“When will your troupe be ready?” he asked.

The Spriggan Mirror

A Legend of Ethshar

Gresh eyed the carpet critically. “Will that thing really hold us?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Tobas assured him. “It’s quite safe.”

“No, it isn’t,” Alorria said.

“Ali…”

“It isn’t! It’s amazing none of us have ever fallen off, and we’ve gotten hit by birds and gotten bugs in our eyes…”

“Shut up, Ali,” Karanissa said. “We haven’t fallen off, and we aren’t going to, because part of the spell on the carpet is to adjust its shape to hold us upright and to adjust its path through the air to keep us on it.”

“It’s hard to fall off a flying carpet,” Tobas said.

“But it can be done,” Alorria insisted. “And we do run into birds and bugs, and there’s no protection from wind or rain…”

“I’m sure Gresh can handle riding it,” Karanissa replied.

“I’m sure I can,” Gresh agreed, but he had some doubts. The carpet was only about six feet wide and nine or ten feet long, and it was a long way to the Small Kingdoms, well over a hundred leagues. He and Tobas would presumably want to sleep on the way. Put the two of them on that carpet, along with their baggage and supplies, and…well, it would be cozy.

He had asked Tobas to bring it over so he could see how much room he would have for supplies, and he was not happy with what he saw. The carpet was nicely patterned in blues and reds and hovered steadily a foot off the hard-packed earth of East Road, but it really was small and didn’t look very sturdy. Gresh tended to think Alorria was right about its safety.

“The four of us flew here from Ethshar of the Sands on it,” Tobas said. “It wasn’t bad.”

“It was crowded,” Alorria said. “I was frightened the whole time that I was going to drop the baby.”

“But you didn’t,” Tobas said. “Really, it wasn’t bad.”

From Ethshar of the Sands to Ethshar of the Rocks was about fifty leagues. “How long did that take?” Gresh asked.

“Oh, half a day.”

Gresh threw Tobas a sideways glance. “Half a day?”

“About that.”

“That’s fast!”

“That’s the point,” Tobas said.

“Well, yes,” Gresh acknowledged.

“It’s going to be crowded,” Alorria said. “It was bad enough with four of us.”

Gresh looked at her, startled. “What?”

“I said it would be crowded,” Alorria said.

“But you aren’t coming!”

“Oh, yes, I am! You think I’m going to miss a chance to show our daughter to her grandparents? They haven’t seen her yet, you know. And I am not about to let Tobas strand me and the baby here with a bunch of strangers. I don’t know anyone in this city! We’ve been staying at an inn near Eastgate, and I am not going to stay in a place like that without my husband to protect me. Not to mention that caring for a baby is a lot of work, and I expect Tobas to do his share of it, and he can’t if he’s in Dwomor and Alris is here, can he? I am definitely coming, Gresh the Supplier, and don’t you think you can prevent it!”

“We may be able to leave her and the baby with her parents in Dwomor while we’re out in the wilderness,” Tobas said apologetically. “Or if the trip is too strenuous, perhaps in our home in Ethshar of the Sands.”

“Or our other home,” Alorria said.

“As far as anyone in this World can tell, that is in Ethshar of the Sands,” Karanissa said.

Gresh was not at all sure what homes they were talking about, but the details didn’t really matter. “So we’re going to crowd all four of us and our baggage onto…”

“Five,” Karanissa said.

Gresh turned to glower at her.

“I’m afraid my wives don’t like it if I travel with only one of them,” Tobas said.

Karanissa glared silently at him, while Alorria said, “No, I don’t like it if you try to go off alone with her, and I don’t mind saying so! I know you married her first, and you’re both magicians, but you’re my husband, all the same, and I’m not going to let you run around with another woman, even if she is your wife! Especially not now that I have the baby.”

Gresh closed his eyes wearily.

“It’s going to be crowded,” he said.

“We can hang the luggage from the sides,” Tobas said. “It won’t be that bad.”

“I’ll need to re-pack my things,” Gresh said.

“Honestly, it can lift several tons,” Tobas said. “You’d be amazed. We moved half our household from Dwomor to Ethshar on it, in a single load. Secure everything with a few ropes, and we’ll be fine.”

“All the same, I prefer to rearrange,” Gresh said. He did not say so, but what he now intended to do was to stuff everything into the magical bottomless bag Dina had made for him years ago, as much to keep Tobas’s wives from poking into his belongings as because he was concerned about the carpet’s capacity. It would make unpacking much more of a job, since everything had to be removed from the bag one item at a time in the exact reverse of the order it went in, but he would feel more secure.

He really hoped Akka’s dance did some good. Her group had gathered the other night and danced until they were dripping with sweat, and Gresh hoped the effort hadn’t been wasted. It had certainly felt invigorating, as if the dancers were pouring energy into him, so presumably it had done something.

“Can you be ready to leave in an hour and a half?” he asked.

“We’re ready to leave now,” Alorria said.

“No, we aren’t,” Karanissa retorted. “Our belongings are still at the inn, and we haven’t paid the bill or told Kaligir we’re leaving.”

“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 wool: 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.