The Medusa Plague tdom-2

by Mary Kirchoff

  Squinting skyward, Lyim recognized the befuddled chamberlain who'd thought to dispatch an entire army of Knights of Solamnia with the announcement that he hadn't the authority to recognize their siege. The old man's face was even thinner and creased with more worry lines than when last Lyim had seen him, his eyes more milky with cataracts.

  "Good chamberlain, I am no merchant with wares for sale. I am an old friend looking for Kirah DiThon," Lyim called up to the man in his most persuasive tones. "I heard there is plague in the village and was concerned for her welfare."

  "Kirah is well, as far as I know," said the chamberlain, his tone eased.

  "As far as you know?" repeated Lyim, puzzled. "Have you not seen her in the castle with your own eyes?"

  "How would 1?" asked the chamberlain as if the answer were plain. "I see little enough with these eyes. Even still, Kirah has lived in the village since shortly after she refused to marry the husband of her mother's choosing."

  "Where does she live?" he asked the chamberlain.

  "Above the baker's, I've heard," said the old man. "He's just died of the sickness, if Gildee the cook has it right from the gossips."

  But Lyim was already on his way back to the village.

  When Kirah heard the knock at her door, she thought it must be Dilb with some wood for her fire. With Bram gone to parts unknown, the baker's son was the only one she would trust to enter her little room. Still taking no chances, Kirah opened the door slowly and slightly, then pressed her right eye to the crack. Her breath abruptly caught in her throat, and her heart skipped a painful beat.

  It could not be him. After all these years, and all her wishes, it could not be Lyim. The world was too big a place, her dreams too inconsequential, for Lyim to arrive to help her twice in a lifetime. And yet there he stood on her stoop, beyond the crack in her door.

  "Hello, Kirah," the mage said. "Is this how you welcome an old friend, peering at him like he's a robber in the night?"

  Kirah primmed her mouth in superior fashion, then spoiled the effect by laughing girlishly. "Yes-I mean no! I mean, hello and come in!" she managed at last, flustered beyond all reason. Kirah opened the door with one hand and pulled closed her ragged wrap with the other, suddenly self-conscious. It had been so long since she'd been expected to behave like anything but a crazy hermit.

  As Lyim walked into her room, Kirah noticed that something about him was different, yet she couldn't quite put her finger on it. It wasn't just the simple, oversized brown robe that seemed to engulf him, or the odd leather mittens, although they were uncharacteristic. His face and hair were essentially unchanged, no early gray at the temples. Maybe it was the eyes, she thought, looking for the sparkle of humor she remembered there and not finding it. Perhaps it was the man's stride, slower and more contained. His was no longer the strut of a peacock proud of his plumes.

  Unlike Lyim, Kirah had never cared what she looked like. Until this minute, anyway, when a recent memory of her visage in a street puddle made her shiver. Her unwashed hair was dull gray instead of blonde, and flat against her head, as if she wore a cap. Kirah felt well enough, but her eyes and cheeks were sunken so that she appeared far older than her nineteen years. She looked beyond bony in the sacklike dress and wrap the baker's robust wife had given her some months ago when her previous raggedy shift had disintegrated at the shoulders.

  Kirah made herself as small as possible in a reed- backed chair by the hearth. "Have you come to save the village again?" she asked more caustically than she'd meant. "There's a plague here."

  "I know." Lyim removed his left mit and set it on the small table by the door, as if he had done so for years. "That is why I've come. I was hoping you'd know where Guerrand is."

  She looked up, mildly surprised. "You've come to the wrong place, then," she said. "Guerrand came to see me just after we prevented the Berwick siege, but I haven't heard from him since."

  "You sound as though you're still angry with him after all these years," observed Lyim.

  Kirah thought about that briefly. "No, I don't suppose I am," she said at last. "We made our peace, Guerrand and I. He had to leave Thonvil." Kirah leaned forward in the chair to add her last meager log to the coals. Brushing off her hands, Kirah stood and took two chipped pottery mugs from the narrow mantle. "I can offer you rainwater tea, but I'm afraid I have nothing else. I get my meals after the baker's family below, and they're not coming regularly now, what with Glammis's death."

  "Did you know him well?"

  "Glammis?" She shrugged thin shoulders. "You know everyone in a village the size of Thonvil, even if you don't live above them. Glammis was kindly enough, a hardworking man with a wife and young son to support. I don't know how they'll get along without him." She dropped a pinch of tea leaves into one of the cups. "If they don't catch the disease themselves, that is."

  Kirah poured heated rainwater from a kettle onto the brittle green leaves in both mugs. She stopped abruptly, her head cocked as she regarded Lyim. "It's funny that you should be looking for Guerrand now. Have you heard the rumors, too?"

  "Too?" he repeated, taking in his left hand the hot mug she held out to him. He settled his bulk into the chair Kirah had vacated and took a tentative sip. "Who else is looking for him?"

  Kirah whipped back dirty strands of hair from her face. "My nephew Bram left Thonvil in search of Guerrand because he thinks Rand may know something about curing this plague. I'm afraid my brother helped stir up Bram's suspicions, since Cormac believes everything that is wrong in and around Thonvil is Guerrand's fault. In the stupor that is his conscious state," Kirah said with great deliberateness, "Cormac has rewritten history to exonerate himself."

  Lyim fidgeted in the chair. "What made Bram think Guerrand knows anything about it?"

  "I haven't seen the pestilence myself," Kirah confessed, "but my nephew described it to me just before he left. Bram said that he had heard with his own ears what the gossips had been whispering: Just before death, the victims' snake limbs whisper Guerrand's name."

  "Do you think it's possible Guerrand is responsible for it?" Lyim asked cautiously.

  Again Kirah shrugged, a gesture seemingly as involuntary as breathing to her. "A month or more ago I w ouldn't have thought anyone I knew could even contract such a bizarre illness."

  Lyim sipped, looking at her over the brim of his mug.

  And what do you think now?"

  Kirah moved to sit across from Lyim on the edge of her small bed. "This illness is odd enough to be magical m nature," she said slowly, "but I can't believe Guerrand had anything to do with it." Her face scrunched up pensively. "Why on Krynn would he want to do such a thing?"

  Lyim set his empty cup down and wouldn't meet her eyes. "Do you think this nephew of yours, Bram, has any chance of returning with Guerrand?"

  "I don't know. Frankly, he has more determination than experience."

  Lyim frowned darkly. "Where did your nephew go, and when did he leave?"

  "1 suggested he start by asking the wizards at Wayreth-" Kirah stopped suddenly. "Say, you're a mage, Lyim. If the pestilence is magical, can't you do something to stop it?" Her face brightened in hopeful understanding. "That's why you're here, isn't it?"

  Lyim grimaced, wrestling with some decision. "I had hoped to spare you what I know about your brother, but-"

  "What is it?" Kirah jumped to her feet and reached out imploringly for Lyim's arm, his right. The mage snatched away his gloved hand viciously before she could lay a finger to it. Stunned, she drew back and looked at him with pain in her pale eyes.

  Lyim rubbed his face. "I believe Guerrand is responsible for this plague," he managed at last. "I knew it the second I stepped into the village and heard the details of the illness."

  "But why?" gasped Kirah, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Lyim's laugh was not kindly. "Guerrand and I have not been friends since-" he paused, considering, then pushed back his big right cuff and removed the tan leather mit from his hand. "Since this happen
ed to my hand."

  Not knowing what to expect, Kirah hung back apprehensively. She jumped in stunned horror when a long, single-headed snake with a gold diamond pattern on its head slithered forth where Lyim's hand should have been.

  "I–I don't understand," she stuttered, unconsciously averting her eyes. "Are you saying Guerrand did that to you?"

  His face red with shame, Lyim tucked the hissing creature back into its glove. "Not exactly," he said. 'In fairness, I'm forced to admit that my own master inflicted this upon me. But it was within Guerrand's power to help me cure it. He refused. I've been unable to cure it myself, but I did manage to find an antidote that enabled me to contain it to one hand."

  Paler than death, Kirah dropped back onto the bed and shook her head with slow but unceasing regularity.

  "If he has the power to cure it, Guerrand also has the power to create the disease," reasoned Lyim. When Kirah continued to shake her head mutely, he said, "I didn't want to believe it either."

  "But why?" asked Kirah in a small voice. "Why would Guerrand want to inflict the same horrible pain on us?"

  "Because he can?" Lyim postulated. "You don't know Guerrand anymore, Kirah. He's become a powerful and influential mage. Perhaps his impoverished roots are an embarrassment to him, I'm not really sure, but I fear his power has gone to his head. It happened to my master-the magic took him over." Lyim's dark, wavy hair brushed his shoulders as he shook his head sadly. "I tell you, you would not recognize your brother in the man who refused my simple request to cure my hand."

  Kirah's eyes held a faraway look. "He promised me when he first left that if ever I needed help, he'd somehow know and come to me," she said numbly.

  "Instead he sent me, rather than risk his position with his master," Lyim reminded her. "Apparently the seeds tor his selfishness had already been planted."

  Lyim saw the firm set to her mouth. "Look, Kirah, I don't like to say these things, let alone believe them. But don't you think all the coincidences are a bit odd? My hand? The similarity of the plague's symptoms to the affliction Guerrand refused to cure in me? Why else would the snakes hiss his name? What but guilt or design could keep him away?"

  Kirah bristled. "He probably hasn't heard of our troubles yet."

  Lyim shook his head sadly. "You don't understand the powers of a mage if you believe that."

  Kirah shook her head mutely. "I… can't… believe it. But maybe I don't know Guerrand anymore." Overcome, she pressed her face into her hands.

  Lyim knelt by her on one knee, his hair falling to gently curl around his face as he lifted her tear-streaked chin with his good hand. "I've come to help you, Kirah."

  Kirah tried to break the bond that held his eyes to hers, but the power that gripped her was as old as sorcery and far stronger. She could only manage a nod.

  'Together, we can make Guerrand come forward and face what he has done," Lyim said smoothly. 'Together, we can end the suffering." He reached into his brown shroud and withdrew a flask. "This is the antidote I traveled to Mithas to secure. It prevents those with symptoms of the disease from dying, though it won't cure the mutations. And it keeps those without symptoms from contracting the illness. Guerrand will surely come forward when he realizes we've foiled his plot."

  Still on one knee and holding Kirah's gaze, Lyim pressed the flask into her small hands. "I have just enough with me for you, Kirah," he intoned. "You must take it. For me."

  Chapter Ten

  Lyim had forgotten how menacing Wayreth forest looked. Tbe trees and bushes were all hideously twisted, casting sinister shadows. The distant sounds of wolves and bears didn't make the forest feel any more inviting, either.

  He noticed these things, but he wasn't frightened by the forest, never had been. Right now he could think only of how his calf muscles were starting to cramp. He'd been waiting behind the underbrush outside the gates of Wayreth for days, ever since he'd teleported here directly upon leaving Kirah. Growing annoyed with waiting, he shifted to relieve the pressure on his legs, never taking his eyes from the elaborate gateway to the stronghold of magic.

  Lyim resolved to give Guerrand's nephew until sunset to make it to the tower; the Council would recess then until the next day. After that he'd place a magical sentinel to watch for the young man's arrival. If the country boy ever made it, thought Lyim, knowing he could not have missed him already. It would take a non- mage more than a week to reach Wayreth from Northern Ergoth. Still, the discomfort would be worth the wait to Lyim if Bram got into Wayreth and persuaded the Council to send him to Bastion. It was the best change Lyim had for entering the stronghold himself.

  The wizard had taken the plague to Thonvil, hoping to draw Guerrand from Bastion. Lyim had reasoned that if he watched Thonvil closely and witnessed Guerrand's magical arrival, he might find a clue to entering the impenetrable stronghold. But Kirah's revelation about her nephew's departure for Wayreth to find Guerrand had given the wizard another idea. A far superior and more expedient idea.

  Lyim still tingled when he recalled how his mind had raced to conceive a plan that would take him all the way into the forbidden stronghold and cure his hand. Or kill him trying. But Lyim was no more afraid of that than of the forest behind him.

  It was all within Lyim's grasp, if only the nephew's quest was successful. The wizard waited and watched with patience borne of hope. A few would-be wizards came and went; half of the latter were dragged away by dwarves, Lyim knew, because they had failed their Test. None of them met Lyim's mental image of Guerrand's nephew; most were either younger than Bram would be, or of a different race.

  The wizard wasn't even aware he'd slipped into a shallow slumber of boredom until he was jolted awake for seemingly no good reason. Nothing had touched him; no one else had appeared before the tower. And yet, some sense told him that the air around the tower was somehow different, charged. He was instantly alert.

  Lyim blinked. When his eyes opened again-it was that quick-a young man stood looking up with surprised awe at the gates of gold and silver. Though magical entrances were more common than not at Wayreth, this one seemed different, as if the young man himself were surprised to be here.

  The man in the heavy cloak turned to look at the forest that hid Lyim, giving the wizard a good look at his profile. The resemblance to Guerrand in hair color and facial shape was remarkable.

  Lyim smiled. He had only to wait and monitor the towers for significant external radiations of magical energy. He was as good as in Bastion already.

  The gates of gold and silver before Bram were so masterfully crafted they looked as thin as cobwebs. The gates adjoined a wall in the shape of an equilateral triangle, with a small guard tower at each point. Odd, unfamiliar symbols were carved upon the surface of the dark stone, symbols that suggested the strength of the earth even to those with no power to read them. There were no battlements on the smooth-topped obsidian walls. Bram presumed the wizards who gathered there had little use for such mundane protection.

  Beyond the gated wall, twin towers of polished black obsidian pierced the forest roof. He turned to glance around, but the forest here looked and felt so oddly malevolent that he quickly returned his attention to the structure. The gates were open, so he strode slowly through them, eyes attempting to look everywhere at once. The courtyard was stark and barren, paved with cold gray flagstone. Though he could see no one, he had the vague feeling that he was not alone, as if the vard were teeming with people rushing to and fro. Turning quickly, he thought he saw a face and the upturned collar of a white robe, but then it was gone. He shook his head, knowing the vision was impossible. Other than himself, he could see no one in the flagstone courtyard.

  Bram walked toward the only door in a small fore- tower between the twin columns. At his approach the door abruptly flew back. Though no one appeared, it was obvious he was expected to step inside, and so he did. Smokeless torches provided dim illumination inside the simple, circular room. Three doors led from the room at equidistant points in the cir
cle. Opposite the door an empty row of chairs followed the curve of the wall. Inside his still-new boots, Bram's feet had begun to throb, so he slipped over to the row of chairs and lowered himself into one. Bram unconsciously tapped his foot while he waited for someone to arrive to direct him.

  And waited. Had he overlooked some bell or buzzer new arrivals were expected to ring? Bram squinted in the dark, spotted a simple wooden stand in the shadows to the left of the door, but it held only a thick, much-used book from the look of the binding. He drummed his fingers on the armrests.

  Many more anxious moments passed, and Bram began to debate whether he should pick a door and go looking for someone. Perhaps he should just leave.

  He had just risen to do so when the door to his left opened abruptly with a noisy creak, and from it emerged a man in a white robe, pushing a broom, his head bent to the task. Actually, Bram only assumed it was a man, since all he could see was the top of the person's tilted head, hair slicked down and carefully arranged so that each toothmark of the comb was still visible.

  "Pardon me, my good man," Bram tried to say, but his voice was phlegmy from lack of use this day. The words came out sounding like something a chicken might croak.

  The man's head shot up. Spying Bram in the shadows, he whirled his broom about and held its handle like a spear. "Speak the common tongue or be sausage!" he threatened. The man was old, his skin ash-gray, as were the fingers that trembled upon his mock weapon.

  Bram cleared his throat and summoned the words he had been rehearsing since Northern Ergoth. "I have traveled far to speak with the wizard named Par- Salian."

  The man smacked his lips in thinly veiled impatience. "You've come too late in the day for Testing, or to declare an alignment. The Council of Three has recessed for the day." He continued to sweep, pausing expectantly when he came to the floor under Bram's feet.