"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 9 - The Spriggan Mirror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

moment, please?” he said.
“Certainly.”
 He turned and hurried to the vault door, where he fished out the key again, unlocked the lock,
then pried a large black wax seal off with a thumbnail, being careful not to mar the rune etched into the
wax. He set the seal aside, to be softened over a candle-flame and re-used later, and placed a glass bowl
over it to keep it safe from stray fingers. If anyone else touched that seal, anyone but himself, it would
explode violently, and Gresh did not particularly want to risk burning down the shop because Twilfa got
careless or a customer got curious.
“There,” he said, opening the vault. “Twilfa, find her blood for her, would you? I’ll help you in a
moment. And afterward, I want you to find Tira.”
“Tira?” Twilfa looked at the woman in red, then back at her brother. “What do you want her
for?”
Gresh glared at her silently for a moment, then turned back to his waiting customer without
explaining. Twilfa ought to be able to figure it out for herself, and he did not care to say anything that the
customer might overhear. An ordinary person wouldn’t have heard a whispered explanation at that
distance, but a witch would—as Twilfa ought to know. Tira, another of their sisters, was a witch, and
Twilfa had certainly had plenty of opportunity to observe just how keen Tira’s senses were. One witch
could always tell another and could also evaluate the other witch’s honesty. Tira might be useful in
assessing the customer in the red dress.
Twilfa threw one final curious glance at the stranger, then stepped into the vault, Dina close
behind.
“Now,” Gresh said, returning to the front of the shop, “what was it your husband wanted to
buy?”
“A mirror,” the witch said. “A very specific mirror, about this big.” She held out her hands in a
rough circle perhaps five inches in diameter. “He last saw it in the Small Kingdoms, in the mountains near
the border between Dwomor and Aigoa.”
“The Small Kingdoms.” That was more or less the far side of the World, and explained her
accent.
“Yes. In or near Dwomor.”
“And is this mirror still there?”
“We don’t know.”
Gresh suppressed a sigh. “My dear, the Small Kingdoms are almost a hundred leagues from
here, and my time...”
“We have a flying carpet to take you there,” she interrupted. “And we can pay you well.”
Gresh blinked. “A flying carpet?” He glanced at the vault; Dina and Twilfa were out of sight
behind the iron door.
“Yes.”
Flying carpets required high-order magic; not one wizard in twenty could produce one reliably.
And a wizard who had one, assuming he had made it himself, could generally find most of the ingredients
for his spells without assistance, rather than paying Gresh. Certainly finding a mirror should not be so very
difficult for such a wizard.
“What’s unique about this mirror?” he asked. “Why do you want me to find it for you?”
The self-proclaimed witch replied, “It’s where spriggans come from.”
Gresh considered that for a moment. On the face of it, it seemed preposterous—but then, a great
deal of what wizards did was preposterous. She looked calm and sincere, and why in the World would
anyone come to him with so absurd a story if it wasn’t true?
“Have a seat, my dear,” he said, gesturing to the maroon velvet chairs in one corner. “I’ll need to
hear the whole story, but let me finish with this other customer first.”
The Spriggan Mirror
A Legend of Ethshar