"I… never knew any of that," breathed Guerrand. "Father refused to talk about Mother after she died."
Wilor managed a half-shrug. "It was the grief." He closed his eyes. "I know now what it can do to a man."
It was obvious to Guerrand that the tincture had loosened Wilor's tongue, as well as his hold on his emotions. The smith seemed to need to talk, as if he realized his time to do so was fast passing. Guerrand leaned back on his stool and listened patiently, arms crossed, letting the man speak his fill.
"It was Zena who noticed the oddness in Bram, you know," Wilor said faintly. Guerrand sat forward to question the statement, but the smith wasn't finished.
"Well I remember the night Rejik met me at the Red Goose, all sweaty-faced and edgy," Wilor continued, his voice picking up speed and volume. " 'Zena's certain Cormac's son Bram is a changeling,' " Wilor said in an imitation of Rejik's voice. "Your father confessed it after he'd drank more tankards of ale than I'd ever seen downed before."
Guerrand jumped to his feet. "What are you talking about?"
"I never spoke of it to anyone, nor did I seek you out now, dear boy," said Wilor, his eyes clear yet sad. "But when you arrived here today, it seemed like providence, like you were put in my path one last time for a reason. I can't let the truth die with me."
Wilor's head shook as he recalled a painful memory. "It almost killed your father, too, knowing that about his own grandson, knowing that Zena was never wrong about such things, knowing that nothing could be done about it without risking the wrath of the tuatha who'd pulled off the switch." Wilor coughed violently and spat, then asked for a drink. "The way things have been in Thonvil since then, I've had my suspicions about their meddling… I've never spoken them aloud before, but what can faeries do to me that the rising of the moons won't do in mere minutes anyway?"
"Why have I never heard this before?" demanded Guerrand. "Has anyone ever told Bram they thought he might have faerie blood?" Legends were common of such baby exchanges, but Guerrand had never seen
evidence of such an occurrence.
Wilor rolled his head on the straw. "Not that I've been able to see. Your father never said so, but I think Rejik shared his suspicions with Cormac, or Cormac guessed himself, because I hear tell he's always kept a distance and deferred judgment about the boy to his mother."
Guerrand couldn't deny the truth of that. His head was a tangle of questions that forced their way to the front of his tongue at the same time. All that came out was, "What am I supposed to do with this confession now? Whether it's true or not, how can I ever look at Bram the same way again, knowing my mother and father believed it?"
"Believe it or not, that is your choice. Take it to your deathbed, as I did. But remember, it makes Bram no less a man than you thought him before." Wilor's eyes traveled to the window, where the long yellow streaks of twilight stretched into the room. "I'm afraid the sun is setting." He didn't looked the least bit afraid.
"That can't be! Not now, not yet!" Scowling, Guerrand raced to the windowsill. "If only I could hold the sun in place!" he cried in frustration, but no mage was powerful enough for that. The window looked to the west. Guerrand could already see that Solinari and Lunitari had risen before sunset, faint white and red outlines in the purple sky above the Strait of Ergoth. Wilor was right-there wasn't much time.
"I fear I've left you with more questions than answers, dear boy," the silversmith said ruefully. "Life, and especially death, aren't at all neat."
Guerrand turned away from the window and back to the weakened man on the bed of straw, stopping short when the snakes rose up, hissing. "I'm the one who needs to apologize, Wilor. You've been a true friend."
Wilor's breath whistled two notes at once in response.
tbe СРеЭдел plague
He stared blankly, and his lips moved in a word that Guerrand could not hear. Heart in his throat, the mage scorned the snakes and moved closer. They didn't writhe, but slowly settled upon the straw as softly as feathers.
"Please, not yet!" the mage gasped again as the light in the eyes of his father's oldest friend winked to black. Without thinking, Guerrand leaped to the window again, as if to question that the time had come. Though he could not see it, there scuttled across the purple- darkened sky a distant, round shadow he understood too well. The third moon, Nuitari, had risen like the gleaming onyx in Wilor's eye sockets.
Guerrand cursed the wretched soul of Lyim Rhis- tadt, who had made all this happen when he began following the black moonlit path of the evil god of magic.
Chapter Fifteen
It happened enery night on Krynn. Moonrise. Tonight, white Solinari rose first, a blindingly bright light that was quickly tinged a vague pink by the rising of red Lunitari. Moments afterward, the pinkish moonlight was muted further by the rising of the third moon, black Nuitari. People not of an evil disposition were never quite sure if Nuitari had risen, or if the sudden muting was caused by clouds scuttling in the nighttime sky.
Guerrand tilted his face and stood silent in the doorway for a moment, reading some pattern in the heavens. Though the night sky was partly cloudy, there were no clouds near white Solinari and red Lunitari to dim their light now. The mage recalled that Solinari and Lunitari's combined pink light had shone for many minutes while Wilor still lived. But the silversmith had turned to stone at the precise moment when Nuitari's black light had dimmed the glow of the other two moons. Guerrand knew he had found his clue, knew it with the certainty of a seasoned mage whose experiments had met with both failure and success. Nuitari's rising was a component in the spread of the plague. Only the evil black moon no decent person could see would cause such sickness.
Why hadn't he realized before what was so obvious now? Guerrand had needed to witness the final transformation to see the answer. Everyone thought that the end came at sunset on the third day. But, not being mages, they had looked at a symptom-the setting of the sun-rather than the cause-the rising of the moons on three successive days. The villagers couldn't know the magical influence of the heavenly bodies that were the symbols of the gods of magic.
What was still unclear to Guerrand, though, was what he could do about it. It was not the sun he needed to stop, as he'd cried to Wilor, but the rising of the moons, specifically Nuitari. Guerrand sighed and ran a hand through his long, graying hair. He might as well try to split Krynn in half as keep Nuitari from rising. He doubted even the Council of Three had the power to accomplish such a feat. The mage dropped his chin upon his palm and stared out the window.
"Guerrand?"
The mage nearly jumped from his skin. He spun about, turning eyes like saucers upon the form in the straw. Wilor was still stone, still dead. The door to the silversmith's street-front shop swung open and Bram stepped through it. His brows were furrowed with anxiety, but they eased up at the sight of his uncle.
"Thank goodness," he puffed, out of breath. Bram bent over and grabbed his knees, lungs heaving. "I've practically sprinted over every inch of Thonvil in search of you."
Alarmed, Guerrand grabbed the door frame for support. "Is it Kirah?"
"The disease is… running its course. She's still alive, resting now." Bram broke in before Guerrand could say another word. Pausing, he tilted his head and seemed only then to sense the odd stillness in the room. Bram's gaze shifted left with a jerky motion, to the man of stone, then back to Guerrand's careworn face. He had witnessed the final transformation too many times to afford the sight of the dead silversmith more emotion than sad acceptance.