The Medusa Plague tdom-2

by Mary Kirchoff

  Guerrand drew back and maintained a four-foot remove from the sick man so as not to excite the snakes again. He stared, as if mesmerized by the intricate diamond patterns behind the dark and beady eyes on their heads. Each little, slithering head recalled to Guerrand the memory of the mage who had caused this.

  He circumnavigated the bed of straw to prop open both the grease-streaked window and door to let some fresher air into the sickroom. "Is there much pain, Wilor?"

  Wilor seemed to realize Guerrand was not just making idle

  conversation. He leaned forward and considered his bizarre new appendages. "Some, mostly when I try to control them. Tbe change was excruciating, I'll admit, but now the snakes are more inconvenient than hurtful. I can't use my hands or feet to do anything. It's a good thing nothing itches anymore." He fell back against the straw, winded. "But it all be over as soon as the moons rise. There's a comfort in knowing that."

  Guerrand only nodded; his repartee was not at its best today. He had often played attendant to the minor ailments of folks in Harrowdown, listening to their dilemmas and suggesting solutions both magical and not. Though this was no minor ailment, Guerrand pulled up a stool and called those long-used skills to his side.

  "I'm a mage now, Wilor," Guerrand informed him softly.

  "I figured that out from the robes," said the silversmith, and his glance held a covert amusement.

  Guerrand reddened. "I don't know what your views on magic are," he continued somewhat hesitantly, "but I'm hoping to use my skills to find a cure. Kirah's got the plague now." Guerrand heard his own hollow voice in the quiet of the death room. "She just finished shedding the skin from her arms and legs."

  Wilor bobbed his head sadly. "You've seen too much death in your life, Guerrand DiThon." The silversmith stunned Guerrand with his next words. "Use me to find the cure."

  "I don't know that I can help you, Wilor," he said awkwardly.

  "I'm not asking you to," Wilor nearly snapped. "Have I given you the impression I'm afraid to die?" The mage had to shake his head. "I don't wish to live without my Marthe"-he looked down at himself- "like this."

  Wilor scowled when he saw Guerrand hesitate with a look of pity the mage couldn't disguise. "Don't waste time," declared the smith, looking at the slant of the light. "I'm unsure how much of that I have left."

  Guerrand rummaged around in the pack he'd carried with him on his first trip from Thonvil and withdrew his much-used spellbook. Hundreds of pages had been filled with his illegible scribbling since the handful he'd painstakingly inked in secret corners of the castle and upon a potato wagon outside Wayreth.

  He looked up, his lips pursed in thought. "I'm unclear about what starts the disease in some people and not others," he admitted. "Kirah said she drank something that caused the onset of the illness. Do you recall drinking anything unusual?"

  Wilor creased his brow momentarily. "Just water and ale."

  Guerrand scowled his frustration. "I'll bet Lyim tainted the village water, but it would help if I knew if the disease was magical in nature or simply transmitted by magic." He snapped his fingers as an easy enchantment came to mind. The mage muttered the oft-spoken words that would reveal the presence of magic in Wilor's body. He frowned when that, too, revealed no glowing emanations, nothing.

  Or did it? Guerrand hastily flipped open his spell- book again, found the entry for dispelling, and traced his finger down the column of his own writing:

  Other-planar creatures are not necessarily magical. Multiple types of magic, or strong local magical emanations, may confuse or conceal weaker radiations.

  Guerrand slammed the book shut. The plague could still be magical in nature, despite his spell. He knew no more than he did before.

  "You're getting as frustrated as some of the villagers," said Wilor. "They've come up with the craziest tbe CftetmsA plague

  notions about a cure. Several tried chopping the snakes off, but they only grow back. I know of one who begged his son to poison his snake hand."

  "What happened?" Guerrand asked.

  'The man got violently ill from the poison," admitted Wilor, "and he still died at sunset on the third day.

  "Fear is a powerful force," Wilor continued. "Shortly after the first outbreak, a group of villagers went on a rampage and killed all the snakes they could find, at Herus's suggestion. When that didn't work, they moved on to other animals."

  Wilor's lips pursed with concern. "I'm afraid that those who don't die of the plague will suffer a lingering death of starvation." Abruptly, Wilor's face contorted in pain.

  Guerrand shifted uneasily at the sight of Wilor's agony. "I know my spells haven't proven very impressive, but I could give you an herbal analgesic that might ease the pain."

  Wilor absently nodded his approval. Guerrand quickly combined the mixture of crushed dried peppermint leaves and meadowsweet flowers soaked in oil of clove he had used to help Kirah. Resolutely ignoring the snakes, the mage quickly leaned in and placed the tincture under Wilor's tongue before the man could change his mind.

  Almost immediately, Wilor's eyes took on a peaceful look, far away in time and place. "Your father would have been proud of your being a mage," he said distantly. "Rejik was more than a little interested in the art himself after he married your mother."

  Guerrand's heart skipped a beat at the unexpected revelation. "I always suspected Father had more than a passing interest, from the volumes in his library."

  "Zena wasn't a blue-blood like your father or his first wife," Wilor went on, as if Guerrand hadn't spoken, "but Rejik followed his heart, despite pressure to marry someone from his own class."

  Guerrand knew this part of the story too well; it was the root of his conflict with his brother Cormac. Cormac's mother, of old Ergothian stock, had died of Bali- forian influenza when Cormac was but eight. Ten years later, Rejik remarried a woman just two years older than his son. Zena DiThon's family had settled in Northern Ergoth just after the Cataclysm (some three hundred years before), but prejudice was rampant among the nobility. People not of the old, darker- skinned stock that had lived in Ergoth proper, before the Cataclysm split the region into two islands, were considered newcomers.

  The smith's head shook. "You suffered for their union as much, if not more, than they-you and Quinn and Kirah. Especially after Rejik died. Between you and me," Wilor whispered, leaning forward conspira- torially, though no one was around to hear what had long stopped mattering to town folk anyway, "Zena was twice the woman Cormac's mother was, blue blood be damned."

  Wilor fell back against the rustling straw, an odd smile lighting his face. "You get your magical skill from Zena, you know," he confided. "Her gypsy blood runs in your veins. She was a pale-skinned, sprightly miss with hair like Solinari's light, and just as enchanting. One with the magic of the earth,' was how Rejik described Zena. He was bewitched by her every day of their marriage."

  "I… never knew any of that," breathed Guerrand. "Father refused to talk about Mother after she died."

  Wilor managed a half-shrug. "It was the grief." He closed his eyes. "I know now what it can do to a man."

  It was obvious to Guerrand that the tincture had loosened Wilor's tongue, as well as his hold on his emotions. The smith seemed to need to talk, as if he realized his time to do so was fast passing. Guerrand leaned back on his stool and listened patiently, arms crossed, letting the man speak his fill.

  "It was Zena who noticed the oddness in Bram, you know," Wilor said faintly. Guerrand sat forward to question the statement, but the smith wasn't finished.

  "Well I remember the night Rejik met me at the Red Goose, all sweaty-faced and edgy," Wilor continued, his voice picking up speed and volume. " 'Zena's certain Cormac's son Bram is a changeling,' " Wilor said in an imitation of Rejik's voice. "Your father confessed it after he'd drank more tankards of ale than I'd ever seen downed before."

  Guerrand jumped to his feet. "What are you talking about?"

  "I never spoke of it to anyone, nor di
d I seek you out now, dear boy," said Wilor, his eyes clear yet sad. "But when you arrived here today, it seemed like providence, like you were put in my path one last time for a reason. I can't let the truth die with me."

  Wilor's head shook as he recalled a painful memory. "It almost killed your father, too, knowing that about his own grandson, knowing that Zena was never wrong about such things, knowing that nothing could be done about it without risking the wrath of the tuatha who'd pulled off the switch." Wilor coughed violently and spat, then asked for a drink. "The way things have been in Thonvil since then, I've had my suspicions about their meddling… I've never spoken them aloud before, but what can faeries do to me that the rising of the moons won't do in mere minutes anyway?"

  "Why have I never heard this before?" demanded Guerrand. "Has anyone ever told Bram they thought he might have faerie blood?" Legends were common of such baby exchanges, but Guerrand had never seen

  evidence of such an occurrence.

  Wilor rolled his head on the straw. "Not that I've been able to see. Your father never said so, but I think Rejik shared his suspicions with Cormac, or Cormac guessed himself, because I hear tell he's always kept a distance and deferred judgment about the boy to his mother."

  Guerrand couldn't deny the truth of that. His head was a tangle of questions that forced their way to the front of his tongue at the same time. All that came out was, "What am I supposed to do with this confession now? Whether it's true or not, how can I ever look at Bram the same way again, knowing my mother and father believed it?"

  "Believe it or not, that is your choice. Take it to your deathbed, as I did. But remember, it makes Bram no less a man than you thought him before." Wilor's eyes traveled to the window, where the long yellow streaks of twilight stretched into the room. "I'm afraid the sun is setting." He didn't looked the least bit afraid.

  "That can't be! Not now, not yet!" Scowling, Guerrand raced to the windowsill. "If only I could hold the sun in place!" he cried in frustration, but no mage was powerful enough for that. The window looked to the west. Guerrand could already see that Solinari and Lunitari had risen before sunset, faint white and red outlines in the purple sky above the Strait of Ergoth. Wilor was right-there wasn't much time.

  "I fear I've left you with more questions than answers, dear boy," the silversmith said ruefully. "Life, and especially death, aren't at all neat."

  Guerrand turned away from the window and back to the weakened man on the bed of straw, stopping short when the snakes rose up, hissing. "I'm the one who needs to apologize, Wilor. You've been a true friend."

  Wilor's breath whistled two notes at once in response.

  He stared blankly, and his lips moved in a word that Guerrand could not hear. Heart in his throat, the mage scorned the snakes and moved closer. They didn't writhe, but slowly settled upon the straw as softly as feathers.

  "Please, not yet!" the mage gasped again as the light in the eyes of his father's oldest friend winked to black. Without thinking, Guerrand leaped to the window again, as if to question that the time had come. Though he could not see it, there scuttled across the purple- darkened sky a distant, round shadow he understood too well. The third moon, Nuitari, had risen like the gleaming onyx in Wilor's eye sockets.

  Guerrand cursed the wretched soul of Lyim Rhis- tadt, who had made all this happen when he began following the black moonlit path of the evil god of magic.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It happened enery night on Krynn. Moonrise. Tonight, white Solinari rose first, a blindingly bright light that was quickly tinged a vague pink by the rising of red Lunitari. Moments afterward, the pinkish moonlight was muted further by the rising of the third moon, black Nuitari. People not of an evil disposition were never quite sure if Nuitari had risen, or if the sudden muting was caused by clouds scuttling in the nighttime sky.

  Guerrand tilted his face and stood silent in the doorway for a moment, reading some pattern in the heavens. Though the night sky was partly cloudy, there were no clouds near white Solinari and red Lunitari to dim their light now. The mage recalled that Solinari and Lunitari's combined pink light had shone for many minutes while Wilor still lived. But the silversmith had turned to stone at the precise moment when Nuitari's black light had dimmed the glow of the other two moons. Guerrand knew he had found his clue, knew it with the certainty of a seasoned mage whose experiments had met with both failure and success. Nuitari's rising was a component in the spread of the plague. Only the evil black moon no decent person could see would cause such sickness.

  Why hadn't he realized before what was so obvious now? Guerrand had needed to witness the final transformation to see the answer. Everyone thought that the end came at sunset on the third day. But, not being mages, they had looked at a symptom-the setting of the sun-rather than the cause-the rising of the moons on three successive days. The villagers couldn't know the magical influence of the heavenly bodies that were the symbols of the gods of magic.

  What was still unclear to Guerrand, though, was what he could do about it. It was not the sun he needed to stop, as he'd cried to Wilor, but the rising of the moons, specifically Nuitari. Guerrand sighed and ran a hand through his long, graying hair. He might as well try to split Krynn in half as keep Nuitari from rising. He doubted even the Council of Three had the power to accomplish such a feat. The mage dropped his chin upon his palm and stared out the window.

  "Guerrand?"

  The mage nearly jumped from his skin. He spun about, turning eyes like saucers upon the form in the straw. Wilor was still stone, still dead. The door to the silversmith's street-front shop swung open and Bram stepped through it. His brows were furrowed with anxiety, but they eased up at the sight of his uncle.

  "Thank goodness," he puffed, out of breath. Bram bent over and grabbed his knees, lungs heaving. "I've practically sprinted over every inch of Thonvil in search of you."

  Alarmed, Guerrand grabbed the door frame for support. "Is it Kirah?"

  "The disease is… running its course. She's still alive, resting now." Bram broke in before Guerrand could say another word. Pausing, he tilted his head and seemed only then to sense the odd stillness in the room. Bram's gaze shifted left with a jerky motion, to the man of stone, then back to Guerrand's careworn face. He had witnessed the final transformation too many times to afford the sight of the dead silversmith more emotion than sad acceptance.

  "I–I'm sorry," Bram said haltingly. "Wilor once told me that you two had been friends. That's how I thought to look here for you-after I'd covered the rest of the village, that is."

  Guerrand approached the man on the bed of straw. "Wilor was alone. The rest of his family died in the last couple of days. I can scarcely spare the time, but I promised to bury him in the field out back."

  "I'll help you," Bram offered. He bounded in and removed the blanket from Wilor's body.

  Nodding, Guerrand hefted the smith's snake legs while Bram supported the lion's share of Wilor's stone- stiff body. Together they took him through the supply door and out into the scrubby field, where potatoes had last grown. Guerrand steered them toward three freshly dug rocky mounds of dirt, and they set Wilor down.

  Bram looked around, palms up. "No shovel. Wilor must have had one to dig these other graves. I'll go look." Bram swept by Guerrand on his way back to the shop.

  There was a sound of thunder above their heads. As so often happened on the windswept coast, the good weather was at an abrupt end. The mage caught his nephew's arm. "There's no need," he said, squinting skyward as the first cold drops of rain fell. Murky gray clouds covered the moons. "We haven't the time to spend on digging, anyway."

  Bram whirled around and stared, slack-jawed, at his uncle. "Are you saying we should just leave Wilor in the field?"

  "Of course not," Guerrand snapped, distracted from searching his memory for a helpful spell. "Just stand clear." Bram watched him curiously and stepped back as Guerrand dug around in the deep pockets of his robe until his fingers settled upon the items he s
ought.

  The mage's hand emerged holding some miniature items. The words of the spell were simple enough, inscribed on the handle of the tiny shovel he held up in his palm, next to an equally small bucket. Guerrand lowered his head in concentration, but out of the corner of his eye he could see Bram was about to question him, then thought better of it.

  "Blay tongris." Instantly, the top layer of mud, then drier dirt began to fly from the ground in a steady stream as if under the paws of some invisible, burrowing creature. Although the hole was wide enough, Guerrand mentally directed the crater to lengthen to accommodate Wilor's height. When he determined it to be of sufficient size, the mage simply stopped the spell by breaking his concentration. The bucket and shovel remained, the mage knew, because the duration of the spell had not yet expired.

  Bram looked impressed. Guerrand's face was flushed with success, his lower lip red because he'd been biting down on it as a focus. Together, as the rain turned from drizzle to torrent, the two men lowered the smith into the ground. Turning his attention to the newest mound of earth, Guerrand reactivated the spell and commanded a hole be dug there. The loose earth flew again and landed atop the stone body of the silversmith. When all the dirt had been replaced in the grave, Guerrand cut his concentration again and the digging stopped. None too early, either, because this time the tiny bucket and shovel disappeared from Guerrand's soft, white palm.

  Guerrand regarded his nephew, blinking against the drops of rain that splashed his face. "I've discovered the plague's final component that causes victims to turn to stone."