The Medusa Plague

Chapter Thirteen

Kirah awoke at first light with an inexplicable sense of well- being she had not felt in a long time. She bounded from her feather tick, feet dancing over the cold floor, seeking her worn boots. Jamming her feet into the things, more mud than good leather now, she stoked the fire with just one small piece of wood to keep the cinders burning while she toiled in the bakery below.

Kirah had secretly done work for the baker's wife for some time. Glammis hadn't been thrilled with the idea of Cormac DiThon's crazy sister working for him, let alone living in the room above his bakery. But his wife, Deeander, had taken pity on Kirah and offered her room and board in exchange for sweeping floors, changing the rushes occasionally, and the odd bit of sewing and mending.

Kirah wasn't happy Glammis had died from the plague, for the baker had been a kindly man, despite his prejudices- still, she was happy that his passing had given her the opportunity for work that was more to her liking than the tedium of ordinary household chores. Today she would bake bread, until the flour ran out, that is.

Kirah shrugged on her dirt-stiffened clothing-old hose and the thin shift Deeander had given her-then gnawed off a small piece of hardtack and gulped some soured milk before skipping down the stairs to the bakery.

She bypassed the open front door and took the alleyway to avoid the patrons. Two meager, half-filled sacks of ground spelt flour were propped against the back door, left by Wilton Sivesten, the miller's son. Normally, the bakery would receive five times that amount each day, but the mill had slowed its production considerably since the death of the miller. Frankly, there were far fewer people in the village to buy the bakery's products, anyway.

Kirah asked herself why she should be feeling so light of heart when things in Thonvil seemed their grimmest. She didn't have to look far for the answer. Lyim. He had miraculously arrived in her life for the second time, bringing hope.

Once Kirah had had an endless amount of hope. Hope and two loyal brothers. But first Quinn left, then Guerrand, taking with him the last of her hope. All she'd had left was belief in herself. Even that had proved insufficient in Gwynned.

As usual, Kirah turned her mind away from that unspeakable time. There was something pleasant to ponder now. Lyim cared enough about her to travel far with the cure. She still had difficulty believing Guerrand had caused this plague, but where was he, if he was so innocent?

Kirah stepped into the stone-block baking room and looped a broad, white apron nearly twice about her narrow waist. She didn't wait for Deeander to tell her the day's tasks-they seldom varied. Besides, the baker's widow was undoubtedly busy in the front room, selling the last of yesterday's yield.

First, Kirah stoked the two brick ovens, raking out the ashes to prepare the hot floor for the loaves she would prepare next. When she was satisfied with the level of heat, Kirah went to the long marble baking table and carefully lowered the cloth-covered bowl of fermented bread starter from a high shelf. She tossed a wooden scoopful of the goopy, sour-smelling stuff into an enormous mixing bowl. To that she added coarse, brown spelt from one of the new sacks (there was no one who could afford fine white loaves, even if they could get the flour), a pinch of sea salt, and a large ladleful of warm well water from the cauldron that always hung above the fire pit. Kirah mixed it around with her bare hands, squeezing the concoction between her fingers.

Next came her favorite part. Sprinkling the marble table with a frugal amount of flour, she flung the stringy mixture onto it, pushed her sleeves past her elbows, then began to furiously knead the dough. It was the color of coarse, undyed cotton, with dark flecks of brown. Kirah counted to three hundred while she pushed and prodded the stuff around the table. When she was at last satisfied with the soft feel of it, Kirah chopped the dough into thirds with a sharp knife. Fashioning each into a perfectly round ball, she placed them one, two, three on the flat shovel end of a long, wooden peel and gently lowered them upon the hot oven floor. With a quick tug, she yanked the peel from under the bread and withdrew it from the heat before the wood could char.

Brushing the leftover flour from her hands, Kirah surveyed her work with satisfaction. Three loaves in the oven in no time at all. A wisp of hair fell across her face, and she looked at it cross-eyed before trying to blow it back. The strands stuck upon her sweaty forehead. Funny, she thought, scraping them away with the back of her hand, I don't feel hot enough to sweat. If anything, she felt a little chilly, despite her strenuous efforts at the kneading table. Must be the heat of the ovens, she decided.

Kirah was preparing to mix a batch of pie crust when Deeander pushed back the curtain to the front room.

The stout woman's face was pale with strain as she looked upon the loaves in the brick oven. "I would have stopped you had I heard you come in." She shook her head sadly. "Every day there are fewer and fewer to come and buy bread. I have yet to sell yesterday's loaves."

"People still have to eat," Kirah said.

"What people?" barked the baker's wife, her patience suddenly snapping like a lute string. "Have you looked outside today? Have you seen the bodies of stone stacked head to toe upon the green because they can't dig graves fast enough to bury the dead anymore?" Bright spots of angry red mottled her fleshy face. "Why do we make bread to sustain people who will only die horrible deaths within the week?"

"With that line of reasoning," said Kirah, "you could ask why ever feed someone? They will only die in forty or fifty years anyway." Her expression turned serious. "Because to not feed people is to ensure their deaths, that's why."

The baker woman's bosom heaved, and she wearily lowered herself into a flour-flecked chair. "It's just that I've given up hope. I see no reason nor end for this disease. Sometimes I wish it would just take me and end the waiting!"

"Don't ever say that!" Kirah gasped, looking over her shoulder to see if the woman's young son had heard her, but there was no sign of him. "You have Dilb to think about."

"It's about him that I worry endlessly," the woman confessed. "How can I keep the plague from him, when I don't know how to keep it from myself?"

Kirah massaged the woman's thick shoulder, hoping to impart strength. She wished that she could give the woman the hope she herself felt, but the town had never been trusting of mages. She would just have to wait until Lyim returned with enough antidote for everyone, then hope the townspeople would follow her example and take the cure.

"Make no more bread, and take the rest of the day off," Deeander instructed her, pushing herself up to return to the front room in hopes that someone would come to buy bread. "I'll watch the loaves you've made."

Kirah cleared the marble pastry table. Removing her apron, she hung it on a hook and wondered what she would do to fill her day. She wished Lyim would return soon, for reasons that had nothing to do with cures. He'd left two days ago to get enough antidote for the rest of the village. She missed him more than she was comfortable admitting, torn between an expectation too strong and fear of disappointment. Suddenly she could not sit still-not for a moment-leaving her in an itching agony.

She would stop by the inn. Surely Lyim would stay there when he returned with the cure. Kirah polished the bottom of a pie pan with a coarse sleeve and checked her reflection. Her face was sweaty and her hair lank. With clumsy, untrained hands, she braided the pale blond strands into one long plait that rested on her right shoulder.

Pulling on a loose, scratchy woolen cape, Kirah stepped out into the narrow, filthy alley and shivered. She hadn't remembered the air feeling so cold. Thankfully, the Red Goose Inn was only two thatched buildings and a vegetable patch down the street, across from the green. She would warm herself by the fire there before checking with the innkeeper. Kirah rounded the corner and emerged into the sunlight.

She had kept to her room and the bakery since Lyim left and was amazed at the change a few days made in the village. Never prosperous, it looked nearly deserted now. The taint of decay was everywhere, including the shabby, boarded-up shop fronts. The breeze carried the scent of burning flesh; she'd heard people were now cremating the husks of skin that victims shed on the second day of the disease, in hopes of stopping its spread. The greatest shock came from the sight of bodies piled upon the green, as Deeander had said, waiting for burial.

Without realizing it, Kirah had slowed her pace until she was barely moving. The horror of the stacked bodies was riveting. Human torsos and faces frozen in terror and pain intermixed with a mass of snakes that still seemed to writhe, in spite of being stone. She did not iook closely enough at the faces to recognize anyone, but it was clear that many of the dead were children ar.d infants. Snake bodies lay on the grass, broken off from limbs by careless or hurried handling. It was a scene from a nightmare, a chamel pit of snakes squirm- ire over and between the corpses of the tormented dead.

Kirah yanked her gaze away from the horrid stack ar.d covered her eyes. She had become suddenly lightheaded and waited several seconds for the dizziness to pass Her gaze went wide to the right, over a fallow tbe

vegetable patch arid to the fields that surrounded Thonvil. Unharvested corn stood exposed in sodden patches, where the previous winter's steady north wind had bent the old stalks until they trailed the ground like willow branches. Kirah spied a shape trudging through the distant fields, bent almost double beneath a load. She couldn't see whether it was man, woman, or child, but she didn't hail the person, for it was enough to know there was at least one other person in the world who had not yet stopped his life for the plague.

Kirah hastened up the steps to the inn. The smell of decay seemed to vanish here, replaced by the scent of damp ashes. The hearth had just been cleaned. So much for warming myself before the fire, Kirah sighed inwardly.

No one was inside the large taproom. Kirah waited for the innkeeper at the tall counter, where the dark, pitted wood of the bar met the back wall. Feeling a little queasy of a sudden, she lowered herself upon a stool. The muscles of her shoulders, neck, and lower back had begun to ache. It was probably a good thing that Deeander had given her the day off, she decided. She'd obviously been overdoing it at the bakery.

Growing impatient, Kirah rapped her knuckles upon the hard wooden bar. Cold, despite the perspiration between her shoulder blades, Kirah shivered her thin cape closer, as if a bird rearranging its feathers.

"Hallooo?" she called toward the kitchen door when her knuckles were sore from banging.

At length a thin, shiny-pated man in his middle years pushed through the swinging door, wiping his hands on a filthy apron, a look of suspicious surprise on his face. His inn had not seen the likes of Kirah DiThon before, either as lord's daughter or crazy woman. Llewen knew her only by reputation.

"If you're here to break fast or for noon lunch, I'm afraid all we have is a few of yesterday's greasy turnips," Llewen confessed. "There's no meat to be found in the town."

"I'm not here to eat," said Kirah. "I'm looking for someone who probably stayed here recently and is expected to return any day. He's tall, with long, dark, wavy hair. He was wearing a dark brown robe."

The innkeeper raised his eyebrows at the word "he." Everyone in town believed the story of crazy Kirah waiting for the return of a lover who didn't exist. "What's his name?" Llewen asked.

Kirah saw the disapproving curiosity in the man's watery eyes. "Either you've seen the man I've described or you haven't. Which is it?"

"Haven't," he said, shaking his head. "Nobody's come to Thonvil or stayed at the inn since word of the sickness spread."

"But that's not possi-" Kirah began, then stopped. Lyim was a mage; perhaps he had magiced himself up a place to stay. "Thank you," she said weakly, turning to leave. She felt hot and limp. "Have you a cup of water, please? I'm not feeling quite right."

The man looked at her in alarm and stepped back from the bar warily.

She saw his fear through bleary eyes. "Don't worry, it's not the plague," she muttered, though the world began to spin crazily. "I can't be getting the plague, you see…" Kirah didn't finish the sentence, because she had slouched, unconscious, to the floor.

Guerrand did one last run-through in his mind about the state of security at Bastion. He had given a hastily jotted list of instructions to Dagamier. Ezius had replaced her in the scrying sphere after removing Lyim's body from the courtyard and taking it to the white wing to prepare it for burial. She'd taken the piece of parchment reluctantly, and only after he insisted. Though she might have run things well enough before Guerrand arrived, he was responsible for Bastion now, even during his absence.

Satisfied that he had done all he could to ensure smooth running of things during his leave, Guerrand used the scroll justarius had sent for the purpose of teleporting Bram, Zagarus, and himself back to Thonvil. The moment the words inscribed on the scroll left his lips, Guerrand felt a brief disorientation, like he was a scrap of paper in the draft of a chimney, flaming and floating, weightless. But it was only for a moment, and then his eyes were readjusting to daylight on the main street of Thonvil. He, Bram, and Zagarus stood before the open door of the bakery.

Turning, Guerrand accidently stepped on one of Zagarus's webbed feet.

The bird squawked angrily. Watch where you're going, oaf.

"What's eating you?" Guerrand asked him silently. "1 thought you'd be happy to leave Bastion for a trip back to Thonvil. You're always complaining about living there."

Yeah, well, I don't want to get too used to sky and earth again, since we'll be returning to that shadow box we call home too soon, the bird huffed. The look in his beady dark eyes abruptly softened. Guerrand could see that Zag was merely covering his own trepidation with bluster.

Uncomfortable with his master's scrutiny, Zagarus told Guerrand that he was going to the cove to see if anyone from the old days was still alive.

Guerrand watched the old gull lumber into the air and flap stiffly toward the sea. He turned in a circle, peering around with eyes that could not fathom distance or endure the sun after so long at Bastion. Before Rand could get more than a whiff of decay and an impression of Thonvil's general squalor, Bram took his hand and dragged him up the open flight of stairs next to the door embellished with a sign carved in the likeness of a steaming loaf.

"Kirah!" Bram cried, banging his fist on the door to his aunt's room. "Come on, Kirah, it's Bram. I'm back with Guerrand as I promised."

"Maybe she's not home," Guerrand suggested.

"Maybe," Bram muttered. To his surprise, the door creaked open a crack. Bram pressed his eye to it, then gave that up and gave the door a hard shove with his booted toe.

The door swung back on rusty hinges. The choking stench of sweat and vomit and rotting flesh rolled out in a cloud. Bram tore into the room ahead of Guerrand. "We're too late!" he cried.

Blood pounded at Guerrand's temples as he followed Bram into the cold, fireless room. He found his nephew on his knees at the side of a small rope bed. Unceremoniously dumped upon the dirty feather tick was someone he barely recognized.

"Bram?" she whispered, blinking in disbelief. Kirah's eyes had always looked like the sort created to house mysteries, but now they seemed no more than the soft, unseeing eyes of a cow at graze. Her once-blond hair was ash-colored and damp about her emaciated face. It looked to have been braided, but fuzzy hanks had been rubbed out of the plait in back. Her clothing was worse than a beggar woman's and beginning to rip at the sleeves.

"Yes, it's me, Kirah," Bram said, choking back a sob. "When did you get sick?"

"I… don't know," she said haltingly. "The last thing I remember I was at the Red Goose Inn, asking for some water. I was so cold." She shivered, remembering. "I must have had the flu because I feel much better now."

Bram looked over his shoulder. The two men exchanged worried looks.

Guerrand stepped forward into his sister's view. "Hello, Kirah." Guerrand hoped his expression held the right shade of sympathy touched by the diffidence due an estranged member of one's family.

She started, then weakly pushed herself up onto her elbows. "It is you. Well, well," she said caustically. "Frankly, I'm surprised you found the time for us, but I guess history does repeat itself. Once again, you've made it back too late to help most of Thonvil. And, once again, your old friend, Lyim, squeezed us into his schedule."

"Did you swallow the concoction he gave you?" Guerrand asked anxiously.

"Of course," she said. 'Two days ago."

A cry escaped Bram's lips, a curse Guerrand's.

"Does that disappoint you, Guerrand?" asked Kirah, giving him a canny look. "That he gave me the cure to this disease you've caused?"

In the middle of her question, Guerrand had begun to shake his head in disbelief, gaining both speed and power, until his whole body shook. "Is that what Lyim told you? That I caused this plague?"

"I saw his hand," she said. "I've heard the snakes hiss your name."

A muscle twitched in Guerrand's jaw. "What would make you think I'd want to cause anyone to suffer such hideous deaths, let alone my family and the villagers with whom I was raised?" he demanded.

Kirah scoffed. "That question implies that I know anything about you anymore. Lyim said you were an important mage and were trying to destroy all evidence of your humble beginnings."

Guerrand was struck dumb, and he turned away. His hands curled into fists at his side as he paced. For the first time, he was glad he'd killed Lyim. The man had poisoned his sister's body and mind, just to punish him. Lyim had been a master of lies.

Bram touched him on the arm, and Guerrand jumped. "From the looks of her," Bram whispered, "she had the fever yesterday." They both gave worried glances over their shoulders. Kirah was sitting up, scratching her right arm, her expression a practiced mask of carelessness.

"Are you sure she has it?" Guerrand whispered back.

Bram nodded his head reluctantly. "She's on day two, which means she's going to start shedding skin any time now. I've learned there's no point trying to stop it by tying a patient down, but it's easier on them if you can keep them on the bed." He looked at his uncle closely, then dropped his voice even more. "Do you think you'll be able to help me? It's horrifying to watch, but it's nothing compared to what will happen later."

"Of course I'll help you," Guerrand said. "That is, if she'll let me near her."

As they turned back toward Kirah, both men noticed that her casual scratching had turned to determined scraping. Her arm was covered with thick, red welts where her nails had dug into the flesh.

"Now I have this awful itch," Kirah moaned. "I really need a bath, after that fever from the flu." Her hand continued scraping back and forth on her right forearm all the while she spoke. But the scratching did nothing to relieve the itch, which only made Kirah attack the arm more ferociously.

Within moments, she was nearly frantic. "This arm, it's driving me crazy. I've never itched like this before!"

Guerrand glanced questioningly at Bram. Kirah surely must have heard the symptoms of the plague. Did she really have such faith in Lyim that she still didn't suspect his "cure"? Lyim had not been above using a magical charm on her. Or was she simply fooling herself out of fear?

"Just lie back, Kirah," Bram soothed. "We'll get a rag and some warm water. It will make you feel better."

Tears welled in Kirah's eyes and left light-colored streaks down her dirty cheeks. "Hurry, please," she pleaded, gouging ever more frantically at the raw arm.

"What's happening?" she wailed, looking down the length of her arms. Kirah's head went from side to side in shocked, old-womanish gestures.

"You have the plague, Kirah. You'll shed a layer or two of skin today," Bram explained as calmly as he was able.

"I can't have the plague!" she howled, rubbing her arms at a furious rate against the roughness of the sheets. "Lyim gave me the cure!"

"Lyim gave you the plague," Guerrand said harshly.

"I don't believe you-I can't!" Kirah rubbed her limbs and thrashed against the bed, both men holding her to keep her on it.

"It's true," said Bram. "I heard him boast of it, Kirah."

Bram motioned Guerrand toward the wash basin for the wet rag. The older man had taken only a few steps when a piercing shriek spun him around in his tracks. Kirah was arching violently on the bed. Bram struggled to push her shoulders to the mattress. "Help me, Rand!" Bram cried. Kirah's right arm twitched horribly as she banged it over and over against the bed frame.

Guerrand dashed back to the bed and tried to grab his sister's flailing limb. "Just hold her down so she can't hurt herself worse."

Guerrand did as Bram asked and was surprised by the strength in Kirah's thin, fevered frame. Her arm struck him in the back several times, but Guerrand ignored it. A cry of anguish rent the air as the skin split along the entire length of Kirah's right forearm and hand, then slipped away in a hideous curl. She looked at the red, raw flesh beneath it with large, teary eyes. Her glance traveled to Guerrand, unable to deny the truth any longer. Kirah fell back against the soiled pillow, the need to scratch silenced for the moment.

Why?" she asked in a hollow voice. "Why would he do this? I thought he cared about me."

"He did care about you, Kirah," whispered Guerrand. "Just not as much as he hated me."

Kirah cried out again, and Bram held her tightly. He shot an anxious look over his shoulder at his uncle. "Can't you come up with some spell to lessen her pain?

Guerrand snapped from his stupor to recall a mixture he had once given Esme when she broke her leg. He found the prerequisite herbs in his pack and hastily concocted the mixture of crushed dried peppermint leaves and cream-colored meadowsweet flowers soaked in oil of clove. He leaned in, struggling against her thrashing, and placed the tincture under Kirah's tongue. Within moments, her struggles visibly, though briefly, lessened.

"I'd like to try something else as well," Guerrand said pensively. "If this illness is magic-based, perhaps it can be dispelled."

"Do it!" urged Bram, turning back to his aunt, whose legs had begun to split now.

Guerrand reached into his pouch and withdrew a hardened leather scroll case. He popped off the lid and pulled out a heavy scroll. The spell of dispelling was a simple one to a mage of Guerrand's experience, and he had cast if from memory many times. But if this worked, he would need to cast it many more times, so he had brought along several such scrolls. Guerrand took a moment to compose himself and focus his mind, closing out Kirah's shrieks of pain. With eyes narrowed, he translated aloud the mystical symbols so precisely scribed on the parchment. As each was pronounced, it flared like a tiny wisp of paper set alight, to immediately swirl away above the scroll. Familiar magical symbols danced through his mind, organizing themselves in the proper pattern, and disappeared. Finally, Guerrand mumbled the words›f'"Delu solisar," to trigger the precisely crafted spell.

Both men held their breath as they watched. Bram's eyes darted from Kirah's legs to her face, and back to her legs again, in a nervous cycle. Guerrand sat motionless.

Finally, Bram whispered, "What's happening? Why can't I see anything?"

"Because there's nothing to see," sighed Guerrand. "If the spell had worked, it's effect would have been apparent right away It failed."

Without a word, Bram turned back to Kirah.

When the skin was shed entirely from the first leg, she was so exhausted she lapsed into a shallow, fitful sleep. Both men knew the rest was only temporary, until her other leg began to shed. Bram joined his uncle by the cold hearth. "Is there nothing else you can try?"

Guerrand shook his head. "Despite the simplicity of the process, most magic can be dispelled. Whatever this is, it goes beyond the realm of pure magic. A multitude of forces are at work creating this disease."

"You can't even ease her pain more fully?" asked Bram, his voice far away, yet urgent.

"I can keep administering the analgesic herbs, but I'm neither a physicker nor a priest. Mine are not healing spells. I don't even understand what I'm dealing with."

"Then learn about it," charged Bram. "Walk around Thonvil and see its effects. You've got until sunset tomorrow night to come up with a cure. That's when Kirah's limbs will turn to snakes and her eyes to onyx."

Guerrand nodded. "Of course."

Bram saw the brief flash of guilt and self-doubt cloud his uncle's face. "These people will not be cured by your guilt, but by your wits and your sweat," he said. "Whatever decisions led Lyim to his actions, you are to blame for what happens here only if self-pity keeps you from working to cure what he caused."

Guerrand regarded his nephew with a new respect. The mage resolved to do whatever he could, leave no magical concept untried, to keep his sister from turning to stone. Her next round of pain-racked screams began as her second leg began to shed its skin, reminding the mage that he had very little time.