but since this was the chamber the tapestry showed, he was not surprised to find himself in it.
He had half expected to find Peren waiting for him, though. “Hello?” he called.
No one answered. He felt his way forward; the darkness was so complete that he could see almost nothing of his surroundings. He found a wall and groped his way along it, rounding a corner.