The Medusa Plague

by Mary Kirchoff

  “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 Lyim 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 left 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 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. I 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. “I 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 eyes 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.”

  By now, Zagarus did not land so much as he simply slammed into the ground. I … don’t know … how much longer I can do this, panted Zagarus, staggering to his feet.

  Guerrand held out the bundle. “Just one more, old friend, and then you can rest for a year and eat all the fish you want.”

  It’s a good, thing, too … because I think Nuitari is about to rise. The gull took the bundle in his mouth, stumbled down the street with wings flapping, and took off.

  After watching the final batch of sigils head skyward, Bram turned back to Guerrand. “What about the moon’s edge? Won’t that still provide a tiny bit of light?”

  Guerrand had already rolled back his sleeves and closed his eyes in concentration. “Not if the spell works properly. If Nuitari becomes truly two-dimensional, its edge will not exist in this world. If you want to worry about something, worry that the spell won’t work at all; that’s far more likely.

  “I don’t know how long I can maintain it,” the mage continued, “so I’m going to cast the spell at the last possible moment, just as the sun disappears. I have to prepare now.” He pressed his hands to his ears briefly, clueing Bram to stay back quietly.

  As the sunlight waned, Guerrand silently repeated the words of the spell over and over with great concentration, until he felt himself no more than a black hollowness, like the length of a flute through which the invisible sound passed. He repeated the spell like a mantra the entire length of his mind’s body, opening passages to the power and stopping the interference of others. He dared not open his eyes, lest he lose concentration. He would know without seeing if the spell worked. The mage squeezed his eyes shut more tightly, and with every clenched and tingling muscle in his body, he willed the spell to work. He’d done everything he knew how to make it happen.

  Guerrand felt the mental presence of Zagarus at his side, telling him that all the scrolls had been dispatched. Guerrand pronounced the words he had been rehearsing.

  “Ine jutera, Ine swobokla, jehth Ine laeranma.”

  A tremendous clap of thunder rattled doors and shook the ground beneath their feet like an earthquake for many moments. Guerrand’s eyes flew open in alarm as he stumbled about, crashing into Bram, who was already on his knees.

  “What’s happening?” cried Bram, struggling to keep Kirah on her straw mattress.

  But Guerrand could only shake his head mutely. What had he done with his rearranging of ancient symbols? A bolt of lightning cracked the dusky sky and zagged a path above the buildings of the village, straight to Guerrand. The bolt struck the mage full in the chest in the very instant he realized it would. To his greater surprise, there came only a slight tingling pain.

  Guerrand reached up a hand to the wound, but the earth dropped away beneath him, throwing him off balance. Yet he did not tumble down but flew forward, as if all the wind in the world were at the small of his back, arching him like a bow until he thought he might snap. The skin of his face drew back from the incredible speed of his passage, exposing the outline of every tooth and bone in his head. His ears rang, and his head felt stuffed with wool.

  Strangest of all, Guerrand seemed to be going somewhere in a great hurry. He was hurtling through a vast expanse of blackness broken only by tiny pinpoints of distant light. One of those points loomed larger than the rest, until its impossibly bright, blinding light was all that was ahead, choking out the blackness, burning Guerrand’s eyes.

  And then the breakneck ride stopped. Instantly. Guerrand was thrown to his knees, and his head snapped forward painfully. He kept his eyes shut as he crawled to his feet, one hand rubbing his neck. He was afraid to open his eyes, but curiosity won out, and he spared a glance around him.

  The mage was in a room defined so only by the four crystal-clear glass walls that separated him from the vastness of blue-black space. Even the floor beneath his feet was transparent, cold glass, the view broken only by winking stars. The feeling was disorienting, as if a surface as thin as a soap bubble were all that kept him from tumbling through the heavens.

  Slow-paced footsteps abruptly hammered against the glass. Guerrand’s head jerked up, eyes wide. A youngish man stepped into view from the blackness of space. His jet-black hair and long black robe seemed to form from the darkness beyond the glass. Pinpoints of starlight twinkled in his eyes, set slant-wise and sly and entirely ringed with shadows. He radiated a sense of majesty, cool and unreachable. Guerrand would have dropped to his knees in supplication if he weren’t already kneeling.

  The aristocratic man stepped to the middle of the room, a curious smile playing about his mouth. He bent at the waist, and a chair grew beneath him, rising out of the floor like stretched, heated glass. He casually crossed his legs and raised an arm, and a table grew similarly beneath it. He app
raised Guerrand with a serene visage, his eyes alighting with brief interest upon Guerrand’s red robe. If not for his venerable aura, the man looked at a distance like any intelligent listener sitting at a table in an inn, with fried root vegetables and a cup of lily wine on the table before him.

  “Why are you scribbling on my moon?” he asked coolly.

  “Your moon?” Guerrand gasped. With a small jerk of his head, he looked all around the glass walls and noticed the dark, circular shadow that loomed taller than a cliff face. He could almost make out smaller shadows of familiar magical runes scratched upon the darker shape. Guerrand’s head snapped back to the man at the table. The red-robed mage grew paler than a mushroom, when, with simple, terrible understanding, he realized he was looking at the god of dark magic himself, Nuitari.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “I-I didn’t think—”

  “Always dangerous for a mage,” broke in Nuitari, his lips pursed in displeasure.

  “I had good reason,” Guerrand began again feebly.

  The god smothered a yawn. “You earthbound mages always do.”

  “I’m not some ordinary mage playing at spellcasting,” Guerrand managed. “I am one of the wizards who was chosen to man Bastion, the stronghold that defends against entrance into your Lost Citadel.”

  The mage dispatched Bastion with a flick of his long, tapered nails. “Do you truly believe I need your help to protect anything?”

  “N-No,” stuttered Guerrand. “I just thought—”

  “That a position I did not bestow should grant you favor?”

  “No!” exclaimed Guerrand. “I just thought it would not displease you if I prevented another mage from continuing to use the power of your moon without your leave.”

  Nuitari’s dark-ringed eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

  Guerrand quickly complied, taking heart from the fact that Nuitari, drumming his nails on the glass table, seemed to seriously consider his story about Lyim.