Guerrand gave him a grateful smile, then stood awkwardly, unsure what to do now, unable even to hold the dying man's hand. He ordered his reluctant feet forward to close the distance between them so that Wilor wouldn't need to strain so to speak. Suddenly the snakes hissed and snapped toward the mage. Cursing the vipers, Wilor struggled to hold them down to the bed of straw. Their tongues lashed and flickered, as if they had heard the man's sadness and were laughing. One of the heads lashed away from the rest and snatched a small, fright-eyed mouse from the shadows of the floor and swallowed the thing in one gulp.
Guerrand drew back and maintained a four-foot remove from the sick man so as not to excite the snakes again. He stared, as if mesmerized by the intricate diamond patterns behind the dark and beady eyes on their heads. Each little, slithering head recalled to Guerrand the memory of the mage who had caused this.
He circumnavigated the bed of straw to prop open both the grease-streaked window and door to let some fresher air into the sickroom. "Is there much pain, Wilor?"
Wilor seemed to realize Guerrand was not just making idle
conversation. He leaned forward and considered his bizarre new appendages. "Some, mostly when I try to control them. Tbe change was excruciating, I'll admit, but now the snakes are more inconvenient than hurtful. I can't use my hands or feet to do anything. It's a good thing nothing itches anymore." He fell back against the straw, winded. "But it all be over as soon as the moons rise. There's a comfort in knowing that."
Guerrand only nodded; his repartee was not at its best today. He had often played attendant to the minor ailments of folks in Harrowdown, listening to their dilemmas and suggesting solutions both magical and not. Though this was no minor ailment, Guerrand pulled up a stool and called those long-used skills to his side.
"I'm a mage now, Wilor," Guerrand informed him softly.
"I figured that out from the robes," said the silversmith, and his glance held a covert amusement.
Guerrand reddened. "I don't know what your views on magic are," he continued somewhat hesitantly, "but I'm hoping to use my skills to find a cure. Kirah's got the plague now." Guerrand heard his own hollow voice in the quiet of the death room. "She just finished shedding the skin from her arms and legs."
Wilor bobbed his head sadly. "You've seen too much death in your life, Guerrand DiThon." The silversmith stunned Guerrand with his next words. "Use me to find the cure."
"I don't know that I can help you, Wilor," he said awkwardly.
"I'm not asking you to," Wilor nearly snapped. "Have I given you the impression I'm afraid to die?" The mage had to shake his head. "I don't wish to live without my Marthe"-he looked down at himself- "like this."
Wilor scowled when he saw Guerrand hesitate with a look of pity the mage couldn't disguise. "Don't waste time," declared the smith, looking at the slant of the light. "I'm unsure how much of that I have left."
Guerrand rummaged around in the pack he'd carried with him on his first trip from Thonvil and withdrew his much-used spellbook. Hundreds of pages had been filled with his illegible scribbling since the handful he'd painstakingly inked in secret corners of the castle and upon a potato wagon outside Wayreth.
He looked up, his lips pursed in thought. "I'm unclear about what starts the disease in some people and not others," he admitted. "Kirah said she drank something that caused the onset of the illness. Do you recall drinking anything unusual?"
Wilor creased his brow momentarily. "Just water and ale."
Guerrand scowled his frustration. "I'll bet Lyim tainted the village water, but it would help if I knew if the disease was magical in nature or simply transmitted by magic." He snapped his fingers as an easy enchantment came to mind. The mage muttered the oft-spoken words that would reveal the presence of magic in Wilor's body. He frowned when that, too, revealed no glowing emanations, nothing.
Or did it? Guerrand hastily flipped open his spell- book again, found the entry for dispelling, and traced his finger down the column of his own writing:
Other-planar creatures are not necessarily magical. Multiple types of magic, or strong local magical emanations, may confuse or conceal weaker radiations.
Guerrand slammed the book shut. The plague could still be magical in nature, despite his spell. He knew no more than he did before.
"You're getting as frustrated as some of the villagers," said Wilor. "They've come up with the craziest tbe CftetmsA plague
notions about a cure. Several tried chopping the snakes off, but they only grow back. I know of one who begged his son to poison his snake hand."
"What happened?" Guerrand asked.
'The man got violently ill from the poison," admitted Wilor, "and he still died at sunset on the third day.
"Fear is a powerful force," Wilor continued. "Shortly after the first outbreak, a group of villagers went on a rampage and killed all the snakes they could find, at Herus's suggestion. When that didn't work, they moved on to other animals."
Wilor's lips pursed with concern. "I'm afraid that those who don't die of the plague will suffer a lingering death of starvation." Abruptly, Wilor's face contorted in pain.
Guerrand shifted uneasily at the sight of Wilor's agony. "I know my spells haven't proven very impressive, but I could give you an herbal analgesic that might ease the pain."
Wilor absently nodded his approval. Guerrand quickly combined the mixture of crushed dried peppermint leaves and meadowsweet flowers soaked in oil of clove he had used to help Kirah. Resolutely ignoring the snakes, the mage quickly leaned in and placed the tincture under Wilor's tongue before the man could change his mind.
Almost immediately, Wilor's eyes took on a peaceful look, far away in time and place. "Your father would have been proud of your being a mage," he said distantly. "Rejik was more than a little interested in the art himself after he married your mother."
Guerrand's heart skipped a beat at the unexpected revelation. "I always suspected Father had more than a passing interest, from the volumes in his library."
"Zena wasn't a blue-blood like your father or his first wife," Wilor went on, as if Guerrand hadn't spoken, "but Rejik followed his heart, despite pressure to marry someone from his own class."
Guerrand knew this part of the story too well; it was the root of his conflict with his brother Cormac. Cormac's mother, of old Ergothian stock, had died of Bali- forian influenza when Cormac was but eight. Ten years later, Rejik remarried a woman just two years older than his son. Zena DiThon's family had settled in Northern Ergoth just after the Cataclysm (some three hundred years before), but prejudice was rampant among the nobility. People not of the old, darker- skinned stock that had lived in Ergoth proper, before the Cataclysm split the region into two islands, were considered newcomers.
The smith's head shook. "You suffered for their union as much, if not more, than they-you and Quinn and Kirah. Especially after Rejik died. Between you and me," Wilor whispered, leaning forward conspira- torially, though no one was around to hear what had long stopped mattering to town folk anyway, "Zena was twice the woman Cormac's mother was, blue blood be damned."
Wilor fell back against the rustling straw, an odd smile lighting his face. "You get your magical skill from Zena, you know," he confided. "Her gypsy blood runs in your veins. She was a pale-skinned, sprightly miss with hair like Solinari's light, and just as enchanting. One with the magic of the earth,' was how Rejik described Zena. He was bewitched by her every day of their marriage."