Gresh stared at him. “Why not?” he asked, baffled. He remembered now that Tobas had said the center of Ethshar of the Sands wasn’t a safe place to fly, either. That part of the city was where the usurper Tabaea died. And this place in the wilderness was where Derithon’s flying castle had crashed. The all-purpose countercharm, if that’s what it was, was presumably involved.

“I can’t tell you that.”

Gresh glared for a moment, then said, “Fine. Get me as close as you can. Shall we meet at midday?”

“I’ll come find you,” Tobas said.

“Fine.”

Tobas bowed, and turned away. Gresh watched him go, then closed the door of the apartment.

Whatever the secret was Tobas was hiding-well, first off, he wasn’t hiding it very well. Second-it appeared that whatever had been done in the mountains and in the overlord’s palace had after-effects. That was interesting-and did it have anything to do with the spriggans’ mirror?

He would probably find out that afternoon. He returned to unpacking his bag.

A few hours later he had sorted out his belongings, changed his clothes, stuffed a few carefully selected items in a small shoulder-pack, stuffed several others back in the bottomless bag, and had gotten lost wandering the castle corridors looking for a bite to eat. The servants he encountered did not include anyone who could make sense of his Ethsharitic or his gestures, but he eventually found himself directed to the Lord Chamberlain, who sent him back to his apartments with assurances that a tray would be sent up forthwith.

The tray did arrive-bread, cheese, wine, figs, and dried apricots-and he was licking the last of the sticky residue of the figs from his fingers when Tobas knocked on the door again.

After admitting the wizard, Gresh finished his glass of wine and re-corked the bottle, then grabbed his little pack. He took a moment to reassure himself that the bottomless bag was tucked out of sight; then he followed Tobas upstairs.

Ten minutes later the carpet rose from the platform outside Tobas’s apartments with the two men on it-and no women or children, nor any luggage but Gresh’s pack.

It seemed much roomier that way.

About forty minutes later they came swooping down over a forested valley, and Tobas said, “There it is.” He pointed at an impressive cliff ahead.

Gresh followed the pointing finger and saw the ruins at the foot of the cliff, barely visible among the trees. He blinked, and said, “Fly level, please.”

“We are flying level,” Tobas replied. “It’s the castle that’s crooked.” Then the carpet veered off, swooping up to the right.

Gresh turned his head to keep the castle in sight.

It was still some distance away, so he could not make out all the details, but he could see the tops of five towers and one gable end protruding above the treetops. As Tobas had said, the castle was crooked; the trees made that obvious, now that he was paying attention. The entire structure was tilted at a ridiculous angle; it was a wonder that any of the towers still stood.

The roofs were red tile, though streaked dark with dirt and moss; the walls were smooth stone, either off-white or a very pale yellow. Gresh was not sure which. It appeared to be a very simple structure, with no ornamentation or elaboration.

The carpet came around in a full circle, and Gresh realized they were descending into a clearing in the forest. “Are we landing?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Can’t we get closer than this?”

“Not safely, no.”

“Wait a minute, then,” Gresh said. He unslung the pack from his shoulder and loosened the drawstring, then began rummaging in it.

The carpet slowed and descended further, making another loop. The trees now hid the castle completely.

Gresh pulled Chira’s talisman from the pack and gestured over it, setting it to detect anything between a foot and half a foot in height, and taller than it was long. That, he thought, should limit it to spriggans. Squirrels and other such creatures should be longer than they were tall, at least when moving. He spoke the command that activated the device.

Nothing happened; the surface did not glow, and no markings appeared.

He reset it for all small creatures, as a test, and promptly located what appeared to be several mice, squirrels, chipmunks, and other animals. He switched the settings back, and it went dead again.

“What is that?” Tobas asked, staring.

Gresh looked up, startled. He had been so involved in working the talisman that he had not consciously noticed that the carpet was now on the ground, and Tobas was standing on it and looking down at him.

“Sorcery,” he said.

“You’re a sorcerer?”

“I know a sorcerer.”

Tobas did not seem entirely satisfied by that response, but before he could say anything more, Gresh said, “Can we get any closer to the castle?”

“On foot, certainly-we can walk right up to it. But it’s not safe to fly the carpet any closer.”

Gresh considered that for a moment, staring into the forest toward the castle, then shook his head. “Get us airborne again and move us around to the…” He glanced up at the sun, then at the disk in his hand. “…the east,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because the mirror isn’t in this area.”

Tobas started to ask another question, then stopped. He sat down and waved a hand, and the carpet rose. “You know, it’s only an hour’s walk to the castle from here,” he said. “We could visit it, if you want.”

“Why would I want to?” Gresh said. “Do you think the mirror might be in there?”

“No,” Tobas said. “In fact, I’m sure it isn’t.”

“Because the same thing that makes it unsafe to fly there would make the mirror…well, it would do something to the mirror?”

“Yes,” Tobas admitted reluctantly. “It wouldn’t work there. That was why I let the spriggans take it in the first place-I never thought they’d get it out of the… out of… away from the castle.”

“You have some kind of powerful countercharm there?”

“What? No, I… Not exactly.”

“But there’s something there that interferes with certain spells. And you used the same thing against Tabaea in the overlord’s palace in Ethshar of the Sands.”

“Not just… Well, after a fashion.”

“Do you know which spells it stops? How certain are you it affects the mirror?”

“It prevents all wizardry,” Tobas said. “All of it. It doesn’t cancel out anything, or counter it, or reverse it-it’s just that no magical effects happen there.”

“So it didn’t break the enchantment on the mirror, when it was in the castle?”

“No. It just…suspended it, I suppose. And the Transporting Tapestry, and everything else. The carpet can’t fly there-it’s just a carpet. For that matter, I suppose Karanissa ages any time she’s in there-but the instant the mirror was somewhere normal, spriggans must have started popping out again. And the tapestry still works, the carpet flies, and Karanissa doesn’t age, as long as they’re somewhere normal. If I use the Spell of the Spinning Coin and then I go in there, the coin still spins-but I can’t spin one when I’m there, even if I immediately leave for someplace else. You do understand that this is a Guild secret and to reveal it may carry a death sentence?”

“You’re revealing it to me.”

“We’re on Guild business, and you’d already figured part of it out, and I can’t see any way to not tell you if you’re going to look for the mirror around here. I don’t think Kaligir would appreciate it if you wasted all his powders and potions by trying to use them in there.”

Gresh grimaced. “That’s a good point. Or even just wasting time searching the area, if you’re really sure the mirror can’t be in there.”

“I’m sure, believe me. No wizardry has worked there in four hundred years. There’s an entire town up on the cliff that had to be abandoned as a result.”