“If it will get us airborne,” Gresh said, fumbling to find the right jar of powder. Karanissa provided a handful of light, and a moment later a faint blue shimmer suddenly settled Tobas’s rumpled garments back into their proper shapes.

Gresh was still tucking the box back into his shoulder-pack when Tobas settled cross-legged on the fabric and gestured. The carpet rose silently and smoothly.

“Can you see well enough to get us safely back to the castle?” Gresh asked, as he looked around at the blackening sky and shadow-filled landscape. Stars were appearing overhead, and he wondered whether the greater moon would be visible that night, and when the lesser would next rise. He could not see either of them at the moment.

Some of the stars didn’t seem to be staying; apparently clouds were starting to gather, which would not help matters.

“I hope so,” Tobas said, turning the carpet to the southwest. “I’m hoping to navigate by the glow from the castle windows.”

“They don’t close the shutters?” Gresh asked, startled.

“They usually miss a few,” Karanissa reassured him. Tobas was too busy peering into the gloom to respond.

“We could stay up here on the mountain until morning,” Gresh suggested, as he noticed the carpet drifting closer to a sharp-looking tree than he liked. “It might be safer than flying in the dark.”

“No!” answered Tobas and both his wives. The carpet picked up speed.

“I wish I knew where we’re going,” the reflection said plaintively, as she looked around in obvious consternation. “It’s windy up here.”

“We’re going to Dwomor Keep, assuming we can find it in the dark,” Gresh told her. “It’s a big old castle, but reasonably comfortable.”

“Is it? Why are we going there?”

Gresh tried to explain, with both the human reflection and the four spriggans listening intently and asking questions, and that kept him and the real Karanissa busy for the better part of an hour. By then the sky was overcast, hiding the stars and moons, so that the carpet seemed to be soaring through nothingness. Alorria was dozing, and Alris was still sound asleep.

Gresh leaned forward and whispered to Tobas, “Do you know where we are?”

“No,” Tobas admitted. He explained that he no longer had any idea where they were. He was just looking for a light, any light, that he could aim for. Gresh pointed out a faint orange glow far off to their left, but Tobas shook his head.

“That’s not it,” he said.

“How do you know?” Gresh demanded.

“Because that’s the Tower of Flame,” Tobas said. “I’ve seen it before. It’s a good thirty leagues away. It would take hours to get there, and there’s nothing there we want.”

“Oh,” Gresh said, staring at the distant glimmer. He had heard of the legendary Tower of Flame all his life, but he had never seen it before.

From this distance it really didn’t look like much.

“There’s a light,” the reflection said, pointing ahead

“Where?” both men asked, turning to see.

“There.”

She was right; a faint flicker of orange was visible, and Tobas steered the carpet toward it. He did not know what the light was, but it appeared man-made and was not the Tower of Flame. At this point that was good enough.

They wound up as guests for the night at a small farmhouse where the man of the house had been out with a lantern, checking on a soon-to-calve cow.

When they first arrived and asked the startled and drowsy farmer where they were, they were assured that they were only a mile or two from Dwomor Keep. Upon hearing the castle was close Tobas wanted to continue on and try to find it, despite the now-total darkness, but just then the first drops of rain began to fall, and the others unanimously overruled him. They hastily hoisted their luggage, rolled up the carpet, and hurried into the cottage, Gresh almost banging his forehead on the lintel.

After the wife and teenaged sons were awakened, Gresh paid the family of farmers generously for a late supper and the use of several beds, even though the beds were just piles of straw and some rather malodorous blankets crowded into various corners of house and barn.

Unlike the sleeping accommodations, the meal was entirely satisfactory, as the family had just that day butchered a hog and had a good supply of vegetables and beer to accompany the fresh pork. The entire party ate heartily after their long and weary day, then tottered off to bed with as little conversation as possible.

Gresh had slept on worse bedding on occasion, on various buying trips; he awoke feeling fine. Most of the others had no real problems, but Alorria had not done as well as some and was alternately yawning and complaining as the company gathered in the main room of the farmhouse shortly after dawn.

Gresh was mildly surprised to discover that all four spriggans had stayed the night and not wandered off seeking fun, but there they were when he arose, clustered around Tobas and his luggage, ready to continue their adventure. As their hosts fried up a pound or so of bacon for breakfast, Gresh and Tobas studied the spriggans carefully and concluded that these were, in fact, the same four, and there were no others to be seen, either running loose or in Tobas’s valise. The mirror had not produced any more during the night. Presumably the mirror in the spriggans’ world was safely shut away in a box and would never again spew unwelcome visitors into the World.

Since they had opened the valise to check for spriggans, Tobas lifted out the mirror for inspection. “You really did it,” he said, marveling as he turned carefully wrapped glass over in his hands. “You got me the mirror.”

“It’s my job,” Gresh replied gruffly. “You saw it last night.”

“But it seems more real by daylight. Before I’d only just been turned back to my natural form and was surrounded by spriggans. It was hard to be sure just what was real under those circumstances!”

Gresh could not argue with that.

An hour later the ten of them-Gresh, Tobas, Alorria, Alris, Karanissa, the reflected Karanissa, and the four spriggans-spilled off the carpet onto the platform outside the tower window at Dwomor Keep.

The Spriggan Mirror

A Legend of Ethshar

Gresh decided to spend a day or two in Dwomor before heading back to Ethshar of the Rocks to collect his fee; after all, once he was paid he would have all the time in the World. Besides, he had spent more than enough hours crowded onto the flying carpet, and a brief stay would allow him and Tobas to tidy up loose ends, such as making certain no more spriggans were emerging.

That was easy enough to ascertain, since the mirror was wrapped in cloth-so long as the wrappings stayed in place, no spriggans had appeared, since any new arrival would have had to loosen the bindings to fully materialize. They had been too tired to fully appreciate that at the farmhouse, but now it seemed sufficient evidence.

The mirror was carefully placed in Tobas’s tower workshop, where the four spriggans were set to watch over it with strict orders not to touch it, or to meddle with anything else. Gresh had some doubts about ordering them not to meddle and considered using Javan’s Geas on them, but eventually decided that if Tobas wanted to risk it, that was his problem, and Gresh wasn’t going to waste a bunch of valuable magic safeguarding anything. Especially since he still didn’t know whether or not Javan’s Geas would work on spriggans.

As for the enchanted powders themselves, Gresh had tucked the pack in a corner when they first came in from the flying carpet’s landing platform. He saw no need to move them; none of the residents of Dwomor Keep were going to be foolish enough to steal from the wizard’s apartments.