The Medusa Plague

by Mary Kirchoff

  Bram sat stiffly while the old farmer tried to quench his thirst. Every muscle was tensed with dread. The pewter mug fell from Nahamkin’s aged hands midway through his ninth drink. It fell to the floor with a dull ting that sounded like a bell of doom in Bram’s head. He fingered one of a handful of small flour sacks he’d fetched to mop up the water Nahamkin had spilled while he drank. Bram twisted the sack so tightly the flesh of his palms began to burn.

  Nahamkin’s body abruptly shuddered, and his arm began to twitch. The raw flesh of his forearm undulated with hideous, unnatural spasms. Nahamkin groaned, a small, dry sound in the back of his throat that abruptly changed to a full-fledged shriek. Both men watched in horror as the thrashing arm began to bend and twist in ways no human arm was ever meant to. Bram struggled to grab the limb and pin it to the bedding, but his effort netted him a punch in the nose that left him dazed and bloody. As his eyes refocused, he saw the arm, thrashing left and right like a whip being played across the ground. The first and second fingers closed together and fused into one mass of flesh, then the third and fourth did the same. The thumb folded back on itself, becoming shorter and thicker.

  Bram covered his mouth as the arm began splitting open between the newly formed digits. No sooner did the flesh split apart than it resealed itself, forming three distinct appendages all the way up Nahamkin’s forearm to his elbow. Like three eyeless worms, the limbs writhed across Nahamkin’s pallet. Quickly the color and texture changed from pale, fleshy white to green-brown scales with a pattern of red and yellow stripes. Two bulges appeared near the end of each appendage and popped open, revealing pure black orbs. Three fully formed snakes writhed from the stump of Nahamkin’s arm, their forked tongues flicking in and out as they scanned their new world with unblinking eyes.

  Wiping his bloody nose on his sleeve, Bram stared in transfixed horror at the creatures that Nahamkin’s arm had become. He was relieved to see that Nahamkin was unconscious. But the old man’s eyes slowly opened under Bram’s scrutiny. Dazed, Nahamkin searched for the cause of the pain in his arm. When he saw the snakes resting in a coil there, Nahamkin’s screams shook the rotted thatch above their heads. The snakes jumped from their slumber and rose up to hiss into the frightened man’s face.

  Bram did the only thing that came to mind. Ignoring his own horror, he snatched up one of the sacks near Nahamkin’s pallet and slid it over the transformed limb, then cinched it tightly above the elbow.

  “I’m dying,” the old man said hoarsely.

  “I should have warned you!” moaned Bram. “Herus told me, but I already suspected—”

  Nahamkin touched his good hand to Bram’s face. “It wouldn’t have mattered. It’s probably best I didn’t have time to ponder it too much.”

  “I should have been able to help you in some way!”

  “You have.”

  “Nahamkin,” Bram whispered, so softly it was like a reluctant confession. He could not meet the old man’s eyes. “Do you want me to … I mean, I could spare you—”

  “No.”

  Bram’s eyes shot away from the tangled bedclothes.

  “How could I face Chislev in the grand forest Zhan,” Nahamkin asked, his eyes strangely serene, “knowing that I hadn’t patience or strength enough to abide by her will?”

  “Who’s Chislev?” Bram asked.

  Nahamkin closed his eyes to gather strength against the forces that were fighting within him. “My goddess. I know most people don’t believe in the old gods any longer, but I have tilled the soil and planted seeds in her honor for nearly four score years.”

  “Why have I never heard of her?”

  Nahamkin’s rheumy eyes took on a faraway look. “I suspect you have not heard her name because she has been called one of the old gods since the Cataclysm. Most people think she abandoned her followers then, but I have only to look at the beauty of the land to know better. You have seen her with every passing season and just not known it,” he said. “It is said that her fear brings the fall, her despair the winter, her hope the spring, and her joy the summer. Every blade of grass, every creature in the field, turns toward her as toward the sun.”

  He smiled at some distant vision. “They say she appears to her followers as a beautiful woman whose hair glows like golden sunlight, and her clothes are made from living plants. I will see for myself soon enough.”

  “How can you revere something that would allow this sickness to happen to you?” Bram asked.

  “It is Chislev’s plan for me.” He gave Bram a look of masculine pity. “I have long suspected your spiritual side has been neglected, Bram.” It was said kindly enough. “Life is a series of tests. Death is simply the final one. The difficulty of each is a measure of a person’s faith. Chislev must have great faith in me to have handed me my most difficult test now. I will not fail by avoiding it, Bram.” He bit his lip against the pain. “I can endure this. You’ll find, my friend, that there are times when you simply have no alternative but to have faith.”

  Nahamkin’s face contorted as his left leg began the transformation. He didn’t scream this time, but tears rolled down his wrinkled cheeks and across his clenched jaw. The limb thrashed wildly before settling into a calm undulation. Using his horror and the last of his strength as tools, Bram slipped the second cloth bag over the limb, hoping to calm the three snakes that sprouted from the knee.

  When Nahamkin recovered his breath, he said, “I would be happier if I could go with you at my side, but I will understand if you leave.”

  “Of course I’ll stay,” Bram said firmly.

  He stayed to put flour sacks over the last two limbs to turn into writhing snakes. He stayed through the long, cruel afternoon, the stillness broken only by the muffled hissing of the snakes and Nahamkin’s pain-racked gasps. It was increasingly difficult, then impossible, for Nahamkin to speak through the pain. Bram couldn’t even hold the dying man’s hand.

  The light through the rotted thatch faded quickly. As darkness grew in the hut, Nahamkin began whimpering and mumbling softly. Bram leaned in close to hear. “I’m dying, Bram, and I can feel it. It’s spreading, I can feel it moving up my legs. It’s death.”

  Bram pulled back the thin cover from Nahamkin’s legs. Instead of flesh, he saw gray stone. The snakes still moved listlessly, but as the grayness crept along the limbs, the snakes’ movements slowed and finally stopped. Bram touched Nahamkin’s leg; it was stone, hard and cold. Looking up, he saw that the change had advanced all the way up Nahamkin’s torso to his neck and jaw. Numb, Bram watched without flinching as his friend’s eyes slowly clouded over and turned black as coals. “Close your lids, Nahamkin,” he said gently. The old man complied, for he could no longer see. Within moments, as Krynn’s three moons rose and the last traces of sunlight slipped away, his face, too, transformed to ashen gray stone.

  Bram scarcely breathed. The snakes were deathly still beneath their bags, so Bram risked removing the flour sacks. The snakes on Nahamkin’s arms popped up like whips, snapping at Bram. He stumbled back and nearly fell from the loft. “Guerrrannnd,” they hissed. In unison, they fell like limp rope back to the cot, turned gray, and were silent.

  Heart hammering, Bram knew there could be no doubt now that the illness was magical.

  The light in the refectory was dim, coming from two listing, bad-smelling candles. The castle had not seen beeswax, or even good-quality tallow, in at least a year. It was just as well, because the room looked less shabby when so little of it was visible beyond the long table. Rietta had moved the last of the castle’s finely crafted furniture from the large formal dining hall to this communal eating area because this room was smaller and more easily heated. Also, it was closer to the kitchen, important now that they had only one downstairs servant, Gildee the cook.

  There were no tapestries here to prevent drafts, and no point in moving the rotted and faded ones from the formal hall. The bare limestone blocks radiated cold, even on the hottest summer day.

  “I couldn’t
help noticing you have new boots, dear,” Bram’s mother was saying.

  “Hmmm?” He turned unseeing eyes to his right, where Rietta was seated at the head of the table. Her black hair was pulled back in a severe knot, and her gown was an old, dun-colored, high-necked affair with grease at the embroidered cuffs.

  “Your boots,” she prompted, delicately spooning up her carrot soup. “They’re new. Where did you get them?”

  “Kirah gave them to me for my birthday six days ago,” he supplied absently.

  “I wonder where the little lunatic got the coin for that,” muttered Rietta. “Very likely she stole them.”

  “I doubt it.” Bram knew better than to do much more to defend his aunt to his mother; both of them always came away believing what they would.

  “Anyway,” Rietta continued in her loud, authoritative voice, “I hope you’re not considering going back to the village again to help any of those people.”

  “You mean your subjects?” Bram asked with a bite in his tone. He shrugged. “I hadn’t thought that far, but I’ll go if summoned again.” Fiddling his spoon in his thin orangy soup, he gave a self-deprecating snort. “Not that I’ll be able to help any of them.”

  Gildee set a pot of mashed winter parsnips on the table between Bram and Rietta, then backed away. “There’s been two more cases in the village since old Nahamkin passed on,” she breathed, her fear evident.

  “Who are—were they?” Bram asked quickly.

  “That will be all, Gildee,” Rietta snapped. The nervous cook continued backing through the door to the kitchen. Rietta turned dark eyes upon her son. “The DiThons have not sunk so low that we are now conversing with the servants at the table, Bram.” Rietta gave a dismissive twitch of her lips. “You forget, there’s a perfectly competent physicker in the village—”

  “Competent?” howled Bram. “Herus’s solution is to kill the victims.”

  “I hear he’s ordered people to kill every snake they can find,” Rietta remarked. “Still, people say it hasn’t reduced the unusual number of them this spring.”

  Bram’s expression was still troubled. “He’s addressing the symptoms of the disease, not the cause of it.”

  Rietta leaned back in astonishment. “And what, may I ask, is wrong with that?”

  Bram could only gape at her in disbelief.

  Rietta’s nose lifted in the air. “I don’t care to speak further of such hideous things at the dinner table.”

  Bram laughed. “Which of us won’t be at the dinner table tomorrow?” He shrugged carelessly and fell against the back of his chair. “It’s impossible to predict.”

  Rietta gasped, a hand pressed to her lips. “We’re all fine at Castle DiThon. The disease doesn’t exist here.”

  “Yet.”

  She looked at her son with annoyance. “You’ve been moody and distracted since you returned from that cotter’s.”

  Bram flushed, his gaze fastened to his soup bowl. Since Nahamkin’s death the night before, he had thought of nothing but the snakes who had hissed his Uncle Guerrand’s name.

  “Why have you taken so much of the burden of this illness on yourself, Bram?” his mother pressed. “You aren’t responsible for the cause or cure of this affliction.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.” Still, Bram held in the secret. “I remember a day when a lord’s primary responsibility was the welfare of his subjects.”

  “Is that what this is about?” she demanded. “You think I should expose myself to illness just to help some peasants? Well, I won’t do it! Mark my words,” Rietta continued, “this plague is heavenly retribution against the villagers for their lazy and dissolute ways. It can be no accident that it hasn’t struck here yet.”

  Bram’s temper exploded. “You’ve practically sealed off the castle, that’s why!”

  Rietta’s thin shoulders lifted dismissively. “We lead virtuous, worthwhile lives.”

  Bram laughed without humor. “Do you really believe we DiThons are anything but blue-blooded peasants?” He waved his hands at the squalor in the refectory. Bram couldn’t help reflecting that, in many ways, Nahamkin’s drafty hovel was more appealing. At least it had a surplus of straight candles.

  Rietta frowned darkly at her son. “I didn’t raise you to speak to me this way,” she said. “You are not so old, nor have we sunk so far, that I’ll allow it now.” Her tone, meant more to inspire guilt than fear, had been rehearsed to perfection on Bram his entire lifetime.

  “The cause of this curse is obvious.”

  Both Bram and Rietta turned in surprise to look at Cormac, alone in shadow at the far end of the long table. The tall man’s head was slumped onto his barrel-shaped chest as usual. Even in the dark Bram could see his father’s red-veined nose and that his clothing was way too small for his obese trunk. At least his words weren’t slurred, which suggested Cormac had gone easier on the watered-down bottle he usually nursed.

  “Who said anything about a curse?” demanded Rietta. “You haven’t left the castle walls in four years, Cormac. What could you possibly know about this illness—or anything, for that matter?”

  Bram had long since stopped wincing when his mother sliced into his father like this. When he was young, his parents had always bickered. Bram had accepted early on that there was no love lost between them, had seen it as the way of things. But all the bluster had been knocked out of Cormac. Rietta’s spiteful remarks, or even Bram’s own thoughtful comments, usually went unnoticed.

  “Did you have something to add, Father?” Bram prodded gently.

  Cormac’s glazed expression suggested he hadn’t heard the words as much as their cadence. “We have not seen the likes of such upheaval since there was magic in this house. There is vile sorcery at work here, there can be no doubt.”

  Bram froze. Had Cormac heard a rumor about what the snakes hissed before death?

  Rietta threw herself back in her chair. “It always comes back to magic with you, doesn’t it, Cormac?”

  “That was the start of it all,” rumbled Cormac.

  “Seven years, and you’re still blaming him for your mistakes,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “Everyone knows there was no love lost between Guerrand and me, but—”

  “Don’t speak that traitor’s name!” spat Cormac. “We were doing fine before he brought his sorcery into our lives.”

  “Fine?” Rietta shrieked. “You’d already spent us into poverty. Frankly, this whole situation is your fault, Cormac,” she said. “Bram would be safely away in Solamnia if you hadn’t squandered the money we needed to squire him to a true knight.”

  “Don’t you understand, woman?” roared Cormac. “There would be no plague upon our heads if my brother hadn’t brought magic into this village, this house. We would not be living in poverty if that bastard had done his familial duty as he’d promised. Instead he lost us the Berwick money and Stonecliff in one fell swoop.” Cormac’s hammy fist slammed the table. “Mark my words, when so many people die of mysterious causes, there’s vile magic involved.”

  “Father is right.” Bram’s voice was barely above a whisper. “I’ve seen for myself that magic has caused this illness. And I fear Uncle Guerrand is somehow responsible.” He recounted the last moments of Nahamkin’s life, concluding with the snakes hissing Guerrand’s name.

  “But why?” she asked. “Why would Guerrand do something so cruel to us after all this time?”

  “I don’t know,” Bram confessed. “But I intend to find out.”

  “I’ll tell you why,” snarled Cormac. “Because Guerrand is a contemptible black-hearted wizard, like all his kindred. That’s reason enough.”

  Rietta’s head was shaking slowly in disbelief. “Surely Guerrand is dead after all these years,” she breathed. But she had already seen in her son’s eyes the interest her husband’s words had stirred. Growing alarmed, she took up Bram’s hand and squeezed it. “You know I am not the opponent of magic your father is, but you can’t possibly be taking Cormac’s raving
s seriously now, Bram. He hasn’t said anything worth listening to in years.”

  “Father only confirmed what I already knew,” Bram said. “I’ve realized since Nahamkin’s death that I would have to leave to find Guerrand. If I can’t persuade him to use his magic to stop this sickness, we’ll all die.”

  “You think he’ll do it just because you ask him to?” Rietta scoffed. “You don’t remember Guerrand as I do, Bram. He was not even willing to marry for the sake of the family! And if he’s not to blame for spreading this sickness, I assure you he won’t risk getting the plague to save any of us.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Bram, standing, “I feel a lord’s responsibility, even if you and father don’t. It may have escaped your notice, but I have been working too hard for five years to restore Castle DiThon’s productivity to sit by and do nothing while people suffer. I wouldn’t care to look beyond DiThon’s walls one day and find we’re all alone.”

  “Sometimes I think that would not be such a bad thing,” his mother mused distantly. She knew she had lost the argument. “When will you leave?”

  “Soon. I need to talk to Kirah first. She might have some idea where Guerrand went.”

  “You know, of course, that once you leave, you’ll not be welcome at Castle DiThon again,” his mother said softly. “I cannot risk exposing everyone here to plague for some folly of yours.”

  Bram saw the manipulation for what it was. Rietta had done the same thing to Kirah when she refused to marry. It was not a typical mother’s concern that drove her to these ultimatums. Rietta simply abhorred anyone disrupting the fabric of her life, however threadbare the weave, whatever the cost in others’ lives. Like the briefest fluttering of wings, the last glowing coal of tolerant affection for her winked to black in his breast.

  “Do what you must,” Bram said coldly. He bowed his head formally and backed toward the door. He looked first to Cormac in the shadows. “Good-bye, Father.” He locked his determined gaze on Rietta. “Good-bye, Mother. I wish you long life in this self-imposed prison.” With that, he slipped from the refectory.