The Medusa Plague Read online

  Ah, Guerrand. If you’re hearing this, you were able to recognize that fire would release the magical bonds. I must apologize for putting you through yet another test so long after your apprenticeship, but I had to be sure that you alone received the details of this missive. I also had to be sure that years of life among the simple folk hadn’t robbed you of your wits.

  Guerrand ground his teeth against the presumption, particularly since it was so close to the truth. “How could you be sure that someone else didn’t just toss it in the fire?” he demanded of the smoke, but the image didn’t respond to his question. The mage had to remind himself that Justarius wasn’t really here, just his magically recorded message.

  Random placement in a fire wouldn’t have released the message, Justarius’s image was saying. The archmage had obviously anticipated his former apprentice’s question. Guerrand vowed to keep his mouth shut and listen before he missed any more of Justarius’s words.

  The purpose of this missive is to inform you that the Council of Three requests your presence at Wayreth immediately. We wish to discuss with you a most urgent situation. Use your mirror to speed travel. All questions will be answered when you arrive. With that, the smokey visage of Justarius broke into wavering tendrils and stretched toward the hole in the thatch.

  Guerrand jumped when the door behind him abruptly banged open. Dorigar stomped into the small house, slamming the door closed. “I don’t suppose you’ve made anything to eat.”

  “No.” Guerrand noted vaguely that the gnome had remembered to take the magical concoction the wizard prepared each morning to slow his assistant’s speech to an understandable rate.

  Dorigar marched up to a butcher’s block and retrieved a device from beneath it. Several gleaming blades extended at divergent angles, mounted alongside measuring rods and depth gauges and mesh hand guards. With this doodad, Dorigar commenced slicing leeks into a kettle. Adding carrots and other herbs, he filled the pot with water. Last, Dorigar used an iron poker to hang the pot from a ring above the fire, stoked to furnace proportions.

  Guerrand quickly grew annoyed by the gnome’s happy scurrying. The cottage seemed to grow a degree hotter with each beat of the wizard’s heart. He jumped to his feet and rushed out into the night to lean against a linden tree. Drawing gulps of cool summer air, Guerrand listened to the distant lowing of cows, the ringing of bells calling men in from moonlit fields. The familiar sounds calmed him.

  What’s bothering you? asked Zagarus, settling upon a branch of the tree above his master. I haven’t seen you so shaken since Esme left.

  Guerrand slid down the tree into a crouch and dug his fists into his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just tired from concentrating all afternoon on deciphering Justarius’s message.”

  What do you think the Council wants?

  “I’m sure I don’t know that either.” Guerrand crossed his arms tightly before him. “I do know that I’m not too keen on going back to Wayreth.”

  You’ll have to check your handbook, of course, said Zagarus with exaggerated stuffiness, but I believe you gave up the right of refusal when you vowed loyalty to the Red Robes.

  Guerrand scowled up at his familiar. “I know that, as well as you know there’s no handbook. I merely said I don’t want to go, not that I wouldn’t.”

  The dull-black feathers on Zagarus’s wings lifted in a shrug. So what’s the problem?

  Guerrand absently touched the scar along his cheek that had never healed completely in five years.

  Is that still bothering you?

  “No!” Guerrand snapped a little too quickly. He wasn’t sure whether Zag meant the external or internal scars left by the third and final segment of his Test. A week never went by without him waking up in a sweat from the Dream. Though he had passed the Test, he felt certain the Dream meant he was supposed to take something else from the lesson. But he had no clearer idea of what that was now than he’d had when he walked away from the dreamlike tower in Palanthas and Justarius had told him he’d passed.

  Guerrand glided up the tree to his feet. “I have no interest in leaving Harrowdown, even briefly, to stand around and compare spellbooks with a bunch of high-powered mages. I’m needed here.” He began to pace. “To the villagers, my work is important. Harrowdown is prosperous compared to what it was when I arrived. Life as a mage may not be exactly what I dreamed back in Castle DiThon, but it isn’t bad, either.”

  This is what you and Esme fought about, isn’t it?

  Guerrand’s hand sliced the air like a scythe. “You know I won’t talk about that.”

  Zagarus was silent for some time. You don’t even know why Justarius has summoned you. Aren’t you the least bit curious? Maybe he just wants to say hello.

  Guerrand chuckled without humor. “That’s so like Justarius.” He sighed his resignation. “But I guess we’ll find out the truth soon enough.” Heading back for the cottage door, he announced over his shoulder, “I’m going to take a few moments to eat some of Dorigar’s delicious-smelling stew. Then I’ll pack a few things, and we’ll leave for Wayreth through the mirror.”

  Do you even have that piece of glass anymore? asked Zagarus. I haven’t seen it for years.

  “I packed it away in a safe place after the confrontation with Belize,” explained Guerrand, referring to the magical looking glass the archmage Belize had given Guerrand before they’d left Castle DiThon. It allowed the bearer to magically travel far distances via a mirror world by mentally picturing a mirror where you wished to reenter the real world. Guerrand had used it only once since the Night of the Eye upon Stonecliff, and that had been to transport Esme, himself, and Zagarus away from the site of the destroyed pagan pillars to Palanthas.

  Is it wise to use it after so long? asked the gull. I mean, you need a familiar destination point, and we’ve been away from Wayreth for a long time. Even there, things must change.

  Guerrand waved away the concern. “Justarius himself recommended we use it. He must have removed any magical wards on Wayreth that would prevent us from entering.”

  Guerrand returned some time later from the cottage with his old leather pack filled and strung from shoulder to hip. Digging around in the bag, he pulled from it a familiar, hand-sized fragment of dusty glass and set it on the dirt path. The mage smiled ruefully up at his familiar and extended his arm as a perch for the gull. “Justarius awaits us.”

  With the heavy old gull on his arm, Guerrand felt a long-forgotten sense of déjà vu as he stepped upon the surface of the magical glass and slipped into the extradimensional mirror world.

  As Guerrand suspected, Justarius had left a glowing trail in the mirror world that bypassed any protective wards and led them directly to a man-sized looking glass right inside the Hall of Mages. The room had not changed one jot since Guerrand’s first audience here. It was a vast, round chamber carved of obsidian; the far walls and ceiling were beyond his sight, obscured in shadow. As usual, there were no torches or candles, yet the room was lit by a pale white light, cold, cheerless, without warmth.

  Shivering in the dampness, Guerrand remembered with a bittersweet twinge his friend and fellow apprentice Lyim Rhistadt’s first bit of advice to him, when they both were waiting outside in the foretower to be assigned masters: “It’s a snap.” He had been so afraid then. Now he felt only cold.

  This time Guerrand was not surprised by the sudden appearance of the heavy oaken chair behind him in the otherwise empty room. He slipped into it and waited, fingers drumming the intricately carved armrests, anxiously at first, then with growing impatience.

  “Be at ease, Guerrand,” he heard at long last. He still could not see a face, but he recognized the slight quiver of age in Par-Salian’s voice.

  “We’re delighted you responded to Justarius’s missive.” The years had not dulled LaDonna’s sultry voice.

  The members of the Council of Three chose that moment to reveal themselves. The light had not increased or crept farther into the shadows, and yet Guerrand c
ould now see the semicircle of twenty-one seats, all but three empty. He had sat in one of those seats briefly, during the Conclave to discuss the building of Bastion.

  Seated in the very center, in a great chair of carved stone, was the extremely distinguished, though frail-looking, head of the Conclave of Wizards. Age had not dulled Par-Salian’s piercing blue eyes; the long, gray-white hair, beard, and mustache that nearly matched his white robe had not grown an inch.

  LaDonna, too, looked as if not a day had passed since Guerrand’s first audience. The Mistress of the Black Robes was seated to her superior’s right. She was a striking woman whose iron-gray hair was woven into an intricate braid coiled about her patrician head. Her beauty and age still defied definition.

  “You’re looking well, Guerrand.”

  Guerrand’s eyes shifted at last to the speaker whose voice, robust with unspoken humor, he knew so well. Justarius alone seemed to have aged. There was more salt than pepper now in the mustache and the shoulder-length hair that was simply parted down the middle. New, tiny lines pulled at the corners of his mouth and the narrows between his dark eyes. His usual neck ruff was a crisp and clean white, in contrast to the red linen robe below it.

  “I am well,” the former apprentice said stiffly.

  The three revered mages exchanged surprised looks. Par-Salian brushed a wisp of white hair from his watery old eyes. “The Council has summoned you, Guerrand, to offer you a position of some importance.”

  “I’m happy enough where I am.”

  Justarius’s eyebrows narrowed in a familiar gesture of irritation. “I see you’ve compounded your impertinent tendency to jump to conclusions. You would do well to listen and not waste our time.”

  Though words welled in his throat, Guerrand had the wits to press his lips into a tight line.

  “Let us not mince words, Guerrand,” began Par-Salian. “Bastion’s representative from the Red Robes has abruptly resigned, and we are in need of an immediate replacement. The Council has raised your name as a possibility to fill that position.”

  Guerrand could not keep the shock from registering on his face. His mouth dropped open. None of his musings regarding the nature of the summons had included Bastion. He couldn’t speak, which was fortunate, because there was still more to hear.

  “Since its completion,” continued Par-Salian, “Bastion has been run democratically by three occupants, a representative from each order, but that doesn’t seem to have worked. Somehow even the most trivial issues degenerate into a two-against-one brawl. These conflicts divert the mages’ attention from their real purpose in the stronghold: to be ever vigilant against intruders seeking the Lost Citadel.”

  Par-Salian leaned forward on his chair, elbow propped on the right armrest. “To prevent this from continuing, the Council has voted to create the position of high defender. The model is this very Council. I am the head of the Council of Three, as would the high defender be to the occupants of Bastion.”

  Par-Salian paused for effect. “Justarius has recommended you for that position.”

  “So I would be in charge of two mages who’ve been there for some time?” Guerrand asked.

  Par-Salian nodded, but held up a blue-veined hand for Guerrand to allow him to finish. “You must also know that the work is lonely and tedious, requiring constant vigilance for something that is likely never to happen.”

  Guerrand squinted one eye suspiciously. “Why did the previous mage resign?”

  “Vilar … was unstable,” Justarius said, picking his words carefully. “Bastion is very isolated, particularly if you don’t get along with its other occupants.” The red mage sighed. “He was not the first, but the second to resign; Ezius of the White Robes is the only original representative. You will be the fifth sentinel and the first high defender … should you accept the position.”

  Overwhelmed, Guerrand ran a hand through his mop of dark hair. “I-I can’t give you an answer right now. I need time to go home and think, and—”

  “There isn’t time for a trip,” interrupted LaDonna a bit peevishly. “Surely you can understand the need to fill this position immediately. You have until sunrise to decide.”

  “Your old room in the north tower has been prepared for your comfort,” Justarius added more kindly. “Of course, Zagarus is welcome. I’ll take you there now.”

  Guerrand stood weakly, holding fast to the arm of the chair. He nodded briskly to Par-Salian and LaDonna, then walked from the Hall of Mages at Justarius’s side. The red archmage seemed to be limping more than Guerrand remembered, favoring the leg that had been twisted by his own Test. Their footsteps, Justarius’s irregular, echoed against the cold, circular walls. The two mages crossed the small foretower where once Guerrand had waited with other hopeful apprentices, then entered the north tower.

  Both men knew there was no need for Justarius to show Guerrand the way to the sleeping chamber some five levels above Par-Salian’s study. He’d stayed there for several days before and after his Test, then during the planning of Bastion. Guerrand couldn’t decide if Justarius was acting as jailor or host now. Neither spoke as they climbed the narrow flights of stairs to the sixth level. The exercise brought warmth to feet that had grown cold in the foreboding ceremonial hall.

  Guerrand automatically took a sharp left at the top of the stairs, passed the first room, and turned the marble knob on the second. Squeezing through the door to the triangular room, he mumbled, “Thank you,” and made to shut the door behind him.

  Justarius’s good leg shot out to place his foot between the door and its frame. “I know you well enough to see when something is troubling you, Guerrand. Do you care to tell me what it is?”

  Guerrand looked at his feet. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You don’t do coy at all well,” Justarius remarked. “That was always Esme’s specialty.”

  Guerrand’s head jerked up at the mention of Esme’s name, as Justarius had obviously intended.

  “She’s doing well, by the way,” Justarius said conversationally. “She’s still living in Fangoth.” The archmage managed to steer them into the small, triangular room. Thin light filtered through a tiny window, more an arrow loop, on the far wall. “Her father died several years back, and she’s working toward restoring the locals’ faith in magic after her father’s reign of terror. But you would know about that.”

  “I-I knew her father died, but not the rest,” confessed Guerrand. “I haven’t heard from her in years.”

  With pursed lips that raised his mustache, Justarius acknowledged the admission. “I meant, you would know about raising the morale of a village with your magic. From what I’ve observed, you’ve accomplished near miracles in Harrowdown-on-the-Schallsea.”

  “ ‘From what you’ve observed?’ You mean you’ve been watching me?”

  “I make it a point to follow the progress of all my students.” Justarius’s eyes alone held the warmth of the confession.

  Guerrand sank with a sigh into the deep chair by the hearth on the curved, outside wall. “I didn’t know.”

  Justarius let out a breath as he closed the door. “Why do you think I recommended you for the position at Bastion?”

  “Frankly,” chuckled Guerrand, “I haven’t had time to consider your reasoning. Your missive revealed nothing about the nature of the meeting.”

  “What made you answer the summons?”

  Guerrand considered the question honestly. “Mainly curiosity,” he admitted at last. “Besides, I wasn’t sure I had the option of ignoring a summons by the Council.”

  Justarius raised one brow. “I believe I told you once, when you wanted to return to Thonvil to help your family, that you always have a choice.”

  Guerrand acknowledged the memory with a small nod.

  Justarius moved by the fire and crossed his arms expectantly. “So now that you’ve had your curiosity satisfied, are you interested in the position?”

  “I … don’t know,” Guerrand admitted. “Ther
e’s just so much to consider. The people of Harrowdown depend on me, and—”

  “They’ll survive without you,” Justarius broke in. “Every master must let his students fly or fall one day. You’ve given them the tools to succeed on their own.”

  Guerrand gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “But will I survive without them? What if I’m no more suited to the job at Bastion than the previous red mage?”

  “I have not succeeded at a great many things,” Justarius said soberly. “The only thing I have not failed at is trying. Failure is an integral part of the life cycle.”

  “But I am a rousing success in Harrowdown,” said Guerrand. “There’s a great deal of comfort in knowing that.”

  Justarius cocked his head in question. “Is comfort the achievement that you seek?”

  Guerrand frowned, discomfited with the introspection, but unable to deny Justarius his answers. “At one time, I didn’t think so. After the battle at Stonecliff with Belize, then the creation of Bastion, I believed I was destined to follow in your footsteps to becoming an archmage. But when that didn’t happen, I began to suspect I wasn’t suited to more than I had in Harrowdown.”

  “If you feel shorted of opportunities,” Justarius observed, “it’s because you haven’t sought them out.” He gave an ironic chuckle. “Just how many times did you expect to save the world, anyway? You’ve already been given more opportunities than most. Life is tedious, life is dirty, life is stimulating, life is ordinary for all of us. There are good days and bad days, and there will be no less of each at Bastion if you accept the position.”

  Guerrand set his chin firmly. “But I’ve resigned myself to my small success in Harrowdown. That’s enough for me now.”

  “Now, today, perhaps, but will it be sufficient three years hence? Or fifteen?” demanded Justarius. He tapped a finger to his chin as he seemed to recall something. “This conflict of expectations, exacerbated by fear of failure, was the source of your conflict with Esme, wasn’t it?”

  Guerrand winced, nodding. It still hurt to think of it, let alone speak of his separation from the young woman. She had never understood his conflicting emotions. “Be happy with what you are, whatever it is, and you’ll be a success,” she’d say. He understood now that she had been right, but it didn’t erase the conflict from his mind. That conflict had been the springboard of their friendship, since she, too, had suffered from confused expectations. The difference was, she had conquered her demons sufficiently to return to help her taskmaster father, while Guerrand had never been able to return to Thonvil, even for a visit.