The Medusa Plague

by Mary Kirchoff

  “That can wait one day,” Bram countered.

  “Can it?” Guerrand’s tone suggested he thought otherwise. “Besides,” he added, “you have to stay here and keep my mirror safe.”

  Bram looked perplexed.

  “I can’t teleport between planes,” Guerrand explained. “Instead, I’m going to step into this magical mirror and exit through one in the red wing of Bastion. But that means I have to leave the mirror behind. Although only someone who has seen the inside of Bastion could use it to follow me there, it’s still too powerful a device to let fall into the wrong hands.”

  Bram’s nostrils flared in anger. “So I’m to stay here and protect a piece of glass while you’re in who-knows-what manner of danger.” Guerrand’s expression told Bram he wouldn’t budge on this issue. “I don’t like this one bit,” the younger man said, but he bowed his head in resignation.

  “I must go now, Bram,” Guerrand said as gently as he could. Turning back to the cottage where Zagarus rested on the roof, he yelled, “Come on, Zag.” The familiar spread his wings with a dolorous flap, apparently resigned to never getting any rest, and flew directly into the tiny piece of glass and disappeared.

  Guerrand raised a foot, but turned to Bram. “I’ll send word, either in person or by missive, so don’t fear.” He touched his nephew’s sleeve, then bent his head to the shard. “Be of strong heart, Bram.”

  “Have a care!” Bram cried, but his uncle had already disappeared into the impossibly small mirror. All the nobleman could see now was his own fretful expression reflected in the shiny glass. He snatched up the mirror, placed it in a pocket, and strode off to face his own problems at Castle DiThon.

  Guerrand fairly flew through one of the reflective mirrors in the seascape room, trying to look all ways at once. He stopped and shook his head at his behavior. As if whatever danger Weador predicted would be lurking in his seascape where Zagarus was perched at water’s edge.

  The first thing Guerrand did was race to his dressing area and remove his red robe, more tarnished than soiled. He wrenched it from his shoulders and flung it to the ground, unable to resist the temptation to grind the thumb-printed thing under his feet as he reached for one of the clean red garments that hung in his clothespress. He shrugged that one on and cinched it tight about the waist. As if to confirm that he had removed Nuitari’s mark and was safe, he checked himself in a glass. Before his horrified eyes, the mark reappeared in the same spot on the new garment, and on each of the three others he frantically donned. Devastated, Guerrand gave in to the inevitability of the mark and slid down the wall to the floor to think.

  Did the ever-present black thumbprint mean the danger Weador said awaited him at Bastion was somehow linked to Nuitari? The god had a representative here at Bastion: Dagamier.

  Guerrand’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. Ezius was too quiet and befuddled to ever be a threat. But Dagamier … She obviously coveted the position of high defender; the black wizardess had fought against Guerrand’s authority from the first moment they’d met. She’d made it easier for Guerrand to take his leave from Bastion by assuming his responsibilities. Had she spent the time arranging his downfall?

  He turned back to his shoulder bag, now lying on the floor, and donned the bracelets and rings that carried his protective spells and were capable of shielding him against both physical blows and magical forces. Checking the scrying schedule, he determined that it was Dagamier’s shift in the sphere.

  Guerrand covered the distance to the nave in a matter of heartbeats. He passed through the door and approached the white column that housed the scrying diorama, willing himself to remain calm. Still, he didn’t hesitate to briskly call her name across the moat from where he knew the door to be. “Dagamier! It’s Guerrand. Open the sphere, please.”

  After a brief pause, the door slid open as requested. Dagamier stepped up to stand in the small archway, her cheeks dimpled in a smile that set her green eyes slantwise. Her body looked slim and salamander-smooth in the snug-fitting black silk robe that clung to every curve.

  “You’re back.” The smile gave way to her usual studied mask of indifference. “I trust things are well again in Thonberg with Bertram?”

  A muscle leaped in Guerrand’s jaw. “Bram has things under control again in Thonvil.”

  “Fine.” Dagamier made to return to the scrying sphere.

  “Form the bridge, Dagamier,” Guerrand commanded. “I would have a report of events since I left.”

  She frowned at the unusual request. “Can’t it wait until Ezius’s turn at the sphere? There’s too little room, as you must realize—”

  “No.”

  Dagamier searched his face and must have seen that he would brook no defiance today. Shrugging, as if Guerrand’s authority still meant little to her, Dagamier touched a tapered finger to the button that activated the bridge, calling it forth.

  Guerrand crossed the crystal bridge and joined her in the narrow column. The darkened room, the real heart of Bastion, was austere and functional. Dagamier was already seated again before the faintly glowing diorama of Bastion and its perimeter.

  Guerrand pressed his back to the wall away from Dagamier, to keep from touching the black-robed wizardess. “Please tell me of your activities, both unusual and mundane, since I left.”

  Dagamier kept her eyes fixed on the model. “That’s an odd request. I took my turns at the sphere, which were doubled, I might add, by your absence. I slept, studied, drilled for defense, and conducted experiments in my apartments. The usual things.”

  “Nothing else of interest occurred, either inside or outside Bastion?”

  She gave him a fleeting glance, her lips pursed. “That depends on if you consider conversing with Ezius interesting,” she said coolly, returning her glance to the diorama. “However, the demiplane has been as quiet as a tomb since you left.”

  The younger woman abruptly leaned away from the subject of her gaze and crossed her arms. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s got you so edgy?”

  Guerrand watched Dagamier’s reaction closely as he said, “Someone I have reason to trust said that great danger awaited me at Bastion.”

  “So naturally you thought of me.” She returned her gaze to the model, betraying neither concern nor offense.

  He watched her expression. “I’m thinking of invoking my right as high defender to search both yours and Ezius’s apartments, Dagamier.”

  To Guerrand’s great surprise, the black wizard gave her trademark shrug. “Go ahead and check my apartments if you must. That is your right. While you’re in the white wing,” she continued, nonplused, please remind Ezius to arrive on time for his next shift. Maybe it was the change in schedule while you were gone that threw him off, but he forgot to show up for a few of his turns here.”

  “Did he?” asked Guerrand. “That’s unusual. Ezius is usually very punctual and reliable.”

  Dagamier looked unconcerned. “He came immediately when I reminded him. If you ask me, he forgot because he’s become preoccupied with the body of that wizard friend of yours who ‘dropped by’ just before you left with your nephew.”

  “Ezius told me he was going to arrange for proper disposal of the body,” said Guerrand, frowning. “I thought he would have done so by now.”

  Dagamier could only look at Guerrand.

  The high defender’s mouth drew into a pinched, worried line. “Have you noticed anything else odd about Ezius since I’ve been gone?”

  The black wizard returned her gaze to the model. “He’s kept to his apartments when he wasn’t scrying.” She chuckled suddenly. “There is one thing, though it’s more funny than odd. You remember how long it took you to keep him from calling you Rind, after that cobbler he once knew?” Guerrand nodded. “Well, Ezius may have got your name straight now, but he’s taken to mixing mine up. He keeps calling me Esme,” Dagamier said, her eyes still on the sphere. “I’ve never even known anyone by that name.”

  Guerrand’s blood froze in
his veins. He slowly lifted his head to stare at her pale, chiseled profile before whispering hoarsely, “Are you sure about that name?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It was unusual enough to remember.” Dagamier shifted her eyes to look at him quizzically.

  Without speaking, Guerrand whirled on his heel in the small chamber, meant only for one. The door raised, the bridge formed across the small moat, and he walked across it, oblivious to the plant fronds in his path. His heels pounded across the cold marble floor on his way to the white wing.

  The door to the wing was closed, as usual. Guerrand grasped the heavy brass ring that hung from the griffon’s-head knocker and slammed it against the door. When no response came, Guerrand tried again, waiting with increasing impatience.

  “Ezius!” he howled to the roof, legs spread, arms and fists stiff at his sides. “I demand that you open this door at once!”

  The white door remained closed.

  Guerrand didn’t hesitate to call forth the spell given only to the high defender. He placed his right hand against the door. With his fingers arranged very precisely, he muttered, “Lenithis kor.” The air around his hand flared bright yellow, and the door shuddered beneath an ear-numbing boom.

  But still it did not open.

  No legitimate power in Bastion could have prevented the spell from giving the high defender access to any area in the stronghold. Undaunted, Guerrand prepared to break down the door to the white wing.

  The white-robed mage’s head shot up. Loud banging at the far end of the wide-open wing briefly broke his concentration. Recognizing Rand’s voice, he willed himself not to panic. So, the high defender had returned. … What did it matter? The mage had prepared for this possibility and put up protections to prevent, or at the very least significantly slow, anyone who tried to enter the white wing. It would take some time for Guerrand to break through the door, and there were still additional safeguards beyond it.

  The thought considerably calmed the mage. He stood next to a white marble table that held the corpse of Lyim Rhistadt. The table was part of a small work space in the section designated as the wing’s laboratory. Though there were no walls to delineate rooms here, the purpose and boundaries of each area were clear, designated by function: bookshelves plainly marked off the library, thick carpets lent warmth to the small living space, tables and countertops in neat rows filled the work area.

  Since bringing the body into the wing, the mage had maintained a spell that also prevented scrying or other magical methods of direct observation. Because of the spell, even the high defender was virtually powerless to know what was happening inside the white wing. Whether Guerrand was merely seeking a report upon his return to Bastion, or was already suspicious of Ezius’s behavior, it mattered little. The mage in the white robe had worked too long and hard toward the goal that was moments from being realized to be turned back now.

  To further protect himself against interruption, the stooped, pale-haired mage quickly prepared to cast two more spells in a sequence that would cause the second to protect the duration of the first. Withdrawing a small crystal bead from a deep pocket in his robe, he muttered the arcane word, “Pilif.” The globe of invulnerability appeared as a faintly shimmering sphere around the mage and the entire marble lab table before him. He set the crystal bead on the table by the corpse.

  The second spell would prevent anyone from dispelling the magic of the globe. For it, the white-robed mage removed another gem from his robe, a large diamond. Placing it gingerly in a marble mortar, he drove the pestle into it like a hammer again and again, until he had shattered the precious stone. He ground the diamond into coarse dust and sprinkled both himself and the red mage’s body with the glittering shards. Though there was no visible effect to indicate the spell’s discharge, the mage instinctively felt that he had successfully made them immune to most spells. For a short time, anyway.

  The mage prided himself on his good planning. But he was also dependent upon a measure of luck for having gotten this far. It had been the greatest good fortune that the high defender’s nephew had taken him away, giving the mage time to prepare his spells before anyone questioned his activities with the red-robed corpse.

  Dead? Hah! The mage in the white robe pressed two fingers to the death-cool left wrist of the body that lay beneath him upon the cold marble slab. A reedy pulse, slowed to a tenth its normal rate, was barely detectible against the warm index and third digits of his right hand. What a delicious sensation was feeling a pulse through fingers, thought the mage, though it had taken some time to readjust to having a right hand at all.

  But not as long as it had taken to get accustomed to looking at one’s own body through the eyes of another. Lyim had never noticed the small ring of moles at the nape of his own neck, or that his chin in profile receded slightly. Maybe he’d just been too consumed in recent years with the monstrosity at the end of his right arm to notice anything else. Unconsciously, Ezius’s dark eyes were turned by Lyim’s darker mind to the diamond stone piercing Lyim’s left lobe.

  The magic jar spell that made all this possible could not have worked more flawlessly. In Villa Nova, before his final attack upon Bastion, Lyim had chosen the diamond ear stud to be the receptacle, briefly, for his life-force, because he felt certain a small earring was likely to remain with his body, unlike a larger, more ostentatious piece of jewelry. Besides, he doubted the mages at Bastion were looters.

  It had been a relatively simple thing, then—a matter of timing in the heat of the battle Lyim had forced—to transfer his essence to the diamond ear stud. His body had collapsed as if slain, while his life-force went into the gem.

  It had been Ezius’s bad luck that brought him first to inspect Lyim’s body. Seizing the moment, Lyim jumped his life-force from the gem into Ezius’s body, simultaneously forcing Ezius’s body into imprisonment in the diamond. The spell had been instantaneous and seamless; no one else could have detected the process.

  That was why there had been no reason to question the white mage’s offer to carry the body of the “slain” red mage into the white wing of Bastion for burial. As Lyim had hoped, Guerrand had been too overwrought by the battle to question Ezius’s offer. The Black Robe obviously hadn’t cared to deal with the body of a mage not from her order, which was just as well, from Lyim’s perspective, though it might have been interesting to inhabit the body of a woman.

  It had all worked so smoothly that Lyim had struggled to keep from smiling when, with the Black Robe and Rand, he had carried his own body up the stairs and into the sacred halls of Bastion. As Ezius, he fought against gaping in wonder, since none of it would have seemed new to the White Robe. Fortunately, they’d left him at the door to his wing, which allowed him to familiarize himself in private. Lyim’s first task had been to place protections on the door.

  Only later had Lyim learned from Dagamier that Rand had left Bastion to battle the medusa plague. Rand’s absence had been the greatest gift, giving Lyim precious time to lay the groundwork for recreating the events that had mutated his hand. He had hoped to be done with the preparations sooner, but of course everything took longer when you were working in someone else’s laboratory, not to mention body.

  The magic jar gave Lyim the option of keeping Ezius’s body, with its two good hands, but he had no interest in living very long in anyone’s body but his own. Ezius’s was stiffened with age and a level of inactivity to which Lyim was unused, and his eyesight was good only through the use of thick lenses. Still, Lyim needed to keep himself locked within Ezius’s form now for one very important reason: two hands were needed to make the complex motions required by the spell that would cure his hand.

  Soon, he told himself, the hideous snake would be gone, and he would have his own form again. Lyim used the thoughts to give himself energy for the tasks that still lay ahead.

  There were no moons at Bastion to worry about aligning, nor did he need to anchor a cross-dimensional bridge. Thanks to the meddling of the Conclave of W
izards, Bastion was at a dimensional crossroads, the only one that gave access to the Lost Citadel. But, unlike his master before him, Lyim had no intention of entering the Lost Citadel; he wished only to open exactly the same sequence of pathways unlocked by Belize, then insert his arm so that it crossed the snake-creature’s plane. Only upon seeing its home would the reptile flee from Lyim’s body, allowing the limb to return to its natural form.

  Lyim thought he heard Guerrand howl Ezius’s name outside the wing’s entrance. He turned his mind to casting the most important spell of his life.

  Ezius’s hands summoned a swirling sphere of flame. The ball writhed between his fingers, twisting, flickering, contained only by Lyim’s will. With intense concentration the mage turned and extended his arms so that the ball of energy hovered over his physical body on the marble slab.

  The flickering globe flared angrily and swelled to twice its previous size. Its eerie light shimmered on the clean surfaces in the all-white laboratory.

  Next, Lyim drew a succession of vials and containers he had placed for this purpose upon the shelves. He tossed each into the swirling inferno, just as Belize had done those years ago next to the stone plinths. He muttered arcane phrases and completed the specified hand gestures—one short slice with the right hand, both hands slowly circling thrice. The fiery globe grew steadily larger until its shape began to change, to flatten and stretch into an oval. The swirling mass yawned open with an unbearable, purplish light.

  Lyim looked through Ezius’s bespectacled eyes at the hated appendage covered in scales of brown, red, and gold, patterned symmetrically in rings and swirls. Without hesitation, he commanded Ezius’s hand to raise the silent snake arm and plunge it toward the wall of whirling hues.

  There was no soul within Lyim’s body to scream this time, or to writhe in pain. But through Ezius’s hands Lyim could feel the limb thrashing, could sense the unworldly energy blazing through it. The memory of the flood of agony, undimmed by the intervening decade, surged to life again. But now he was steeled by years of striving, and he would let no scream pass his lips.