As if he'd snapped from a trance, Bram jolted, then jogged out the door into the darkness and rain. Guerrand shouted his name, and Bram stopped in the puddled street to peer back inside, squinting against the raindrops.

"Bring candles, too!"

Bram sprinted away down the street, splashing as he went.

Guerrand was still hunched over the table, completely absorbed in scribing illegible characters onto a sheet of parchment, when Bram returned for the fourth time with supplies. Other sheets were scattered across the workbench, mostly covered with drawings and arcane writing. Zagarus was perched on an opposite corner of the table, snoozing peacefully. Bram struggled through the doorway and plunked his heavy basket on the floor.

The noise attracted Guerrand's attention. "Oh, thank goodness you've returned," he expounded, "I was nearly out of parchment, and I've carved at least six new points on this quill." Immediately the mage began rummaging through the package, and his face brightened tenfold. He held aloft a sheaf of new parchment and a bundle of beeswax candles. "This is marvelous, Bram! Where did you find all this?"

Bram stepped to the fire to warm his hands and dry his cloak. "Leinster the scribe died three days ago, and his wife and children fled town. They left most of his things behind. I got the candles from a… a friend. I helped make them a few days ago, although it feels like months, with all that's happened."

Guerrand was already shifting fresh supplies to his worktable. "I will probably need even more parchment than this, if you can find it," he called over his shoulder. He lined up three stone vials of ink from the basket and, one by one, unstoppered them, smeared a bit of their contents between his fingers, smelled it, and even tasted one batch. His face wrinkled up in distaste.

"This ink, unfortunately, won't do," Guerrand announced sadly.

Bram cast a worried look away from the fire. "I don't know where I can find any more. Leinster made that ink himself, and anyone in the village who needed ink bought it from Leinster."

"What about at the castle?"

"The castle is closed off," Bram said, obviously embarrassed by the admission. "My mother thinks that if she bars her door securely enough, none of this will affect her. She as much as told me that if I left the safety of Castle DiThon to find you, even I would not be allowed in again."

The mountain dwarves did the same thing to their own during the Cataclysm," said Guerrand. "I can't help thinking there must be a message in the parallel somewhere."

The mage sat upon his stool and stared at the substance on his fingers. "This ink was made from

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dogwood bark. It doesn't have sufficient richness-it isn't substantial enough to carry magic." The mage sat for several moments, rubbing his fingertips thoughtfully. "We'll just have to make it work. Do you have any oak gall in your herb stocks?"

"I don't, even if I could get to it," Bram said. "But I'm sure I could find some in the same place I got the candles. Nahamkin has-had-an exhaustive collection."

Guerrand scooped up the three ink bottles. "Dump all this ink together. Then mix in a good, strong infusion of oak gall and some sulfate of iron." He fished in a fold of his robe and tossed a vial to Bram. "This ink doesn't have to stay black forever, but it does have to make a trip to the moon." Guerrand flashed a smile of encouragement at his perplexed nephew, then turned back to his work on the table.

Bram picked up his damp cloak and was nearly out the door when Guerrand's voice stopped him again. "Did you check on Kirah?"

Shivering against its cold wetness, the young man pulled his clammy cloak around his shoulders. "She was sleeping in fits a while ago. 1 gave her honeyed tea for energy and a fresh blanket." He grimaced. "I don't like leaving her alone. In the morning she'll begin to-" He neither needed to nor could finish the sentence.

Whittling pensively at his quill tip, Guerrand gave a grim nod. "Fetch that gall, then go sit with her. I'll be at this for the rest of the night and the better part of tomorrow's light, anyway."

Bram was surprised. "That long?"

Guerrand looked up from his work. "1 told you magic was a complicated and time-consuming business, and not all lighting fires with your finger." He looked back with great concentration to his tracings. "Now be off, or I'll miss my sunset deadline."

Properly chastised, Bram disappeared once more into the darkness, a shadow in rain-shrouded moonlight.

The moons, at least the ones Guerrand could see as he hurried from the silversmith's to Kirah's, rose before sunset. In the still-bright sky, pale Solinari looked like the bleached bones of some great beast, sucked dry of their marrow.

Guerrand tried not to dwell on the fleeting day. His task of transcribing Bastion's runes from memory had been more taxing than even he'd expected it to be; the demands on his memory were extreme as he reconstructed the intricate patterns, making subtle changes as necessary. He believed-and hoped-that he had enough time remaining to put his magical plan into operation.

Tell me again how this works, requested Zagarus, swooping low across Guerrand's path. Do you seriously expect me to carry something to the moon?

"No, Zag," replied Guerrand, "at least not all the way." The mage paused at the rear door to the bakery. Bram was upstairs with Kirah, had been through her third terrible morning of the plague. By now her limbs would be a writhing mass of snakes. Guerrand steeled himself against the shock of seeing her like that.

As Guerrand climbed the stairs, everything that had happened in the past few days seemed to focus on Kirah's life. He was the only person who could save her. If this spell worked, she would live; if it failed, she would die. His hand trembled as he reached for the door handle.

As his uncle entered the room, Bram stood, weary eves searching for a sign of hope. Guerrand was tremendously relieved to see that his nephew had pulled

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sacks over Kirah's limbs, although the way they bulged and twitched nearly brought up Guerrand's meager lunch.

Kirah turned, too, and watched Guerrand enter. Like Wilor, she appeared perfectly lucid, but the fever had been much harder on her than on the stout silversmith. Her cheeks were beyond sunken, her eyes hollow and dark. She opened cracked lips to utter a barely audible, "Hello, Rand." A flicker of his old, scrappy kid sister came into her pale eyes. "You'll have to excuse me for not dressing for visitors. I'm feeling all thumbs today," she managed with a weak grin, then lay still.

Guerrand's own smile held affection and sadness and a thousand other things. More than anything, though, he wanted to pick up his sister and carry her away from all this horror. He wanted to play fox and hound over heather and creeks the way they had as children. He wanted to be anywhere but in this town filled with death, pinning Kirah's life on a basketful of scribbled runes and an untried spell.

Bram cut into Guerrand's thoughts. "We haven't much time. What can I do to help?"

Guerrand quickly focused his mind. "I'll need to be outside."

"Take me along." Kirah's whisper-weak voice caught both men by surprise. She could barely raise her head from the pillow. "I don't want to be alone in here when-" Her eyes were pleading.

Bram looked to Guerrand, who motioned him toward the bed. Together they picked up the straw mattress with Kirah on it and carried it outside to beneath a tree on the edge of the green. Bram ran back to the room and fetched Guerrand's basket of papers.