“You’re…a supplier? A merchant?”

“Yes, exactly. A merchant, like my father before me, save that he trades in more ordinary goods-exotic woods, perfumes, that sort of thing.” As he said that, it occurred to Gresh to wonder whether his father had ever done any business here; he mostly traded with Tintallion and the other northern lands, but there had been a few expeditions to the Small Kingdoms…

“And you have a market for albino hair?” Peren asked.

“I believe so, yes. Not a huge quantity of it, but I could certainly use a few locks.”

Peren stared at him for a moment, then said, “I have two questions, and I’m not sure which to ask first.”

“If one of them is ‘How much will you pay?,’ I’ll need to…”

“No,” Peren interrupted. “That’s later. The first one is, if you’re just a merchant, why has Tobas brought you halfway across the World?”

“Oh-has he told you why he’s here?”

Peren grimaced. “He has half a dozen reasons to be here, beginning with showing his daughter off to her grandparents, but I assume you mean that he’s running some mysterious errand for the Wizards’ Guild. He said you were helping him with it, but not the nature of it.”

“Then I shan’t say too much either, but I will say that I have a reputation back home as a man who can always find what his customers want, if the price is right. I have agreed to obtain a certain object for Tobas and the Guild, and I believe it to be somewhere in the mountains to the northeast of this castle. It’s not adventuring; it’s just a hunting expedition. Just business.”

“Not a dragon?”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

“And your other question?”

“Simple enough. I’ve dealt with wizards’ suppliers before-I was the one who sold off the blood and scales and teeth and all the rest of it when we killed the dragon seven years ago. I’ve sold them a few other things since then-as I’m sure you know, there are certain spells that call for ingredients that are best obtained by someone with an intimate relationship with a royal family.”

“Yes, I know. Your question?”

“Why is it that in all these seven years, none of those suppliers ever asked about my hair?”

Gresh smiled and turned up a palm.

“Amateurs,” he said. “You were dealing with amateurs. I, Lord Peren, am a professional.”

The Spriggan Mirror

A Legend of Ethshar

By the time dinner was served Gresh had made the acquaintance of a significant portion of the royal family of Dwomor-King Derneth II, Queen Alris, the king’s brother Prince Debrel, the king’s unmarried sisters Princess Sadra and Princess Shasha, and half a dozen of the king’s nine children, the others having been married off to the royal families of other kingdoms. Three grandchildren were also present, counting little Alris-known here, understandably, as Alris the Younger. One prince had a wife, recently brought from Yorbethon, and still clearly not entirely adjusted to her new surroundings.

Two of the absent daughters also reportedly had children, but those children, like their mothers, were elsewhere.

If nothing else, it was clear that there was no danger that the current dynasty would run out of heirs any time soon.

Unfortunately, only about half the royal family and a handful of retainers spoke any Ethsharitic, and not all of them were anything close to fluent, leaving Gresh unable to communicate with most of the company. He still tried to make the best impression he could, especially when he was presented to the king and queen.

He had to explain repeatedly that he was not a wizard nor an adventurer, merely a businessman.

All in all, he did not consider the evening a great social success; his unfamiliarity with the language put a damper on any attempt to strike up an intimate acquaintance with one of the local women, since he was not stupid enough to attempt to seduce a princess or anyone with a husband in evidence, and his other conversations all seemed to follow the same route while going nowhere.

The food was excellent, though-plentiful servings of well-seasoned roast beef, cabbage soup, stewed apples, and cherry compote. The wine was astonishingly good; when he remarked on it he was informed that Dwomor prided itself on its vineyards, and the only reason they weren’t better known was that they didn’t produce enough of a surplus for significant exports.

He did manage to conduct some business, after a fashion; he added Peren to his permanent list of suppliers and talked to several people about spriggan sightings in the area. He was surprised how few people had ever seen the little pests; a few even professed not to believe in the creatures at all.

That seemed very odd, given that the mirror was in the area. Rather than being attracted by Tobas’s magic, the spriggans seemed to be deliberately avoiding Dwomor Keep. There was clearly something going on here that he didn’t understand, and he wondered whether it was related to whatever secrets Tobas was keeping. If there really was a powerful countercharm of some sort in Tobas’s possession, such as Gresh had previously theorized, perhaps the spriggans feared it.

He had no hard evidence, though, and no one he spoke to seemed to know anything about it, so at last he dropped the subject.

When the meal was over the Lord Chamberlain, who turned out to be the thin old man who had first knocked on the sitting room door, took him aside. “We have arranged accommodations for you, sir; if you would follow me, I will show you to your rooms.”

At that Gresh realized just how tired he was. He had started the day in Ethshar of the Sands, spent more than half the day on the flying carpet, visited Ethshar of the Spices, arrived in Dwomor, and survived a royal supper, all of it after a rather poor night’s sleep. He was happy to follow the chamberlain to a pleasant apartment on the second floor.

All his luggage was still in the bottomless bag in Tobas’s sitting room, though. He mentioned as much to the chamberlain.

“I will see to it, sir.”

Gresh settled into a chair, planning to just rest his feet for a moment; he was awakened by a knock at the door, where he found a footman holding his bag. He accepted it with a polite remark that the man obviously didn’t understand, but the two of them exchanged bows, and then the footman went about his business, leaving Gresh alone.

Gresh considered his situation for perhaps two or three minutes. Then he made his way into the bedchamber, dropped the bag, pulled off his boots, blew out the candle, and fell into bed.

No crying infants disturbed him; no woman’s lingering scent troubled his dreams. He slept well and awoke refreshed and was not surprised to see, upon looking out a window at the angle of the sun, that he had slept long. The morning was well advanced, the sun high in the east.

He was hungry, but not ravenous, and decided that he would prefer not to eat breakfast in the same clothes he had worn to bed. He began emptying his bag. He was unsure how long he would be staying in Dwomor Keep, but he thought he might as well unpack thoroughly.

He had pulled out perhaps half the contents when a knock sounded at the apartment door. He answered it and found Tobas.

“Good morning,” the wizard said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all; I was just unpacking a little,” Gresh said.

“I see. I was wondering what your plans are for today. Will you be heading out to look for the mirror?”

“Actually, I would very much like to get a look at where the mirror first entered the World, and I was hoping you could fly me there this afternoon. I assume it won’t take very long to reach the area?”

Tobas hesitated. “The carpet can’t take you all the way,” he said. “I can get you to the general area and point out a few things-it’s perhaps an hour’s flight-but it isn’t a safe place to fly.”