Tobas and the two Karanissas were waiting in the bedroom; the two women were seated side-by-side on the edge of the bed, the wizard standing before them. For a moment Gresh was uncertain which woman was which, but then he got close enough to see the height difference.

“Are you ready?” he asked, opening the jar. “You’ll have about half an hour to decide which sort of existence you prefer. If you wait any longer than that the Spell of Reversal won’t change you back, and we don’t know whether Javan’s Restorative will work.”

“It ought to,” Tobas said.

“I’m ready,” the image said. The original Karanissa moved down the bed, farther away from her duplicate, to make room.

Gresh flung a generous pinch of white powder at the smaller Karanissa and proclaimed, “Esku!!”

There was a blinding silver flash; Gresh blinked, trying to clear his vision. When he did he saw two identical Karanissas sitting on the bed-truly identical; the size difference had vanished.

So had all differences between their facial expressions and even their position. Both were sitting bolt upright, staring at their own hands. Both spoke in perfect unison, saying, “By all the gods, Gresh-what have you done?”

The Spriggan Mirror

A Legend of Ethshar

“I don’t understand,” Gresh said, looking from one woman to the other. “What happened?”

Both of them looked at him, which was oddly reassuring, because at least it meant they were no longer in exactly the same position. “Don’t you see?” they said, still speaking in unison. “It turned the reflection into what it was meant to be-but it wasn’t just meant to be human, it was meant to be me!”

“What?”

“We’re both me!” they insisted. “I have two bodies, but they’re both me! I can still remember everything from the moment I emerged from the mirror-we can both remember it-but we’re both Karanissa!”

“Gresh, I think we better undo this,” Tobas said.

The two women turned to look at one another, moving in perfect synchronization. “Oh, how strange!” they said, as they stared at one another. “Yes, I think we should reverse this!”

Gresh stared, fascinated. “But this is… Shouldn’t we…What is it like?”

Karanissa-both of her-looked at him. “It’s very hard to describe,” they said. “When I used witchcraft to hear people’s thoughts it was… Well, no, it wasn’t anything like this, really, because there isn’t anyone else, there’s just me, but I’m in two places at once.”

“Do you see things double, then?”

“No, no-I just see more.”

“Gresh, I don’t think this is the time…” Tobas began.

Gresh turned. “It’s exactly the time,” he said. “We have half an hour before we need to reverse the spell, so why not try to learn more about it while we can?”

“Because we might lose track of time. Could you at least go get the powder for the Spell of Reversal and keep it ready?”

“I think that would be a good idea,” the Karanissas said, turning to look at one another again. “I really don’t think I want to stay like this indefinitely.”

Reluctantly, Gresh acknowledged the wisdom of this. “I’ll go get it, then-and meanwhile, Karanissa, could you please take note of anything particularly interesting?”

As the two women stared at each other they made an odd noise that Gresh took for agreement. He turned and headed for the stairs.

Something green peeked up over the steps, then squeaked and scampered down. That spriggan was clearly bored with watching the mirror do nothing, Gresh thought, as he reached the head of the staircase and started down.

At the foot of the stairs he turned toward the corner, then froze in horror.

He had shoved his pack into the corner by the door to the platform, but he had not bothered to fasten it. Now he found himself looking at all four spriggans, each of them holding one of the jars of magical powder-two in the sitting room, one on the sill of the open door to the platform, one on the platform itself.

Even as he stared, readying an angry shout, he mentally cursed his own stupidity. He knew spriggans were attracted to magic; he knew the spriggans were getting bored guarding the mirror; he knew they had been told not to touch anything in the workshop. No one had said anything about not touching the contents of the sitting room.

“Put those down!” he bellowed.

All four spriggans immediately dropped their jars.

The two jars in the sitting room landed with a slight thump, undamaged.

The one on the doorsill flew up out of the startled spriggan’s hands, came down hard on the stone, and cracked.

The one on the platform was not so much dropped as flung sideways; it landed rolling, and both Gresh and the spriggan watched in helpless dismay as it kept on rolling, right off the edge of the platform. As the label and clear glass alternated Gresh could see dark powder inside, but he could not be completely certain whether it was blue, purple, or dark red.

A few seconds later he heard the distant sound of breaking glass as it shattered on stonework somewhere far below.

“Oops,” the spriggan on the platform said. It looked up at Gresh with an embarrassed grin.

Gresh stared at it, wanting to scream at it, but unable to think of any words that were even remotely appropriate. Then he marched forward to collect the jars before any more damage could be done and to see which spells he still had.

The two unharmed jars held Javan’s Restorative and the Spell of the Revealed Power.

The cracked jar contained the dark red powder for Javan’s Geas.

The jar of purple powder that could produce the Spell of Reversal was gone.

“Oh, blood, pain, and death!” Gresh cursed, as he hurried out on the platform and looked down, hoping that perhaps part of the jar had survived, intact enough to hold a dose of the powder. Perhaps if he used the potion for the Spell of Retarded Time he could climb down and collect enough of the powder and still get back before the half-hour was up…

“Jar broken,” the spriggan said sadly, as it stood beside Gresh and looked over the edge with him.

“Could fix it?” another spriggan said, coming up behind them.

“Fix how?” the first spriggan asked.

“With magic powder?”

That was a possibility Gresh had not yet considered; he started to say something, but before he could, the spriggan who had dropped the jar on the platform leaned over the edge and shouted, “Esku!” at the top of its squeaky little voice.

There was a red-gold flash, and a suddenly intact jar came sailing up at them; Gresh stepped back, startled, and narrowly missed being hit by it as it flung itself onto the platform and rolled to a stop at the spot where it had been dropped.

Gresh stared at it, astonished. He had not thought of that, and the spriggans had. They had recognized the powder by color and had known how to use it from watching him back in the cave. Furthermore, they had actually done it, and it had worked! He had not known spriggans could actually work that sort of magic-but then, it was the powder that really did it; all anyone else had to provide, once the powder was flung, was the trigger word.

“Jar fixed!” the spriggan said happily, pointing.

“Yes, it is,” Gresh agreed, as a horrible suspicion struck him. He reached down and picked up the jar and held it up to the light.

It was empty.

Words once again failed him; he bit down so hard he thought his teeth might crack. That spell had retrieved the jar, but it had used up all the powder! It had all been flung, and it had all been consumed in one flash-enough powder to work the tenth-order Spell of Reversal eight, or nine, or perhaps even ten more times, all of it gone to repair a cheap glass jar.