The Medusa Plague tdom-2

by Mary Kirchoff

  Bram pushed wet ropes of hair back from his face. "You know how to stop it then?"

  Guerrand shook his head. "I didn't say that. Come inside where it's warm and I'll tell you what I've learned." The mage gave Wilor's grave a final, farewell pat, then trudged back toward the smith's shop, Bram clumping along eagerly beside him. Mud gathered upon their boots until their feet felt as heavy as blocks of wood.

  Guerrand seized the handle of a bucket full of rainwater sitting by the door, then removed his muddy boots before stepping inside. Next he stoked a fire in the hearth of the storeroom, and made two double- strength cups of Wilor's tea from the rainwater. He felt a jitteriness inside that crawled up into his throat, telling him to run all ways at once, seeking an instant solution. But he had too much to consider and no time to get the answer wrong. Kirah had less than twenty- four hours left before she, too, would turn to stone, before she, too, would be placed in the ground. Guerrand forced himself to sip the tea.

  Bram took the steaming mug his uncle offered, then sat back on his haunches before the fire. He wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and over his head, watch- ing the mage with thready patience. If Bram had learned nothing else about this stranger of an uncle in the last days, it was that Guerrand would not be rushed.

  tbe CftefcusA Plague

  Guerrand pulled up a child's chair by the warmth of the flames. He wasted no time, revealing to his nephew his theory of Nuitari's damaging light.

  Bram's lips were pursed in thought above his mug. "I don't understand why this black light is so important. It's not the cause, but just a trigger, isn't it?"

  "I believe it's a trigger for the initial infection and all three stages and days of the plague," said Guerrand. "Exposure to Nuitari's light triggers the fever, and so on, until the final exposure turns the victims to stone."

  Bram was still shaking his head. 'Then why can't we just shield everyone from the black moon's light- lower the shutters, put them underground, cover their eyes, that sort of thing?"

  "I doubt seriously whether that would have any effect," said Guerrand, with a long, slow, sorry shake of his head. "Magic just doesn't function that way. Moonlight, especially, is insidious. Where magic depends on its effect, you rarely need to actually see it in order for it to work. You can even bottle it, if you know what you're doing." He shrugged, adding, "Moonlight shines on our world whether we see it or not."

  Guerrand felt the need to pace while he pondered, thumbs hooked in his waist. "I'm going to have to think of a way to actually prevent the black moon from shining here."

  "Can't you ask the Council of Three for help?"

  Guerrand grimaced. "I've considered it. But you told them about the plague and they didn't offer to come."

  "How can they turn their backs on the decimation of an entire village?"

  "They're too powerful and important to concern themselves directly with anything but the welfare of the whole world." Guerrand saw Bram's continued confusion. "In their own way, they have helped Thonvil more than I would have expected, first by letting you speak with me in Bastion, and second by allowing me to return here to do what I could to save the village."

  Bram nodded his understanding at last.

  "It's funny," said Guerrand, struck with a new thought. "This wouldn't even be happening at Bastion. No moons shine there." The mage's expression shifted from vague musing to recognition. He snapped his fingers. "Bastion is on a two-dimensional plane and not part of Krynn, or subject to its moons."

  Bram could see his uncle's face light up as his mind went to work. "So? You're not contemplating some really strange idea, like transporting everyone to Bastion, are you?"

  Guerrand obviously was, because his face fell when he admitted, "I couldn't manage that magically, even if it weren't a violation of my vow to keep intruders from entering Bastion." He squinted at his nephew. "You still haven't told me what you said to persuade Par- Salian and Justarius to send you there."

  "I know it may sound strange, but some magical creatures called 'tuatha dundarael' have apparently been helping me restore the gardens at the castle for some time. They gave me a coin and set me off on a path they called a faerie road." He looked far away. "It feels so long ago I can scarcely believe it myself, but it apparently impressed your Justarius and Par-Salian enough to bend the rules for me."

  For a brief moment, Wilor's dying words came into Guerrand's mind, and he found himself scrutinizing Bram's face to assign hereditary features.

  "What are you staring at?" Bram asked, coloring to the roots of his hair. "Did I say something wrong?"

  Guerrand jerked his eyes away awkwardly. There were no answers to be found in his young nephew's face. It wouldn't do for Bram to further question the scrutiny. "I-No, you didn't say anything wrong,Bram," he hastily assured his nephew. "As a matter of fact, your thoughts are helping me a great deal."

  Bram beamed. "What about sending victims someplace else on Krynn to avoid the moonlight?"

  Guerrand shook his head. "Aside from being impractical to accomplish, Nuitari's light would find them eventually. No, I've got to figure out a way to prevent Nuitari from rising."

  He scratched the pink scalp beneath his brown hair. "The only mages 1 know who've even come close to disrupting the course of the moons are the Council of Three. I believe I told you that after the conclave of twenty-one mages completed Bastion here on Krynn, Par-Salian, Justarius, and LaDonna combined magical energies to send the behemoth from the Prime Material Plane and compress its three dimensions to two while not altering its function…"

  Guerrand's voice trailed off as an idea began to blossom behind his eyes. When Bastion was completed, the Council had to prepare it for transit to the two- dimensional demiplane where it now resided. In effect, they had to strip away one dimension. That alteration was unnoticeable, because it seemed normal in the fortress's new location.

  The exterior of Bastion was covered by mystic runes, scribed by Par-Salian, LaDonna, and Justarius as the final step in the building's construction. Though he had not witnessed their inscribing, Guerrand had studied the runes often in the long months of solitude as high defender. He found their intricacies fascinating. As far as he could determine, the runes themselves provided most of the impetus for the change from three dimensions to two. It had taken the combined power of all three council members to move the structure from one plane to another, but almost any mage could have triggered the dimensional collapse, with

  the runes to back him up.

  Guerrand was pacing in Wilor's small back room, his demeanor growing more and more excited with each new realization. Finally, Bram had to interrupt his uncle. "What is it, Rand? You're on to something, aren't you?"

  Guerrand paused for a moment with his head down, collecting the rush of thoughts before they disappeared. "Bram, you probably won't understand this, but we can make Nuitari two-dimensional-actually turn it on it's side-by transcribing the runes from Bastion to the moon. The runes are the key. We have a lot of work to do before the next moonrise, but by the grace of Lunitari we'll get it done."

  "You're right," agreed Bram, his brow crinkling. "I don't understand. I didn't see any runes at Bastion, and even if they are there, how do we get them to the moon?"

  "Of course you didn't see them," Guerrand said. They're magical. Half the trick of reading magic is just being able to see it. What I'm proposing here is ambitious. I'm going to need your help," he continued. "Will you do whatever I ask, no matter how strange it might sound at the time?"

  "Of course," his nephew replied, "but I still don't understand what you're going to do."

  'That's not your concern now," Guerrand said. "I'm going to need as many sheets of parchment, pots of ink, and good goose quills as you can find. While you're at it, tell everyone you meet to avoid the village well and drink only freshly collected rainwater. I'm guessing Lvim passed the disease through the communal source of water. If-when I succeed, the absence of Nuitari should cleanse the water of the plague." He l
eft the stench and darkness of the death room and went back into the silversmith's shop at the front of the store.

  Bram followed him, staring transfixed.

  But the mage scarcely noticed him, his mind racing ahead. He spotted Wilor's large worktable. In one quick motion, Guerrand swept Wilor's tools to the floor and dragged up a stool. "This will do perfectly," he announced. "Bring everything here; this will be my work area." The mage dumped the contents of his shoulder bag onto the desk and began sorting out the few sheets of vellum and quills he carried. He looked up then and noticed Bram's gaping inactivity. "Hurry now. You have important work to do before you can get back to tending Kirah."

  As if he'd snapped from a trance, Bram jolted, then jogged out the door into the darkness and rain. Guerrand shouted his name, and Bram stopped in the puddled street to peer back inside, squinting against the raindrops.

  "Bring candles, too!"

  Bram sprinted away down the street, splashing as he went.

  Guerrand was still hunched over the table, completely absorbed in scribing illegible characters onto a sheet of parchment, when Bram returned for the fourth time with supplies. Other sheets were scattered across the workbench, mostly covered with drawings and arcane writing. Zagarus was perched on an opposite corner of the table, snoozing peacefully. Bram struggled through the doorway and plunked his heavy basket on the floor.

  The noise attracted Guerrand's attention. "Oh, thank goodness you've returned," he expounded, "I was nearly out of parchment, and I've carved at least six new points on this quill." Immediately the mage began rummaging through the package, and his face brightened tenfold. He held aloft a sheaf of new parchment and a bundle of beeswax candles. "This is marvelous, Bram! Where did you find all this?"

  Bram stepped to the fire to warm his hands and dry his cloak. "Leinster the scribe died three days ago, and his wife and children fled town. They left most of his things behind. I got the candles from a… a friend. I helped make them a few days ago, although it feels like months, with all that's happened."

  Guerrand was already shifting fresh supplies to his worktable. "I will probably need even more parchment than this, if you can find it," he called over his shoulder. He lined up three stone vials of ink from the basket and, one by one, unstoppered them, smeared a bit of their contents between his fingers, smelled it, and even tasted one batch. His face wrinkled up in distaste.

  "This ink, unfortunately, won't do," Guerrand announced sadly.

  Bram cast a worried look away from the fire. "I don't know where I can find any more. Leinster made that ink himself, and anyone in the village who needed ink bought it from Leinster."

  "What about at the castle?"

  "The castle is closed off," Bram said, obviously embarrassed by the admission. "My mother thinks that if she bars her door securely enough, none of this will affect her. She as much as told me that if I left the safety of Castle DiThon to find you, even I would not be allowed in again."

  The mountain dwarves did the same thing to their own during the Cataclysm," said Guerrand. "I can't help thinking there must be a message in the parallel somewhere."

  The mage sat upon his stool and stared at the substance on his fingers. "This ink was made from

  Ok CftedusA plague

  dogwood bark. It doesn't have sufficient richness-it isn't substantial enough to carry magic." The mage sat for several moments, rubbing his fingertips thoughtfully. "We'll just have to make it work. Do you have any oak gall in your herb stocks?"

  "I don't, even if I could get to it," Bram said. "But I'm sure I could find some in the same place I got the candles. Nahamkin has-had-an exhaustive collection."

  Guerrand scooped up the three ink bottles. "Dump all this ink together. Then mix in a good, strong infusion of oak gall and some sulfate of iron." He fished in a fold of his robe and tossed a vial to Bram. "This ink doesn't have to stay black forever, but it does have to make a trip to the moon." Guerrand flashed a smile of encouragement at his perplexed nephew, then turned back to his work on the table.

  Bram picked up his damp cloak and was nearly out the door when Guerrand's voice stopped him again. "Did you check on Kirah?"

  Shivering against its cold wetness, the young man pulled his clammy cloak around his shoulders. "She was sleeping in fits a while ago. 1 gave her honeyed tea for energy and a fresh blanket." He grimaced. "I don't like leaving her alone. In the morning she'll begin to-" He neither needed to nor could finish the sentence.

  Whittling pensively at his quill tip, Guerrand gave a grim nod. "Fetch that gall, then go sit with her. I'll be at this for the rest of the night and the better part of tomorrow's light, anyway."

  Bram was surprised. "That long?"

  Guerrand looked up from his work. "1 told you magic was a complicated and time-consuming business, and not all lighting fires with your finger." He looked back with great concentration to his tracings. "Now be off, or I'll miss my sunset deadline."

  Properly chastised, Bram disappeared once more into the darkness, a shadow in rain-shrouded moonlight.

  The moons, at least the ones Guerrand could see as he hurried from the silversmith's to Kirah's, rose before sunset. In the still-bright sky, pale Solinari looked like the bleached bones of some great beast, sucked dry of their marrow.

  Guerrand tried not to dwell on the fleeting day. His task of transcribing Bastion's runes from memory had been more taxing than even he'd expected it to be; the demands on his memory were extreme as he reconstructed the intricate patterns, making subtle changes as necessary. He believed-and hoped-that he had enough time remaining to put his magical plan into operation.

  Tell me again how this works, requested Zagarus, swooping low across Guerrand's path. Do you seriously expect me to carry something to the moon?

  "No, Zag," replied Guerrand, "at least not all the way." The mage paused at the rear door to the bakery. Bram was upstairs with Kirah, had been through her third terrible morning of the plague. By now her limbs would be a writhing mass of snakes. Guerrand steeled himself against the shock of seeing her like that.

  As Guerrand climbed the stairs, everything that had happened in the past few days seemed to focus on Kirah's life. He was the only person who could save her. If this spell worked, she would live; if it failed, she would die. His hand trembled as he reached for the door handle.

  As his uncle entered the room, Bram stood, weary eves searching for a sign of hope. Guerrand was tremendously relieved to see that his nephew had pulled sacks over Kirah's limbs, although the way they bulged and twitched nearly brought up Guerrand's meager lunch.

  Kirah turned, too, and watched Guerrand enter. Like Wilor, she appeared perfectly lucid, but the fever had been much harder on her than on the stout silversmith. Her cheeks were beyond sunken, her eyes hollow and dark. She opened cracked lips to utter a barely audible, "Hello, Rand." A flicker of his old, scrappy kid sister came into her pale eyes. "You'll have to excuse me for not dressing for visitors. I'm feeling all thumbs today," she managed with a weak grin, then lay still.

  Guerrand's own smile held affection and sadness and a thousand other things. More than anything, though, he wanted to pick up his sister and carry her away from all this horror. He wanted to play fox and hound over heather and creeks the way they had as children. He wanted to be anywhere but in this town filled with death, pinning Kirah's life on a basketful of scribbled runes and an untried spell.

  Bram cut into Guerrand's thoughts. "We haven't much time. What can I do to help?"

  Guerrand quickly focused his mind. "I'll need to be outside."

  "Take me along." Kirah's whisper-weak voice caught both men by surprise. She could barely raise her head from the pillow. "I don't want to be alone in here when-" Her eyes were pleading.

  Bram looked to Guerrand, who motioned him toward the bed. Together they picked up the straw mattress with Kirah on it and carried it outside to beneath a tree on the edge of the green. Bram ran back to the room and fetched Guerrand's basket of papers.


  The wizard picked up a sheaf of them, weighed it thoughtfully in his hands, added another sheet, then rolled and tied them with a bit of twine. To Bram he said, "Help me bundle these parchments, seven sheets at a time. Be sure to keep them in the proper order."

  Bram dropped to his knees and set to work, rolling parchments.

  Guerrand looked to his familiar, perched on the roof of the bakery. "You're on, Zag." The gull swooped to his master's side. Guerrand held toward him the first parchment roll, letting the gull grab the twine in his beak. "Fly this up as high as you can go. When you can't possibly get any higher and we just look like tiny dots on the ground, give the roll a toss. Then return as fast as you can for the next one."

  Give it a toss? wondered the bird. You think I can throw this all the way to the moon? While I am a hooded, black- backed Ergothian gull, the-

  Guerrand squeezed Zag until his breath squeaked out his beak, cutting off the gull's trademark reply. "Of course you can't throw it that far. The scroll will know where to go, and the rest of the trip will take care of itself."

  With a stifled, slightly indignant "Kyeow!" Zagarus lifted off. Three pairs of eyes watched his progress as he climbed, circling round and round. The bird was nearly lost from view when a flash of orange light drew two surprised gasps. Flaming runes etched themselves across the sky, flashing until all were complete, then raced away eastward toward the darkening blue, finally disappearing behind the horizon.

  Zagarus folded his wings and plummeted like a rock, arriving with a tremendous flapping tumult just moments after the last flaming sigil dissipated. He snatched another bundle without pausing and was off again, spiraling skyward.

  Rolling parchments next to Bram, Guerrand explained the process: "The symbols and runes on these parchments are etching themselves on Nuitari. When that's complete, I'll trigger the spell and the moon will become two-dimensional, with its edge turned toward Krynn, like a coin on its side."

  Squinting, Guerrand's gaze shifted. "Here comes Zag for the last bundle."